Storage - Block Storage

Note

Our newer NVMe Block Storage solution is now available across most of our data centers. This new hardware dramatically increases the performance of Block Storage and is offered at no additional cost. Review the NVMe Block Storage Upgrade guide to learn more about this roll out.

Linode’s Block Storage service provides a method of adding additional storage drives to Compute Instances, enabling you to store more data without resizing your Compute Instance to a larger plan. These storage drives, called Volumes, can be formatted with any Linux-compatible file system and attached and mounted to a Compute Instance.

A Block Storage Volume augments the raw storage capacity of a cloud instance, which can be useful if your storage needs are greater than your computing demands. Because a Volume is scalable, it can adapt as your data grows in size.

Block Storage Volumes are configured to be durable and fault tolerant using erasure coding, ensuring that your data is protected from loss. Since Volumes are managed independently of Compute Instances, your data persists even if you delete your attached instance.

Newer Block Storage deployments are powered entirely by NVMe SSD storage devices. Review the Availability section to learn which data centers utilize this newer NVMe Block Storage.

NVMe storage offers dramatically increased performance over standard SATA SSDs, HDDs, or hybrid storage solutions. Performance is also automatically increased in 60 second bursts for even faster real-world speeds. See the table below for both sustained and burst performance limits on the new NVMe-only Block Storage:

Performance may vary based on the workload and Compute Instance type. Plans with dedicated CPU resources (such as Dedicated CPU or High Memory Compute Instances) will not be impacted by resource contention, though a Shared Compute Instance may be impacted.

Note

These performance details are only applicable to newer NVMe-backed Block Storage deployments. Volumes that are still using our older Block Storage solution are less performant.

Block Storage is available across all regions. Additionally, the newer NVMe-backed Block Storage has been deployed to most of our data centers. See the NVMe Block Storage Upgrade guide for additional details regarding this roll out, as well as information on upgrading existing Volumes.

Block Storage Volumes cost $0.10/GB per month ($0.00015/GB per hour) and can range from 10 GB to 10,000 GB in size.

• Minimum size for a Volume is 10GB and the maximum size is 10,240 GB (10 TB).
• Backed by high speed NVMe storage in most data centers, excluding Fremont.
• Throughput: Up to 350 MB/s sustained and 525 MB/s in 60 second bursts
• IOPS: Up to 8,000 sustained and 12,000 in 60 second bursts
• Built in redundancy maximizes availability and reduces possibility for data loss

• To attach a Volume, both the Volume and the Compute Instance must be located in the same data center. Migrating a Volume to a different data center is not directly available at this time. See Transfer Block Storage Data between Data Centers for a work-around.

• A combined total of 8 storage devices can be attached to a Compute Instance at the same time, including local disks and Block Storage Volumes.

• Our Backup Service does not cover Block Storage Volumes. You must manage your own backups if you wish to backup data stored on your Volumes.

• A Linode must be running in Paravirtualization mode in order to work with our Block Storage service. Block Storage currently does not support Full-virtualization.