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I am new to AWS. I have seen numerous definitive answers saying Windows and AWS EFS can't work with each other. Is it still the case with Windows Server 2016?

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Amazon now supports a fully managed native Microsoft Windows file system,look at Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/windows/

Hussein Al-Far
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Yes they can but it's some work.

Amazon clearly states that EFS + Windows is not supported. But that doesn't mean it isn't possible. CITI @ University of Michigan made an NFSv4.1 client for Windows several years ago.

To use it with AWS EFS you have to comment out one definition so that it always uses OPEN4_SHARE_DENY_NONE for the share-deny value – AWS specifically states in its Unsupported Features page as disallowing any other value.

And then compile, sign and install. It's not a trivial process, but it's doable. I'm running EFS + Windows Server 2012 R2 on EC2.

More detail in an answer to a similar question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/46625030/137641

davemyron
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  • How did you achieve EFS on windows server? Can you please share the document to configure EFS on windows server 2019? It would be thankful. – Lakshminarayanan S Mar 21 '23 at 14:34
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I did this the other way around, by using Samba to provide the Windows share, from Linux.

  • Create an AWS EC2 instance.
  • Mount the EFS on the EC2 instance (using mount point IP, ensure same security group)
  • Install Samba on EC2 instance
  • Create local Samba config entry for EC2 local mount point
  • Add security group inbound entry for "SMB" port for client IP.
  • Mount EC2 samba share on Windows

After that, I could successfully mount the EFS volume on Windows.

David Thomas
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No. Windows servers cannot currently (as at June 2017) mount Amazon EFS volumes.

(I don't know if it will be available in future, but I inserted the date because it might be introduced in future.)

John Rotenstein
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    Thank you John. Is it because of technical difficulties, or Microsoft intentionally wants it this way, or Amazon intentionally wants it this way? –  Jun 09 '17 at 13:06
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    Amazon EFS uses NFSv4, which is not compatible with the Windows SMB sharing model. I heard somebody mention that v3 could work with Windows, but not v4. I guess it comes down to having the right drivers. – John Rotenstein Jun 10 '17 at 03:01
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    It's not supported, but possible. EFS supports NFSv4 and NFSv4.1. There's a NFSv4.1 client that the University of Michigan put out 5-9 years ago that can be made to work. I've added an answer with more details – davemyron Oct 07 '17 at 21:04