What does Amazon EFS provide?

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) provides a scalable file storage service that is designed specifically for use with AWS cloud services. It enables users to create and configure file systems that can be mounted across multiple instances in multiple availability zones, thus providing high availability and durability. EFS is ideal for applications that require shared access to a common file system, such as web serving, content management systems, or data analytics workloads.

This scalable nature means that it can automatically adjust storage capacity as the amount of stored data increases, allowing for seamless user experiences without the need for manual intervention. It also supports standard file system interfaces and file system semantics, making it easy for applications to interact with stored data.

The other options, while they relate to broader cloud services, do not accurately describe the functionality of Amazon EFS. For example, a data lake solution focuses on storing large amounts of structured and unstructured data, and a relational database service is designed for structured data storage with defined schemas. A content delivery network is primarily concerned with distributing content across multiple locations. In contrast, Amazon EFS is explicitly about providing managed file storage for application workloads within the AWS ecosystem.