Document history - Amazon Elastic File System

Document history

  • API version: 2015-02-01

  • Latest documentation update: March 13, 2024

The following table describes important changes to the Amazon Elastic File System User Guide after July 2018. For notifications about documentation updates, you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

ChangeDescriptionDate

Elastic throughput limit increased

Elastic throughput limit has increased for specific AWS Regions. For more information, see Total default Elastic throughput for all connected clients in each AWS Region.

March 13, 2024

Increased IOPS

File systems that use Elastic throughput can drive a maximum of 90,000 read for infrequently accessed data. For more information, see Performance summary.

January 22, 2024

Updated existing AWS managed policy

Permission elasticfilesystem:UpdateFileSystemProtection added to existing AmazonElasticFileSystemFullAccess policy to allow principals to update protection on a file system. For more information, see Amazon EFS updates to AWS managed policies.

November 27, 2023

Replicate to existing file system

File systems can now be replicated to existing file systems, making it easier to synchronize changes between file systems for failback purposes. For more information, see Destination file systems.

November 27, 2023

File system protection added

Replication overwrite protection has been added to file systems and is enabled by default. The protection prevents file systems from being used as the destination in a replication configuration. For more information, see File system protection.

November 27, 2023

New storage class, file system types, and lifecycle policy

Amazon EFS now offers the EFS Archive storage class, file system types, and the Transition into Archive lifecycle policy. For more information, see File system types and storage classes.

November 26, 2023

Increased IOPS

Elastic throughput file systems now support a maximum of 65,000 read and 50,000 write operations IOPS for infrequently accessed data, and now support 250,000 read IOPS for frequently accessed data. For more information, see Performance summary.

November 26, 2023

Delete replication configuration from source file system

Replication configurations can now be deleted from the source file system. For more information, see Deleting a replication configuration.

September 19, 2023

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Israel (Tel Aviv) Region.

August 7, 2023

Performance increase for General Purpose mode file systems

Amazon EFS General Purpose mode file systems now support up to 55,000 read operations per second and 25,000 write operations. For more information, see Quotas for Amazon EFS File Systems.

August 3, 2023

Provisioned throughput limit increased

Provisioned throughput limit has increased for specific AWS Regions. For more information, see Total default Provisioned throughput for all connected clients in each AWS Region.

June 21, 2023

Expanded Region support for EFS replication

EFS replication is now available in all AWS Regions in which EFS is available. For more information, see Amazon EFS replication.

April 28, 2023

Elastic throughput limit increase

Elastic throughput limit has increased for specific AWS Regions. For more information, see the table Total default Elastic throughput for all connected clients in each AWS Region.

April 17, 2023

Elastic replaces Bursting as the default throughput mode

The default (and recommended) throughput mode for file systems is now Elastic instead of Bursting. For more information, see Throughput modes.

April 13, 2023

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region.

April 12, 2023

Support added for macOS Ventura

Amazon EFS can now be installed on EC2 Mac instances running on macOS Ventura. For more information, see Supported distributions.

April 10, 2023

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region.

February 16, 2023

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Europe (Spain) AWS Region.

January 19, 2023

The access point limit for file systems has increased

The maximum number of access points a single file system can have has increased from 120 to 1,000. For more information, see Resource quotas.

January 17, 2023

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Europe (Zurich) AWS Region.

December 15, 2022

Support added for one day lifecycle policies

You can now select one day for the Transition into IA lifecycle policy. For more information, see Using Lifecycle policies.

November 27, 2022

Reduced read and write latencies

Latencies for file data reads and writes have reduced for both One Zone storage and Standard storage file systems. For more information, see Performance summary.

November 27, 2022

Additional throughput mode added

Elastic throughput mode is added as a throughput option for Amazon EFS file systems. For more information, see Elastic throughput.

November 27, 2022

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Middle East (UAE) Region.

October 17, 2022

Support added for EFS Replication

Amazon EFS has removed a previous limit where EFS replication does not support sockets and named pipes, or FIFOs.

September 15, 2022

The limit for the number of file locks per connection has increased

The number of file locks per connection has increased from 8192 to 65,536. For more information, see Quotas for NFS clients.

May 4, 2022

Limit for processes using file locks removed

Amazon EFS has removed a previous limit where a maximum of 256 processes on a single instance could use file locks at the same time. For more information, see Quotas for NFS clients.

May 4, 2022

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Jakarta) AWS Region.

January 27, 2022

Support added for EFS Replication

Use EFS Replication to replicate the data and metadata on an EFS file system to another EFS file system in the AWS Region of your choice. For more information, see Amazon EFS replication.

January 25, 2022

File system and mount target resources use 17-character resource ID format

New Amazon EFS file system and mount target resources are now assigned 17-character IDs. For more information, see Resource IDs.

October 22, 2021

Support added for EFS Intelligent-Tiering

EFS Intelligent-Tiering uses EFS Lifecycle Management to monitor file access patterns and is designed to automatically transition files to and from your corresponding Infrequent Access (IA) storage classes. For more information, see EFS Intelligent-Tiering and Lifecycle Management.

September 2, 2021

Support added for testing 17-character resource ID format

Amazon EFS is transitioning from using 8-character IDs to 17-character IDs for file systems and mount targets on October 1, 2021. During this transition, you can opt in and start using 17-characters resource IDs on a per AWS Region basis. For more information, see Resource IDs.

May 5, 2021

Support added for mounting One Zone file systems from a different Availability Zone using Amazon EFS mount helper

You can now use the EFS mount helper to mount an Amazon EFS file system that uses One Zone storage classes to an EC2 instance that is in a different Availability Zone. You can use the new az option to specify the Availability Zone of the Amazon EFS file system. For more information, see Mounting file systems with One Zone storage classes.

April 6, 2021

Support added for EFS One Zone storage classes

Amazon EFS One Zone storage classes store data redundantly within a single Availability Zone in an AWS Region. The EFS One Zone and One Zone-Infrequent Access (One Zone-IA) storage classes are a cost-effective option for storing data that doesn't require the Multi-AZ resilience of the EFS Standard and Standard-IA storage classes. For more information, see Using EFS storage classes.

March 9, 2021

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Osaka) AWS Region.

March 3, 2021

Support added for Amazon EC2 macOS instances running macOS Big Sur

You can now mount your Amazon EFS file system from EC2 macOS instances that are running macOS Big Sur by using the EFS mount helper or by using the NFS mount command. For more information, see Mounting with the EFS mount helper or Mounting file systems without the EFS mount helper.

February 23, 2021

New Amazon EFS console is available in AWS GovCloud (US) Region

The new Amazon EFS console is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) AWS Region.

February 10, 2021

Support added for new Amazon EFS CloudWatch metric MeteredIOBytes

You can use MeteredIOBytes to measure the number of metered bytes for each file system operation, including data read, data write, and metadata operations. Read operations are metered at one-third the rate of other operations. For more information, see Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon EFS.

January 28, 2021

Amazon EFS increases file system read throughput by 300%

Amazon EFS file systems now meter read requests at one-third the rate of other requests.

January 28, 2021

Support added for new Amazon EFS CloudWatch metric StorageBytes

You can use StorageBytes to measure and monitor the size of the file system in bytes, including the amount of data stored in the Standard and Infrequent Access storage classes. For more information, see Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon EFS.

January 11, 2021

Use AWS Transfer Family to access Amazon EFS file systems

You can use AWS Transfer Family to transfer files into and out of your Amazon EFS file systems. For more information, see Using AWS Transfer Family to access files in your EFS file system.

January 6, 2021

Use AWS Systems Manager to manage Amazon EFS client (amazon-efs-utils)

You can use AWS Systems Manager to automatically install or update the Amazon EFS clients (amazon-efs-utils) on your EC2 instances. For more information, see Using AWSSystems Manager to automatically install or update Amazon EFS clients.

September 29, 2020

Enforce the creation of encrypted EFS file systems

You can use the elasticfilesystem:Encrypted AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) condition key to enforce that users create Amazon EFS file systems that are encrypted at rest. For more information, see Enforcing the Creation of Amazon EFS File Systems Encrypted at Rest.

September 16, 2020

Amazon EFS per-client throughput increased 100%

EFS now supports up to 500 MB/s of per-client throughput, a 100% increase from the previous limit of 250 MB/s. For more information, see Quotas for Amazon EFS file systems.

July 23, 2020

Support added for automatic daily backups of Amazon EFS file systems

Automatic daily backups are now enabled by default when creating a file system using the EFS console. For more information, see Using AWS Backup with Amazon EFS.

July 16, 2020

New Quick Create workflow simplifies creating Amazon EFS file systems

Using the Quick Create option in the EFS console, you can create an EFS file system using service recommended settings with a single button. For more information, see CreateyYour Amazon EFS file system.

July 16, 2020

New Amazon EFS console is now available

The new EFS console makes it easier for you to use Amazon EFS and simplifies the management of your EFS file systems.

July 16, 2020

Amazon EFS increases file system minimum throughput

Amazon EFS file systems using Bursting throughput now have a minimum throughput of 1 MiB/s. For more information, see Throughput modes.

June 30, 2020

Performance of General Purpose mode file systems increased

Amazon EFS General Purpose mode file systems now support up to 35,000 read operations per second, a 400% increase from the previous limit of 7,000. For more information, see Quotas for Amazon EFS File Systems.

April 1, 2020

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Beijing and Ningxia AWS Regions.

January 22, 2020

Support added for IAM authorization for NFS clients

You can now use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage NFS access to an Amazon EFS file system. For more information, see Using AWS IAM to Control NFS Access to Amazon EFS.

January 13, 2020

Support added for EFS Access Points

Amazon EFS access points are application-specific entry points into an Amazon EFS file system that make it easy to manage application access to shared datasets. For more information, see Working with Amazon EFS Access Points.

January 13, 2020

Support added for AWS Backup partial restore.

You can now restore specific files and directories using a partial restore, in addition to restoring a complete recovery point. For more information, see Using AWS Backup with Amazon EFS.

January 13, 2020

Support added for IAM service-linked roles

Amazon EFS now uses a service-linked role based on IAM, making it easier to set up EFS by automatically adding the necessary permissions. For more information, see Using Service-Linked Roles for Amazon EFS.

December 10, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Europe (Stockholm) AWS Region.

November 20, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) AWS Region.

November 20, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the South America (São Paulo) AWS Region.

November 20, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Middle East (Bahrain) AWS Region.

November 20, 2019

New 7 day Lifecycle management policy added

Lifecycle management now has an additional policy to move data to the cost-effective Infrequent Access storage class after 7 days. For more information, see EFS Lifecycle Management.

November 6, 2019

Support added for Interface VPC Endpoints

You can establish a private connection between your virtual private cloud and Amazon EFS to call the EFS API. For more information, see Working with VPC Endpoints.

October 22, 2019

Mount an EFS file system when launching a new EC2 instance.

You can now configure new Amazon EC2 instances to mount your EFS file systems at launch in the EC2 Launch Instance Wizard. For more information, see Step 2. Create Your EC2 Resources and Launch Your EC2 Instance.

October 17, 2019

Support for Service Quotas added

You can now view all Amazon EFS limits in the Service Quotas console. For more information, see Amazon EFS Limits.

September 10, 2019

New lifecycle management policies added

When using Lifecycle Management, you can now choose from one of four lifecycle policies to define when files are transitioned into the cost-effective Infrequent Access storage class. For more information, see EFS Lifecycle Management.

July 9, 2019

EFS Lifecycle Management now available on all EFS file systems.

The EFS Lifecycle Management feature is now available on all EFS file systems. A previous restriction based on when a file system was created is now removed. For more information, see EFS Lifecycle Management.

July 9, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Europe (Paris) AWS Region.

June 12, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) AWS Region.

June 5, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Canada (Central) AWS Region.

May 1, 2019

API Update: Tags are now part of the CreateFileSystem operation payload

You can now include tags when using the AWS API and CLI CreateFileSystem operation to create an Amazon EFS file system. For more information, see CreateFileSystem and Creating a File System Using the AWS CLI.

February 19, 2019

New features: EFS Infrequent Access storage class and EFS lifecycle management

Amazon EFS Infrequent Access is a cost-optimized storage class for infrequently accessed files. EFS lifecycle management automatically transitions files from Standard to Infrequent Access storage. For more information, see EFS Storage Classes.

February 13, 2019

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Europe (London) AWS Region.

January 23, 2019

AWS Backup Service integration with Amazon EFS

Amazon EFS file systems can be backed up using AWS Backup, a fully managed, centralized, automated backup service for backing up data across AWS services in the cloud and on premises. For more information, see AWS Backup and Amazon EFS.

January 16, 2019

Transit Gateway connection support to on-premises storage systems added.

Amazon EFS file systems are now accessible using Transit Gateway connections to on-premises storage systems. For more information, see Mounting from Another Account or VPC and Walkthrough: Mount a File System from a Different VPC.

December 6, 2018

EFS File Sync is now part of the new AWS DataSync service.

AWS DataSync is a managed data transfer service that simplifies synchronizing large amounts of data between on-premises storage systems and AWS storage services. For more information, see Transfer Files from On-Premises File Systems to Amazon EFS Using AWS DataSync.

November 26, 2018

VPN and inter-Region VPC peering connection support added

Amazon EFS are now accessible over VPN connections and inter-Region VPC peering connections. For more information, see Transfer Files from On-Premises File Systems to Amazon EFS Using AWS DataSync.

October 23, 2018

VPN and inter-Region VPC peering connection support added

Amazon EFS file systems are now accessible over VPN connections and inter-Region VPC peering connections. For more information, see Mounting from Another Account or VPC and How Amazon EFS Works with Direct Connect and VPNs.

October 23, 2018

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Singapore) AWS Region.

July 13, 2018

Introducing Provisioned Throughput mode

You can now provision throughput for new or existing file systems with the new Provisioned Throughput mode. For more information, see Throughput modes.

July 12, 2018

Additional AWS Region support added

Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) AWS Region.

July 11, 2018

The following table describes important changes to the Amazon Elastic File System User Guide before July 2018.

Change Description Date Changed
Additional AWS Region support added Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Asia Pacific (Seoul) AWS Region. May 30, 2018
Added CloudWatch metric math support Metric math enables you to query multiple CloudWatch metrics and use math expressions to create new time series based on these metrics. For more information, see Using metric math with Amazon EFS. April 4, 2018
Added the amazon-efs-utils set of open-source tools, and added encryption in transit

The amazon-efs-utils tools are a set of open-source executable files that simplifies aspects of using Amazon EFS, like mounting. There's no additional cost to use amazon-efs-utils, and you can download these tools from GitHub. For more information, see Using the amazon-efs-utils tools.

Also in this release, Amazon EFS now supports encryption in transit through Transport Layer Security (TLS) tunneling. For more information, see Data encryption in Amazon EFS.

April 4, 2018
Updated file system limits per AWS Region Amazon EFS has increased the limit on the number of file systems for all accounts in all AWS Regions. For more information, see Amazon EFS resource quotas that you cannot change. March 15, 2018
Additional AWS Region support added Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the US West (N. California) AWS Region. March 14, 2018
Data encryption at rest Amazon EFS now supports data encryption at rest. For more information, see Data encryption in Amazon EFS. August 14, 2017
Additional Region support added Amazon EFS is now available to all users in the Europe (Frankfurt) Region. July 20, 2017
File system names using Domain Name System (DNS) Amazon EFS now supports DNS names for file systems. A file system's DNS name automatically resolves to a mount target’s IP address in the Availability Zone for the connecting Amazon EC2 instance. For more information, see Mounting on Amazon EC2 with a DNS name. December 20, 2016
Increased tag support for file systems Amazon EFS now supports 50 tags per file system. For more information on tags in Amazon EFS, see Tagging Amazon EFS resources. August 29, 2016

General availability

Amazon EFS is now generally available to all users in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) Regions.

June 28, 2016

File system limit increase

The number of Amazon EFS file systems that can be created per account for each AWS Region increased from 5 to 10.

August 21, 2015

Updated Getting Started exercise

The Getting Started exercise has been updated to simplify the getting started process.

August 17, 2015

New guide

This is the first release of the Amazon Elastic File System User Guide.

May 26, 2015