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What's the Difference Between Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx for OpenZFS?

Compare Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx for OpenZFS side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

Compare side-by-side

Comparisons
Amazon EFS
Amazon FSx for OpenZFS
Category

Storage, File Storage

Storage, File Storage
Description

Serverless, fully elastic file storage

Fully managed, elastic, scale-out file systems for NAS workloads
Best for
  • Content management
  • Web serving
  • Home directories
  • Machine learning
  • Container storage
  • Linux workloads
  • Web serving
  • DevOps
  • Data analytics
  • Media processing
Key features
  • Elastic scaling
  • Multi-AZ
  • Lifecycle management
  • NFS compatible
  • Throughput modes
  • NFS protocol
  • Snapshots
  • Data compression
  • Low-latency
  • Point-in-time clones
Pricing model

Pay per GB stored; no provisioning required

Pay per GB provisioned + throughput
Free tier

Yes

No
Expert take

“EFS is the answer when multiple EC2 instances or containers need concurrent read/write access to the same file system. It grows and shrinks automatically, so you never have to provision capacity or worry about running out of space.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Amazon FSx for OpenZFS delivers high-performance file storage with instant snapshots, compression, and data cloning. It supports workloads migrating from on-premises ZFS environments.”
— Giovanni Lauria, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about Amazon EFS »

Learn more about Amazon FSx for OpenZFS »

When to use Amazon EFS or Amazon FSx for OpenZFS

Use Amazon EFS when:

  • Content management
  • Web serving
  • Home directories
  • Machine learning
  • Container storage

Learn more about Amazon EFS »

Use Amazon FSx for OpenZFS when:

  • Linux workloads
  • Web serving
  • DevOps
  • Data analytics
  • Media processing

Learn more about Amazon FSx for OpenZFS »

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