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Introduction to the Block Storage Service

The Block Storage service provides reliable, high-performance persistent storage for your stateful applications. It allows your databases, message queues, and other critical services to store data that persists independently of the pod lifecycle, ensuring data durability and availability.

By default, the filesystem of a Kubernetes pod is ephemeral. If the pod crashes or is rescheduled, any data written to its local filesystem is lost. To run stateful applications, you need a way to store data in a persistent location that outlives the pod itself.

The Contain Platform solves this by integrating with the underlying infrastructure to provide persistent block storage, which you can consume using standard Kubernetes objects.

How It Works

You can provision storage for your applications using the standard Kubernetes workflow: by creating a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) object. A PVC is a request for storage that specifies the desired size and access mode.

The platform uses StorageClass resources to define different types of available storage. When you create a PVC, a PersistentVolume (PV) is dynamically provisioned for you based on the StorageClass you request.

Available Storage Classes

The StorageClasses available to you depend on where your Kubernetes cluster is running.

  1. Clusters in Our Data Centers: For clusters hosted within our own data centers, we provide managed StorageClasses. These are optimized for performance and reliability on our infrastructure and may offer different performance tiers to suit your needs. See Storage Classes.

  2. Clusters in Public Clouds: If your cluster is running on a public cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, you can and should use the native StorageClasses provided by that provider (e.g., gp2 on AWS, managed-premium on Azure). This allows you to leverage the full feature set and performance of the underlying cloud storage.

Features

  • Dynamic Provisioning: Storage is automatically provisioned on-demand when you create a PersistentVolumeClaim, eliminating the need for manual storage administration.
  • Standard Kubernetes Workflow: Interact with the service using familiar kubectl commands and YAML manifests, with no custom tooling required.
  • Infrastructure Integration: The service seamlessly integrates with the underlying storage infrastructure, whether in our data centers or on a public cloud.
  • Support for Stateful Workloads: Provides the persistent storage foundation required to run databases, caches, and other stateful applications reliably on the Contain Platform.

Tip

For general information about pricing, legal or support concerning the platform, services or components, consult your contract or see the contact page.