Primitive

File Storage

A shared filesystem that multiple compute instances can mount concurrently over the network.

Description

Managed file storage (AWS EFS, GCP Filestore, Azure Files) exposes a shared network filesystem that many instances mount at once. The differences are in protocol support (NFS, SMB, or both), performance tiers and how throughput scales with capacity, and whether the service is fully elastic or provisioned at a fixed size. Azure Files notably offers SMB for Windows workloads, while EFS and Filestore centre on NFS. To the best of our knowledge the shared-POSIX role is equivalent; pick based on the protocol your clients need and the performance tier.

Capabilities

  • Concurrent mounts from many instances
  • POSIX-style file semantics
  • Grow capacity elastically
  • Standard NFS/SMB protocols

Vendor implementations

Icon-Architecture/64/Arch_Amazon-EFS_64
AWS EFS
AZ File Storage
Icon_24px_Filestore_Color
GCP File Storage

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