4 ms·

EFS is ridiculously slow though. Almost to the point where I fail to see how it’s actually useful for any of the traditional use cases for NFS.

dekhn 3y ago
if you turn all the EFS performance knobs up (at a high cost), it's quite fast.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  Faster, sure. But I wouldn’t got so far as to say it is fast
harshaw 3y ago
Have you tried it recently? Because we've made it a lot faster over the years.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  More recently and for more use cases and varied workflows than most people. But that’s as much as I can say without getting people to sign an NDA. Our AWS spend is high enough to warrant a very close working relationship with AWS so this is something we have worked with you guys on already.
geertj 3y ago
> EFS is ridiculously slow though. Almost to the point where I fail to see how it’s actually useful for any of the traditional use cases for NFS. Would you care to elaborate on your experience or use case a bit more? We've made a lot of improvements over the last few years (and are actively working on more), and we have many happy customers. I'd be happy to give a perspective of how well your use case would work with EFS. Source: PMT turned engineer on EFS, with the team for over 6 years
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  Unfortunately I can’t say too much publicly on HN. But one of the big shortcomings is dealing with hundreds of files. It doesn’t even matter if those are big or small files (I’ve had experience with both). Services like DataSync show that the underlying infra can be performant. But it feels almost impossible to replicate that on EFS via standard POSIX APIs. And unfortunately one of our use cases depend upon that. If feels, to me at least, like EFS isn’t where AWSs priorities lie. At least if you compare EFS to FSx Lustre and recent developments to S3. Both of which has been the direction our AWS SAs have pushed us.

dekhn 3y ago

if you turn all the EFS performance knobs up (at a high cost), it's quite fast.

hnlmorg 3y ago
Faster, sure. But I wouldn’t got so far as to say it is fast

harshaw 3y ago

Have you tried it recently? Because we've made it a lot faster over the years.

hnlmorg 3y ago
More recently and for more use cases and varied workflows than most people. But that’s as much as I can say without getting people to sign an NDA. Our AWS spend is high enough to warrant a very close working relationship with AWS so this is something we have worked with you guys on already.

geertj 3y ago

> EFS is ridiculously slow though. Almost to the point where I fail to see how it’s actually useful for any of the traditional use cases for NFS. Would you care to elaborate on your experience or use case a bit more? We've made a lot of improvements over the last few years (and are actively working on more), and we have many happy customers. I'd be happy to give a perspective of how well your use case would work with EFS. Source: PMT turned engineer on EFS, with the team for over 6 years

hnlmorg 3y ago
Unfortunately I can’t say too much publicly on HN. But one of the big shortcomings is dealing with hundreds of files. It doesn’t even matter if those are big or small files (I’ve had experience with both). Services like DataSync show that the underlying infra can be performant. But it feels almost impossible to replicate that on EFS via standard POSIX APIs. And unfortunately one of our use cases depend upon that. If feels, to me at least, like EFS isn’t where AWSs priorities lie. At least if you compare EFS to FSx Lustre and recent developments to S3. Both of which has been the direction our AWS SAs have pushed us.