HDD Volumes
Extra block storage for your VM, on our Ceph HDD pool in Lisbon. Made for large data that does not need SSD speed: backups, archives, media, logs, datasets.
At a glance
- Size: from 100 GB, any size in GB above that
- Price: €0.56/month for the first 100 GB, then €0.0056 per GB above that
- Billing: hourly, from your prepaid wallet
- Location: Portugal (Lisbon) only. A volume can be attached only to a VM in Portugal.
How volumes work
- Order a volume in the client panel, as an option. Attach, detach and delete it there too.
- A volume belongs to your account, not to a VM. It keeps existing when you delete or rebuild the VM it was attached to.
- Attach a volume to one of your VMs and it appears there as a new disk.
- One VM at a time. To move a volume to another VM, detach it first, then attach it to the other VM.
- Detach it at any time. The data stays on the volume.
- Billing runs while the volume exists, attached or not. Delete the volume to stop billing.
Not included in VM backups
Volumes are excluded from your VM's automatic backups, because a volume can be many terabytes. If the data matters, back it up yourself, for example to S3 storage with Restic.
Deleting is irreversible
Deleting a volume destroys its data permanently. We cannot restore it.
First use
A new volume is empty and has no filesystem. Format it once after the first attach.
Linux
lsblk # the new disk is usually /dev/sdb
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb # only the first time - this erases the volume
mkdir -p /mnt/data
mount /dev/sdb /mnt/data
To mount it at every boot, add it to /etc/fstab by UUID (see blkid /dev/sdb), with the nofail option so the VM still boots if the volume is detached.
Windows
Open Disk Management, initialize the new disk, then create and format a volume on it.
Which storage to choose
| Local disk extension | HDD volume | S3 object storage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media | SSD | HDD | HDD |
| Size | up to 1TB per VM | from 100 GB | any |
| Detach and move | No | Yes | Not a disk |
| Survives VM delete | No | Yes | Yes |
| Location | wherever your VM is | Portugal only | Portugal only |
| Price | see Large storage | €0.56/month per 100 GB | €3.99/TB/month |
- Local disk extension is the fastest. Use it for the operating system, databases and applications. See Large storage/disks.
- HDD volume is for large data that must look like a normal disk to the VM.
- S3 is for backups and files your applications read over HTTP. See S3 Overview & Pricing.