I have noticed that my EFS sometimes goes through long periods (hours, sometimes days) of high metadata IOPS. So much so that when this disk was bursting, then this would consume my burst credits very quickly. I have had to change to expensive Elastic FS type to prevent this.

I am relatively sure this is not any process that I am in control of. What exactly is a metadata IOPS and can I prevent it running for so long on my EFS?