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Disks

whitesky.cloud NV supports two types of disks, Boot disks and Data Disks. This guide covers Data Disks and their full lifecycle. For more about the difference between Boot Disks and Data Disks, check out the Concepts section.

Storage Types

When creating a disk, you choose a storage class. The storage classes are:

Storage Type Billing Unit Description
whitesky.cloud SDS (Software-Defined Storage) SU (Storage Unit) Distributed storage replicated across multiple servers. Provides redundancy and resilience against hardware failures. Best for general-purpose workloads.
Physical Storage (Flash / NVMe) FSU (Flash Storage Unit) High-performance local NVMe volume attached directly to the hypervisor. Lower latency and higher IOPS than SDS. Best for I/O-intensive workloads (databases, analytics).
External Storage NBD See the storage class details in the portal.

FSU (Flash Storage Unit)

Flash Storage Units measure the capacity of Physical Storage (NVMe). The FSU rate is higher than SU, reflecting the premium performance of NVMe hardware. Check the Billing & Resource Units page for current rates.

Choosing a Storage Type

Use Physical Storage when: - The workload requires high IOPS or low latency (e.g. database, caching, big data) - The VM is on a dedicated or reserved host - Performance is more important than resilience

Use whitesky.cloud SDS when: - Resilience and data redundancy are priorities - The workload is not I/O-bound - You want storage to survive hypervisor failures

Tip

Physical Storage disks are not replicated across hosts. If the hypervisor fails, the disk becomes unavailable. For critical workloads, use SDS or ensure you have backups.

Creating Disks

To create a disk

  1. On the left side of the page in the navigation drawer, click Disks. The previously created disks will be listed, with one tab per location. The list shows the Disk Name, Size, Type, Storage class, Status, VM and Actions columns.

  2. At the top of the page, click CREATE DISK. The Choose disk source step will appear.

  3. Select Create an empty disk (the other options are Attach disk and Create disk from a snapshot).

  4. In Choose storage class, select the storage class of the disk from the storage classes enabled on the location. A panel below the selection shows the class details and the Storage unit multiplier used for billing. The classes can include:

  5. Physical Storage: billed as FSU
  6. whitesky.cloud SDS: billed as SU
  7. External Storage NBD

For more about storage classes, see Storage Classes.

  1. In Create empty disk, fill in the form with the Disk name, Description (optional), Backup size limit (physical storage only), Disk Size (GiB) and Speed (IOPS). The configuration cost is displayed where you can see the price details in Storage (SU), Flash storage (FSU) and Transaction (TU) units. > Note Physical Storage disks will consume Flash Storage Units (FSU) and Software-defined storage disks will consume Storage Units (SU).

  2. Click CREATE.

A message will appear indicating that the disk was created successfully and you will be navigated to the new disk's details page.

Editing Disks

Each disk has a details page, where you can access and edit all the disk information.

Accessing Details Page

To access the details page for a specific disk

  1. On the left side of the page in the navigation drawer, click Disks. The previously created disks will be listed.
  2. Select the disk you want to access.

A details page will appear with all the disk information: Name, Status, Size, Exposed, Type, Storage class, Speed (IOPS), Model, Cloudspace, Virtual Machine and Backup block size. The action bar at the top has DELETE, DETACH, TAKE SNAPSHOT and CACHE SETTINGS (BETA), and the page has the tabs Snapshots, Audits and Roles & permissions.

Resizing Disk Parameters

You can edit the disk size and speed from the details page. Under each of Size and Speed (IOPS), click to adjust their values.

Changing Disk Model

You can edit the disk model from the details page. Under Model, click to choose one of the supported models.

Deleting Disks

To delete a disk, open the disk's details page and click DELETE at the top of the page. Confirm the deletion in the dialog that appears.

Attaching/Detaching Disks to Virtual Machines

In the list of existing disks, the disk status can be Assigned or Created. Assigned means that the disk is currently attached to a certain virtual machine, while created indicates that the disk is not attached to a virtual machine.

To attach a disk to a virtual machine

  1. Navigate to the specific disk's details page.
  2. Click ATTACH at the top of the page.
  3. Select the Cloudspace and Virtual Machine you want to attach the disk to.
  4. Click ATTACH.

A message will appear indicating that the disk was attached successfully and you will be navigated to the disk's details page where the disk status will be updated to ASSIGNED.

To detach a disk from a virtual machine

  1. Navigate to the specific disk's details page.
  2. Click DETACH at the top of the page.
  3. Click Confirm to confirm detaching the disk.

A message will appear indicating that the disk was successfully detached.

Managing Snapshots

A Snapshot is a logical copy of the state of a disk at a particular point in time. You can use snapshots to roll back a disk to a desirable state.

Accessing Snapshot's Details Page

In the snapshot's details page, you can access all the snapshot's information, such as ID, name and creation time.

To access the snapshot's details page

  1. Navigate to the specific disk's details page.
  2. Make sure the 💲Snapshots tab is selected. If not, then select it.
  3. Select the snapshot you want to access. Enable Show automatic snapshots to include automatic snapshots in the list.

You will be navigated to the snapshot's details page.

Creating Snapshots

To create a Snapshot

  1. Navigate to the specific disk's details page.
  2. Make sure the 💲Snapshots tab is selected. If not, then select it.
  3. Click TAKE SNAPSHOT at the top of the page.
  4. Enter the Snapshot name, and click CREATE. You can also switch on Take snapshots of all virtual machine disks and With cooperation.

The snapshot will be created and added to the list of snapshots.

Rollback to a Snapshot

To rollback to a specific snapshot

  1. Navigate to the snapshot's details page.
  2. Click ROLLBACK at the top of the page. A dialog will appear with a data-loss warning, verifying that you want to rollback your disk to the snapshot's state. An additional option is that you can rollback all the disks in this specific virtual machine to the snapshot state by ticking the check box (Rollback snapshot ... on the other virtual machine disks as well).
  3. Click Confirm.

The disk will be rolled back to the state of the snapshot.

The Rollback and Delete actions are also available in the Actions column of the snapshots list.

Deleting a Snapshot

To delete a snapshot

  1. Navigate to the snapshot's details page.
  2. Click DELETE at the top of the page. A message will appear verifying that you want to delete this snapshot.
  3. Click Confirm.

The snapshot will be deleted and removed from the list of existing snapshots.

Creating a Disk from a Snapshot

There's no standalone "clone this disk" action. To get an independent copy of a disk's data at a specific point in time, create a new disk from a snapshot of the source disk:

  1. On the left side of the page in the navigation drawer, click Disks.
  2. Click CREATE DISK.
  3. Choose Create disk from a snapshot as the disk source.
  4. Select the source disk, then the snapshot to create from.
  5. Enter a name for the new disk and click CREATE.

The new disk contains the data as it was at the moment the snapshot was taken, and is a fully independent disk — attach it to any VM, resize it, or delete it without affecting the source disk or snapshot.

Note

Snapshots themselves only support Rollback (restore the disk in place) and Delete — there is no clone action on a snapshot's own details page.

Setting Disk Cache

Beta feature

Disk cache configuration is in beta testing.

From the disk details page, click CACHE SETTINGS (BETA) to configure the disk's cache mode. This affects how disk writes are handled between the VM and the underlying storage.

Disk Notes

On the disk details page, you can add private notes (visible only to you) using the notes icon in the resource details panel.

PHYSICAL Disk Extra Fields

When creating or editing a Physical Storage disk, additional fields appear: Backup snapshot ratio and Block size. These control how snapshots are stored for that disk.

Storage Class Picker

When creating a disk, the storage class is selected in the Choose storage class step, which offers Physical Storage, whitesky.cloud SDS and External Storage NBD.

Each storage class carries an SU multiplier that scales the number of storage units it is billed at (it does not change the capacity you get). See Billing & Resource Units for how the multiplier affects cost.

Roles & Permissions

A disk has its own Roles & permissions tab, listing the custom roles that have been granted access to this specific disk — the same mechanism used for cloudspaces, VMs, and other resources. See Roles & Permissions for how roles and their permissions are defined.

Audits

A disk also has its own Audits tab, showing the same request log described in Audits, pre-filtered to this disk. See that page for the column and filter reference — everything there applies here, just scoped to one disk.