Block Storage - Concepts

Block device

A block device is a storage volume on a network-connected storage system that is exposed to the guest operating system as if it were a physical disk.

IOPS

IOPS or Input/Ouptut Operations Per Second, is a unit of measurement that indicates how many input or output operations a storage device is performing per second.

Scaleway Block Storage Low Latency offers two IOPS limits:

• 5000 IOPS (5K IOPS)
• 15 000 IOPS (15K IOPS)

Local volume

The local volume of an Instance is an all SSD-based storage solution, using a RAID array for redundancy and performance, that is hosted on the local hypervisor.

Storage Area Networks (SANs)

A Storage Area Network (SAN) consists of interconnected machines, network infrastructure and storage devices designed for performance and high-availability. Unlike a Network Attached Storage (NAS) which stores all data on a file level, the SAN stores all data on block level, this makes SAN a perfect solution for business critical applications and input/output intense operations like relational databases. The SAN is a network-connected solution, that operates independently from the local hypervisor hosting the virtual Instance. The storage capacity of the block devices on the SAN can be tailored towards your requirements.

Volumes

A volume is a storage space used by your Instances. Several volumes can be attached to an Instance. In addition, they can be snapshotted, mounted or unmounted.