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A company is creating a new application that will store a large amount of data. The data will be analyzed hourly and will be modified by several Amazon EC2 Linux instances that are deployed across multiple Availability Zones. The needed amount of storage space will continue to grow for the next 6 months.
Which storage solution should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?
A
Store the data in Amazon S3 Glacier. Update the S3 Glacier vault policy to allow access to the application instances.
B
Store the data in an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume. Mount the EBS volume on the application instances.
C
Store the data in an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system. Mount the file system on the application instances.
D
Store the data in an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Provisioned IOPS volume shared between the application instances.
Explanation:
Correct Answer: C - Amazon EFS
Why EFS is the best choice:
Multi-AZ access: The requirement states that several EC2 Linux instances are deployed across multiple Availability Zones. Amazon EFS is a regional service that provides a shared file system accessible from multiple Availability Zones simultaneously.
Scalability: The storage needs will continue to grow for the next 6 months. EFS automatically scales storage capacity up or down as files are added or removed, with no need for provisioning.
Concurrent access: Multiple EC2 instances need to modify the data. EFS supports concurrent access from multiple EC2 instances, making it ideal for shared storage scenarios.
Linux compatibility: The instances are Linux-based, and EFS provides a standard file system interface compatible with Linux.
Hourly analysis: EFS provides the performance needed for hourly data analysis operations.
Why other options are incorrect:
A. Amazon S3 Glacier: Glacier is designed for long-term archival storage with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours. It's not suitable for data that needs to be modified by EC2 instances or analyzed hourly.
B. Amazon EBS volume: EBS volumes are block storage devices that can only be attached to a single EC2 instance at a time within the same Availability Zone. They cannot be shared across multiple instances or Availability Zones.
D. EBS Provisioned IOPS volume shared between instances: EBS volumes cannot be shared between multiple EC2 instances simultaneously. While you could use a clustered file system on top of EBS, this adds complexity and is not a native AWS solution for shared file access.
Key AWS Service Characteristics:
Best Practice: When you need shared file storage accessible from multiple EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones with automatic scaling, Amazon EFS is the recommended AWS service.