Volumes

A volume is a block storage device that works like a physical disk but resides in the cloud. Volumes boot Virtual Machines by storing the operating system, and provide general-purpose storage for non-OS data.

We use a software-defined distributed file system to store volume data. It runs across a cluster of scalable nodes with triple data replication and load distribution, ensuring high availability.

Boot and regular volumes

Each Virtual Machine requires a boot volume to start. The boot volume is created from an OS image or a custom image and appears as System on the VM creation form in the Customer Portal.

The boot volume cannot be deleted or detached while the Virtual Machine exists. When terminating a Virtual Machine, the boot volume can be kept independently — it is not deleted automatically — and used to create another Virtual Machine.

A regular volume is a general-purpose storage volume for any non-OS data.

Both boot and regular volumes support snapshots.

Available volume types

The Gcore Customer Portal supports the volume types listed below. Not all types are available in every region — the Gcore Cloud calculator shows availability by region. Configure each type while creating a volume.

Volume	Description
High IOPS SSD	High-performance SSD block storage for latency-sensitive transactional workloads (60 IOPS per 1 GB; 2.5 MB/s per 1 GiB). IOPS limit: 9,000. Bandwidth limit: 500 MB/s.
Standard	Network SSD disk with stable high random I/O performance and high data reliability (6 IOPS per 1 GB; 0.4 MB/s per 1 GiB). IOPS limit: 4,500. Bandwidth limit: 300 MB/s.
Cold (deprecated)	Network HDD disk for less frequently accessed workloads. Max IOPS: 1,000. Bandwidth limit: 100 MB/s.
Ultra (deprecated)	Network block storage for non-critical, infrequently accessed data. Max IOPS: 1,000. Bandwidth limit: 100 MB/s.
SSD Low-Latency	SSD block storage for applications requiring low-latency storage and real-time data processing. IOPS up to 5,000; average latency 300 µs.

Snapshots and volume resizing are not supported for SSD Low-Latency volumes.

For High IOPS SSD and Standard volumes:

• Both volume IO burst and throughput burst are supported.
• IO and throughput credits exceed base limits and ensure optimal performance at peak IOPS and throughput.
• Credits increase IOPS and volume throughput by 10 times for 10 minutes.

For example, a Virtual Machine with a 3 GB High IOPS SSD volume has base limits of 180 IOPS (60 × 3) and 7.5 MB/s (2.5 × 3). When those limits are exceeded, burst credits apply:

• 180 IOPS × 10 = 1,800 IOPS
• 7.5 MB/s × 10 = 75 MB/s

Credits are renewed after peak usage subsides. When base limits are exceeded again, the renewed credits apply.