Amazon S3 Files vs Amazon EBS gp3
An architectural teardown. I compare Managed NFS Gateway against Block Storage to solve issues like optimizing cloud storage costs while maintaining strict application latency and concurrency requirements.
Amazon S3 Files
Mounts S3 buckets directly to instances via NFS v4.1 for concurrent, high-throughput file access.
When to Use It
Machine learning datasets, media transcoding pipelines, and shared logs across thousands of EC2/Lambda instances.
Amazon EBS gp3
High-performance, low-latency direct-attached block storage for EC2 instances.
When to Use It
Boot volumes, high-IOPS applications, and transactional databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) locked to a single instance.
Interactive Cost Benchmark
Proprietary Insight: While S3 Standard is the cheapest, it lacks POSIX compliance for traditional file mounting. S3 Files acts as an NFS Gateway, bridging the gap between EBS block storage and raw object storage, offering a middle-ground on cost and performance.
Architectural Conclusion
EBS for DBs, S3 Files for Data Lakes