Amazon S3 vs EBS vs EFS

Comparison chart from the NetApp blog with additional notes -

Features	Amazon S3	Amazon EBS	Amazon EFS
Purpose	static storage service useful for static website hosting, media distribution, version management, big data analytics, and archiving	persistent storage device that can be used as a file system for databases, application hosting and storage, and plug and play devices	works like NAS devices and performs well for big data analytics, media processing workflows, and content management. excellent as a managed network file system that can be shared across different Amazon EC2 instances
Storage Cost (US-East, for example)	Cheapest	cheaper than EFS but can only be accessed by one Amazon EC2 instance at a time which can be problem in a clustering or distributed app	10 times more expensive than Amazon EBS
Storage Size	No limit on number of objects	Maximum storage size of 16 TB	No limitation on the size of the file system
File Size Limitation	Individual Amazon S3 objects can range from a minimum of 0 bytes to a maximum of 5TB	No limitation on file size in EBS disk	Single files have a maximum size of 47.9TiB
Data Throughput and I/O	•Supports multipart upload. It is recommended for capability of objects larger than 100MB •The largest size of a single object uploaded using PUT API can be of 5GB	SSD- and HDD-backed storage types •Use of SSD backed and Provisioned IOPS is recommended for dedicated IO operations as needed	Default throughput of 3GB/s for all connected client
Performance	•Highly scalable managed service supports 3500 PUT/LIST/DELETE requests per second •Supports 5500 GET requests per second	•Manually scale the size of the volumes without stopping instance. •Baseline performance of 3 IOPS per GB for General Purpose volume •Use Provisioned IOPS for increased performance	•Highly Scalable Managed Service •Supports up to 7000 file system operations per second
Data Stored	•Stored data stays in the region. •Replicas are made within the region in multiple availability zones •Amazon S3 objects can be copied to other region using the cross region replication feature	•Data stored stays in the same Availability zone. •Replicas are made within the AZ for higher durability	•Data stored stays in the region. •Replicas are made within the region
Data Access	Accessible over internet based on access policy configured	Can only be accessed by a single Amazon EC2 instance	Can be accessed by 1 to 1000s of EC2 instances from multiple AZs, concurrently
File Permissions/ File System	•Can be mounted as a file system, but it is not recommended •Unlike traditional file systems, bucket permissions do not pass on to the folders by default (bucket policies can be used to achieve this)	Supports various file systems, including ext3 and ext4	•Auto-Scaled File storage service for use with AWS EC2 •EFS can be used as network file system for on-premise servers too using AWS Direct Connect.
Supported Encryption Mechanisms	•Server Side Encryption with Amazon S3-Managed Keys (SSE-Amazon S3),AWS KMS-Managed Keys (SSE-KMS), and with Customer-Provided Keys (SSE-C) •Client Side Encryption using an AWS KMS–Managed Customer Master Key (CMK) and using a client-side master key	Uses an AWS KMS–Managed Customer Master Key (CMK) and AES 256-bit Encryption standards	Uses an AWS KMS–Managed Customer Master Key (CMK) and AES 256-bit Encryption standards
Access Control	•Using bucket policies and user policies - Managed with ACLs - Pre-signed URL access based on IAM	•Security groups - NACL - User based Authentication such as IAM	•Security groups  -User-based authentication - IAM
Availability	99.99% availability of objects over a given year	99.99% available	Highly available (No public SLA)
Availability Zone Failure	Can withstand up to two concurrent AZ failures	Cannot withstand AZ failure without point-in time EBS Snapshots	Every file system object is redundantly stored across multiple Availability Zones so it can survive one AZ failure.
Durability	Eleven 9’s of durability (99.999999999%)	20 times more reliable than normal hard disks	Highly durable (No public SLA)
Eventual Consistency Problem	AWS Amazon S3 offers eventual consistency for overwrite PUTS and DELETES in all regions.	No such issues	No such issues

Related - Comparison of AWS Storage options, Amazon Web Services in Action, Second Edition