ShareFile Storage Center extends the ShareFile Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud storage by providing your ShareFile account with on-premises private storage. You can use the Storage Center on-premises storage with or instead of the ShareFile-managed cloud storage. ShareFile-managed cloud storage is a public multi-tenant storage system maintained by Citrix. A ShareFile Storage Center is a private single-tenant storage system maintained by you and can be used only by your account.

Storage Center is a Web service that handles all HTTPS operations from end users and the ShareFile control subsystem. The ShareFile control subsystem handle all operations not related to file contents, such as authentication, authorization, file browsing, configuration, meta-data, sending and requesting files, and load balancing. The control subsystem also performs Storage Center health checks and prevents off-line servers from sending requests. The ShareFile control subsystem is maintained in Citrix Online data centers.

The ShareFile storage subsystem handles operations related to file contents such as uploads, downloads, and antivirus verification. When you create a Storage Zone, you are creating a private storage subsystem for your ShareFile data.

For a production deployment of ShareFile, the recommended best practice is to use at least two servers with Storage Center installed, for high availability. When you install Storage Center, you create a Storage Zone. You can then install Storage Center on another server and join it to the same Storage Zone. Storage Centers that belong to the same Storage Zone must use the same file share for storage.