AWS announces low-cost storage for Amazon Elastic File System

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced its new Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) One Zone storage classes. It reduces storage costs by 47% compared to existing Amazon EFS storage classes while delivering the same features and benefits.

One Zone storage classes store data within a single Availability Zone (AZ). They are ideal for customers who want low-cost file storage options for workloads and applications that do not require the level of availability and durability offered by regional Amazon EFS storage classes that redundantly store data across multiple geographically separated Availability Zones.

The new storage classes for Amazon EFS require no minimum commitments or up-front fees, and customers can pay only for the amount of file system storage used. Amazon EFS is a simple, serverless, elastic file system with AWS for a broad range of workloads. Traditionally, Amazon EFS storage classes have been storing data across multiple geographically-separated Availability Zones.

Amazon EFS is mainly used for SAP and Oracle applications; however, some workloads do not require multi-AZ availability and durability. As a result, the customers either have to pay for more than they require or deploy self-managed file systems that are complex and time-consuming.

With new storage classes for Amazon EFS, customers can now choose a simple, serverless, fully managed file system that runs in a single Availability Zone. It also costs  47% less than regional Amazon EFS storage classes. The new offering from AWS allows customers to achieve a blended storage price of $0.043/GB per month while also offering higher availability and durability than self-managed file systems.