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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Amazon S3 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

No sentiment score available
Amazon EFS support is well-rated, with users finding documentation helpful and support responsive, though some find AWS support costly.
Sentiment score
6.2
Amazon S3 support is knowledgeable and professional, though some users desire quicker responses and reduced costs.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
5.4
Amazon EFS needs improved user-friendliness, Windows integration, stability, performance, cost transparency, connectivity, and remote access similar to OneDrive.
Sentiment score
5.8
Amazon S3 requires better management, security, cost transparency, UI improvements, faster access, scalability, reduced latency, and enhanced support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon EFS is praised for its rapid, scalable performance, supporting varied business sizes, despite minor issues with dynamic scaling.
Sentiment score
8.3
Amazon S3 is valued for its scalable, secure, and efficient storage solutions, suitable for businesses of all sizes and needs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon EFS is generally praised for stability and performance, though some users report occasional glitches and less stability.
Sentiment score
8.5
Amazon S3 is highly reliable, secure, and efficient with minimal maintenance, nearly 100% availability, and rare upload speed issues.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon EFS offers scalable, cost-effective, seamless storage with extensive AWS integration, supporting multiple servers and applications requiring consistent file access.
Sentiment score
8.4
Amazon S3 offers scalable, secure, cost-effective storage with features like versioning, lifecycle policies, multi-zone replication, and AWS integration.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon S3 offers cost-effective, flexible pay-as-you-go storage with extra costs for data retrieval and transfers across regions.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (6th), File and Object Storage (9th)
Amazon S3
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (1st)
 

Q&A Highlights

Jitendra Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 31, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

Shailesh Tripathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for storing details of projects and has an easy configuration
I will recommend the product to others. We are partners. Our clients moved from on-premise setup to the cloud. We suggested AWS to them. We have configured the product based on the best practices. We also monitor the solution for recommendations in the Security Hub. We try to get the data encrypted properly within our repository. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.
HenryAragon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers different tiers, enable encryption but there's a lot of complexity
The best thing about S3 is the security. I can enable encryption at rest using a KMS server, a key management server. Key management servers encrypt data, and you need the key to decrypt it. Without the key, you can't access the data. Amazon allows you to use your own servers or theirs. They offer Amazon encryption, which you decide on when you create the bucket. The bucket also has all the other features like versioning. We can do versioning and life cycles. The biggest plus for me as a storage admin is the different tiers: standard, infrequent access, Glacier, and Glacier Deep Archive. The differences between these tiers are cost and data retrieval speed. Standard tier data is considered "hot," meaning it's accessible anytime, but it's expensive. If you want to archive data you won't need often, or if you have ample time to retrieve a backup, the most cost-effective option is Glacier Deep Archive. It's very cheap, but the disadvantage is that when you request data, it takes up to 24 hours to become accessible. There are no limitations on how much you can store, but the biggest limitation is that you cannot use Glacier Deep Archive from the console. You can't go into the AWS console and copy something directly into Deep Glacier, but you can do it from the command line. If you have programmatic access, there's a command to put data directly into Glacier Deep Archive. We don't use anything AI on AWS right now. The AI stuff isn't really too useful for us yet. We're just playing around with Copilot from Microsoft, which is more on the Azure side. We haven't leveraged any AWS AI stuff yet. We've basically just been playing around with Amazon Bedrock, but haven't done anything in production with it.
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Answers from the Community

Jitendra Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 31, 2022
Mar 31, 2022
Hi @Vipin Garg, @Oscar Mejia ​, @Shaban AL-Ahmad ​, @Nibrask Alambilat Kaniyat , @Marcelo Lucas and @Krishna Rao , Do you possibly have any answers to assist @Jitendra Patel ​with this question?​
See 2 answers
AC
Mar 22, 2022
It depends on the storage capacity you are looking for and expected data growth. You would need to ascertain these numbers before looking at backup volumes, and potential costs.
EB
Mar 31, 2022
Hi @Vipin Garg, @Oscar Mejia ​, @Shaban AL-Ahmad ​, @Nibrask Alambilat Kaniyat , @Marcelo Lucas  and @Krishna Rao , Do you possibly have any answers to assist @Jitendra Patel ​with this question?​
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
75%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...
What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
The product charges are based on the amount of data stored, with different hot and cold storage costs. Cold storage is inexpensive but slower to access.
What do you like most about Amazon S3?
We can easily connect to the AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?
The licensing model is complex. If you need your backup data available at all times, but don't access it frequently, there are better options. You could go with S3, but other vendors offer the same...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
There's a lot of complexity, but that's unavoidable because it needs to be versatile. You have to be able to get the data in many different ways. For example, if you need to give just one file to s...
 

Also Known As

No data available
S3, Simple Storage Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend
Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Amazon S3 and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.