The Problem: EFS not is supported by Windows infrastructure deployed on AWS. This presentation shows you how to set up NAS / SAN style-like infrastructure on AWS

1. MICROSOFT WINDOWS
SHARED STORAGE ON AWS
An alternative for AWS
Elastics File Storage and
compliment to EBS for
Windows users

2. THE PROBLEM: EFS NOT
SUPPORTED FOR WINDOWS
INFRASTRUCTURE DEPLOYED ON
AWS“ Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable
file storage for use with Amazon EC2. With Amazon EFS, storage
capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add
and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need,
when they need it” (ref AWS)
Problem: “Using Amazon EFS with Microsoft Windows Amazon EC2
instances is not supported”
EBS volumes cannot be used as shared storage on AWS

3. IMPACT
Without EFS being supported on Windows, how do you share files
other a Windows Domain?
Enterprises cannot use the SAN (i.e. EBS) to store their workgroup
files.
Some application dynamic files such as “.py” can be stored on a NAS
implementation to share its files between multiple EC2 instances.

4. SETTING UP A WINDOWS NAS
SERVER ON AWS
Prerequisites:
 Windows Domain Name System (DNS) server
 Windows Domain Controller server
 All Servers should be part of the Domain
 If you are planning to link your on-premise servers make sure your VPC and subnet
CIDR block do not overlap
3rd party application:
 StarWind Virtual SAN

5. INSTALLING
AND
DEPLOYING
A VIRTUAL
SAN
SERVER
SOFTWARE Storage
Device
Go to the new target server and create a new
storage device.
Target
Server
The application will deploy a Target (storage)
server.
Download
and install
Download and install the virtual Server SAN
server application from the vendor website.
Our server will be called SANServer

6. ADDING A NEW TARGET SERVER
 On SANServer, open the Server Manager
application
 Then go to Tools >>iSCSI Initiator
 In the iSCSI Initiator propriety
window, select the target textbox
and enter the name/IP
address/FQDM of the Target
server and then click on the Quick
Connect button. The initiator will
find the target server and then
connect it to your “storage pool”
click on the Done button to
continue the process

7. INITIALIZE THE NEW VOLUME
To initialize a new volume into the
server go to :
On the Server Manager window click
on “All Servers”
Right click on “SANServer” and select
computer management
Click on Storage and then Disk
Management
In the Disk Management section
select Disk2
Right click, click initialize then
proceed to initialize the new disk

8. VIEW THE NEW VOLUME
Now that you have initialized and
given a name volume, it is time to
view it on the server.
Open File explorer and click on
This PC
You can see the volume added .
Here the volume name is
SharedStorageA and its size is
1GB.

9. SHARE THE VOLUME EVERYWHERE
Once you have deployed the new volume in you NAS server, you can
now repeat the same operation everywhere in your Windows domains
in the cloud
Notes :
 To use this system as SAN, create the target server and then link it to the servers
that needed to be connected. You don’t need to deploy it on the SAN server in the
first place.
 If the volume is not initialized on the SAN server, the documents created in one
server are not visible to the others.

10. CONCLUSION
SAN / NAS storage system are very important for many organizations.
And even if AWS does not offer the EFS service and the NAS features
to Windows users, that doesn’t mean that this cannot be done there.
Solution Architecture Works, LLC is a consulting and AWS Partner that
can help move your infrastructure or some business logic to the cloud.
Doing so it will always be available.
Email us at jr@saworks.io for inquiries and for more information about
this process
Tel: +1 845 535 9699