What is Block Storage?
The Backbone of the Always-Hot Cloud
In the world of cloud infra, there is a "holy trinity" that defines every system:
- Compute: Where instructions execute (the brain).
- Storage: Where the data lives (the memory).
- Network: How data moves between them.
In the early days of computing, these three pillars lived together in one physical box. Your CPU and your hard drive were inches apart, connected by a physical bus. But the cloud changed that. To make infrastructure "elastic," we had to break that box apart. We pulled the disks out of the servers and placed them in their own dedicated racks.
This separation gave birth to different types of storage, each serving a unique purpose in the cloud ecosystem.
The Storage Spectrum
To understand where Block Storage fits, you have to look at the three primary ways the cloud handles data. It is essentially a trade-off between convenience and speed.
| Storage Type | Primary Strengths | Best For (Common Use Cases) | Latency/Performance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Object 📦 | Scalable, durable, metadata-rich | Archives, backups, data lakes, media, big data | Higher latency |
| File 📁 | Hierarchical, shared access | Shared folders, collaboration, content management | Moderate |
| Block ▇ | High performance, low latency | Databases, VMs/disks, transactional apps, execution | Lowest latency |
What is Block Storage?
At its core, Block Storage is a method of data storage where files are decomposed into autonomous, fixed-size chunks called blocks.
In a traditional file system (like the one on your laptop), you see a "document.pdf." In block storage, that PDF is shredded into multiple blocks - typically 4 KB or 8 KB in size. Each block is assigned a Unique Identifier (UID). These blocks are then scattered across the storage environment, placed wherever the hardware finds the most efficient "gap" to fill.
Why the "Blocks" Matter: Efficiency in Modification
The true genius of block storage is how it handles updates. Imagine you have a 10 GB database and you change a single transaction entry:
- In Object Storage: You must re-upload the entire 10 GB file.
- In Block Storage: The system identifies the exact single block where that transaction lives, updates only those few bytes, and leaves the other 9.99 GB of blocks untouched.
You can think of block storage like a high-efficiency Apartment Building.
- Fixed Size: Every "block" of data is a standardized unit. The system doesn’t care if you’re storing a photo or a piece of code; it just sees a standard room.
- The Address: There are no names on the doors. Each room has a simple number (like Room 402). The system doesn’t need to know who lives there; it only needs to know the floor and the door number.
- Direct Access: In a traditional file system, the computer has to "sweep" the building floor-by-floor to find a house. In our high-rise (Block Storage), the elevator goes straight to Floor 4, Room 02. It’s a direct line to the data with zero wandering.
Nirvana Accelerated Block Storage (ABS)
Nirvana Accelerated Block Storage (ABS) is a crypto-tuned block storage layer built for always-hot blockchain data. It delivers sustained IOPS, sub-ms latency, and predictable costs under continuous load—without burst credits or performance cliffs. ABS is physically colocated with compute and nodes, eliminating cross-network hops and keeping data always hot.
ABS is live today.
Ready to stay fast under load? Get in touch and we will set you up.
Nirvana Labs: The Performance Cloud for Web3.
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