Block storage – local and persistent disks
At Google Cloud, block storage in the form of disks emulating physical drives and attached to a compute layer is used by Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Google Compute Engine (GCE). An operating system recognizes block storage as a volume that can be formatted so applications can use it.
Compute Engine instance has, by default, a single boot persistent disk where the operating system is running. However, you can add multiple local or persistent disks if you need additional storage space.
The step-by-step guide on configuring a Compute Engine VM, including persistent disks, was already presented in Chapter 4. Please look at Figure 4.38, which presents a table comparing available persistent disk types in Google Cloud: Balanced, Extreme, SSD, and Standard.
The following table summarizes the differences between available disks for Compute Engine VMs. Note that some disks can be replicated between zones. Also, a persistent disk...
