What must be the file system on AWS EBS Multi-Attach volume?

Question

I'm back again with a new question: What must be the file system on AWS EBS Multi-Attach volume?

On this website https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ebs-access-volumes-using-multi-attach/

It is written that standard file systems such as XFS, EXT3, EXT4, and NTFS aren't designed to be simultaneously accessed by multiple servers or EC2 instances.

However, they have not written what must be the file systems for AWS EBS Multi-Attach volume.

Any idea? I would be glad if you can provide the command lines for setting the file system.

Annorah

In this blog, (aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/…) in the comments, Nathan Neulinger has written that "... people MUST use a cluster safe filesystem like GFS, OCFS2, or similar. Deployments using clustered LVM are also possible, though with same caveat about the filesystem used within the volume group." – Annorah

Meanwhile, I have used efs which is working properly up to now. Various ec2 instances can read and write from efs simultaneously. Quiet good. I recommend efs solution instead of ebs. – Annorah

The EFS solution is significantly slower for systems with many small files, high IOPS than EBS. e.g. An EFS system with 20,000 small 5KB files, a tar operation is like 5 minutes and on EBS it is 200ms. – Thalamencephalon

The link in the comment to aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/… doesn't mention anything about GFS anymore. – Thalamencephalon

Yeah, the docs just say what isn't supported and nothing about what is supported, so I guess it is like launching a product that people need and a bit hands off about what people want to do with it. – Thalamencephalon

I did find this comparison slidedeck (but didn't find the video) from Gang He at OpenSuse comparing GFS (RedHat) and OCFS2 (OpenSuse, Oracle etc) here slideshare.net/dchg2000/comparison-between-ocfs2-and-gfs2. – Thalamencephalon

Answer 1

On this page it's very briefly mentioned that a clustered file system is necessary:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-volumes-multi.html#working

In this blog post they explain how to use one clustered file system, the Red Hat Global File System 2 (GFS2), with Multi-Attach EBS. Cluster software must additionally be installed:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/clustered-storage-simplified-gfs2-on-amazon-ebs-multi-attach-enabled-volumes/

Full-Disclosure: I have not actually replicated their results. It was too much overhead for my use case.

Tiber