S3 vs EBS vs EFS at a Glance
When do you choose object storage (S3), block storage (EBS), or shared file (EFS) on AWS?
Answers use simple, clear English.
Quick interview answer
S3: durable object store for blobs, static assets, data lakes — not a POSIX disk. EBS: block volume for a single EC2/AZ workload (databases). EFS: shared NFS-style file system across instances.
Detailed answer
S3: durable object store for blobs, static assets, data lakes — not a POSIX disk. EBS: block volume for a single EC2/AZ workload (databases). EFS: shared NFS-style file system across instances. Pick based on access pattern, consistency, and mounting needs.
Real example & use case
Web images on S3+CDN; Postgres data on EBS; shared ML training datasets on EFS.
Pros & cons
Pros: clear fit-for-purpose. Cons: using EBS as shared multi-attach wrongly causes corruption risk.