Can Windows Server 2016 EC2 mount EFS?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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/

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.)

Answer 4

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.