Choosing the Right FSx Variant

~10 min read

A quick decision framework across the four FSx variants based on protocol and workload requirements.

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Key points

  • Windows File Server: only choice needing genuine SMB + AD-integrated permissions
  • NetApp ONTAP: preserves existing ONTAP tooling/scripts/replication workflows
  • OpenZFS: Linux workloads already built around ZFS snapshot/clone semantics
  • Lustre: purpose-built for massively parallel HPC/ML training read throughput