Mounting Fileshares on Compute Engine Clients

Use this topic to learn how to mount a Cloud Filestore fileshare on a Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instance.

Client VMs must be in the same Google Cloud Platform project and VPC network as the Cloud Filestore instance.

Mounting a fileshare on a VM instance

Use one of the following procedures to mount a Cloud Filestore fileshare on a Compute Engine VM:

Linux

  1. Go to the VM instances page
  2. Locate the Linux VM you want to use as a client, then click SSH to open a terminal on that VM.

  3. Install NFS by running the following commands:

    Debian/Ubuntu

    Use the following commands to install NFS on Debian or Ubuntu.

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

    RHEL/CentOS

    Use the following commands to install NFS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS.

    sudo yum update
    sudo yum install nfs-utils

    SUSE

    Use the following commands to install NFS on SUSE.

    sudo zypper update
    sudo zypper -n install nfs-client

  4. Make a local directory to map to the Cloud Filestore fileshare by running the following command:

    sudo mkdir [MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY]

    where [MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY] is the directory to create (for example /mnt/filedir).

  5. Mount the fileshare from the Cloud Filestore instance by running the mount command. You can use any NFS mount options. For the best performance, we recommend using the default NFS mount options, especially using a hard mount and having the rsize and wsize options set to 1 MB.

    Run the mount command, replacing [VALUES_IN_BRACKETS] with the appropriate values:

    sudo mount [IP_ADDRESS]:/[FILESHARE] [MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY]

    where:

    • [IP_ADDRESS] is the IP address for the Cloud Filestore instance.
    • [FILESHARE] is the name of the fileshare on the instance.
    • [MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY] is the path where you want to map to the Cloud Filestore fileshare.

    You can get the IP address and fileshare name of an instance from any of following sources:

    For example, given a Cloud Filestore instance with an IP address 10.0.1.2 and a fileshare named share1, the following command mounts the fileshare to the local mount point directory /mnt/render:

    sudo mount 10.0.1.2:/share1 /mnt/render

  6. Optionally, run chmod to set permissions on the mount directory so that it is writable by other than the root user. Run the following command to set directory permissions, replacing [VALUES_IN_BRACKETS] with the appropriate values:

    sudo chmod [PERMISSIONS] [MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY]

    where:

    • [PERMISSIONS] is the set of permissions to grant. For example, chmod go+rw makes the directory readable and writeable by users in the group that owns the directory and all other users. For more information about setting permissions, see Configuring access on a fileshare.
    • [MOUNT_POINT_DIRECTORY] is the path to the directory where the Cloud Filestore fileshare is mounted.

  7. Optionally, confirm that the Cloud Filestore fileshare is mounted by running the following command:

    df -h --type=nfs

    The output should contain an entry similar to the following:

     Filesystem        Size    Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
 10.0.1.2:/share1  1018G   76M   966G   1%    /mnt/render
 10.0.2.2:/vol3    1018G   76M   966G   1%    /mnt/filestore3

  8. If the applications you plan to use with the mounted Cloud Filestore fileshare require NFS file locking, and this client VM instance is using something other than the default VPC network with unchanged settings, you might need to set two ports on the instance in order to make firewall configuration easier. For more information on determining if you need to configure a firewall rule for the VPC network, see Configuring Firewall Rules. For more information on setting ports, see Setting NFS Ports.

Windows

  1. Go to the VM instances page
  2. Locate the Windows VM you want to use as a client, then click RDP to open a remote desktop connection to that VM.
  3. Open PowerShell as an administrator.

  4. In PowerShell, install the NFS client by running the following command:

    Install-WindowsFeature -Name NFS-Client

  5. Restart the Windows VM instance as prompted, then open a new remote desktop connection.

  6. Click the Windows Start button to open the Start page.

  7. On the Start page, search for regedit and then open the Registry Editor.

  8. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ClientForNFS\CurrentVersion\Default.

  9. Right-click on the Default folder, choose New, and then choose DWORD (32-bit) Value.

  10. Type AnonymousUid as the name for the new entry.

  11. Repeat step 9 and create another entry named AnonymousGid.

  12. Open PowerShell as an administrator.

  13. In PowerShell, restart the NFS client service by running the following commands:

    nfsadmin client stop
nfsadmin client start

  14. Open Windows Explorer and click the Map network drive menu item.

  15. For Drive, select an unused drive letter to map to.

  16. For Folder, type the connection information for the Cloud Filestore fileshare, in the format \\[IP_ADDRESS]\[FILESHARE],

    where:

    • [IP_ADDRESS] is the IP address for the Cloud Filestore instance.
    • [FILESHARE] is the name of the fileshare on the instance.

    You can get the IP address and fileshare name of an instance from any of following sources:

    For example, given a Cloud Filestore instance with an IP address of 10.0.1.2 and a fileshare named share1, the Folder value should be as follows:

    \\10.0.1.2\share1

  17. Click Finish.

  18. In the left-hand pane of Windows Explorer, right-click the mounted fileshare and choose Properties.

  19. On the NFS Attributes tab, adjust the permissions in the File permissions (mode) section to reflect who is allowed to read, write, and execute files on this share.

What's next

Copy data to the mounted fileshare.

Was this page helpful? Let us know how we did:

Send feedback about...

This page
Documentation feedback
Cloud Filestore Documentation
Product feedback