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Amazon FSx - Runbook & Reference

中文 · GitHub source Facts verified against official AWS documentation: 2026-08-19

Overview

Amazon FSx is a family of fully managed file storage services for workloads that need shared file systems. It provides native Windows file servers, a high-performance parallel file system, and POSIX file systems with NetApp and OpenZFS compatibility.

File system types

Type Protocol Best for
FSx for Windows File Server SMB 2.0-3.1.1 Lift-and-shift Windows workloads, home directories, business apps
FSx for Lustre POSIX (Lustre) High-performance computing, ML training, media processing
FSx for NetApp ONTAP NFS, SMB, iSCSI Enterprise NAS features: snapshots, clones, data tiering
FSx for OpenZFS NFS (POSIX) Linux workloads needing ZFS features: snapshots, clones, compression

Key concepts

  • File system: the primary resource; you choose storage capacity, throughput, and (for Windows) SSD IOPS independently.
  • File shares: SMB shares (Windows) or NFS exports (Lustre/ONTAP/OpenZFS) exposed to compute clients.
  • Single-AZ / Multi-AZ: Windows file systems support high availability within one AZ or across two AZs with automatic failover.
  • Active Directory integration: Windows file systems join a Microsoft AD for user authentication and ACL-based access.
  • Backups: file-system-consistent, incremental backups; automatic daily backups plus manual backups.
  • Data tiering: ONTAP can tier cold data to Amazon S3 to control costs.

Common operations (AWS CLI)

# Create a file system (Windows example)
aws fsx create-file-system --file-system-type WINDOWS \
  --storage-capacity 300 --storage-type SSD \
  --subnet-ids subnet-0123456789abcdef0 \
  --windows-configuration ThroughputCapacity=32,DeploymentType=MULTI_AZ_1,PreferredSubnetId=subnet-0123456789abcdef0

# List and describe file systems
aws fsx describe-file-systems
aws fsx describe-file-systems --file-system-ids fs-0123456789abcdef0

# Create a backup
aws fsx create-backup --file-system-id fs-0123456789abcdef0

# Update capacity
aws fsx update-file-system --file-system-id fs-0123456789abcdef0 \
  --storage-capacity 600

# Delete (after taking a final backup)
aws fsx delete-file-system --file-system-id fs-0123456789abcdef0

Best practices

  • Choose the FSx type by protocol and workload, not by habit: Windows/SMB vs. Lustre/HPC vs. ONTAP/OpenZFS for NAS features.
  • Use Multi-AZ Windows file systems for production; use Single-AZ where cost matters and downtime is acceptable.
  • Enable automatic daily backups and keep manual backups before destructive changes.
  • Place file systems in private subnets and control access with VPC security groups.
  • Join Windows file systems to Managed Microsoft AD and use Windows ACLs for file-level permissions.
  • Monitor with CloudWatch and enable CloudTrail for API auditing.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Checks and fixes
Clients can't mount Verify security group rules (SMB 445, NFS 2049) and that the client is in a peered/transit-gateway-connected VPC.
Windows authentication fails Confirm the file system is joined to AD, DNS resolves the file system name, and the user has an AD account.
Poor performance Check throughput/storage/IOPS settings and workload type; scale capacity as needed.
Backup failed Check available storage and file system state; retry a manual backup.
Multi-AZ failover issues Verify preferred subnet and standby subnet are in different AZs with correct routing.

Limits

Per-account quotas for file systems, total storage, and throughput depend on file system type and Region. See the Service Quotas console for current values.

Official references