Introducing a new storage class for FSx for OpenZFS called AWS FSx Intelligent-Tiering.
Speaking with clients who intend to move large volumes of on-premises data to AWS, it hear that they want to lower expenses, streamline storage management, and increase data accessibility for use in genomics, analytics, machine learning training, and other applications. Clients that now utilize Network Attached Storage (NAS) on-premises are searching for a cloud-based alternative that provides comparable features, such as user administration, data clones, and point-in-time snapshots.
Amazon FSx for OpenZFS has been used by AWS customers including Amdocs, Vela Games, and Astera Labs to operate their mission-critical and performance-intensive NAS workloads, including databases, game development and streaming, and semiconductor chip design. To give these workloads the reliable, high performance they require, they have been utilising the current SSD storage class on AWS FSx.
Nevertheless, a lot of other clients have sizable data sets that are kept on HDD-based or hybrid SSD/HDD-based NAS storage on premises, and they believe that switching to all-SSD storage would be too expensive. Additionally, managing allocated storage on-premises for erratic data sets and preventing space shortages are becoming more difficult and costly for these clients.
Additionally, they are keeping their NAS data for longer because it might be useful in the future for creating their next model, investment plan, or product. However, in order to minimize expenses, they must invest more time and energy in tracking access patterns and transferring data between hot and cold storage media.
AWS FSx Intelligent-Tiering

With all of this in mind, I’m pleased to inform you about the new AWS FSx Intelligent-Tiering storage class, which is compatible with Amazon FSx for OpenZFS file systems and is available now. The new storage class offers complete flexibility and intelligent tiering to NAS data sets, and it is priced 20% less than conventional HDD-based installations on premises and 85% less than the current SSD storage class.
You receive immediate cost savings with no upfront expenses or obligations since your data seamlessly switches between the three storage levels (archive, seldom use, and frequent access). The levels operate as follows:
- Frequent Access: This tier contains data that has been accessed in the previous 30 days.
- Infrequent Access: At a 44% lower cost than frequent access, infrequent access stores data that hasn’t been retrieved in 30 to 90 days.
- Archive: This tier, which is 65% less expensive than Infrequent Access, stores data that hasn’t been accessed in 90 days or more.
Your data may be recovered quickly in milliseconds and is stored across many AWS Availability Zones (AZs) for redundancy and availability, regardless of the storage tier.
This storage class is ideal for applications like genomics, financial data analytics, seismic imagery analysis, and machine learning where storage needs might fluctuate significantly over the course of days or weeks since there is no need to manage or pre-provision storage.
High performance is available along with the possibility of cost savings: each OpenZFS file system may process up to 400K IOPS and 20 GB/second, and all data, regardless of storage class, has a time-to-first-byte of tens of milliseconds. To decrease the time-to-first-byte for cached data by 10x to 100x, you may also set up an SSD-based read cache (64 GiB to 512 TiB).
Creating a File System
It can use an AWS CloudFormation, CLI, API, or the AWS Management Console to build a file system.

Characteristics and Features of Amazon FSx NAS
Let’s quickly review some of the characteristics that make the AWS FSx Intelligent-Tiering storage class and FSx for OpenZFS an excellent choice for your NAS-level storage requirements:
- Built-in Backups: During a designated backup window, Amazon FSx automatically creates a daily backup of every file system and saves it for a certain amount of time. The backups are incremental, very durable, and consistent across file systems. Additionally, you may make backups yourself and keep them for as long as you need to.
- Point-In-Time Snapshots: An OpenZFS disc may be made into a read-only image at any moment. They may be used to restore a volume, recover certain files and folders, or build a new volume as a full copy or clone. The snapshots are saved within the file system and take up storage.
- Replication: Across file systems, AWS Regions, and AWS accounts, you may duplicate a point-in-time view of an OpenZFS volume to another volume. In order to handle disruptions and restart data transmission when necessary, FSx automatically creates and maintains network link between file systems and employs ZFS send/receive technology to carry out this replication in the background.
- Data Compression: To save storage costs and expedite data transfer, you can set ZSTD or LZ4 compression on your OpenZFS volumes.
- User and Volume Quotas: You may restrict how much storage a certain volume or user uses.
To Get To Know
Before concluding, remember these:
- Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Central Canada, Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland), the US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), and the US West (Oregon) provide this new storage class.
- Pricing is determined by the quantity of read cache supplied (GB/Month) and primary storage used (GB/Month).