Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Amazon FSx comparison

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) and Amazon FSx are both solutions in the Cloud Storage category. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while Amazon FSx is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.3. Additionally, 100% of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Amazon FSx users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx are cloud storage solutions competing in the AWS ecosystem. FSx seems to have the upper hand due to its flexibility and support for specialized file systems.

Features: Amazon EFS offers a fully managed NFS file system with easy scalability and minimal management. FSx supports Windows File Server, integrates seamlessly with Windows-based environments, and is optimized for high-performance computing tasks with FSx for Lustre. FSx offers tailored functionalities for specific workloads.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EFS provides straightforward deployment with reliable customer support, emphasizing ease of use. FSx deployment varies by file system, including detailed configuration options that may require more setup. FSx's customer service is recognized for specialized support in complex integrations.

Pricing and ROI: EFS has a pay-as-you-go pricing model with automatic scaling to balance costs and resource consumption. It is favored for low upfront costs and predictable expenses. FSx pricing depends on the selected file system and may be higher due to its specialized nature but offers robust performance for demanding applications.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Amazon FSx Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Amazon FSx

May 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime

The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.

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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Shared storage capabilities provide enterprise value with good reliability

Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS. The auto-scaling feature should be improved, as it currently includes downtime. I need to manually increase the storage, which is not ideal. Integrating FSx with Windows Server is challenging; it's a long process involving Active Directory (AD) setup and synchronization.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"There are huge money savings, as we can save more than half of our costs."

"Its elasticity and flexible pricing are the most valuable. For Amazon EFS, you are charged based on the storage. It is also very fast and stable with a very simple and intuitive interface."

"The first valuable thing is it is scalable."

"The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations."

"Amazon EFS offers the flexibility of scaling as needed without requiring pre-provisioned storage."

"Elastic File Systems allow me to share data, provision, and manage capacity and performance in AWS."

"We can run code and deploy it whenever we want."

"Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros

"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."

"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."

"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."

"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."

"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."

Cons

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"I have not seen ROI."

"The solution is expensive."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The lack of transparency in the costs attached to the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The product's stability has some shortcomings where improvements are required."

"Specifically, when it comes to the file system for the learning system, we encountered performance issues with both Azure and AWS."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3."

"I don't have notes on improvements."

"The user activity needs to be more connected."

"The initial setup requires prior experience and technical skills."

"Their response was not prompt, and it took them a while to figure out solutions. While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) cons

"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."

"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."

"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"The product is very expensive."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers a pay-as-you-go model, so whenever you use its services, you need to pay."

"I would rate the pricing 7 out of 10."

"It has flexible pricing. You are charged based on your storage."

"The product charges are based on the amount of data stored."

"The solution's price is mid-ranged."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3. For one GB or ten GB of data, S3 is much cheaper. EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage."

"The product's price depends on the services and the size and capacity at which it is used in a business environment."

"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

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Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?

Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to pe...

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What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?

Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?

From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for highe...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?

Our customers mainly use Amazon FSx for high-performance computing. Our customers are mainly in the Life Science and ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?

There is an ongoing project where my customers are exploring the FSx solution, but not yet for AI-driven projects; th...

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Comparisons

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Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 6% of the time

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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon FSx

Compared 23% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon FSx

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 10% of the time

Nasuni vs Amazon FSx

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

June 2025

Download Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

June 2025

Download Amazon FSx product report

Also Known As

No data available

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Amazon EFS is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

When mounted to Amazon EC2 instances, an Amazon EFS file system provides a standard file system interface and file system access semantics, allowing you to seamlessly integrate Amazon EFS with your existing applications and tools. Multiple Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, allowing Amazon EFS to provide a common data source for workloads and applications running on more than one Amazon EC2 instance.

It’s designed for high availability and durability, and provides performance for a broad spectrum of workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon FSx makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run popular file systems. With Amazon FSx, you can leverage the rich feature sets and fast performance of widely-used open source and commercially-licensed file systems, while avoiding time-consuming administrative tasks like hardware provisioning, software configuration, patching, and backups. It provides cost-efficient capacity and high levels of reliability, and it integrates with other AWS services so that you can manage and use the file systems in cloud-native ways.

Amazon FSx provides you with two file systems to choose from: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for enterprise workloads and Amazon FSx for Lustre for high-performance workloads.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Amazon FSx

May 2025

Free Report: Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Amazon FSx

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Amazon FSx and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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