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How FSx works

Managed high-performance file systems: Lustre for HPC/ML, Windows File Server (SMB), NetApp ONTAP, and OpenZFS. Throughput is provisioned in MB/s (Lustre couples it to capacity). Sub-millisecond on SSD.

EFS is great, if your world is Linux and NFS. But a Windows app wants SMB and Active Directory; a supercomputing job wants Lustre; an enterprise wants NetApp ONTAP’s features. FSx is AWS running those specific file systems for you, so you get the exact protocol and capabilities a workload demands, fully managed.

What you will learn

Why isn’t EFS enough for every file workload?
What are the FSx flavours, and what is each for?
When do you pick a specific FSx engine over EFS?
What does "managed" save you here?

When EFS isn’t the right shape

EFS speaks NFS (Linux). Many real workloads need something else: Windows applications expect SMB shares and Active Directory; high-performance computing needs a parallel file system; teams migrating from NetApp want ONTAP’s exact features.

The FSx family

FSx for Windows File Server: fully managed SMB shares with AD integration, for Windows workloads. FSx for Lustre: a high-throughput parallel file system for HPC/ML, can link to S3. FSx for NetApp ONTAP: enterprise ONTAP features (snapshots, multi-protocol). FSx for OpenZFS: ZFS-based, snapshots and high performance.

⚓ Windows file shares, genomics/financial HPC, NetApp migrations, and latency-sensitive POSIX workloads.

Specialist file system, no specialist ops

FSx runs and maintains these engines, provisioning, patching, backups, high availability, so you get the specific protocol and features without operating the file-system software yourself.

Flashcards

Why does FSx exist when EFS already provides shared files?: EFS is NFS/Linux; FSx provides specific file systems (Windows SMB+AD, Lustre, ONTAP, OpenZFS) for workloads that need those protocols/features.
Which FSx for Windows apps needing SMB and Active Directory?: FSx for Windows File Server, managed SMB shares with AD integration.
Which FSx for high-performance computing / ML with extreme throughput (and S3 linkage)?: FSx for Lustre, a parallel HPC file system that can link to S3 data.
Migrating from on-prem NetApp and want the same features in AWS?: FSx for NetApp ONTAP, managed ONTAP with snapshots and multi-protocol support.
FSx or EFS for a plain Linux shared filesystem?: EFS, simpler and cheaper. Reach for FSx only when you need a specific engine’s protocol/features.

Sources

Open the SysPad canvas · Official FSx documentation