DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question
A company runs a containerized application on Amazon ECS using Fargate launch type. The application needs to read and write files to a shared file system across multiple tasks. The development team wants a solution that provides high throughput and is POSIX-compliant. Which storage solution should the team use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Amazon EBS Multi-Attach with a shared file system, but EBS Multi-Attach is limited to EC2 instances in the same AZ and does not support Fargate, while EFS is the only POSIX-compliant, fully managed file system that works natively with Fargate tasks across multiple Availability Zones.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon EFS
Amazon EFS is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, POSIX-compliant shared file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple Amazon ECS tasks using the Fargate launch type. EFS uses the NFSv4.1 protocol, supports high throughput (up to 10 GB/s with Bursting or Provisioned Throughput modes), and automatically scales storage capacity as files are added or removed, making it ideal for shared read/write workloads across containers.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon S3 with mountpoint-s3
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 is fundamentally object storage, which lacks the hierarchical directory structure, strong consistency, and full POSIX file system semantics (like atomic renames or file locking) required by many containerized applications. While mountpoint-s3 allows S3 buckets to be mounted as a local file system, it provides eventual consistency and only a subset of POSIX features, making it unsuitable for applications that rely on full POSIX compliance and consistent shared write access across multiple ECS tasks.
- ✓
Amazon EFS
Why this is correct
Amazon EFS provides a fully managed, scalable, and highly available network file system (NFS) that offers full POSIX compliance. This enables multiple Amazon ECS tasks, even those running on different EC2 instances or Fargate across various Availability Zones, to concurrently read and write to the same shared file system. EFS is an ideal solution for containerized applications requiring persistent, consistent, and shared file storage that behaves like a traditional file system.
- ✗
Amazon EBS with multi-attach enabled
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EBS volumes are block storage, typically designed for attachment to a single EC2 instance. While EBS Multi-Attach allows a single Provisioned IOPS SSD volume to be attached to multiple EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone, it does not inherently provide a shared file system; each instance sees the raw block device. This would necessitate implementing a complex clustered file system (e.g., OCFS2) to manage concurrent access, and critically, EBS volumes cannot be directly attached to Amazon ECS Fargate tasks, limiting its use case for serverless containers.
- ✗
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
Why it's wrong here
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed file storage service built on Windows Server, offering native support for the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and Windows NTFS permissions. It is specifically designed for Windows-based applications and workloads. Containerized applications on Amazon ECS typically run on Linux hosts and require a POSIX-compliant file system, making FSx for Windows File Server incompatible due to its Windows-specific nature and lack of POSIX compliance for Linux containers.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DVA-C02 exam.