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Block Storage

Terms related to simplyblock

Dynamic Provisioning in Kubernetes Erasure Coding Data Replication Hybrid Cloud Storage Storage Quality of Service (QoS) Kubernetes StatefulSet Object Storage vs Block Storage Storage Tiering Block Storage Volume Snapshotting Container Storage Interface Hyper-Converged Storage Disaggregated Storage MAUS Architecture NVMe over RoCE NVMe over FC Blockbridge StorPool Portworx Lightbits Labs Valkey LINBIT RAID Software-Defined Storage (SDS) RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) iSCSI (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface) SPDK Copy-On-Write (CoW) NVMe Latency Storage Latency IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) Thin Provisioning Distributed Storage System Write-Ahead Log (WAL) TiDB Interbase ArangoDB Memgraph TDengine Qdrant CouchDB Hazelcast DuckDB CockroachDB CrateDB SAP Hana Teradata Snowflake Databricks Weaviate Pinecone ScyllaDB Marqo RocksDB Aerospike Singlestore Timescale MariaDB Apache Cassandra Couchbase InfluxDB Neo4j Clickhouse Elasticsearch Redis MySQL Microsoft SQL Server Oracle MongoDB PostgreSQL Open-Source Storage MinIO Longhorn Amazon EBS Rook OpenEBS NVMe-oF Kubernetes OpenStack Ceph

Block storage is a method of storing data in fixed-sized chunks called “blocks,” which are individually addressable and managed by a storage system. Each block functions like a hard drive sector and can be formatted with a filesystem (e.g., ext4, XFS, NTFS) to support high-performance application workloads.

Unlike file or object storage, block storage does not impose metadata or directory structures. This gives it the lowest latency and highest throughput—making it ideal for databases, virtual machines, containers, and transactional applications.

In platforms like simplyblock, block storage is provided as software-defined, NVMe-over-TCP-based volumes, enabling scalability, redundancy, and consistent performance.

How Block Storage Works

Each block volume is provisioned from a storage pool and exposed to compute nodes as a virtual device. Applications or operating systems treat it like a locally attached disk, even when it’s distributed or remote. Block-level operations allow:

  • Direct read/write access to raw volumes
  • High IOPS and parallelism, especially when backed by NVMe SSDs
  • Integration with CSI (Container Storage Interface) for container environments

Block storage is the most common foundation for persistent volumes in Kubernetes and performance-sensitive services in hybrid and cloud-native environments.

Benefits of Block Storage

Enterprises use block storage for its deterministic performance, flexibility, and data consistency. Key benefits include:

  • Low latency, high throughput: Perfect for databases and transactional applications.
  • Filesystem flexibility: Clients can choose their own OS-level filesystem or use raw mode.
  • Portability: Easily attached to VMs, containers, or bare metal hosts.
  • Snapshot and clone support: Works with technologies like volume snapshotting.
  • Redundancy and resilience: When combined with erasure coding, ensures enterprise-grade fault tolerance.

Block storage also supports multi-tenancy, dynamic provisioning, and QoS controls, especially in Kubernetes environments using simplyblock.

Common Use Cases for Block Storage

  • Relational databases: PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL
  • NoSQL stores: Redis, Cassandra, MongoDB
  • Virtual machine disks: VMware, KVM, Proxmox
  • Containerized apps: StatefulSets and persistent volumes in Kubernetes
  • CI/CD pipelines: High-speed test environments with volume cloning

Block vs File vs Object Storage

Each storage type serves a different performance, access, and scalability need. Here’s how block storage compares:

FeatureBlock StorageFile StorageObject Storage
Data AccessRaw blocks via protocolsFiles via directory pathsObjects via HTTP/REST
PerformanceHighest (low latency)MediumVariable (high bandwidth)
Ideal ForDatabases, VMs, volumesShared directories, NASBackups, archives, media
ProtocolsiSCSI, NVMe/TCP, Fibre CHNFS, SMBS3, Swift
Kubernetes IntegrationCSI-supportedLimitedExternal-only
Metadata SupportMinimalStandardExtensive

Block Storage in Simplyblock™

Simplyblock delivers high-performance block storage with:

It’s ideal for platforms that require high availability, elasticity, and operational simplicity—whether in the cloud, edge, or bare metal.

External Resources

Questions and Answers

Why choose block storage for high-performance workloads?

Block storage provides raw, low-latency access to data, making it ideal for databases, VMs, and Kubernetes workloads. It supports high IOPS, scalability, and flexibility, unlike file or object storage which are more suited for static data.

What is the difference between block, file, and object storage?

Block storage breaks data into fixed-sized blocks, allowing fast random access. File storage manages data in a directory hierarchy, while object storage stores data as discrete units with metadata. For transactional apps, block storage via NVMe over TCP offers superior speed.

Is block storage compatible with Kubernetes?

Yes, block storage is widely used in Kubernetes via the Container Storage Interface (CSI). It supports persistent volumes for stateful apps like databases, message queues, and analytics engines.

Does block storage support encryption and data isolation?

Block storage can be secured using encryption at rest at the volume level. With platforms like Simplyblock, each logical volume can be isolated and encrypted per tenant or workload for compliance and security.

What are common use cases for block storage?

Block storage is ideal for latency-sensitive applications like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and containerized stateful apps. It’s also used for VM disk images, snapshots, and transactional workloads that require consistent, fast access to structured data.