NFS file storage: shared storage for multiple servers

First, measure the size of the files to share and add the growth you expect. For a website upload folder, add the photos and attachments piled up so far to what will be added over a year; for a team work folder, base it on the size of the projects handled at the same time. You can move to a bigger size later, so starting with what you need now is fine.

Next, choose a region. File storage connects to servers in the same region over a private network, so choose the city where the servers that will use it are. If you have no servers yet, placing servers and file storage together in a city close to the countries with the most users gives the fastest responses.

Connecting is simple. Tell us which servers will share it when you order, and our team prepares the storage and gives you the access address. Then install the NFS client on your server and attach it to the folder you want with a single mount command. Add it to /etc/fstab and it reconnects automatically when the server restarts; attach it the same way on a second and third server and they all see the same folder.

The smallest, 500GB, is $25.00 per month. 1TB is $45.00, 2TB $85.00, and the amount in the table is the full monthly price. There are no extra fees based on the number of connected servers or reads and writes, so the storage fee stays the same as you add servers.

Copying the same data to each server needs as much disk as you have servers, but sharing one file storage means you need only one copy of the data. Even when growing from two to five web servers, there is no need to move the upload folder again, cutting management time too.

Payment is made by invoice at order time. The first month is invoiced when you order, and you renew monthly by paying each new invoice. The minimum payment is $25.

The first step with a shared folder is deciding which servers can access it. Tell us the servers to connect and our team sets an access list so only those servers can mount it, and the folder stays invisible to other servers and the outside. When you add new servers, let us know on the support page after your first payment and we add them to the access list.

If several servers edit the same files at the same time, configure your programs to use file locking. NFS v4 supports file locking, preventing two servers from overwriting the same file at once. Setups that save each file under a new name, such as website uploads, work fine with no special settings.

To push speed further, cache small frequently read files on each server and read large originals straight from file storage. Keep data a single server reads and writes very often, such as database files, on block storage, and gather only files shared by several servers on file storage to get the best of both.