Ideal Data Store for Fleet of Linux EC2 Instances | SOA-C02 Exam Preparation

Ideal Data Store for Fleet of Linux EC2 Instances

Question

You have a fleet of Linux EC2 Instances.

They need to have a shared data store, where the file system needs to be mounted on a fleet of instances.

The size of the items will vary from 1KB to 300 MB.

The maximum size of the data store will be 3TB.

The data needs to have a consistent read view.

There are few changes to the data with reasonably no conflicts.

Which of the following would be the ideal data store for the fleet of Instances?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

Correct Answer: A.

The following is mentioned in the AWS Documentation when it comes to the features of EFS.

Amazon EFS file systems can automatically scale from gigabytes to petabytes of data without needing to provision storage.

Tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Amazon EC2 instances can simultaneously access an Amazon EFS file system.

Amazon EFS provides consistent performance to each Amazon EC2 instance.

Amazon EFS provides a file system interface, file system access semantics (such as strong consistency and file locking), and concurrently-accessible storage for up to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances.

Option B is invalid since this is used for object-level storage that is available from the Internet.

Option C is invalid since this is used for local block-level storage for EC2 Instances.

Option D is invalid since this is used for the NoSQL database and ideally not suitable for such large item data sizes.

For more information on the EFS file system, please refer to the below URL-

https://aws.amazon.com/efs/faq/

Based on the given requirements, the ideal data store for the fleet of instances would be Amazon Elastic File System (EFS).

Here's why:

  1. Shared Data Store: EFS is a managed, scalable, and highly available shared file system that can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously.

  2. File System Mount: EFS can be mounted on multiple EC2 instances at the same time, making it an ideal choice for a shared data store.

  3. Size of Items: EFS can store files ranging from 1KB to 16TB in size, which is sufficient for the given size of items.

  4. Maximum Size: EFS has no hard limit on the maximum size of the file system, so it can easily handle the required 3TB.

  5. Consistent Read View: EFS supports file locking, which ensures a consistent view of the data across all instances accessing the file system.

  6. Low Conflict: EFS can handle low conflict scenarios where multiple instances access and modify the same files, ensuring data consistency across all instances.

On the other hand, the other options would not be the ideal choice for the given requirements:

  • Amazon S3 is an object storage service and not a file system, so it is not suitable for mounting on EC2 instances.

  • Amazon EBS volumes are block-level storage that is attached to a single EC2 instance and cannot be shared between instances.

  • Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database and is not suitable for storing files. Moreover, it does not provide a file system interface, so it cannot be mounted on EC2 instances.