Amazon FSx lets you choose between three widely-used file systems: NetApp ONTAP, Windows File Server, and Lustre. This choice is typically based on your familiarity with a given file system or by matching the file system's feature sets, performance profiles, and data management capabilities to the requirements of your workload.
Selecting a familiar file system
When moving existing applications and workloads to AWS, a common consideration is to choose the file system that most closely matches your current storage technology so that you can maintain application compatibility and not change how you manage your data.
Current storage technology |
Recommended Amazon FSx file system |
NetApp ONTAP |
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Microsoft Windows Server |
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Lustre |
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Parallel file systems |
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Other file systems |
Selecting a file system based on workload requirements
Amazon FSx file systems offer feature sets, performance profiles, and data management capabilities that support a wide variety of use cases. You can choose a file system that enables you to cost-effectively power your workload with the necessary reliability, functionality, performance, and security.
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FSx for NetApp ONTAP |
FSx for Windows File Server |
FSx for Lustre |
Performance and Scale |
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Latency |
Sub-millisecond |
Sub-millisecond |
Sub-millisecond |
Max. throughput per file system |
2 GB/s* |
2 GB/s* |
100s of GB/s |
Max. throughput available to a single client accessing a file system |
2 GB/s* |
2 GB/s* |
Up to 12 GB/s |
Max. number of concurrent client connections per file system |
Thousands |
Thousands |
Thousands |
Max. IOPS per file system |
Hundreds of thousands |
Hundreds of thousands |
Millions |
Adaptive Quality of Service controls |
✓ |
|
|
Maximum file system size |
Virtually unlimited |
64 TiB; Extends to multiple PBs using DFS Namespaces |
Virtually unlimited |
* 2 GB/s is baseline; you may see significantly higher performance due to automatic client/server caching and performance efficiencies from automatic data compression |
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Accessibility and Integrations |
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Client compatibility |
Windows, Linux macOS |
Windows, Linux, macOS |
Linux |
Protocol support |
SMB 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1.1 |
SMB 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1.1 |
Custom (POSIX-compliant) protocol optimized for performance |
AWS Compute |
EC2 Windows, EC2 Linux, EKS Linux, ECS Windows, ECS Linux |
EC2 Windows, EC2 Linux, ECS Windows |
EC2 Linux, EKS Linux, ECS Linux |
Automatic import/export of S3 data sets |
|
|
✓
|
Hybrid usage |
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On-premises access of FSx data |
✓ AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN |
✓ AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN |
✓ AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN |
On-premises caching of FSx data |
✓ NetApp Global File Cache, NetApp FlexCache |
✓ Amazon FSx File Gateway |
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Backup and disaster recovery from on premises to AWS |
✓ NetApp SnapMirror |
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Support for compute burst to the cloud (use of FSx as an on-AWS cache of data that resides on premises) |
✓ NetApp FlexCache |
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Price/performance Optimization |
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Fast SSD storage option |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
Low-cost storage for cold, infrequently-accessed data |
✓ Low-cost tier with cold data automatically cycled to it |
✓ HDD storage option |
✓ HDD storage option |
Choice of throughput and IOPS levels |
✓ Throughput and IOPS |
✓ Throughput |
✓ Throughput |
User quotas |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
Data compression and/or compaction ** |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
Data deduplication ** |
✓ |
✓ |
|
** Applies to both primary storage and backups |
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Availability and Data Protection |
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Deployment options |
Multi-AZ |
Single-AZ and Multi-AZ |
Single-AZ - Persistent or Scratch |
Availability SLA |
99.99% |
99.99% |
99.99% |
Crash-consistent incremental backups |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
Inline instantaneous snapshots |
✓ |
✓ |
|
Instant cloning |
✓ |
|
|
End-user file restore |
✓ |
✓ |
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Cross-region replication |
✓ NetApp SnapMirror |
|
✓ Using S3 cross-region replication |
Cross-region/cross-account backups |
|
✓ |
✓ |
Security and Compliance |
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Encryption-at-rest |
✓ AWS KMS |
✓ AWS KMS |
✓ AWS KMS |
Encryption-in-transit |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
Network isolation |
✓ Amazon VPC |
✓ Amazon VPC |
✓ Amazon VPC |
Identity-based authentication for file system administration |
✓ AWS IAM |
✓ AWS IAM |
✓ AWS IAM |
Active Directory support for file system access authentication and access control |
✓ |
✓ |
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File access auditing |
✓ |
✓ |
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Anti-virus scanning |
✓ |
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Logging of API calls |
✓ AWS CloudTrail |
✓ AWS CloudTrail |
✓ AWS CloudTrail |
Compliance and certification |
HIPAA BAA, PCI/DSS, ISO, SOC, IRAP, GDPR, ISMAP, FINMA, MTCS, C5, ENS High, OSPAR, HITRUST CSF |
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Learn more Amazon FSx pricing
