AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 Practice Question
A company needs a scalable file storage solution that supports Windows-based workloads and integrates with Active Directory. Which AWS storage service should they choose?
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is the correct choice because it provides fully managed, highly reliable, and scalable file storage that is accessible over the SMB protocol. It is specifically designed for Windows-based workloads and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Active Directory (AD), supporting Windows NTFS and Distributed File System (DFS).
Why the other options are not appropriate:
Amazon EFS is designed for Linux-based workloads and uses the Network File System (NFS) protocol. It has no native SMB support or AD integration, so Windows applications that rely on SMB/NTFS permissions cannot use it without additional software.
Amazon S3 is an object-storage service. It stores data as objects in buckets rather than as files in a hierarchical file system, and it does not provide the shared Windows file-system semantics required here.
Amazon EBS provides block-level storage that is attached to EC2 instances. Although the Multi-Attach feature lets certain volumes be attached to multiple Nitro-based instances, EBS still presents a raw block device (not an SMB share) and offers no built-in Active Directory integration or shared file-system management.
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