Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) File Storage is a fully managed elastic file system service that enables customers to migrate their enterprise workloads to the cloud. Every file system scales automatically to accommodate the growth of up to 8 exabytes. File Storage eliminates the need to provision capacity in advance, so customers pay only for the capacity they need. File Storage also offers snapshot and clone capabilities to simplify business continuity for enterprise applications.

File Storage use cases

  • Concurrent read and write operations: File Storage ensures consistent file systems for concurrent read and writes operations by multiple clients.

  • Higher availability and durability: File Storage provides higher availability and durability for customers who need a fully managed service to handle a single point of failure.

  • Parallel workloads: File Storage performs best with parallelized workloads and when running bulk operations.

  • Scale-out access and capacity: File Storage is best suited for applications that require scale-out access and capacity.

How to mount OCI File Storage from a Windows instance

Log in to the OCI Console: Create a file storage

Open the navigation menu and click Storage. Under File Storage, click File Systems. In the left navigation, in the List Scope section, under Compartment, select a compartment. Click Create File System. For this example, I created file storage, FileSystem-20190723-1014.

Log in to your Windows instance. Only the C drive is available in this OCI instance.

A screenshot of a Windows finder with the C drive selected.

Install the NFS client

Open Windows PowerShell and run as administrator. Use the following commands:

Start-Process PowerShell -Verb runAs
Install-WindowsFeature -Name NFS-Client

Install services for NFS components

In the Start menu, go to Administrative Tools, then click Server Manager.

Install services for NFS components

In the Start menu, go to Administrative Tools, then click Server Manager. In the left pane, click Roles. Under Roles Summary in the right pane, click Add Roles and Features. The Add Roles Wizard appears. Click Next.

Select the File Services check box from the list and click Next. Review the information and click Next. Select the Services for Network File System check box from the list and click Next.

Confirm your selections, then click Install. Click Close when the installation is complete. Open the port in the security list for File Storage.

Open Windows Command Line (CMD) and run as administrator

In the Windows Command Prompt (CMD) window, restart the NFS client with the following commands:

nfsadmin client stop
nfsadmin client start

A screenshot of the administrator command prompt with the previous commands run.

Close the CMD window. Open a standard command prompt window and run the following command:

mount 10.x.x.x:/fs-export-path X:

Replace 10.x.x.x: with the local subnet IP address assigned to your mount target, fs-export-path with the export path you specified when associating the file system with the mount target, and X with the drive letter of any available drive you want to map the file system to. In this example, I use mount 10.0.0.5:/FileSystem-20190723-1014 D:.

A screenshot of the command prompt running the example export.

After the command is completed successfully, you can see attached file storage.

A screenshot of the Windows finder screen with the network location for the mounted file system outlined in blue.

Conclusion

Find out if Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is right for your use cases by trying it. Sign up for our Oracle Cloud Free Tier, which includes over 20 cloud services free forever and US$300 in credit of additional services for a 30-day trial.

For more information on OCI File Storage, see the following resources: