AWS has improved Amazon FSx for Windows File Server with dynamic size and throughput growth scaling capabilities.
FSx for Windows File Server provides disk or SSD-based SMB-protocol file storage and is integrated with Active Directory for authentication purposes. The software runs in single or multiple availability zones, and shares can also be accessed from VMware Cloud on AWS and Amazon WorkSpaces. FSx supports data encryption in transit and at rest and includes backups.
Previously, users created a file system with a fixed capacity and set network throughput levels. They paid for defined storage and throughput capacity and for any backups they created.
As announced in an AWS blog yesterday, users can now scale up or down capacity and or network throughput with button clicks in the AWS Management Console or by using an API call. That means you can add capacity or throughput performance for one-off burst work sessions or regular, cyclical workloads.
FSx file system users can make the changes free of charge – once Amazon rolls out the update in a maintenance window. New users get them straight away.
Competitive heat
AWS added the disk drive storage option to FSx in March this year, pricing it below the standard SSD option. Now it has added dynamic capacity and throughput scaling. And last month it increased EFS read performance from 7,000 to 35,000 IOPS at no charge.
AWS’s FSx for Windows is an SMB file system, complementing its EFS (Elastic File System) service which is an NFS-based offering. NFS is largely used by Unix and Linux applications and is also available for Windows, whereas SMB is a Windows file access protocol. There is also a separate FSx for Lustre offering.