FSx

Generals

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed, highly reliable, and scalable file storage that is accessible over the industry-standard Service Message Block (SMB) protocol.
Amazon FSx makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run popular file systems that are fully managed by AWS.
With Amazon FSx, you can leverage the rich feature sets and fast performance of widely-used open source and commercially-licensed file systems, while avoiding time-consuming administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, software configuration, patching, and backups.
It provides cost-efficient capacity with high levels of reliability, and integrates with a broad portfolio of AWS services to enable faster innovation.
Built on Windows Server, delivering a wide range of administrative features such as user quotas, end-user file restore, ACLs and Microsoft Active Directory (AD) integration.
Amazon FSx provides high levels of throughput and IOPS, and consistent sub-millisecond latencies.
Amazon FSx is accessible from Windows, Linux, and MacOS compute instances and devices.
Amazon FSx provides concurrent access to the file system to thousands of compute instances and devices.
Amazon FSx can connect the file system to EC2, VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Amazon AppStream 2.0 instances.
Integrated with CloudWatch to monitor storage capacity and file system activity
Integrated with CloudTrail to monitor all Amazon FSx API calls.
Amazon FSx file systems is accessible from the on-premises environment using an AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN connection.
Amazon FSx is accessible from multiple VPCs, AWS accounts, and AWS Regions using VPC Peering connections or AWS Transit Gateway.
Amazon FSx provides consistent sub-millisecond latencies with SSD storage, and single-digit millisecond latencies with HDD storage
Amazon FSx supports Microsoft’s Distributed File System (DFS) to organize shares into a single folder structure up to hundreds of PB in size.

Filesystem Options

Amazon FSx provides two file systems to choose from: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for business applications and Amazon FSx for Lustre for compute-intensive workloads.
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

- It is a fully managed file storage that is accessible over the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.
- It is built on Windows Server, delivering a wide range of administrative features such as user quotas, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory (AD) integration.
- It offers single-AZ and multi-AZ deployment options, fully managed backups, and encryption of data at rest and in transit.
- Amazon FSx file storage is accessible from Windows, Linux, and MacOS compute instances and devices running on AWS or on premises. You can optimize cost and performance for your workload needs with SSD and HDD storage options.
- Amazon FSx helps you lower TCO with data deduplication.

Amazon FSx for Lustre for high-performance workloads.

- Amazon FSx Lustre is a fully managed service designed for workloads where speed matters, such as machine learning, high performance computing (HPC), video processing, and financial modeling.
- The open source Lustre file system is designed for applications that require fast storage – where you want your storage to keep up with your compute.
- Lustre was built to quickly and cost effectively process the fastest-growing data sets in the world, and it’s the most widely used file system for the 500 fastest computers in the world.
- It provides sub-millisecond latencies, up to hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput, and millions of IOPS.

Security

Works with Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to integrate with existing Windows environments, which can either be an AWS Managed Microsoft AD or self-managed Microsoft AD.
Amazon FSx provides standard Windows permissions (full support for Windows Access Controls ACLS) for files and folders.
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server supports encryption at rest for the file system and backups using KMS managed keys.
Amazon FSx encrypts data-in-transit using SMB Kerberos session keys, when accessing the file system from clients that support SMB 3.0.
Amazon FSx supports file-level or folder-level restores to previous versions by supporting Windows shadow copies, which are snapshots of your file system at a point in time.
Amazon FSx supports Windows shadow copies to enable your end-users to easily undo file changes and compare file versions by restoring files to previous versions, and backups to support your backup retention and compliance needs.

Use Cases

Amazon FSx was designed for use cases that require Windows shared file storage, like CRM, ERP, custom or .NET applications, home directories, data analytics, media and entertainment workflows, web serving and content management and software build environments.
Home directories. Use FSx to create file system shared between hundreds or thousands of users.
Applications which require shared file storage provided by Windows-based file systems (NTFS) and use the SMB protocol.
Highly available Microsoft SQL Server deployments.

Differences between EFS and FSx

You can use EFS and FSx interchangeably for most applications that support network file shares.
But EFS is better for applications designed for heterogeneous environments and those that run on Linux systems.
On the other hand, FSx for windows is particularly suited to applications that require file storage provided by Windows-based file systems (NTFS) and use the SMB protocol.
Finally, if you need either of the improved latency, throughput or IOPs provided by FSx over EFS, then you know what to do.
More information: http://chinomsoikwuagwu.com/2020/03/28/AWS_EFS-vs-FSx/

Video

Connecting windows with FSx

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