GCP - Filestore Persistence

👉 Overview

👀 What ?

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Filestore is a managed file storage service for applications that require a filesystem interface and a shared filesystem for data. It offers a simple, native experience for standing up managed Network Attached Storage (NAS) with your Google Compute Engine instances. The fundamental concept behind GCP Filestore is to provide a fully managed, highly available, and scalable service that allows applications to interact with the file system seamlessly.

🧐 Why ?

In traditional infrastructure, setting up and managing a file system can be complex and time-consuming, requiring expertise in system administration. With GCP Filestore, these difficulties are abstracted away, providing a turnkey solution for applications needing shared file access. It's ideally suited for enterprise applications, content management systems, website hosting, and data processing applications where multiple instances need to access the same set of files.

⛏️ How ?

To implement GCP Filestore, you need to follow these steps: 1. In the Google Cloud Console, go to the Filestore page. 2. Click on 'Create instance'. 3. In the 'Create a filestore instance' page, provide the required details: instance name, location, file share name, file share size, and network. 4. Click 'Create'. Once the instance is ready, you can mount it on a Compute Engine instance using the provided IP and mount point.

⏳ When ?

Usage of GCP Filestore began gaining popularity as businesses started moving their infrastructure to the cloud. It was officially announced and made available by Google in 2018.

⚙️ Technical Explanations

At its core, GCP Filestore uses Network File System (NFS) protocol for file access. When you create a Filestore instance, it's automatically replicated across multiple zones within the same region to ensure high availability. Each Filestore instance has a capacity that you specify when creating it, and you can increase this capacity at any time without incurring downtime. Filestore instances are accessible from any Compute Engine instance within the same project and region, either by IP address or through a fully qualified domain name. Filestore also integrates seamlessly with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), making it an ideal choice for Kubernetes workloads that need shared file access.