Amazon FSx for Windows File Server Documentation

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server enables you to launch and scale shared file storage for your applications and end users. With Amazon FSx, you can launch file systems that can span multiple availability zones (AZs) and can be accessed from up to thousands of compute instances using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. It provides a number of administrative and security features, and is designed to integrate with Microsoft Active Directory (AD).

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to connect your file system to Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Amazon AppStream 2.0 instances. Amazon FSx is designed to support Windows versions starting from Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, and versions of Linux and MacOS. Amazon FSx is also designed to support on-premises access via AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN, and access from multiple VPCs, accounts, and regions using VPC Peering or AWS Transit Gateway.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed service. You can create Amazon FSx file systems that span multiple AZs by using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDK. Amazon FSx is designed to set up and provision file servers and storage volumes, replicate data, manage failover and failback, and help reduce the need for administrative overhead.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to provide multiple GB/s of throughput and hundreds of thousands of IOPS per file system, and sub-millisecond latencies for file operations.. You can also enable data compression on  your file system. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is also designed to support SMB Multichannel and simultaneous access from up to thousands of clients.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to encrypt file system data at rest and in transit.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to support identity-based authentication over SMB through Microsoft Active Directory (AD).

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to support Windows Access Control Lists (ACLs) for file and folder access control. For network-level access control, you can use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) security groups to control access to your Amazon FSx for Windows File Server resources. Amazon FSx is integrated with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to help you control the actions that your AWS IAM users and groups can take on specific Amazon FSx resources. Amazon FSx integrates with AWS CloudTrail to help you monitor and log administration actions. Amazon FSx also enables you to use user storage quotas to help you monitor and control user-level storage consumption.

You can access your Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file system from your Amazon VPCs. Amazon FSx for Windows File System is designed to enable you to configure firewall settings and control network access to your file systems using Amazon VPC Security Groups and VPC Network ACLs.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to support auditing end-user access to your files, folders, and file shares. Logs can be published to Amazon CloudWatch Logs or streamed to Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, enabling you to view and query logs on Amazon CloudWatch Logs, archive logs in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), trigger AWS Lambda functions to take reactive actions, or perform post-processing on AWS Partner solutions.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to replicate your data within an Availability Zone (AZ) it resides in (which you specify during creation), monitor for hardware failures, and replace infrastructure components in the event of a failure. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to offer single-AZ and multi-AZ deployment options for your Windows file-based workloads.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server offers a multiple Availability Zone (AZ) deployment option, designed to provide availability to data even in the event that an AZ is unavailable. Multi-AZ file systems include an active and standby file server in separate AZs, and are designed to replicate changes written to disk in your file system across AZs to the standby. During planned maintenance, or in the event of a failure of the active file server or its AZ, Amazon FSx is designed to fail over to the standby.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to take daily backups to Amazon S3. You can also take additional backups of your file system.

To enable end-users to undo changes and compare file versions, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed to support restoring individual files and folders to previous versions using Windows shadow copies.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is integrated with AWS Backup, allowing you to create scheduled, policy-driven backup plans for your Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file systems.

You can copy your Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file system backups across AWS Regions, AWS accounts, or both.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides two types of storage – Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Solid State Drives (SSD) – enabling you to optimize cost and performance for your workloads. HDD storage is designed for a broad spectrum of workloads, including home directories, user and departmental shares, and content management systems. SSD storage is designed for workloads that are latency-sensitive and demand higher performance, including databases, media processing workloads, and data analytics applications.

You can enable data deduplication and compression to help reduce costs associated with redundant data.

Amazon FSx offers user quotas that you can use to monitor and control user-level storage consumption on your file systems.

For additional information about service controls, security features and functionalities, including, as applicable, information about storing, retrieving, modifying, restricting, and deleting data, please see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/index.html. This additional information does not form part of the Documentation for purposes of the AWS Customer Agreement available at http://aws.amazon.com/agreement, or other agreement between you and AWS governing your use of AWS’s services.