Adjustable VPS Storage Space

Say you have a VPS that you use largely to store files on. Those files might be backups, movies, photos, songs, etc. Basically, you have a VPS that needs a large amount of disk space, but might not need a huge amount of processing power. That is, you do not need the most powerful CPU or the highest amount of RAM.

Or, lets say you have an app that uses a varying amount of disk space. Some months you need a lot of disk space, other months you need very little. Why pay for all the disk space every month if you don't use it all?

A good solution to both of these scenarios is DigitalOcean's new block storage. Block storage is basically a way to add drive space to your VPS as you need it. You can add or remove the space when you need, allowing you to pay only for the space that you end up using.

You can think of the block storage as a virtual external hard drive. The block storage can hook up to your VPS and you can access it or store things onto it just like you would an external hard drive. When the storage block is not being used it is encrypted to keep your data secure.

Just like an external drive, you can connect the block storage to different VPSs (one VPS at a time). This create a very convenient place to store files that multiple VPSs might need to access, or a single place to store backups from multiple VPSs.

Block storage can be used for anything that might require more disk space. Digital Ocean is currently charging $0.10 per gigabyte of block storage per month. So a single GB of disk storage is only a dime a month. You are able to get anywhere between 1GB and 16TB of space. A 10GB block would cost an additional $10 per month. The blocks are easy to resize and move around so you are not stuck paying for something that you end up not needing in the future.

This is a really great feature from Digital Ocean and is useful for anyone who might need additional storage space for the VPS.