Learn the importance of persistent storage, such as Amazon Elastic File System, in containerized environments like AWS Fargate.
This blog was adapted from “The Importance and Advantages of Using Persistent Storage with AWS Fargate” on Medium.
In the world of cloud computing and containerization, the use of persistent storage is crucial for many workloads. When it comes to AWS Fargate, a serverless compute engine for containers, incorporating persistent storage can bring about significant advantages in designing and migrating workloads to containers on AWS.
In this blog post, we will explore the importance of persistent storage, specifically Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) on AWS Fargate, and its benefits in containerized environments, with a focus on the Kubernetes “pets vs. cattle” pattern.
The Necessity of Persistent Storage in Containerized Environments
In containerized environments, the need for persistent storage arises from the requirement to store and access data across multiple container instances. While containers are ephemeral and designed to be stateless, many applications depend on persistent data, such as configuration files, logs, databases, and user-generated content.
Without persistent storage, these data would be lost when you need to terminate a container or move it to another host.
Advantages of Using Amazon EFS with AWS Fargate
Combining Amazon EFS and AWS Fargate allows you to avoid the pitfall of losing data when your team moves or changes containers. However, the advantages of persistent storage with AWS Fargate go far beyond simply acting as a persistent storage option for your containerized environment. Here are four:
1. Scalability and Elasticity
Amazon EFS provides scalable and elastic file storage for AWS Fargate containers. It automatically scales as the application’s storage needs grow, eliminating the need to provision and manage capacity. This scalability is particularly advantageous for workloads that require dynamic storage allocation, such as content management systems (CMS), file processing applications, and data analytics platforms.
CMSs often rely on shared storage for storing media files, documents, and user-generated content. As a result, they’re constantly growing. Amazon EFS can serve as a centralized file system for these assets, allowing multiple containers to read from and write to the same set of files, facilitating seamless content management and delivery. And, because Amazon EFS is scalable, it permits the CMS to continue to store more files without needing to constantly go in and delete files over time.
2. Shared File System
EFS allows multiple AWS Fargate containers to share a common file system, enabling seamless data sharing and collaboration between containers. This is beneficial for applications that require shared access to files, such as microservices architectures, distributed applications, and batch processing workloads.
In a microservices architecture, for example, certain microservices may require access to shared data or configuration files. Amazon EFS can provide persistent storage for these stateful microservices, ensuring the data remains available and consistent across container instances.
And, for batch processing applications that need to process large volumes of data stored in files, multiple AWS Fargate containers can access the same input and output files stored in EFS, enabling parallel processing and efficient use of compute resources.
3. High Availability and Durability
Amazon EFS is designed for high availability and durability. Data is stored across multiple availability zones, which are groups of data centers separated within a region. These availability zones are close enough to have a strong network connection to other availability zones while being far enough apart to reduce the likelihood that severe weather or disasters would impact all of them.
Storing this data across multiple availability zones ensures the storage remains accessible even in the event of an availability zone failure (such as if that aforementioned disaster were to affect an entire zone), enhancing the reliability of applications running on AWS Fargate.
In the CMS example noted above, imagine what would happen if an entire organization’s CMS went down. Their consumers would have no way of accessing their website, employees wouldn’t be able to edit their individual web pages, and in some cases, they may not even be able to access shared documents. For many organizations, that could lead to a loss of not only productivity but even some customers.
Integration with Kubernetes “Pets vs. Cattle” Pattern
In the context of Kubernetes, the “pets vs. cattle” pattern refers to managing individual, long-lived servers (pets) rather than treating servers as interchangeable, ephemeral entities (cattle).
Amazon EFS aligns well with the “pets vs. cattle” concept by providing persistent, shared storage that you can mount to multiple containers, akin to treating storage as “cattle.” This enables containers to be disposable and easily replaceable while the data stored in EFS remains persistent and accessible across container instances.
Move Foward With AWS Fargate
The incorporation of persistent storage, particularly Amazon EFS with AWS Fargate, brings numerous benefits to containerized workloads. From scalability and shared file systems to high availability and integration with the “pets vs cattle” pattern, Amazon EFS enhances the overall architecture of applications running on AWS Fargate. By using persistent storage, organizations can ensure data durability, application resilience, and efficient management of containerized workloads in the cloud.
Embracing persistent storage solutions like Amazon EFS can effectively help businesses address the data persistence requirements of their containerized applications, paving the way for more robust and reliable cloud-native architectures.
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