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Tutorials › AWS Solutions Architect › FSx — High Performance File Systems

FSx — High Performance File Systems

4 min read Quiz at the end
Choose the right FSx file system (Windows, Lustre, ONTAP, OpenZFS) for specialized workloads requiring high performance or enterprise storage features.

FSx — Specialized High-Performance File Systems

Amazon FSx provides fully managed versions of popular file systems for workloads needing specific file system capabilities beyond what EFS provides.

FSx for Windows File Server

Fully managed Windows SMB file shares with Active Directory integration. Perfect for Windows workloads that need NTFS file system features.

  • Supports Windows ACLs, NTFS permissions, DFS (Distributed File System)
  • Integrates with Active Directory for user authentication
  • SMB protocol — works natively with Windows applications
  • Multi-AZ deployment for high availability
  • Use case: lift-and-shift of Windows file servers to AWS without application changes

FSx for Lustre — HPC and ML

Lustre is a high-performance parallel file system used for machine learning training and HPC workloads requiring massive throughput.

  • Delivers hundreds of GB/s throughput with sub-millisecond latency
  • Natively integrates with S3 — lazy-loads files from S3 on first access
  • SageMaker uses FSx for Lustre for ML training datasets (much faster than S3 direct)
  • Use case: ML training that needs fast local file access to TB of training data

FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Enterprise storage platform with advanced data management capabilities.

  • Multi-protocol: NFS, SMB, iSCSI simultaneously
  • Advanced features: snapshots, clones, deduplication, compression, SnapMirror replication
  • Lift-and-shift: applications using NetApp on-premises work unchanged on AWS
FSx TypeProtocolBest For
Windows File ServerSMBWindows apps, Active Directory integration
LustrePOSIX/NFSHPC, ML training, video processing
NetApp ONTAPNFS+SMB+iSCSIEnterprise storage, lift-and-shift from NetApp
OpenZFSNFSLinux workloads needing ZFS snapshots and clones
Exam Tip: For the exam: FSx for Windows = Windows SMB + Active Directory. FSx for Lustre = ML + HPC + S3 integration. These are the two most tested. Know that Lustre integrates with S3 — data is lazily loaded from S3, making it much faster for ML training than reading from S3 directly.
Topic Quiz · 1 questions

Test your understanding before moving on

1. A company has 50 VPCs that all need to communicate with a central services VPC. Development VPCs should not communicate with Production VPCs. Which solution is MOST scalable?
💡 Transit Gateway with route tables is the only scalable solution for 50+ VPCs. Route tables enforce isolation between Dev and Prod while allowing all to reach shared services.