GCP - Filestore Enum

👉 Overview

👀 What ?

Google Cloud Platform's (GCP) Filestore is a managed file storage service for applications that require a file system interface and a shared file system for data. It gives users a simple, native experience for standing up managed Network Attached Storage (NAS) with their Google Compute Engine and Kubernetes Engine instances.

🧐 Why ?

Understanding Filestore is crucial as it's a key service within the GCP ecosystem. It provides scalable, high-performance network file system for applications running on VM instances and Kubernetes clusters. With the enumeration aspect in play, it becomes important to understanding the data structure and behavior patterns of your file systems. It helps to identify and list the different components like instances and buckets, aiding in effective management and potential vulnerability assessment.

⛏️ How ?

Using Filestore involves creating a file share, mounting it to the desired instances, and then reading from or writing to it. To enumerate filestore, one can use the 'gcloud' command-line tool, or use the Google Cloud Console. For example, to list all instances in a project, use 'gcloud filestore instances list'.

⏳ When ?

Filestore was introduced by Google in 2018 to provide a fully managed file storage with automatic scaling, backup, and restore capabilities, taking the burden off from the users to manage their own file systems.

⚙️ Technical Explanations

GCP Filestore works by creating an instance, which represents a file system and its associated resources. Each instance has one or more associated file shares that are attached to VM instances using the NFS protocol. When it comes to enumeration, it's about listing the different resources under an instance or a project. This can be done through the gcloud command-line tool, with various commands available to list instances, describe their details, and so on. Behind the scenes, these commands use the Filestore's REST API to retrieve and display the information.