EFS File Systems

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) charges based on storage consumed. Unused file systems and those without Intelligent Tiering enabled can silently accumulate unnecessary costs.

Implementation Effort: Low - Estimated time: less than 30 minutes. Delete unused file systems or enable Intelligent Tiering with a single configuration change.

What We Detect

• Unused file systems -- EFS file systems with no client connections over an extended period, indicating no application is mounting them
• Missing Intelligent Tiering -- File systems using the Standard lifecycle policy instead of Intelligent Tiering, which automatically moves infrequently accessed data to a cheaper storage class

Why It Matters

EFS Standard storage costs $0.30/GB-month. Intelligent Tiering moves cold data to Infrequent Access at $0.025/GB-month -- a 92% reduction for inactive files. Completely unused file systems represent pure waste.

Recommendations

1. Unused file systems -- Verify no application depends on the data, then delete
2. Intelligent Tiering -- Enable it on all file systems. There is no downside for most workloads since frequently accessed data stays in Standard automatically

---

Keep on chasing 🧡