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Persistent Volumes

Persistent volumes provide storage that exists independently of your instance lifecycle. Unlike the ephemeral storage that comes with an instance, data stored on a persistent volume is preserved when instances are terminated and can be reattached to new instances.

Key Concepts​

  • Independent lifecycle — Volumes are not tied to a specific instance. You can create, attach, detach, and delete volumes separately from your instances.
  • Reusable storage — Attach the same volume to different instances over time. This is useful for datasets, model weights, or any data you want to persist between sessions.
  • Works with VMs and Docker — Volumes can be attached to both virtual machine and Docker container instances.

Use Cases​

  • Machine learning — Store large model weights or training datasets on a volume so they persist between training runs.
  • Development environments — Keep your development environment and project files on a volume that survives instance restarts.
  • Databases — Run databases with data stored on persistent volumes to ensure data durability.

Multi-Datacenter Access​

Volumes can be accessible from multiple datacenters when the underlying storage cluster is shared. The volume API endpoints (/public/volumes/list, /public/volumes/create, and /public/team-volumes/*) return a datacenters field — an array of all datacenter names where the volume is available. The existing datacenter_name field remains for backward compatibility.

danger

Volumes are deleted when your account balance is depleted. Ensure you maintain a positive balance to avoid data loss.

Getting Started​

Volumes can be managed through the CloudRift Console, CLI, and REST API. See the API documentation for the full list of volume operations.