MLA-C01 Question 30
Single answerYou are building a machine learning pipeline for a financial company to process large volumes of historical transactional data. The data is stored in a shared file system and needs to be accessed by multiple EC2 instances running a distributed training job in Amazon SageMaker. Which AWS storage solution should you use to ensure high performance and scalability while meeting the shared access requirement?
- A
Amazon S3
- B
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
- C
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP
- D
Amazon DynamoDB
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is the best choice in this scenario because it provides a shared file system for multiple EC2 instances, allowing them to access the same data simultaneously. This is critical for distributed training jobs in SageMaker. Other options like Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB do not support shared file system access, and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP introduces unnecessary complexity for this use case.
- A. Incorrect.
Amazon S3 is a highly scalable object storage solution but does not natively support shared file system access for multiple EC2 instances. It is better suited for data lake use cases or as a source for SageMaker training jobs.
- B. Correct.
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is a scalable, fully managed file storage system that supports shared access across multiple EC2 instances. It is optimized for scenarios where multiple compute nodes need concurrent file access, making it ideal for distributed training jobs.
- C. Incorrect.
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a managed service for shared file storage with additional features like multi-protocol support and snapshots. However, it is more complex and suited for specific enterprise workloads. For this use case, Amazon EFS is simpler and more cost-effective for shared file access.
- D. Incorrect.
Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service designed for low-latency key-value or document storage. It is not suitable for shared file system use cases or distributed training jobs.