Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
71 lines (49 loc) · 3.85 KB

create-manage-storage.md

File metadata and controls

71 lines (49 loc) · 3.85 KB
Raw
copyright lastupdated keywords subcollection
years
2017, 2018, 2019
2019-05-17
resource, storage, boot, block, volume, name, naming, best practices
vpc-on-classic

{:shortdesc: .shortdesc} {:new_window: target="_blank"} {:codeblock: .codeblock} {:pre: .pre} {:screen: .screen} {:tip: .tip} {:important: .important} {:note: .note} {:download: .download}

Creating and managing block storage in VPC

{: #creating-and-managing-storage-in-vpc}

{{site.data.keyword.cloud}} Virtual Private Cloud provides a boot storage volume and allows additional block storage volumes, which are hypervisor-mounted, high-performance data storage for your virtual server instances (VSIs). The VPC infrastructure provides rapid scaling of storage across multiple regions and zones, with extra performance and security.

Summary of Characteristics

{: #summary-of-characteristics}

When you provision an {{site.data.keyword.vsi_is_full}} instance, a 100 GB, general purpose IOPS (3 IOPS/GB) block storage volume is created automatically as a primary boot volume, attached to the VSI. During provisioning, you can rename the boot volume and change the volume size. {:shortdesc}

  • You can create block storage volumes whenever you provision a virtual server instance in a VPC network.
  • You can create new volumes, independent of the VSI lifecycle, and later attach these volumes to a VSI.
  • You can create secondary data volumes, which are attached to the VSI, automatically.
  • Data volumes persist when detached from the VSI. Therefore, you can attach a volume to a new instance, later.
  • You can specify whether the data volumes are deleted automatically when you delete a VSI.
  • Boot volumes are deleted when you delete their VSI.
  • By default, boot and data volumes are encrypted with IBM-managed encryption.
  • You can encrypt your volumes using your own encryption keys, during VSI provisioning or when creating a standalone volume.

Block storage volumes

{: #block-storage-volumes}

More complete information about working with block storage volumes and VPC is available our Block Storage for VPC documentation.

For overview information about block storage volumes for the VPC, see About Block Storage for VPC.

To get started creating volumes independent of VSI provisioning, see Getting Started with {{site.data.keyword.block_storage_is_short}}.

Best practices for creating and naming your VPC block storage volumes:

{: #best-practices-for-creating-and-naming-your-vpc-block-storage-volumes}

  • Determine your storage requirements before provisioning a volume. Allow for adequate capacity and IOPS performance.
  • Decide whether a predefined IOPS profile best meets your capacity and performance needs, or whether specifying custom settings is better.
  • Decide whether you want to create secondary data volumes during virtual server instance provisioning. These volumes are automatically attached to the instance.
  • Decide whether you want the volume attached to a VSI be automatically deleted when you delete the VSI.
  • When encrypting volumes with your own encryption key, ensure that the key is valid, that you have authorization to use the key, and that it can be used in your current region.
  • Ensure that you are naming ALL of your volumes at provision time, including the boot volume.
  • Ensure that you are naming ALL of your volume attachments at attachment time.
  • Each volume must have a distinct name within a region within an account.

You can re-use the name of a volume after that volume has been deleted. However, be aware that re-using a volume name could cause confusion for billing purposes. {:note}