Amazon FSx for Windows File Server FAQs Page- Amazon Web Services

Q: What is Amazon FSx for Windows File Server?

A: 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. 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.

To support a wide spectrum of workloads, 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. Thousands of compute instances and devices can access a file system concurrently.

Q: What is an Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file system, and what is a file share?

A: A file system is the primary resource in Amazon FSx. It’s where you store and access your files and folders. It is associated with a storage amount and a throughput capacity, as well as a DNS name for accessing it.

A file share is a specific folder (and its subfolders) within your file system that you make accessible to your compute instances – every file system comes with a default Windows file share, named “share” and you can create and manage as many other Windows file shares as you’d like.

Q: How do I get started with FSx for Windows File Server?

A: You can create a file system via the Amazon Web Services Management Console, the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI), and Amazon FSx API (and various language-specific SDKs).

Q: What instance types and OS versions can I access my file system from?

A: By supporting the SMB protocol, Amazon FSx can connect your file system to Amazon EC2 and VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services instances. To ensure compatibility with your applications, Amazon FSx supports all Windows versions starting from Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, and current versions of Linux (using the cifs-utils tool).

Q: How do I access data on my Amazon FSx file system?

A: From within Windows, use the “Map Network Drive” feature to map a drive letter (e.g., Z:) to a file share on your Amazon FSx file system. You can also access your file system from Linux using the cifs-utils tool to mount your file share. Once you’ve done this, you can work with the files and folders in your Amazon FSx file system just like you would with a local file system.

Q: How do I manage a file system?

A: Amazon FSx is a fully-managed service, so all of the file storage infrastructure is managed for you. When you use Amazon FSx, you avoid the complexity of deploying and maintaining complex file system infrastructure.

To create, view, tag, and delete file systems and backups, you can use the Amazon Web Services Management Console, the Amazon command-line interface (CLI), or the Amazon FSx API (and various language-specific SDKs). To administer file systems, including managing file shares, active user sessions and open files, shadow copies, user quotas, and Data Deduplication, you can use the Amazon FSx remote management CLI via PowerShell.

Q: How do I migrate my existing file data into an Amazon FSx file system?

A: If you’d like to migrate your existing files to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file systems, we recommend the use of Windows’s Robust File Copy (RoboCopy) to copy your files (both the data and the full set of metadata like ownership and Access Control Lists) directly to Amazon FSx. The RoboCopy tool performs the copy in entirety (including all metadata like ACLs, ownership, and time stamps), efficiently (with parallel copy) and reliably (by recovering from interruptions like network outages). Learn more in the migration documentation guide.

Once you have moved your file and folder data, Amazon FSx offers programmatic share management support to help you easily migrate your file share configuration. You must include security ACLs (SACLs) in your data migration to keep using your existing audit controls for file access auditing. Learn more about migrating your existing file shares in the documentation guide.

Q: How do I monitor my file system’s activity?

A: You can monitor storage capacity and file system activity using Amazon CloudWatch, monitor all Amazon FSx API calls using Amazon CloudTrail, and monitor end user actions with file access auditing using Amazon CloudWatch Logs and Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.

Q: What workloads is Amazon FSx for Windows File Server designed for?

A: Amazon FSx was designed for a broad set of 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, software build environments, and Microsoft SQL Server.

Q: How do I use Amazon FSx with Microsoft SQL Server?  

High availability (HA) Microsoft SQL Server is typically deployed across multiple database nodes in a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC), with each node having access to shared file storage. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server can be used as shared storage for High Availability (HA) Microsoft SQL Server deployments in two ways: as storage for active data files and as an SMB file share witness. For more information, see Using Amazon FSx with Microsoft SQL Server.

Q: When should I use Amazon FSx Windows File Servers vs. Amazon EFS vs. Amazon FSx for Lustre?

A: For Windows-based applications, Amazon FSx provides fully managed Windows file servers with features and performance optimized for “lift-and-shift” business-critical application workloads including home directories (user shares), media workflows, and ERP applications. It is accessible from Windows and Linux instances via the SMB protocol. If you have Linux-based applications, Amazon EFS is a cloud-native fully managed file system that provides simple, scalable, elastic file storage accessible from Linux instances via the NFS protocol.

For compute-intensive and fast processing workloads, like high performance computing (HPC), machine learning, EDA, and media processing, Amazon FSx for Lustre, provides a file system that’s optimized for performance, with input and output stored on Amazon S3.

Q. Does Amazon FSx support access from my on-premises environment?

A: Yes, you can access Amazon FSx file systems from your on-premises environment using an Amazon Direct Connect connection between your on-premises datacenter and your Amazon VPC. With support for Amazon Direct Connect, Amazon FSx allows you to access your file system over a dedicated network connection from your on-premises environment.

With on-premises access, you can use Amazon FSx for hosting user shares accessible by on-premises end-users, for cloud bursting workloads to offload your application processing to the cloud, and for backup and disaster recovery solutions. For more information, see Accessing Amazon FSx from on-premises.

Q. Does Amazon FSx support access from multiple VPCs, accounts, and regions?

A: Yes, you can access your Amazon FSx file systems from multiple Amazon VPCs, Amazon Web Services China accounts, and Amazon Web Services China Regions using VPC Peering connections or Amazon Transit Gateway. A VPC Peering connection is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them. A transit gateway is a network transit hub that you can use to interconnect your VPCs. With VPC Peering and Amazon Transit Gateway, you can even interconnect VPCs across Amazon Web Services China accounts and Amazon Web Services China Regions.

With access to your file systems via VPC Peering and Transit Gateway, you can share your file data sets across users and applications in multiple VPCs, Amazon Web Services China accounts, and/or Amazon Web Services China Regions. For more information, see Accessing Amazon FSx from multiple VPCs, accounts or regions.

Q: Does Amazon FSx support shared VPCs?

A: Yes, with Amazon FSx, you can create and use file systems in shared Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) from both owner accounts and participant accounts with which the VPC has been shared. VPC sharing enables you to reduce the number of VPCs that you need to create and manage, while you still benefit from using separate accounts for billing and access control.

Q: What regions is Amazon FSx for Lustre available in?

A: The regional availability of Amazon FSx is listed here: Amazon Web Services Region Table, including availability in the Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region operated by Sinnet and in the Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region operated by NWCD. 

Q: Does Amazon FSx offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

A: Yes. The Amazon FSx SLA provides for a service credit if a customer’s monthly uptime percentage is below our service commitment in any billing cycle. Beijing Region SLA | Ningxia Region SLA