1. Overview

Amazon FSx provides fully managed third-party high-performance file systems on AWS. It offers four file system options, each optimized for specific workloads and protocols.

2. FSx for Windows File Server

  1. Fully managed Windows-native file system
  2. Built on Windows Server. Supports SMB protocol and Windows NTFS.
  3. Integrates with Microsoft Active Directory (self-managed or AWS Managed AD)
  4. Supports Windows features: ACLs, user quotas, DFS namespaces, DFS Replication
  5. Multi-AZ option for high availability
  6. Accessible from Linux via SMB client
  7. Can be accessed from on-premises via VPN or Direct Connect


Use for: Windows-based applications, SMB file shares, Active Directory environments, .NET applications, SQL Server, SharePoint, IIS.

3. FSx for Lustre

  1. High-performance parallel file system for compute-intensive workloads
  2. Lustre = Linux + Cluster (HPC file system)
  3. Sub-millisecond latency, hundreds of GiB/s throughput, millions of IOPS
  4. Native integration with S3: can read from and write back to S3 transparently
  5. Scratch file system: temporary, high-performance, no replication (cheaper, data not persisted)
  6. Persistent file system: data is replicated within AZ, for long-term storage


Use for: HPC, machine learning training, video rendering, financial modeling, genomics, EDA (Electronic Design Automation).

4. FSx for NetApp ONTAP

  1. Fully managed NetApp ONTAP file system on AWS
  2. Supports NFS, SMB, and iSCSI protocols (works with Linux, Windows, and macOS)
  3. Compatible with on-premises NetApp environments
  4. Features: snapshots, cloning, replication, compression, deduplication, tiering
  5. Auto-scales storage capacity
  6. Multi-AZ for HA


Use for: Migrating NetApp workloads to AWS, workloads needing NFS + SMB + iSCSI simultaneously, VMware Cloud on AWS.

5. FSx for OpenZFS

  1. Fully managed OpenZFS file system on AWS
  2. NFS protocol (v3 and v4). Linux, Windows (via NFS client), macOS.
  3. Up to 1,000,000 IOPS, sub-millisecond latency
  4. Features: snapshots, cloning, compression, point-in-time recovery
  5. No Multi-AZ option (single AZ only)


Use for: Migrating ZFS workloads to AWS, workloads needing fast NFS with snapshots, internal tools, dev/test.

6. FSx Comparison

7. When to use

Use FSx when you need a fully managed, high-performance file system built on popular third-party file system technologies.

Key exam triggers:

  1. "Windows file shares"
  2. "Lustre"
  3. "high-performance computing (HPC)"
  4. "SMB protocol"
  5. "ONTAP"
  6. "NetApp migration"
  7. "ZFS"


Exam Tip FSx questions: "Windows file share with AD" = FSx for Windows. "HPC, ML training, S3 integration" = FSx for Lustre. "NFS + SMB + iSCSI" = FSx for NetApp ONTAP. "ZFS workload migration" = FSx for OpenZFS. "Shared Linux file system (NFS)" = check: if simple/managed → EFS; if HPC performance → Lustre; if multi-protocol → ONTAP.