Create a Filestore instance using the Google Cloud console

This quickstart shows you how to perform basic operations in Filestore using this Google Cloud console. In the quickstart, you will:

• Create a Filestore instance.
• Mount the file share from that instance on a Compute Engine client VM instance.
• Create a file on the mounted file share.
• Delete the Filestore instance.

Before you begin

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Enable the Filestore API.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

Enable the API

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Enable the Filestore API.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

Enable the API

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to complete this quickstart, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on your project:

• Create and manage Filestore instances: Cloud Filestore Editor (roles/file.editor)
• Create and manage Compute Engine instances: Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1)
• Create, modify, and delete networking resources, except for firewall rules: Compute Network Admin (roles/compute.networkAdmin)
• Run operations on IAM service accounts: Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser)
• Manage network and related Google Cloud resources: Network Administrator (roles/iam.networkAdmin)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

When you finish the tasks that are described in this document, you can avoid continued billing by deleting the resources that you created. For more information, see Clean up.

Create a Compute Engine VM instance to be the client

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM Instances page.

   Go to the Compute Engine instances page

2. Click Create Instance and configure the instance as follows.

   • Set Name to nfs-client.
   • Set Zone to us-central1-c.
   • Keep the default boot disk.
   • In the Networking > Firewall section, select the Allow HTTP traffic checkbox.
   • Keep the network as default.

3. Click Create to create the instance.

Create a Filestore instance

This quickstart shows how to create an instance in the Regional tier with custom performance enabled. For details on creating instances, see create an instance.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Filestore Instances page.

   Go Instances

2. Click Create Instance and configure the instance as follows:

   • Set Instance ID to nfs-server.
   • Set Instance type to Regional.
   • In Capacity, enter 1 TiB.

   • In Performance, configure your performance based on the workload and scale. The Scale performance with capacity checkbox is checked, so if you change the value in the Capacity field, performance scales accordingly.

     For more information on configuration options, see configure performance.

     Note: After activating custom performance for an instance you can't deactivate it for that instance. Instances with activated custom performance are billed according to purchased IOPS. For details, see configure custom performance and Filestore pricing.

   • Set Protocol to NFSv4.1.

   • Set the IP stack type to IPv6.

   • Set Region to us-central1.

   • For VPC network, select a network from the list. For more information on creating VPC networks, see Create and manage VPC networks.

     Note: When you create a zonal or regional instance using Google Cloud console, you must use Private Service Connect as the connectivity method and create a service connection policy. For more information, see Create a Filestore instance with Private Service Connect. If you use gcloud CLI or Filestore API, you can also use VPC Network Peering with either direct peering or private services access.

   • Set File share name to vol1.

   • Set Allocated IP range to Use an automatically allocated IP range.

   • Set Access controls to Grant access to all clients.

3. Click Create.

Mount the Filestore file share on the client

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM Instances page.

   Go VM instances

2. In the list of VM instances, click the SSH button for nfs-client to open a terminal window connected to that instance.

3. Install NFS by running the following commands:

   sudo apt-get -y update &&
   sudo apt-get -y install nfs-common
   

4. Make a mount directory for the Filestore file share by running the following command:

   sudo mkdir -p /mnt/test
   

5. Mount the file share by running the mount command and specifying the Filestore instance IP address and file share name:

   sudo mount MOUNT-POINT-DIRECTORY /mnt/test
   

   where:

   MOUNT-POINT-DIRECTORY is the path to the directory where the Filestore file share is mounted. For example: 10.0.0.2:/vol1

6. Optional: Confirm that the Filestore file share is mounted:

   df -h --type=nfs
   

7. Make the file share accessible by changing the permissions:

   sudo chmod go+rw /mnt/test
   

   Important: We recommend setting more specific permissions in a production environment. For more information, see Configuring access on a file share.

Create a file on the file share

1. In the terminal window that is connected to the nfs-client instance, create a file named testfile by running the following command:

   echo 'This is a test' > /mnt/test/testfile
   

2. Confirm that the file was created by running the following command:

   ls /mnt/test
   

   and verifying that testfile is listed.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps.

Delete the Google Cloud project

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:
• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for the tasks in this document, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple architectures, tutorials, or quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.

   Go to Manage resources

2. In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
3. In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.

Delete the Filestore instance

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Filestore Instances page.

   Go to the Filestore instances page

2. Click the nfs-server instance ID to open the instance details page.

3. Click Delete delete.

4. When prompted, type the instance ID.

5. Click Delete.

Delete the Compute Engine instance

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Filestore Instances page.

   Go to the VM instances page

2. Select the checkbox next to the nfs-client instance name.

3. Click Delete delete.

4. When prompted, click Delete again.

What's next

• Read the Filestore Overview to learn more about the basics of Filestore.
• Set up a Filestore instance on your own by following the instructions at Creating Instances.
• Read the Access Control page to learn how to control access to Filestore operations and the resources on an instance.
• See how to copy data to or from a Filestore instance.
• See how to transfer large datasets from Cloud Storage to Filestore.