Stop managing Windows® file servers.
Start delivering Windows file services.
Native SMB file shares your clients recognize. Cloud economics you'll appreciate. No Windows servers, no patching, no pre-provisioning.
Roadrunner SMB™ turns Amazon EFS® into a fully domain-joined Windows file service — Active Directory®, Windows ACLs, SMB3 high availability — running entirely in your client's AWS® account. No Windows Server® licensing. No throughput to guess at. No cluster to maintain. Subscribe on AWS Marketplace and reach a working share in about 30 minutes.
A note from the founder
I was Citrix® CTO when the first VDI product was born. A decade later, I founded SoftNAS® and built what became the #1 best-selling NAS on AWS — until Amazon Elastic File System® arrived and changed the economics of cloud file storage permanently.
That disruption taught me something important: EFS is what a cloud filesystem should be. Elastic, durable, multi-AZ by design, and priced for actual consumption. As someone who spent years building the thing EFS replaced, I can say that without reservation.
But EFS speaks NFS. Windows speaks SMB. And every VDI deployment, every FSLogix® profile, every departmental share on AWS still needs Windows-native file semantics that EFS doesn't provide directly.
That's the gap Roadrunner SMB was built to close. Not by working around EFS — by building the SMB bridge on top of it, so Windows workloads inherit everything EFS already does well.
How it scales
Capacity is a node-count decision, not a provisioning guess. Add nodes, scale throughput.
Try Roadrunner SMB in 30 minutes or less
Subscribe in AWS Marketplace, launch the CloudFormation stack into your VPC (~15 minutes), complete First-Time Setup in the Admin UI (~15 minutes), and mount your first SMB share from Windows. Hourly metered billing means you pay only for the shares and storage you actually run — delete the stack when you are done and software charges stop.
Why Roadrunner SMB
Many teams have already standardized on Amazon EFS — elastic, serverless, AWS-native, nothing to provision. Roadrunner SMB extends that to Windows: native SMB file shares on EFS, without running Windows file servers.
Replace Windows file servers on AWS for SMB access to Amazon EFS.
- Native SMB3 for Windows clients
- Active Directory integration and Windows-style ACLs
- Elastic, EFS-backed storage — no Windows Server® for the SMB layer
- Admin UI for shares, health, billing status, and support reports
- No throughput to size or pre-provision — Elastic SMB absorbs login storms without paying for idle peak capacity
FSx bills for peak capacity 24/7. Roadrunner SMB bills for what you actually use.
Deploys from AWS Marketplace with CloudFormation®. RRSMB runs in your AWS account, inside your VPC, using your EFS file systems and Active Directory environment.
How it works
A simple buyer flow — no Docker, ECR, or container assembly required.
- Subscribe in AWS Marketplace
- Launch the CloudFormation template into your VPC
- Choose VPC settings and node count (1 for evaluation, 2+ for HA)
- Open the Admin UI and create SMB shares on your EFS storage
Ready to try it?
Subscribe on AWS Marketplace and launch into your VPC — most teams reach a first SMB share in about 30 minutes.
At a glance
- 40–60%Lower TCO than FSx for Windows® for VDI at scale (10–50 TB)
- 99.99%Production HA at scale with 3–4 nodes across AZs (2 nodes ≈99.9% minimum)
- <10 µsFast metadata for FSLogix, profiles, and login-heavy VDI using patent-pending Elastic SMB™ L1 metadata cache technology
- ∞Elastic storage on Amazon EFS, SMB3 from Windows
SMB file server on AWS for EFS and Windows workloads
Native SMB3 for Windows workloads
Access Amazon EFS from Windows like a native file server — with NTFS®-style ACLs, permission inheritance, and correct SMB semantics for Windows workloads.
Active Directory integration
Domain-join the cluster, authenticate users with Kerberos, and enforce AD security groups the same way you would on a Windows file server — without running Windows Server for the SMB gateway itself.
Fast logins for VDI and user profiles
Keep FSLogix and profile-heavy workloads responsive, even during login storms. Patent-pending Elastic SMB™ caching reduces EFS metadata latency so VDI and home-directory traffic stays snappy under load. Because caching absorbs login-storm load, you don't pre-provision peak throughput the way a Windows file server requires — you pay for what you actually use.
Highly available SMB cluster on AWS
Run a multi-node SMB cluster across Availability Zones with NLB health checks and automatic failover — about 99.9% availability with 2 nodes, up to 99.99% at scale with 3–4 nodes. Use one node for evaluation; scale out for production HA.
Deploy in minutes with CloudFormation
Launch a complete SMB environment into your VPC from AWS Marketplace — load balancing, cluster nodes, EFS integration, IAM, and security wiring — using a single CloudFormation template.
Admin UI included
Manage shares, watch cluster health, review billing status, and generate support reports from a browser — no SSH to nodes for day-to-day operations.
Your data stays in your AWS account
Files live in your own Amazon EFS and share permissions in your own DynamoDB® — no proprietary storage format and nothing locked away. Native AWS backup and cross-region replication for DR use the services your team already runs. If you ever remove Roadrunner SMB, your files remain in your EFS, in your account.
Linux and Windows on one dataset
Because files live as standard files in Amazon EFS, Linux and Unix clients can access the same data over NFS while Windows users connect over SMB — one dataset, no second storage system. Ideal for build pipelines and data-processing estates alongside Windows shares. (Note: VDI/FSLogix profile workloads should remain SMB-only.)
Ideal for
- VDI, FSLogix, and user profiles — Fast, domain-joined SMB storage for Amazon WorkSpaces®, Citrix, Windows 365®, and profile-heavy login storms on AWS
- Departmental file shares — Team folders and shared drives on elastic EFS without Windows file servers
- Home directories — Persistent, AD-authenticated user storage for domain users on AWS
- MSP-managed AWS file services — Deliver Windows-compatible SMB shares to customers without operating Windows Server for the SMB layer
- Windows file server modernization — Lift-and-shift file services to AWS while keeping SMB3, Active Directory, and Windows ACL semantics
Pay for hourly consumption use
RRSMB software is billed on AWS Marketplace as hourly consumption. You pay only for the number of Windows SMB shares connected to EFS, plus mounted EFS storage — delete shares or the stack to stop software charges.
10¢ per Windows SMB share connected to EFS, per hour, and $0.00007 per mounted EFS GB-hour. Short tests and stopped deployments cost proportionally less.
Billed as ShareHours — one unit per share on EFS each hour. Delete a share in the Admin UI to stop accruing for that share on the next hourly billing tick.
Billed as ManagedStorageGBHours. Standard AWS EFS charges are billed separately.
Node count: configurable from 1 to 4 nodes. 1-node deployments are intended for evaluation and non-HA use; production HA deployments should use two or more nodes. Marketplace fees above apply per Windows SMB share connected to EFS and per mounted EFS storage — not per node.
Charges appear on your AWS bill under AWS Marketplace as hourly consumption. Unsubscribe or delete the CloudFormation stack when finished evaluating.
Low-risk to try
Hourly metered billing on AWS Marketplace — subscribe, run only the shares and storage you need, and delete the CloudFormation stack to stop software charges. No commitment, no minimums, no pre-provisioning.
Get Started
Documentation walks through Marketplace subscribe, CloudFormation launch, and First-Time Setup. Most deployments reach a first share in about 30 minutes.
Start on AWS Marketplace
Subscribe and launch the CloudFormation template, open the Admin UI, and follow the Quick Start to join Active Directory and create your first SMB share.
Support
We target initial response within 1 business day for all customers. Generate and download a Support Report from the Admin UI and attach it to your support request for fastest triage.
Try Roadrunner SMB in 30 minutes or less
Subscribe in AWS Marketplace, launch the CloudFormation stack into your VPC (~15 minutes), complete First-Time Setup in the Admin UI (~15 minutes), and mount your first SMB share from Windows. Hourly metered billing means you pay only for the shares and storage you actually run — delete the stack when you are done and software charges stop.
Roadrunner SMB is an AWS Marketplace SMB appliance for teams who need Windows file shares on Amazon EFS without operating Windows Server or hand-rolling Samba. Use it for VDI and FSLogix profiles, departmental shares, home directories, and Windows file server modernization — with Active Directory and Windows ACLs your users already understand.
SMB on Amazon EFS with native SMB3, domain join, and EFS SMB access for Windows clients. Replace Windows file servers on AWS with usage-based Marketplace billing, CloudFormation deployment into your VPC, and 1–4 node appliance sizing for evaluation or high-availability production.