Amazon's long-simmering, highly anticipated storage service is finally generally available -- for most custome...

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Amazon this week moved Elastic File System (EFS) out of preview, 15 months after it was first announced. The fully managed file system is welcome news to customers who have used workarounds on the platform, though, like most AWS rollouts, it's not without early limitations.

Prior to Amazon EFS, customers wanting to use file storage on AWS would have to make do with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or create and maintain their own service across multiple Elastic Compute Cloud instances and availability zones. That could involve building a network file system (NFS) server or using GlusterFS to work across availability zones, or turning to third-party tools, such as Zadara Storage.

EFS has such mass appeal among IT pros, so while the extended beta is frustrating, it also can be seen as reassuring that Amazon is making sure the product is ready, said H. Glenn Grant, CEO of G2 Technology Group, an AWS consulting and managed services firm in Boston.

The service works, though G2 has held off on fully putting the service to the test, Grant said. His biggest problem is it's currently only available in three regions: US-East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon) and Europe (Ireland).

"For our customers [who] are looking to architect global solutions replicated in multiple regions, especially Asia Pacific, we can't really roll this into their solution stack," Grant said.

There was a similar experience with AWS CodePipeline, Grant said. And while he can appreciate the need for a fast rollout with a meaningful service, the limitation comes as a surprise, because it was in beta for so long.

"Earlier in Amazon's evolution, it wasn't abnormal, but I would think that, at this stage in the game, they would be able to roll out these big impact products [globally] at the same time," Grant said.

Amazon declined to comment, but in a blog post announcing the availability, Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for AWS, acknowledged there was an extended preview period for EFS, during which Amazon addressed feedback about the need to support workloads sensitive to latency or those that make heavy use of file system metadata. Amazon also said in a press release the service will expand to more regions in the coming months.

There are other early limitations, too. EFS doesn't provide native Windows support, though customers can use AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell. It also lacks encryption at rest via Key Management Service. It's unclear if these features will be added in the future, though Amazon is known to increase functionality of its services over time.

The service costs $0.30 per gigabyte, per month in the U.S. regions and $0.33 per gigabyte, per month in the EU. Customers in their first year on AWS can use up to 5 GB per month for free.