What Is Block Storage?

Block storage is like a huge closet where you keep your favorite items. You've taken the time to put all of your most prized stuff, including your clothing, shoes, books, and other cherished items, in separate boxes and storage bins. In the realm of information technology, this corresponds to the concept of block storage. Block storage is a sort of data storage used by cloud computing services such as Google Cloud Platform and Am on Web Services to store data in a way that makes it easy to access and retrieve quickly. Block storage is also known as object storage or file storage. Each block of data is analogous to one of the boxes or containers that you keep in the closet; it is possible to add, remove, or alter it independently of the other blocks, just as you can add, remove, or change the contents of the boxes that you keep in the closet. Block storage differs from other types of data storage, such as file storage, in that it allows direct access to the data blocks that are being stored. In contrast, file storage relies on a file system to organize and manage the data that is being stored. Another type of data storage is known as object storage. This makes block storage quicker and more efficient for databases, virtual machines, and big data applications that need to access and handle massive volumes of data quickly. Examples of such applications are big data apps and virtual machine applications. Block storage is highly scalable, so that you can add or remove storage capacity depending on your requirements. This is analogous to how you may add or remove boxes from your closet. Because of the independence of each block, it is possible to add, delete, or modify blocks without impacting the system's functionality as a whole or the other blocks. In block storage, "IOPS" stands for "Input/Output Operations Per Second." This is the total number of read and writes operations the storage system performs.