efs-cfst-1.0.1
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2. Create an Amazon EFS file system
5. Verify the EC2 instances terminates
- Add data to grow a file system
- Create an AWS CloudWatch Dashboard and Alarms to a file system
- Create AWS CloudWatch Alarms to a file system
- Create an AWS CloudWatch Dashboard for a file system
This tutorial is designed to create an Amazon EFS environment for subsequent tutorials which are designed to help you better understand the distributed data storage design of Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) and how to best leverage this design by taking advantage of scale-out achitectures.
- An AWS account with administrative level access
- An Amazon EC2 key pair
If a key pair has not been previously created in your account, please refer to Creating a Key Pair Using Amazon EC2 from the AWS EC2 User's Guide.
Verify that the key pair is created in the same AWS region you will use for the tutorial.
WARNING!! This tutorial environment will exceed your free-usage tier. You will incur charges as a result of building this environment and executing the scripts included in this tutorial. Delete all files on the EFS file system that were created during this tutorial and delete the stack so you don’t continue to incur additional compute and storage charges.
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Select three (3) Availability Zones
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Use default Network Configuration parameters
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Select an existing Amazon EC2 key pair
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Use the default NAT instance size
Click on the 
link below in the desired AWS region to create the AWS Cloudformation stack that will create an Amazon VPC in your AWS account. This VPC will host the Amazon EFS file system and the other AWS resources created in this tutorial.
| AWS Region Code | Name | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 | US East (N. Virginia) |  |
| us-east-2 | US East (Ohio) | |
| us-west-1 | US West (N. California) | |
| us-west-2 | US West (Oregon) | |
| eu-west-1 | EU (Ireland) | |
| eu-central-1 | EU (Frankfurt) | |
| ap-southeast-2 | AP (Sydney) | |
This AWS Cloudformation template, and nested templates, will create an Amazon EFS file system and other AWS resources to monitor and send notifications if the burst credit balance of the file system drops below predefined thresholds. These alarms and other AWS CloudWatch metrics, including a file system size custom metric are added as widgets to a CloudWatch dashboard.
Throughput on Amazon EFS scales as a file system grows. Because file-based workloads are typically spiky—driving high levels of throughput for short periods of time, and low levels of throughput the rest of the time—Amazon EFS is designed to burst to high throughput levels for periods of time. Amazon EFS uses a credit system to determine when file systems can burst. Each file system earns credits over time at a baseline rate that is determined by the size of the file system, and uses credits whenever it reads or writes data. The baseline rate is 50 MiB/s per TiB of storage (equivalently, 50 KiB/s per GiB of storage). Accumulated burst credits give the file system permission to drive throughput above its baseline rate. When a file system has a positive burst credit balance, it can burst. The burst rate is 100 MiB/s per TiB of storage (equivalently, 100 KiB/s per GiB of storage).
If a workload accessing a file system relies on the burst throughput for normal operations, running out of burst credits could negatively impact the workload so monitoring the file system's burst credit balance is essential. This AWS CloudFormation template will create two Amazon CloudWatch alarms that will send email notifications if the burst credit balance drops below two predefined thresholds, a 'Warning' threshold and a 'Critical' threshold. These thresholds are based on the number of minutes it would take to completely use all burst credits if the file system was being driven at the highest throughput rate possible, the permitted throughput rate. You enter these minute variables as input parameters in the Cloudformation template. The 'Warning' threshold and has a default value of 180 minutes. This means that a CloudWatch alarm will send an email notification 180 minutes before the credit balance drops to zero, based on the latest permitted throughput rate. The second alarm and notification is a 'Critical' notification and has a default value of 60 minutes. This alarm will send an email notification 60 minutes before the credit balance drops to zero, based on the latest permitted throughput rate. Permitted throughput is dynamic, scaling up as the file systems grows and scaling down as the file system shrinks. Therefore a third and fourth alarm is create that monitors permitted throughput. If the permitted throughput increases or decreases, an email notification is sent and an Auto Scaling Group will launch an EC2 instance that dynamically resets the 'Warning' and 'Critical' thresholds based on the latest permitted throughput rate. This EC2 instance will auto terminate and a new instance will launch to reset the thresholds only when the permitted throughput rate increases or decreases.
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Add 100 GiB of data
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Select an existing key pair
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Select the default security group of the VPC created in Step 1 above
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Select three (3) Availability Zones of the VPC created in Step 1 above
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Add an email address to the SNS Email Address field that will receive AWS CloudWatch alarm notifications
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Accept all other parameter defaults
Click on the link below in the same AWS region as above to create the AWS Cloudformation stack that will create an Amazon EFS file system and supporting resources in your AWS account. This stack is a series of nested templates that will:
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create an Amazon EFS file system with data
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create AWS CloudWatch alarms to alert when the burst credit balance thresholds are breached
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create AWS CloudWatch dashboard with metrics and alarms
This file system will be used in the Performance and Scale-out tutorials.
| AWS Region Code | Name | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 | US East (N. Virginia) | |
| us-east-2 | US East (Ohio) | |
| us-west-1 | US West (N. California) | |
| us-west-2 | US West (Oregon) | |
| eu-west-1 | EU (Ireland) | |
| eu-central-1 | EU (Frankfurt) | |
| ap-southeast-2 | AP (Sydney) | |
The email address entered as an input parameter will automatically be subscribed to the SNS topic and will receive an AWS Notification - Subscription Confirmation email. Click on the Confirm subscription link in the email.
Verify all four CloudWatch alarms have been created. See the AWS Resources section below for the alarm names.
Two instances are launched from separate Auto Scaling groups.
- The EC2 instance will automatically terminate once the script runs that calcualtes the burst credit balance thresholds.
- The EC2 instance will automatically terminate once the script runs that adds data to grow the file system.
One EFS file system is created within the region and mount targets in the subnets selected as parameters. Data to grow the file system is automatically added using an EC2 instance launched from an Auto Scaling group.
An AWS Lambda function is created and scheduled to run every minute which gets the metered size of the file system, from the describe-file-system command, and adds the value as a custom metric to CloudWatch.
One SNS topic and subscription that receives all SNS notifications.
Naming convention: {file-system-id}-notifications-{cloudformation-stack-name}
example: fs-26e6418e-notifications-efs-burst-credit-balance-notifications-6ECABFA1
Four CloudWatch alarms.
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One 'Warning' alarm that alerts when the burst credit balance drops below the 'warning' threshold for 5 minutes.
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One 'Critical' alarm that alerts when the burst credit balance drops below the 'critical' threshold for 5 minutes.
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One burst credit balance increase threshold alarm that alerts when the permitted throughput increases for 5 minutes.
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One burst credit balance decrease threshold alarm that alerts when the permitted throughput decreases for 5 minutes.
CloudWatch Alarm Examples:
| Warning Alarm | Critical Alarm | Permitted Throughput Increase | Permitted Throughput Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
A CloudWatch dashboard is created with widgets for key metrics, the burst credit balance alarms, and file systme size custom metric.
CloudWatch Dashboard Example:
One IAM policy and EC2 instance profile attached to the auto scaling launch configuration. This grants API permissions for the script to run.
| Allows |
|---|
| cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics |
| cloudwatch:PutMetricAlarm |
| autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups |
| autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingInstances |
| autoscaling:UpdateAutoScalingGroup |
| elasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystems |
| sns:Publish |
Policy name: efs-burst-credit-balance-cloudwatch-alarms
One auto scaling group and launch configuration to launch an EC2 instance that runs a script to add data that grows the file system.
The auto scaling group will have a maximum size of 1, a desired size of 1, and a minimum size of 0.
One auto scaling group and launch configuration to launch an EC2 instance that runs a script to calculate the burst credit balance thresholds.
The auto scaling group will have a maximum size of 1, a desired size of 1, and a minimum size of 0.
The launch configuration will launch instances with no EC2 key-pair and the security group created above. A script is dynamically generated in the /tmp directory. This script will run at boot-time and will calculate the burst credit balance thresholds.
| Tutorial | Link |
|---|---|
| Performance |  |
Below are the unnested CloudFormation templates from above that can be run individually against an existing file system. This allows you to add the features highlighted in this tutorial to an existing file system, like...
- adding data to grow a file system
- creating CloudWatch alarms to monitor burst credit balance and a CloudWatch dashboard with widgets for the burst credit balance alarms, and other important file system metrics, including a custom metric for file system size (this has the next two tools combined into one)
- creating just the CloudWatch alarms to monitor burst credit balance
- creating just the CloudWatch dasboard with widgets for important file system metrics, including a file system size custom metric
| AWS Region Code | Name | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 | US East (N. Virginia) | |
| us-east-2 | US East (Ohio) | |
| us-west-1 | US West (N. California) | |
| us-west-2 | US West (Oregon) | |
| eu-west-1 | EU (Ireland) | |
| eu-central-1 | EU (Frankfurt) | |
| ap-southeast-2 | AP (Sydney) | |
Creates an AWS CloudWatch Dashboard with a file system size custom metric and CloudWatch Alarms to monitor Burst Credit Balance to an existing file system. This template is a combination of the following two templates.
| AWS Region Code | Name | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 | US East (N. Virginia) | |
| us-east-2 | US East (Ohio) | |
| us-west-1 | US West (N. California) | |
| us-west-2 | US West (Oregon) | |
| eu-west-1 | EU (Ireland) | |
| eu-central-1 | EU (Frankfurt) | |
| ap-southeast-2 | AP (Sydney) | |
Creates AWS CloudWatch Alarms to monitor Burst Credit Balance of an existing file system.
| AWS Region Code | Name | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 | US East (N. Virginia) | |
| us-east-2 | US East (Ohio) | |
| us-west-1 | US West (N. California) | |
| us-west-2 | US West (Oregon) | |
| eu-west-1 | EU (Ireland) | |
| eu-central-1 | EU (Frankfurt) | |
| ap-southeast-2 | AP (Sydney) | |
Creates an AWS CloudWatch Dashboard with a file system size custom metric for an existing file system.
| AWS Region Code | Name | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 | US East (N. Virginia) | |
| us-east-2 | US East (Ohio) | |
| us-west-1 | US West (N. California) | |
| us-west-2 | US West (Oregon) | |
| eu-west-1 | EU (Ireland) | |
| eu-central-1 | EU (Frankfurt) | |
| ap-southeast-2 | AP (Sydney) | |
For feedback, suggestions, or corrections, please email me at [email protected].