Root Disk

Root disks are local system drives used to store the operating system and essential files that allow a virtual machine to boot and run.

Overview

Each Exabits Cloud virtual machine is provisioned with a root disk to store the OS and critical system files. This disk is provided using local Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) storage, offering the lowest possible latency by avoiding network-based communication. Because the disk resides inside the system chassis, performance is extremely high, but this comes at the cost of durability in failure scenarios.

In the event of a system or disk failure, any data stored on the root disk will be lost when the VM is rescheduled to a new node. It's therefore essential to consider workload demands and risks before using this storage for critical data.

The disk is automatically mounted during deployment. For most flavors, its size is limited, as active workloads typically run on Ephemeral storage. Ephemeral storage offers faster speeds but lacks persistence. For data durability, use Shared Storage Volumes (SSVs), which trade performance for redundancy.

Root Disk Size

The size of the root disk is determined by the selected flavor at the time of deployment and cannot be changed after the VM is created.