Migrating your on-premises DNS configuration to FSx for Windows File Server - Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
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Migrating your on-premises DNS configuration to FSx for Windows File Server

FSx for Windows File Server provides a default Domain Name System (DNS) name for every file system that you can use to access the data on your file system. You can also access your file systems using any DNS name of your choosing by configuring the alternate DNS name as a DNS alias for your Amazon FSx file system.

With DNS aliases, you can continue to use your existing DNS names to access data stored on Amazon FSx when migrating file system storage from on-premises to Amazon FSx. This helps eliminate the need to update any tools or applications that use your DNS names when migrating to Amazon FSx. You can associate DNS aliases with existing FSx for Windows File Server file systems, when you create new file systems, and when you create a new file system from a backup. You can associate up to 50 DNS aliases with a file system at any one time. For more information, see Managing DNS aliases.

A DNS alias name has to meet the following requirements:

  • Must be formatted as a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), for example, accounting.example.com.

  • Can contain alphanumeric characters and the hyphen (‐).

  • Cannot start or end with a hyphen.

  • Can start with a numeric.

For DNS alias names, Amazon FSx stores alphabetic characters as lowercase letters (a-z), regardless of how you specify them: as uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or the corresponding letters in escape codes.

The following procedures describe how to associate DNS aliases with your existing FSx for Windows File Server file systems using the Amazon FSx console, CLI, and API. For more information about associating DNS aliases when creating new file systems, including new file systems from a backup, see Associating DNS aliases with file systems.

To associate DNS aliases with an existing file system (console)

  1. Open the Amazon FSx console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/fsx/.

  2. Navigate to File systems, and choose the Windows file system that you want to associate your DNS aliases with.

  3. On the Network & security tab, choose Manage for DNS aliases to open the Manage DNS aliases dialog box.

    FSx console Manage DNS aliases window, use this window for associating and disassociating DNS aliases with an FSx for Windows File Server file system.

  4. In the Associate new aliases box, enter the DNS aliases that you want to associate.

  5. Choose Associate to add the aliases to the file system.

    You can monitor the status of the aliases that you just associated in the Current aliases list. When the status reads Available, the alias is associated with the file system (a process that can take up to 2.5 minutes).

To associate DNS aliases with an existing file system (CLI)

  • Use the associate-file-system-aliases CLI command or the AssociateFileSystemAliases API operation to associate DNS aliases with an existing file system.

    The following CLI request associates two aliases with the specified file system.

    aws fsx associate-file-system-aliases \
    --file-system-id fs-0123456789abcdef0 \
    --aliases financials.corp.example.com transfers.corp.example.com

    The response shows the status of the aliases that Amazon FSx is associating with the file system.

    {
      "Aliases": [
          {
              "Name": "financials.corp.example.com",
              "Lifecycle": CREATING
          },
          {
              "Name": "transfers.corp.example.com",
              "Lifecycle": CREATING
          }
      ]
  }

    To monitor the status of the aliases that you are associating, use the describe-file-system-aliases CLI command (DescribeFileSystemAliases is the equivalent API operation). When Lifecycle for an alias has a value of AVAILABLE, you can use it to access the file system (a process that can take up to 2.5 minutes).