Storage Volumes

While instances have ephemeral root disks that are tied to their lifecycle, Volumes provide persistent block storage that exists independently of any single instance.

Use Cases

• Data Persistence: Store databases, file systems, or critical application data that must survive instance termination or failures.
• Flexibility: Detach a volume from one instance and attach it to another to move data or recover from an instance failure.

Technology

I/O Cloud Volumes are powered by Ceph RBD (RADOS Block Device) and managed via OpenStack Cinder.

• High Availability: Data stored in volumes is replicated across the distributed Ceph storage cluster, ensuring high durability and availability against hardware failures.
• Performance: Ceph provides scalable performance, making volumes suitable for a wide range of IO-intensive workloads.

Operations

• Attach/Detach: You can hot-plug volumes to running instances (similar to plugging in a USB drive) without rebooting.
• Snapshots: Create point-in-time snapshots of your volumes for backup or cloning purposes.
• Bootable Volumes: You can boot instances directly from a volume, allowing for persistent root filesystems.