FSx
💡 Definition
Amazon FSx makes it easy to launch, run, and scale feature-rich, high-performance file systems in the cloud. It supports widely used open-source and commercial file system configurations.
🔑 Key Concepts
- Managed Service: AWS handles hardware provisioning, patching, and backups.
- Specialized File Systems:
- FSx for Windows File Server: Native Microsoft Windows file system (NTFS) with Active Directory integration.
- FSx for Lustre: High-performance file system optimized for fast processing of workloads (HPC, Machine Learning).
- FSx for NetApp ONTAP: Enterprise-grade shared file storage.
- FSx for OpenZFS: Managed ZFS file system.
⚙️ How it Works
You create an FSx file system specifying the type, storage capacity, and throughput. You then mount it to your EC2 instances (Windows or Linux) or on-premises servers via VPN/Direct Connect.
🎯 Use Cases
- Windows Workloads: Moving Windows-based applications (SharePoint, SQL Server) to AWS (FSx for Windows).
- High Performance Computing (HPC): Video rendering, financial modeling, genomics (FSx for Lustre).
- Machine Learning: Training models on large datasets (FSx for Lustre).
💰 Pricing Model
- Charged for storage capacity, throughput capacity, and backups.
📝 Exam Tips (CLF-C02)
- FSx for Windows: Think "Windows File Server", "SMB", "Active Directory".
- FSx for Lustre: Think "High Performance Computing (HPC)", "Machine Learning", "Fast processing", "Linked to S3".
- Contrast with EFS (which is for Linux/NFS).