I'm building a system that replaces local disk with managed file storage, any recommendations?

Yes — the key is to treat “managed file storage” as a storage backend, not just a mount point replacement. The best recommendation depends on whether you need:

• Shared POSIX-like filesystem semantics
• Object storage with file-like access
• High throughput vs low latency
• Single-machine vs distributed app
• Compliance / backups / versioning / encryption requirements

Good options by use case

1) General-purpose shared file storage

Best when apps expect a normal filesystem and multiple machines need access.

• AWS EFS / FSx
• Azure Files / Azure NetApp Files
• Google Filestore
• NFS-backed managed storage from a cloud provider

Pros

• Easy to adopt for legacy apps
• Shared across instances
• Managed scaling and durability

Cons

• Higher latency than local disk
• File locking/metadata performance may be limiting
• Often more expensive than local or object storage

2) Object storage with a compatibility layer

Best when you can change the app a bit, or files are mostly read/write blobs.

• S3 / GCS / Azure Blob
• Access via SDKs or a FUSE layer like s3fs, goofys, gcsfuse

Pros

• Very durable, cheap, scalable
• Excellent for backups, media, logs, artifacts
• Easy replication/versioning

Cons

• Not a real filesystem in the strict sense
• Rename/append/locking semantics can be problematic
• FUSE adds performance and consistency caveats

3) High-performance distributed file systems

Best when you need strong performance and shared access at scale.

• Lustre
• CephFS
• NetApp
• BeeGFS

Pros

• Better for large-scale workloads
• Can handle heavy parallel access

Cons

• More operational complexity
• Can be overkill unless you truly need it

4) Managed block storage plus a file service layer

Best when one app server owns the data, or you can run a file service yourself.

• EBS / Persistent Disks / Managed Disks
• Export via NFS/SMB from a managed VM or storage appliance

Pros

• Good performance for one host
• Simple for certain deployments

Cons

• Not inherently shared
• You manage the file server layer unless provider-managed

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Practical recommendation

If you’re replacing local disk for ordinary app file use, I’d usually recommend:

1. If you need filesystem semantics and shared access: managed NFS/file service
2. If you mainly store blobs/artifacts/logs/uploads: object storage
3. If you need very high throughput / HPC / analytics: distributed filesystem

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Important design considerations

Avoid assuming local-disk behavior

Many apps assume:

• atomic rename behavior
• low-latency metadata ops
• local file locks
• durable fsync semantics
• delete/overwrite consistency

Managed storage may differ.

Think about consistency and locking

If multiple processes or nodes write to the same files:

• define ownership clearly
• avoid concurrent writes unless the storage supports your locking model
• use app-level coordination if needed

Plan for migration and abstraction

Use a storage abstraction layer so you can switch backends later:

• local filesystem interface in code
• config-driven path mapping
• wrapper service for reads/writes
• avoid hardcoding OS paths everywhere

Add lifecycle and backup policies

Managed storage is not a backup by itself. Plan for:

• snapshots
• versioning
• replication
• retention policies
• restore testing

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My default recommendation

If you want a safe default for a modern system:

• Use object storage for durable file data
• Use managed NFS/file storage only for workloads that truly need filesystem semantics
• Keep ephemeral temporary files on local disk or tmpfs
• Separate hot temp data from durable user data

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If you want, I can also give you a recommendation based on:

1. your cloud provider,
2. your language/framework,
3. whether you need POSIX semantics,
4. expected file sizes / throughput,
5. single-node vs multi-node deployment.