Storage ¶
Diff storage types¶
Block storage is raw storage in which the hardware storage device or drive is a disk or volume that is formatted and attached to the compute system for use. The storage is formatted into predefined continuous segments on the storage device. These segments are called blocks. The blocks are the basic fixed storage units used to store data on the device.
Storage devices can be hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs), or newer types of storage devices, such as Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe). In addition to individual storage devices, you can deploy block storage on Storage Area Network (SAN) systems.
File storage is built on top of block storage, typically serving as a file share or file server. File storage is created using an operating system that formats and manages the reading and writing of data to the block storage devices. The name file storage comes from the primary use of storing data as files typically in a directory tree hierarchy.
The two most common storage protocols for file storage are Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File System (NFS). You can use the network protocols to communicate with remote computers and servers. You can also use server resources or share, open, and edit files.
Object storage is also built on top of block storage. Object storage is created using an operating system that formats and manages the reading and writing of data to the block storage devices.
The name object storage comes from the primary use of storing the data within a binary object. Unlike file storage, object storage does not differentiate between types of data. The type of data or the file type becomes part of the data's metadata.
An object is made up of a larger set of blocks organized by using a predetermined size. For example, one object storage system uses binary object sizes of 128 megabytes (MB). Smaller files or data are stored at a binary level within the object. Larger data files are stored by spreading the data across multiple objects.
Difference between Object storage and Block Storage with an example
Let's imagine you have an 80-gigabyte video files shooted by Amar on his 14 Pro Max that you're making edit corrections on. To know the best storage class here, we need to understand the difference between object storage and block storage.
Object storage treats any file as a complete, discreet object. Now this is great for documents, and images, and video files that get uploaded and consumed as entire objects, but every time there's a change to the object, you must re-upload the entire file. There are no delta updates.
Block storage breaks those files down to small component parts or blocks. This means, for that 80-gigabyte file, when you make an edit to one scene in the film and save that change, the engine only updates the blocks where those bits live.
If you're making a bunch of micro edits, using EBS, elastic block storage, is the perfect use case. If you were using S3, every time you saved the changes, the system would have to upload all 80 gigabytes, the whole thing, every time.
This means, if you are using complete objects or only occasional changes, S3 is victorious. If you are doing complex read, write, change functions, then, absolutely, EBS is your knockout winner. Your winner depends on your individual workload.
Overview of Storages¶
