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File Shares is Gcore’s Network File System (NFS) as a service. It enables creating, managing, and sharing file systems across Virtual Machines (VMs), Bare Metal, and Managed Kubernetes pods within a cloud infrastructure. The service supports the NFS protocol and works with both Linux and Windows VMs.

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How do file shares work?

After a file share is created and access rules are configured, an NFS server with the standard disk type is provisioned to host the shared files. The file share becomes available to Virtual Machines, Bare Metal servers, and Kubernetes pods within the connected private network. To access the file share, mount it to the local file system of each server. Once mounted, the file share is accessible as part of the local file system. The NFS protocol allows servers within a subnetwork to simultaneously read, write, and modify files on the file share, providing data consistency and facilitating team collaboration.

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Use cases

  1. Cloud infrastructure storage: connect multiple servers to the shared file storage to access the same data across servers and build distributed applications or clustered environments.
  2. Backup and archival storage: store backups and archival data, or extract data from Virtual Machines and physical servers.
  3. Web content delivery: store and serve static web content — images, videos — to improve performance of web applications running in the cloud.
  4. NFS as a persistent volume for Kubernetes: use the file storage to organize persistent volumes with the RWX (ReadWriteMany) access mode.

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Features

The File Shares service provides the following capabilities:
  • Create and manage file shares using the NFS protocol
  • Attach file shares to multiple instances
  • Adjust file share sizes
  • Delete and manage file shares
  • View share information via API
  • Select or create networks for share availability
  • Set up access rules for file shares
  • Create and recover from snapshots

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Benefits

  1. On-demand storage scaling. Storage resources scale on demand without managing physical hardware, reducing costs. File storage capacity can be increased at any time by adjusting capacity parameters.
  2. Flexible data sharing across instances. Share and access data across multiple instances — Virtual Machines, Bare Metal servers, and Kubernetes pods.
  3. Cost savings. Consolidating storage resources with Cloud File Shares minimizes redundant storage devices and reduces overall storage costs.
  4. Simplified management. Storage management is available through the Customer Portal, the API, and infrastructure as code (IaC) tools like Terraform.

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File shares vs cloud storage

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Billing

File Shares is charged based on total storage in gigabytes (GB). Current rates are listed on the Gcore pricing page.