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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.1 out of 5

18 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers elasticity and flexible pricing, making it attractive for cost management. It allows handling fluctuating workloads without pre-provisioned storage, ensuring scalability. While stable and secure under AWS management, it connects poorly with Windows Server and is complex to set up. Despite offering unlimited storage and significant cost savings, the high rates compared to EBS or S3 and limited API availability constrain its adoption.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon EFS offers elasticity and flexible pricing based on storage usage, making it an attractive option for cost management.

The scalability of Amazon EFS allows users to handle fluctuating workloads without the need for pre-provisioned storage, seamlessly accommodating growth.

Amazon EFS is extremely stable and secure, benefiting from AWS management and operation under VPC conditions.

There are significant cost savings associated with using Amazon EFS, as companies can save more than half of their storage costs.

Amazon EFS provides a serverless solution with unlimited storage, enhancing data management capabilities for users.

CONS

Amazon EFS connects poorly with Windows Server instances, limiting feature availability compared to Linux.

Deployment process of Python package into environment could be faster.

Platform's connectivity lacks compared to S3 buckets which offer better API availability.

EFS setup requires prior experience and technical skills, lacking simplicity and ease of use.

The cost of Amazon EFS is high compared to EBS or S3, with expensive data transfer rates.

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Pros review quotes

KR

Customer Engagement, Presales and GIS Solution Architect at ESRI INDIA

Mar 30, 2020

We are not that big of a cloud user. We just use it for the storage of our bytes. The most valuable aspect is the storage.

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ML

Director of IT at Computer Consulting

Dec 13, 2020

Its elasticity and flexible pricing are the most valuable. For Amazon EFS, you are charged based on the storage. It is also very fast and stable with a very simple and intuitive interface.

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Giovanni SHOLAY

System Engineer at MUA`

Aug 19, 2022

The initial setup was straightforward.

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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Free Report: Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Software Engineer at Readyly

Jul 9, 2023

The solution is scalable.

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Information Technology Specialist at Infiniti Creation

Aug 3, 2023

The solution's technical support is good.

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EV

Systems and network services admin management at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 4, 2023

I appreciate Amazon's extensive range of services, which makes it a favorable choice.

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DevOps Developer at AFORV Private Limited

Mar 6, 2024

The most beneficial feature of the product for data storage stems from the fact that it serves as a shared file storage.

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Shailesh Tripathi

Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 6, 2024

We can run code and deploy it whenever we want.

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Senior Power BI Developer at RP tech India

May 8, 2024

The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.

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Mahender Nirwan

Software developer at TAIGLE LLC

Aug 12, 2024

The platform is highly scalable.

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Show 8 more reviews (out of 18)

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Cons review quotes

KR

Customer Engagement, Presales and GIS Solution Architect at ESRI INDIA

Mar 30, 2020

It should be simplified. There are people who don't have cloud experience. It should be storage that we are able to just connect to.

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ML

Director of IT at Computer Consulting

Dec 13, 2020

It could be better in connecting with Windows Server instances.

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Giovanni SHOLAY

System Engineer at MUA`

Aug 19, 2022

The user activity needs to be more connected.

Read full review

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Free Report: Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Software Engineer at Readyly

Jul 9, 2023

Its deployment process could be faster while installing the Python package directly into the environment.

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Information Technology Specialist at Infiniti Creation

Aug 3, 2023

Around 80 percent of the features of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) are available on Linux and not in Windows, making it a major drawback of the product.

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EV

Systems and network services admin management at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 4, 2023

Specifically, when it comes to the file system for the learning system, we encountered performance issues with both Azure and AWS.

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DevOps Developer at AFORV Private Limited

Mar 6, 2024

The lack of transparency in the costs attached to the product is an area of concern where improvements are required.

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Shailesh Tripathi

Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 6, 2024

When we faced some issues, the support team took a lot of time to resolve them.

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Senior Power BI Developer at RP tech India

May 8, 2024

The product's stability has some shortcomings where improvements are required.

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Mahender Nirwan

Software developer at TAIGLE LLC

Aug 12, 2024

The platform's connectivity could be improved to be more comparable to S3 buckets, which offer better API availability.

Read full review

Show 8 more reviews (out of 18)

Product Categories

Product Categories

File and Object Storage

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Product Categories

Product Categories

File and Object Storage

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

MinIO vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Dropbox Business - Enterprise vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Zadara vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Amazon FSx vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Huawei FusionStorage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

HPE File Storage and Object Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

DigitalOcean Spaces vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

See all alternatives

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