My Experience with Deploying Stateful Applications on AWS EKS: Why I Switched from EBS to EFS

In my journey through the world of DevOps and cloud computing, I’ve faced numerous challenges, especially when it comes to managing stateful applications on Kubernetes, specifically Amazon EKS. After grappling with several issues in production, I’ve come to a solid conclusion that has significantly changed how I approach these deployments. Here’s my story and why I advocate for using AWS EFS over EBS for stateful applications.

When I first started deploying stateful applications like databases or message queues on AWS EKS, I naturally leaned towards using EBS volumes. After all, EBS is AWS's block storage service, designed for durability and performance, which seemed perfect for my needs. However, I quickly ran into a wall of limitations that made my life as a DevOps engineer quite challenging.

1. ReadWriteMany Limitation: EBS doesn’t support ReadWriteMany, so all my stateful pods had to be scheduled on the same node. This introduced a single point of failure and required using taints and affinity rules to manage pod placement, which was cumbersome and not scalable.
2. High Availability Concerns: The lack of multi-AZ support with EBS was a significant drawback. My applications needed to be highly available, but with EBS, I was constantly worried about zone failures.
3. Single Node Attachment: EBS could only be attached to one node at a time, adding complexity with EBS multi-attach, which I wasn’t ready to implement in production due to its strict requirements.

After facing these headaches, I decided to switch to AWS EFS for my stateful applications. Here's why:

1. Multi-Pod Access: EFS supports ReadWriteMany, allowing multiple pods across different nodes to access the same file system, eliminating the need for complex scheduling.
2. Multi-AZ Support: With EFS, my applications benefited from multi-AZ deployments, ensuring they remained available even if an Availability Zone went down.
3. Simplified Management: The transition to EFS reduced my operational overhead by removing the complexity of node-specific attachments and simplified deployments.

In conclusion, from my production experience, I strongly recommend considering EFS for deploying stateful applications on AWS EKS:

• It offers greater flexibility by allowing multiple pods to access data concurrently.
• It ensures high availability across different zones.
• It reduces complexity and time spent on managing storage for stateful applications.

Trust me, the switch from EBS to EFS has been one of the best decisions I've made in my DevOps career. If you're facing similar issues, give EFS a try—you won't regret it.

This insight is based on real-world experience and not just theoretical knowledge. For more technical details on EKS and storage solutions, you might want to check out resources like the AWS documentation or community blogs. However, my hands-on experience with EBS and EFS in production environments has led me to this conclusion.

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