Overview of File Storage

Using the File Storage service requires an understanding of the following concepts, including some that pertain to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Networking:

MOUNT TARGET

An NFS endpoint that lives in a subnet of your choice and is highly available. Mount targets use IPv4 addresses to communicate with file systems. The mount target provides the IP address or DNS name that's used in the mount command when connecting NFS clients to a file system. File systems are exported (made available) through mount targets. When you use the console to create your first file system, the workflow also creates a mount target and export for it.

You can reuse the same mount target to make as many file systems available on the network as you want. To reuse the same mount target for multiple file systems, create an export in the mount target for each file system.

Mount target limitations:

• Each mount target can accept up to 100,000 NFS client connections.
• If you use in-transit encryption, each mount target can accept up to 4096 NFS/SSL client connections. See Using In-transit TLS Encryption for more information.
• By default, you can create two mount targets per account per availability domain. See Service Limits for a list of applicable limits and instructions for requesting a limit increase.

See Managing Mount Targets for more information about working with this resource.

EXPORT

Exports control how NFS clients access file systems when they connect to a mount target. File systems are exported (made available) through mount targets. Each mount target maintains an export set which contains one or many exports. A file system must have at least one export in one mount target in order for instances to mount the file system. The information used by an export includes the file system OCID, mount target OCID, export set OCID, export path, and client export options. When you create a new file system, the workflow also creates a mount target and export for it. Thereafter,

• You can create as many exports in a mount target for different file systems as you want.
• You can create as many exports in a mount target for a single file system as you want.
• You can delete and re-create exports in a mount target as often as you need to.
• You can add export options to an export to control access to the file system.

For more information, see Managing Mount Targets. and Working with NFS Exports and Export Options.

EXPORT SET

Collection of one or more exports that control what file systems the mount target exports using NFSv3 protocol and how those file systems are found using the NFS mount protocol. Each mount target has an export set. Each file system associated with the mount target has at least one export in the export set.

EXPORT PATH

A path that's specified when an export is created. It uniquely identifies the file system within the mount target, letting you associate many file systems to a single mount target. This path is unrelated to any path within the file system itself, or the client mount point path.

The File Storage service adds an export that pairs the file system's Oracle Cloud Identifier (OCID) and path.

See Paths in File Systems for more information.

EXPORT OPTIONS

NFS export options are a set of parameters within the export that specify the level of access granted to NFS clients when they connect to a mount target. An NFS export options entry within an export defines access for a single IP address or CIDR block range. You can have up to 100 options per export.For more information, see Working with NFS Exports and Export Options.

VIRTUAL CLOUD NETWORK (VCN)

A private network that you set up in the Oracle data centers, with firewall rules and specific types of communication gateways that you can choose to use. A VCN covers a single, contiguous IPv4 CIDR block of your choice. For more information about VCNs, see VCN and Subnet Management in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Networking documentation.

Traffic to a file system doesn't travel through the internet, but you can manage File Storage resources using the API or SDK over the internet. You can choose to set up a service gateway and give the VCN private access to the File Storage API to manage its resources. When creating the service gateway, enable the service label called All <region> Services in Oracle Services Network, which includes the File Storage service. Be sure to update route tables for any subnets that need File Storage API access through the service gateway.

For more information and detailed instructions, see Setting Up a Service Gateway in the Console.

SUBNETS

Subdivisions you define in a VCN (for example, 10.0.0.0/24 and 10.0.1.0/24). Subnets contain virtual network interface cards (VNICs), which attach to instances. A subnet can span a region or exist in a single availability domain  . A subnet consists of a contiguous range of IP addresses that don't overlap with other subnets in the VCN. For each subnet, you specify the routing rules and security lists that apply to it. For more information about subnets, see VCN and Subnet Management in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Networking documentation.

SECURITY RULES

Virtual firewall rules for a VCN. A VCN comes with a default security list, and you can add more. These security lists provide ingress and egress rules that specify the types of traffic allowed in and out of the instances. You can choose whether a particular rule is stateful or stateless. Security list rules must be set up so that clients can connect to file system mount targets.

Network security groups (NSGs). Another method for applying security rules is to set them up in a network security group (NSG), and then add the mount target to the NSG. Unlike security list rules that apply to all VNICs in the subnet, NSGs apply only to resource VNICs you add to the NSG.

See Security Rules, Security Lists, and Network Security Groups for more information, examples, and scenarios about how these features interact in your network. Networking Overview provides general information about networking. See Configuring VCN Security Rules for File Storage for more specific information.

SNAPSHOTS

Snapshots provide a consistent, point-in-time view of a file system, and you can take as many snapshots as you need. You pay only for the storage used by your data and metadata, including storage capacity used by snapshots. Each snapshot reflects only data that changed from the previous snapshot. For more information, see Managing Snapshots.

For information about how to use your own key for new file systems, see Creating File Systems. See Encrypting a File System for how to assign or change the key for an existing file system.

FastConnect offers you the ability to accelerate data transfers. You can leverage the integration between FastConnect and the File Storage service to perform initial data migration, workflow data transfers for large files, and disaster recovery scenarios between two regions, among other things.

For more information, see Transferring Data To and From File Storage.

The File Storage service allocates space in blocks of variable size in a way that is fine-tuned to minimize total customer cost and optimize performance for modern workloads. The minimum block size used is 8192 bytes. For example, if you create a 1-byte file, we allocate 8192 bytes. We use larger blocks to store larger files. To learn more about file system and snapshot usage, see File System Usage and Metering.

File Storage service resources include file systems, mount targets, and export sets. The AUTH_SYS style of authentication and permission checking is supported for remote NFS client requests. You use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy language to define access to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources. You can consider exports and snapshots subsidiary resources of export sets and file systems, respectively. As such, they do not need their own permissions. Related resources include Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute instances and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Networking virtual cloud networks (VCNs).

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure users require resource permissions to create, delete, and manage resources. Without the appropriate IAM permissions, you cannot export a file system through a mount target. Until a file system has been exported, compute instances cannot mount it. For more information about creating an IAM policy, see Let users create, manage, and delete file systems.

If you have successfully exported a file system on a subnet, then you use Networking security lists to control traffic to and from the subnet and, therefore, the mount target. Security lists act as a virtual firewall, allowing only the network traffic you specify to and from the IP addresses and port ranges configured in your ingress and egress rules. The security list you create for the subnet lets hosts send and receive packets and mount the file system. If you have firewalls on individual instances, use FastConnect, or use a virtual private network (VPN), the settings for those might also impact security at the networking layer. For more information about creating a security list for the File Storage service, see Creating File Systems. See About File Storage Security for more information on how different types of security work together in your file system.

You can use the File Storage service in all regions. For a list of supported regions, see Regions and Availability Domains.

When you create file systems and mount targets, you specify the availability domain they are created in. All file system data is then stored entirely within the availability domain the file system resides in. Within an availability domain, the File Storage service uses synchronous replication and high availability failover to keep your data safe and available.

You cannot move a file system to a different availability domain or region. However, you can take a snapshot of your data and use a tool such as rsync to copy your data to a different availability domain or region. To maximize performance for data protection operations, you can use the File Storage Parallel Tools suite. The Parallel File Tools suite provides parallel versions of tar, rm, and cp. See Managing Snapshots for more information on using snapshots to protect your data.

While it is possible to access mount targets from any availability domain in a region, for optimal performance, place File Storage resources in the same availability domain as the compute instances that access them.

Subnets can be either AD-specific or regional. You can create File Storage resources in either type of subnet. Regional subnets allow compute instances to connect to any mount target in the subnet regardless of AD, with no additional routing configuration. However, to minimize latency, place mount targets in the same AD as compute instances just as you would in an AD-specific subnet. For more information, see Overview of VCNs and Subnets.

You can create automation based on state changes for your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources by using event types, rules, and actions. For more information, see Overview of Events.

The following File Storage resources emit events:

• File systems
• Snapshots
• Mount targets
• Exports
• Export sets

Most types of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources have a unique, Oracle-assigned identifier called an Oracle Cloud ID (OCID). For information about the OCID format and other ways to identify your resources, see Resource Identifiers.

See Service Limits for a list of applicable limits and instructions for requesting a limit increase.

To set compartment-specific limits on file systems or mount targets, administrators can use compartment quotas.