Amazon EFS Throughput Modes : Provisioned & Bursting

📊 Amazon EFS Throughput Modes

Feature	Provisioned Throughput Mode	Bursting Throughput Mode
How throughput is determined	You explicitly set the throughput you want (MiB/s), independent of how much data is stored.	Throughput scales with the amount of data stored in the file system (1 MiB/s per GiB of data, with burst credits).
Best for	Workloads with high throughput demands but low storage size (e.g., dev tools, CMS, web serving, frequent read/write workloads).	Workloads where throughput demand scales with storage size and workloads are spiky (e.g., big data analytics, content repositories).
Performance consistency	Guarantees consistent, predictable throughput regardless of file system size.	Can burst to high throughput temporarily, but sustained throughput is limited by file system size.
Cost model	You pay for the configured throughput, whether you use it or not.	No extra cost for throughput — throughput is included based on storage size.
Flexibility	You can increase throughput anytime; you can decrease once every 24h. Mode can be changed after 24h.	No manual configuration needed. Automatically adjusts as data grows.
Example use cases	- Database rollover jobs with frequent read/write - Development tools - Web/content serving where storage size is small but requires high IOPS	- Spiky traffic workloads - Large-scale file-based analytics - Workloads that grow storage naturally with throughput needs
Limitation	Can be more expensive if provisioned higher than needed.	May require “padding” storage (storing dummy data) to achieve desired throughput if dataset is small.

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             +-----------------------------+
             |     Start: Choosing EFS     |
             +-----------------------------+
                          |
                          v
        +---------------------------------------+
        | Is your workload throughput demand    |
        | proportional to storage size growth?  |
        +---------------------------------------+
                    |                 |
                  Yes                 No
                    |                 |
                    v                 v
  +--------------------------------+   +-----------------------------------+
  | Use Bursting Throughput Mode   |   | Do you need consistently high      |
  | (throughput scales with data   |   | throughput even with small data?   |
  | stored, with burst credits)    |   +-----------------------------------+
  +--------------------------------+                 |
                                                     |
                                                    Yes
                                                     |
                                                     v
                               +---------------------------------------+
                               | Use Provisioned Throughput Mode       |
                               | (set throughput explicitly, decoupled |
                               | from storage size)                    |
                               +---------------------------------------+