Which protocol is primarily used by OCI File Storage service?

The OCI File Storage service primarily utilizes the Network File System (NFS) protocol to facilitate file sharing. NFS is well-suited for distributed environments such as the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure because it allows multiple clients to access shared file systems over a network. This protocol is designed for high performance and can be used effectively with compute instances in OCI, enabling them to easily read from and write to the shared file storage.

Using NFS, clients can mount remote file systems as if they were local, which simplifies the management of files across multiple instances and applications. This capability aligns with many use cases in cloud environments, where applications often need to access and manipulate large sets of data stored in a centralized location.

In contrast, iSCSI is typically used for block storage rather than file storage, making it less suitable for the functionality provided by OCI's File Storage service. SFTP and HTTP are protocols mainly used for secure file transfer and web-based data interactions, respectively, rather than for managing file storage and sharing in the way that NFS does.