Block Storage Volumes

Block storage volumes are network-based block devices that provide additional data storage for Droplets. You can move them between Droplets and resize them at any time.

Plans and Pricing

Volumes cost $0.10 GiB per month and range from 1 GiB to 16 TiB (16,384 GiB). Charges accrue hourly for as long as the volume exists.

Regional Availability

Volumes are available in NYC1, NYC3, SFO2, SFO3, FRA1, SGP1, TOR1, BLR1, LON1, and AMS3.

Warning

NYC3 contains some legacy hardware that does not support block storage volumes. Attach volumes to NYC3 Droplets during creation to guarantee volume support.

Volumes are region-specific resources. You can only move them between Droplets in the same datacenter.

Features

• Use cases: Volumes are most useful when you need more storage space but don’t need the additional processing power or memory that a larger Droplet would provide, like:

  • As the document root or media upload directory for a web server
  • To house database files for a database server
  • As a target location for backups
  • As expanded storage for personal file hosting platforms like ownCloud
  • As components for building more advanced storage solutions, like RAID arrays

• Performance: Like Droplets, volumes are backed by SSDs.

• Familiarity: Volumes function as generic block devices, so you can treat attached volumes like locally connected storage drives. This lets you partition, format, and manage volumes with familiar tools and techniques.

• Flexibility: Volumes are independent resources, so you can move them between Droplets in the same datacenter, and you can increase the size of a volume without powering down the Droplet it’s attached to.

• Encryption: Volumes are encrypted with LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup). The entire storage cluster is encrypted, so snapshots of volumes are also encrypted at rest.

• Redundancy: Volumes are built with Ceph. As we describe in our blog post on why we chose Ceph:

  Ceph is built for redundancy, and we carefully ensure that the loss of a single drive, server, or even an entire data center rack does not compromise data integrity or availability.

  Ceph gracefully heals itself when individual components fail, ensuring continuity of service with uncompromising data protection. Additionally, we use sophisticated monitoring systems built around tools including Icinga, Prometheus, and our own open-source ceph_exporter. These help us respond immediately to any issues with our Ceph infrastructure to ensure continuous availability.

  Volumes store data on hardware that is separated from the Droplet and replicated multiple times across different racks, reducing the chances of data loss because of hardware failure.

• Automatic format and mount: You can choose to automatically format and mount a volume for first-time use on Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian 8+, CentOS, and Fedora Atomic.

• Burst support: Burst support automatically increases volumes' IOPS and bandwidth rates for short periods of time (60 seconds) before returning to baseline performance to cool off (60 seconds) to support spikes in workload.
  
  

  Droplet Type	IOPS	Throughput
  Standard	5K	200 MB/s
  Standard (Burst)	7.5K	300 MB/s
  Optimized	7.5K	300 MB/s
  Optimized (Burst)	10K	350 MB/s

• Snapshots. Volume snapshots are full disk images that you create on demand. Create a snapshot to save the contents of the volume, and create volumes based on snapshots to create a new volume with the same contents.

Limits

• You cannot rename volumes.

• You can only attach a volume to one Droplet at a time.

• By default, users can create up to 100 volumes and up to a total of 16 TiB of disk space per region. You can contact our support team to request an increase. You can attach a maximum of 7 volumes to any one node or Droplet, and this limit cannot be changed.

• Unverified users can have up to 10 volumes per region and up to a total of 500 GB of disk space per region. Learn more about account verification.

• FreeBSD, RancherOS, and one-click apps do not support automatic formatting and mounting.

• Volumes are not included in Droplet backups. However, you can create snapshots of volumes and create volumes based on those snapshots.

• Tags for volumes are only supported via the API.

• Volume IOPS and throughput limits are currently 5000 IOPS and 200MBps, respectively, regardless of the size of the volume. These limits are applied per volume and not in aggregate. If you see lower values, it could be a result of I/O contention with other processes on the same Droplet.

Latest Updates

31 January 2021

• Due to capacity limits in the region, we have disabled the creation of new resources in SFO2 for new customers. Existing customers with resources in SFO2 are unaffected and can still create and destroy resources in SFO2.

12 May 2020

• The SFO3 datacenter region is now available.

26 August 2019

• Volume limits for verified accounts have been raised from 10 volumes per account/500 GB of volume data per region to 100 volumes per account/16 TB per region. Unverified accounts are still limited to 10 volumes/500 GB. Learn more about account verification.

For more information, see all Block Storage Volumes release notes.