File shares support some of the most important workloads that enterprise businesses rely on, and the resources of the public cloud have created interesting new possibilities. Every major public cloud
provider now offers its own shared file service, each with its own target workloads and considerations. But not every enterprise will find what they’re looking for in a fully-managed, all-cloud service.

In this guide to file services in the cloud, we’ll give you a short introduction into shared file storage technologies, including all of the challenges of running a file service in the cloud. We’ll profile each of the major file service offerings available today, including Amazon EFS and FSx, Azure Files, GCP’s Cloud Filestore, and more. We’ll also give you a full view of what NetApp’s Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers file users, spotlighting important performance, availability, and data protection features, examples for how to get started, and some case studies of enterprise businesses that rely on Cloud Volumes ONTAP to meet all their file service requirements.