8. Block and File Storage

Difference between block, object, and file storage

Amazon EBS

Amazon EFS

Amazon FSx

AWS Storage Gateway

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Amazon FSx

Last edited 149 days ago by Kirtan Chavda

Amazon FSx is a fully managed service that provides third-party file systems optimized for different use cases. It offers high-performance and scalable storage solutions for various workloads, integrating seamlessly with AWS services.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed Microsoft Windows file servers, backed by a fully native Windows file system. FSx for Windows File Server has the features, performance, and compatibility to easily lift and shift enterprise applications to the AWS Cloud.

Amazon FSx supports a broad set of enterprise Windows workloads with fully managed file storage built on Microsoft Windows Server. Amazon FSx has native support for Windows file system features and for the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol to access file storage over a network. Amazon FSx is optimized for enterprise applications in the AWS Cloud, with native Windows compatibility, enterprise performance and features, and consistent sub-millisecond latencies.

With file storage on Amazon FSx, the code, applications, and tools that Windows developers and administrators use today can continue to work unchanged. Windows applications and workloads ideal for Amazon FSx include business applications, home directories, web serving, content management, data analytics, software build setups, and media processing workloads.

As a fully managed service, FSx for Windows File Server eliminates the administrative overhead of setting up and provisioning file servers and storage volumes. Additionally, Amazon FSx keeps Windows software up to date, detects and addresses hardware failures, and performs backups. It also provides rich integration with other AWS services like

AWS IAM⁠

AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory⁠

Amazon WorkSpaces⁠

AWS Key Management Service⁠

, and

AWS CloudTrail⁠

Functionality

Windows-based file storage: Provides fully managed Windows file systems that support the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. You can easily connect Linux instances to the file system by installing the cifs-utils package. The Linux instances can then mount an SMB/CIFS file system.

Active Directory integration: Integrates with Microsoft Active Directory for user authentication and access control.

Windows NTFS: Uses the Windows NTFS file system to support Windows features such as file permissions, encryption, and data deduplication.

High availability: Offers multi-AZ deployments for high availability and durability.

Use Cases

Enterprise applications: Ideal for enterprise applications that require Windows file storage.

User home directories: Supports storing user home directories.

Web serving and content management: Suitable for web serving, content management, and collaboration applications.

Key Features

Performance: Delivers consistent high performance with up to hundreds of thousands of IOPS.

Scalability: Scales storage capacity and performance independently.

Backup and Restore: Provides automated daily backups and the ability to create user-initiated backups.

Data encryption: Supports data encryption at rest and in transit.

File system auditing: Enables logging of file system access for compliance and security monitoring.

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Working with Microsoft Active Directory in FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx works with Microsoft Active Directory to integrate with your existing Microsoft Windows environments. Active Directory is the Microsoft directory service used to store information about objects on the network and make this information easy for administrators and users to find and use. These objects typically include shared resources such as file servers and network user and computer accounts.

When you create a file system with Amazon FSx, you join it to your Active Directory domain to provide user authentication and file- and folder-level access control. Your users can then use their existing user identities in Active Directory to authenticate themselves and access the Amazon FSx file system. Users can also use their existing identities to control access to individual files and folders. In addition, you can migrate your existing files and folders and these items' security access control list (ACL) configuration to Amazon FSx without any modifications.

Amazon FSx provides you with two options for using your FSx for Windows File Server file system with Active Directory:

Using Amazon FSx with AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory⁠

and

Using Amazon FSx with your self-managed Microsoft Active Directory⁠

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Amazon FSx for Lustre

FSx for Lustre makes it easy and cost-effective to launch and run the popular, high-performance Lustre file system. You use Lustre for workloads where speed matters, such as machine learning, high performance computing (HPC), video processing, and financial modeling.

The open-source Lustre file system is designed for applications that require fast storage—where you want your storage to keep up with your compute. Lustre was built to solve the problem of quickly and cheaply processing the world's ever-growing datasets. It's a widely used file system designed for the fastest computers in the world. It provides sub-millisecond latencies, up to hundreds of GBps of throughput, and up to millions of IOPS. For more information on Lustre, see the

Lustre website⁠

As a fully managed service, Amazon FSx makes it easier for you to use Lustre for workloads where storage speed matters. FSx for Lustre eliminates the traditional complexity of setting up and managing Lustre file systems, enabling you to spin up and run a battle-tested high-performance file system in minutes. It also provides multiple deployment options so you can optimize cost for your needs.

FSx for Lustre is POSIX-compliant, so you can use your current Linux-based applications without having to make any changes. FSx for Lustre provides a native file system interface and works as any file system does with your Linux operating system. It also provides read-after-write consistency and supports file locking.

Functionality:

High-performance file system: Designed for compute-intensive workloads, providing fast and scalable file storage.

Integration with Amazon S3: Integrates with Amazon S3 to provide a seamless link between your data sets stored in S3 and the high-performance file system.

POSIX compliance: Supports POSIX permissions and file system operations.

Use Cases:

High-performance computing (HPC): Ideal for HPC applications in fields like genomics, financial modeling, and machine learning.

Media processing: Supports media rendering and transcoding workloads.

Big data analytics: Suitable for large-scale data analysis and processing tasks.

Key Features:

Low latency and high throughput: Provides sub-millisecond latencies and high throughput to handle large-scale workloads.

Scalability: Scales to petabytes of data and hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput.

Bursting capability: Supports the ability to burst to higher performance levels to handle peak workloads.

Data durability: Ensures data durability with multiple copies of data within the file system.

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Summary

Amazon FSx offers two specialized file systems tailored to different workload requirements:

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server: Ideal for Windows-based applications requiring shared file storage with features like Active Directory integration, NTFS support, and high availability.

Amazon FSx for Lustre: Optimized for compute-intensive workloads that need high performance, low latency, and scalable file storage, with seamless integration with Amazon S3. It is ideal for high performance computing (HPC) workloads running on Linux instances.

Exam Tips

Amazon FSx for Lustre is ideal for high performance computing (HPC) workloads running on Linux instances. FSx for Lustre provides a native file system interface and works as any file system does with your Linux operating system.

When linked to an Amazon S3 bucket, FSx for Lustre transparently presents objects as files, allowing you to run your workload without managing data transfer from S3.

This solution provides all requirements as it enables Linux workloads to use the native file system interfaces and to use S3 for long-term and cost-effective storage of output files.

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Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Functionality

Use Cases

Key Features

Working with Microsoft Active Directory in FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx for Lustre

Summary

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