Google Announces Cloud Filestore

In a recent post on the Google Cloud Platform blog, Google announced the coming beta of Cloud Filestore. This is a new service that provides customers with managed storage with a traditional shared file system interface.

Cloud Filestore will provide high performance, low latency storage but with a file system interface, rather than an abstract or object-based database that many other current cloud products offer. This is done by setting up fully-managed network attached storage, or NAS, that can be used in conjunction with Google’s Compute and Kubernetes Engine services.

Google’s Cloud Filestore will be offered in both Standard and Premium tiers. The Standard tier will cost $0.20 per GB per month and will provide a maximum throughput of 180MB per second and a maximum IOPS of 5,000. The Premium tier will cost $0.30 per GB per month and will provide a maximum throughput of 700MB per second and a maximum IOPS of 30,000.

Both service tiers will provide a maximum capacity of 64TB per share, use the third version of the Network File System protocol (NFSv3), and offer a typical customer availability of 99.9 percent.

Given the high throughput and low latency of this new service, it can be ideal for storing and retrieving large amounts of unstructured data with some examples including audio and video editing or web hosting. Organizations could also utilize Cloud Filestore for research and development purposes, especially those that involve the analysis of a large number of files.

Those who would like to give Google Cloud Filestore a try will, unfortunately, wait until it’s release next month. However, Google has provided a sign up form so that users can register to be notified once the public beta is made available.

With the number of cloud storage options available across Amazon, Microsoft, and Google’s platforms, it’s important that the big three continue to release and revise the service offerings so that there is something available for everyone. And with Cloud Filestore, Google is helping to do just that by providing managed file system storage for those that may want or need it.