Google Compute Engine + Google Cloud Storage + NFS VM Instance

Question

I wanted to know if anyone has tried with good success on setting Google Compute Engine + Google Cloud Storage + NFS VM Instance?

The scenario I have in mind is to create a Google Cloud Storage instance and have it presented to an NFS VM instance that runs on GCE. Then, configure the NFS VM instance to export the Google Cloud Storage bucket to several web servers that will need to read and write to that bucket (Cloud Storage).

The reason I would prefer this approach, if possible, is because my Cloud Storage data would be more reliable in terms of backups, etc. I know I can just create a persistent disk for the NFS VM instance on GCE and dump my data on that persistent disk but then I have to worry about backing up my own data at that point. Snapshots of disks are fine within GCE but don't know if this is the best solution.

I am new to GCE and Google Cloud Platform overall and trying to determine how to mimic my current physical systems in the cloud using different methods.

Answer 1

If your scenario implies mounting Cloud Storage bucket as a filesystem on NFS server instance and then exporting it to clients, you won't get production-level performance and reliability. The reason is because there is no native way to mount Cloud Storage and you will be limited to userspace filesystem implementation such as s3fuse. It might work for simple use-cases and low load though.

Note that you can mount a Persistent Disk to multiple instances simultaneously in read-only mode.