Consider updating EFS to use elastic throughput mode

[jsf9k]

💡 Summary

Consider updating the EFS to use elastic throughput mode.

Motivation and context

I heard from an RTA entity that the EFS is very slow in their assessment environment. I also recently received an email from AWS that stated that one or more EFS shares had been throttled because the current mode (bursting throughput mode) is insufficient to handle the traffic. The email suggested switching to elastic throughput mode. (The EFS can also apparently switch between the two modes on demand.)

Contents of the email from AWS:

Hello,

You are receiving this message because, at least once in the past 30 days, one or more Amazon EFS file systems in your account has been constrained by the performance limits of EFS’s Bursting throughput mode. Specifically, these file systems have exhausted the Bursting mode’s available throughput and/or IOPS performance, which could result in a degraded experience for your application or end users.

Your file system is currently configured to use EFS's Bursting Throughput mode. Bursting file systems' throughput capacity is determined by a credit model (“burst credits”) and IOPS capacity is up to 35,000 read IOPS and up to 7,000 write IOPS [1]. When your file system exhausts its “burst credits” or reaches its IOPS limit, throttling of additional I/O can result in unexpected slowness, timeouts, or other application failures for your end users or workloads.

We have identified the following impacted Amazon EFS file system(s) that have been throttled in the past 30 days and require more throughput or IOPS than what Bursting Throughput provides.

A list of your affected resource(s) can be found in the 'Affected resources' tab in the AWS Health Dashboard.

#Action Recommended:
To help your end users and applications to achieve their required throughput and IOPS performance, we recommend that you update your file system configuration to Elastic Throughput mode [2]. When in Elastic Throughput mode, your file system can achieve up to 10 GiB/s of read throughput or 3 GiB/s of write throughput — depending on the AWS Region [3] — and up to 55,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS. Elastic Throughput charges a pay-as-you-go rate for data transfer to/from your file system, which means you only pay for what you use [4]. You can update your file system configuration to switch between Elastic and Bursting throughput modes on demand.

If you have already updated your file system configuration to one of EFS’s enhanced throughput modes - Elastic or Provisioned Throughput - you can disregard this message.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact AWS Support [5].

[1] https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/performance.html*performance-overview__;Iw!!BClRuOV5cvtbuNI!EogXGg2V2HigA96RB39oMQc433wJ7T0KegTJXaXvs7PGLdiHUkFlAVIMAxzCJ-jhRN8h35x-sfds1IBoiSEYoa6H12FwpyVgFhNv5TjW07-ahyg$
[2] https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/performance.html*throughput-modes__;Iw!!BClRuOV5cvtbuNI!EogXGg2V2HigA96RB39oMQc433wJ7T0KegTJXaXvs7PGLdiHUkFlAVIMAxzCJ-jhRN8h35x-sfds1IBoiSEYoa6H12FwpyVgFhNv5TjWygC6JEY$
[3] https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/limits.html__;!!BClRuOV5cvtbuNI!EogXGg2V2HigA96RB39oMQc433wJ7T0KegTJXaXvs7PGLdiHUkFlAVIMAxzCJ-jhRN8h35x-sfds1IBoiSEYoa6H12FwpyVgFhNv5TjWNjU9s3U$
[4] https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://aws.amazon.com/efs/pricing/__;!!BClRuOV5cvtbuNI!EogXGg2V2HigA96RB39oMQc433wJ7T0KegTJXaXvs7PGLdiHUkFlAVIMAxzCJ-jhRN8h35x-sfds1IBoiSEYoa6H12FwpyVgFhNv5TjWXjBwRUY$
[5] https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://aws.amazon.com/support__;!!BClRuOV5cvtbuNI!EogXGg2V2HigA96RB39oMQc433wJ7T0KegTJXaXvs7PGLdiHUkFlAVIMAxzCJ-jhRN8h35x-sfds1IBoiSEYoa6H12FwpyVgFhNv5TjW_TGYkJ0$

Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services Inc., 410 Terry Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109-5210

Implementation notes

None.

Acceptance criteria

How do we know when this work is done?

• [ ] The EFS is switched to use elastic throughput mode.
• [ ] The assessors verify increased performance of the EFS.

[jsf9k]

Based on what I read in the AWS documentation, it makes sense to use the elastic throughput mode (versus provisioned mode).