Exam relevance: Domain 2 (29%). FSx covers four file system types. Know which to use for Windows, HPC, NetApp, and OpenZFS workloads.
1. FSx File System Types
| Type | Protocol | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| FSx for Windows File Server | SMB | Windows applications, Active Directory, home directories |
| FSx for Lustre | Lustre | HPC, ML training, financial modeling, media processing |
| FSx for NetApp ONTAP | NFS, SMB, iSCSI | Enterprise storage, multi-protocol, data management |
| FSx for OpenZFS | NFS | Linux workloads needing ZFS features, migration from on-prem ZFS |
2. FSx for Windows File Server
- Fully managed Windows file system built on Windows Server
- SMB protocol — compatible with all Windows applications
- Active Directory integration — user authentication via AWS Managed AD or self-managed AD
- DFS Namespaces: aggregate multiple file shares under a single namespace
- Multi-AZ: active-standby configuration for HA; automatic failover
- Single-AZ: lower cost, no automatic failover
- Supports: shadow copies (VSS), data deduplication, encryption at rest (KMS)
Use Cases
- Lift-and-shift Windows file servers
- Home directories for Windows users
- SharePoint, SQL Server (user databases), .NET applications
3. FSx for Lustre
- High-performance parallel file system for compute-intensive workloads
- Sub-millisecond latency, hundreds of GB/s throughput, millions of IOPS
- S3 integration: link to S3 bucket; lazy-load data on first access; write results back to S3
- Deployment types:
- Scratch: temporary, no replication, highest performance — for short-term processing
- Persistent: replicated within AZ, long-term storage — for ongoing workloads
Use Cases
- ML training (SageMaker integration)
- HPC simulations
- Media rendering and transcoding
- Financial risk modeling
- Genomics processing
4. FSx for NetApp ONTAP
- Fully managed NetApp ONTAP file system
- Supports NFS, SMB, and iSCSI simultaneously (multi-protocol)
- SnapMirror: replicate to on-premises NetApp or another FSx ONTAP
- FlexClone: instant zero-cost clones of volumes (dev/test environments)
- Tiering: automatically tier cold data to S3
- Multi-AZ and Single-AZ deployment options
Use Cases
- Lift-and-shift NetApp workloads
- Multi-protocol shared storage
- Dev/test with instant clones
- Hybrid cloud with on-premises NetApp replication
5. FSx for OpenZFS
- Fully managed OpenZFS file system
- NFS protocol (v3, v4, v4.1, v4.2)
- ZFS features: snapshots, clones, compression, data integrity checksums
- Up to 1 million IOPS, sub-millisecond latency
- Single-AZ only
Use Cases
- Migrate on-premises ZFS workloads to AWS
- Linux workloads needing ZFS data management features
- Dev/test with instant snapshots and clones
6. Comparison Table
| Feature | Windows FS | Lustre | ONTAP | OpenZFS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protocol | SMB | Lustre | NFS/SMB/iSCSI | NFS |
| OS | Windows | Linux | Both | Linux |
| AD integration | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| S3 integration | No | Yes | No | No |
| Multi-AZ | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Multi-protocol | No | No | Yes | No |
| HPC performance | No | Yes | No | No |
7. Exam Scenarios
Scenario 1: A company is migrating Windows file servers to AWS. Users authenticate with Active Directory. What is the solution?
Use FSx for Windows File Server with Active Directory integration. Join the file system to the existing AD domain (AWS Managed AD or AD Connector to on-premises AD). Users access shares using their existing AD credentials via SMB.
Scenario 2: A machine learning team needs a high-performance file system for training data stored in S3. What is the solution?
Use FSx for Lustre linked to the S3 bucket. Data is lazy-loaded from S3 on first access. Training jobs read data at sub-millisecond latency with hundreds of GB/s throughput. Results can be exported back to S3.
Scenario 3: A company has on-premises NetApp storage and wants to replicate to AWS for DR while keeping the same protocols. What is the solution?
Use FSx for NetApp ONTAP. Use SnapMirror to replicate from on-premises NetApp to FSx ONTAP. The same NFS/SMB/iSCSI protocols work on both sides. Failover to FSx ONTAP in a DR event.
8. Exam Tips
- Windows workloads + AD → FSx for Windows File Server
- HPC + S3 integration → FSx for Lustre
- Multi-protocol + NetApp migration → FSx for NetApp ONTAP
- ZFS migration + Linux → FSx for OpenZFS
- FSx for Lustre Scratch = temporary/no replication; Persistent = long-term/replicated
- Only FSx for Windows and FSx for ONTAP support Multi-AZ
- EFS = Linux NFS, auto-scaling; FSx for Windows = Windows SMB, AD integration
🎯 Architecture Decision Notes
Choosing the FSx variant
| Variant | When |
|---|---|
| FSx for Windows File Server | SMB shares, Active Directory integration, Windows workloads |
| FSx for Lustre | HPC, ML training — S3-backed, massive parallel throughput |
| FSx for OpenZFS | NFS with ZFS features (snapshots, cloning, compression) |
| FSx for NetApp ONTAP | ONTAP features, multi-protocol (NFS/SMB/iSCSI) |
Match the variant to the protocol and the feature the workload actually needs — “file storage” alone does not decide it. For a lift-and-shift Windows file server, FSx for Windows with AD integration is usually the least-change answer.