The file server is often the last thing in the server room. Four places its contents can go, depending on whether they are team documents, application shares, or archives: FSx for Windows File Server, FSx for NetApp ONTAP, SharePoint and OneDrive, or S3. How to split the share, and what each costs to run.
A typical company file server holds three different things in one tree: documents people collaborate on, shares that applications read and write by UNC path, and years of files nobody has opened since they were saved. Moving all of it to one destination is the usual mistake.
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Pricing has three parts: storage (SSD or HDD, Single-AZ or Multi-AZ), throughput capacity, and backups. AWS's own example: 5 TB of HDD storage at $0.025 per GB-month is about $128, 16 MBps of throughput at $4.50 per MBps-month is $72, and backups of the full 5 TB at $0.050 per GB-month are $256 a month. Data deduplication, which FSx for Windows supports, often reduces general-purpose shares substantially and with it the storage line.
Report on the share: size by top-level folder, last-modified dates and owners. Most servers have a large fraction untouched in years.
Split by the table above, and agree with owners what moves where.
Archive first: move cold data to S3, keeping a manifest so anything can be found again.
Copy active shares with AWS DataSync, which preserves Windows permissions and timestamps, then run a final incremental sync during the cutover window.
Update DFS namespace targets or drive mappings so users and applications follow without changing paths.
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