Amazon EFS CSI Driver Architecture Diagram

Performance modes

• General Purpose has the lowest latency and is the default for most workloads
• Max I/O raises aggregate throughput for parallel workloads with thousands of clients
• Pods in different AZs can read and write the same file system concurrently

Throughput modes

• Elastic scales with usage and is the recommended default
• Provisioned pins a fixed value when you must guarantee steady throughput
• Bursting derives baseline throughput from stored capacity

Configuration caveats

• Every AZ needs a mount target and the security group must allow 2049/TCP
• Access points isolate POSIX permissions per directory, which is safer for multi-tenancy
• Lifecycle policies move cold files to the IA class to cut cost