# Features and Benefits

## Features

* **SSD Storage:** Supports swift data retrieval and reliable data storage.
* **Storage Size:** The cluster size ranges from 2 TiB to 42 TiB, with all provisioned capacity fully usable—no space is reserved for system overhead or performance headroom.
* **No data transfer charges:** Traffic between Network File Storage and your VMs is not metered or billed.
* **NFSv4.2:** The latest NFS protocol version, **NFSv4.2**, allows standard read and write operations directly to storage.
* **Encryption at rest:** Provides encryption at rest, by default.
* **Squash security:** Network File Storage's built-in security mechanism reduces the risk of unauthorized root-level access from the client machine to the NFS server. Next to squash security, enabling the root squash security feature prevents superuser privileges to the root user on a client machine. It also prevents potential attacks on the NFS server when the client machine is compromised.

## Benefits

* **High Performance and Reliability:** **NFSv4.2** protocol provides high availability and durability and the following benefits:
  * Reduced protocol overhead with compound operations and caching.
  * Efficient file operations with minimal server interaction.
  * Live data movement without interruption.
  * Detailed file-level access and performance telemetry in the [<mark style="color:blue;">Activity Logs</mark>](https://docs.ionos.com/cloud/observability/activity-logs/).
* **Seamless Management:** Benefit from proactive IT infrastructure management and maintenance with <code class="expression">space.vars.ionos\_cloud</code> managed Network File Storage.
* **Efficient Data Sharing:** Distribute and manage data across multiple VMs within a VDC, with centralized data organization and fine-grained POSIX access control.

| **Use Case**                                    | **Suitability**                                                                               |
| ----------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Shared configuration / static assets            | Recommended                                                                                   |
| Media serving / content delivery origin         | Recommended                                                                                   |
| Backup target / archival                        | Recommended                                                                                   |
| Log aggregation / event ingestion               | Suitable                                                                                      |
| Kubernetes RWX persistent volumes               | Suitable                                                                                      |
| CI/CD artifact storage (mixed read/write)       | Evaluate first-performance varies with mixed read or write patterns; test with your workload. |
| Databases or transactional writes               | Not recommended - write latency may exceed transactional requirements                         |
| Synchronous write workloads with tight timeouts | Not recommended - synchronous commit latency is not configurable                              |

For detailed performance specifications, latency measurements, and limitation details, see [<mark style="color:blue;">Technical Specification and Limitations</mark>](https://docs.ionos.com/cloud/storage-and-backup/network-file-storage/overview/tech-specification-limitation).


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