Google filestore with smaller provisioning size

[scgcp]

Hi, 

We are a GCP shop and need a high performance persistent file system storage solution for our application. This is needed to  share files between multiple cloud run containers. Google Filestore seems to be a good fit for our use case but it turns out to be too expensive (~ $460+ for 1 TB per month). We don't need huge capacity (a few hundred GBs should be enough) and we won't like to pay for the extra storage we won't use. Unfortunately, GCP doesn't seem to have a pay for usage solution like AWS EFS.

Some questions for the community:

Is it possible to get a smaller provisioned storage for Google File Store to reduce the cost?

If answer to above is no, is there a way to work with Google customer solution specialists to get an exception for our use case?

Any alternative to GFS that would work for us with a pay for usage model? Note: we tried GCS and it's performance won't work for us. 

We are heavily invested in GCP and won't want to migrate to AWS if possible. Thanks for the help!

[Marramirez]

Hello @scgcp,

Welcome to Google Cloud Community!

To answer your questions:

1. No, you are charged based on the provisioned capacity, not based on the capacity used. If you create a 1 TiB instace and store 100 GiB of data on it, you still incur the charges for the entire 1 TiB. Also, see the Service tiers.
2. You can contact Google Cloud sales specialist. You can chat online or request a call back. 
3. Your only options for persistent storage are: Filestore, Google Cloud Storage, and Persistent Disk (Virtual Machine instances).

I also suggest that you contact Cloud Billing Support to help you with your case. All Google Cloud accounts get free billing support. Hope it helps, thank you!