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Managing a Block Storage volume

Reviewed on 23 November 2023 • Published on 29 November 2019

This documentation only explains how to mount additional block volumes to your Instance, as the root volume of your Instance is already mounted at creation.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

  • A Scaleway account logged into the console
  • Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
  • An SSH key
  • An Instance with an additional Block Storage volume attached to it

Mounting and using a Block Storage volume

In order to mount and use your Block Storage volume, you need to connect to the Instance it is attached to via SSH. Then, check that the volume is available, format it and mount it, following the instructions below.

Verifying device availability

  1. Connect to your Instance with ssh. 
    ssh root@<your_instance_ip>
  2. Use the lsblk command to make sure your block volume is available: 
    lsblk

You should see an output like the following. You can see your block volume named sda with the chosen storage size.

root@scw-festive-agnesi:~# lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda       8:0    0 23.3G  0 disk
vda     252:0    0 18.6G  0 disk
├─vda1  252:1    0 18.5G  0 part /
└─vda15 252:15   0  100M  0 part /boot/efi
Note

The Scaleway ecosystem uses GB to define storage sizes and not GiB as the default on linux.

Formatting the Block volume

  1. Create a filesystem with the following command. This command uses the ext4 filesystem, though you can choose another if you prefer. 
    mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda
  2. Make sure your filesystem is correctly created by running the lsblk -f command. 
    lsblk -f

You should see an output like the following. Check that the FSTYPE field matches ext4 for your Block volume.

root@scw-festive-agnesi:~# lsblk -f
NAME    FSTYPE LABEL UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda     ext4         925c2c17-ca8c-493a-a9cd-b475d87fd276
vda
├─vda1  ext4   root  8509fe04-d91c-410a-9087-c5d34537d3ae /
└─vda15 vfat         B3E7-7040                            /boot/efi

Mounting the Block volume

Once you have created your filesystem, you need to mount it.

  1. Create the mount point. In this tutorial, we choose /mnt/block-volume.

    mkdir /mnt/block-volume

  2. Mount the volume. We recommend that you use the defaults option, as in the command below.

    mount -o defaults /dev/sda /mnt/block-volume
        **defaults**
              Use  the  default  options: **rw**, **suid**, **dev**,
              **exec**, **auto**, **nouser**, and **async**.

    If you want to see all available options, you can run man mount on your Instance.

  3. Make sure your filesystem is properly mounted by running the lsblk command.

    lsblk

    You should see an output like the following. Check the MOUNTPOINT field.

    root@scw-festive-agnesi:~# lsblk
    NAME    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
    sda       8:0    0 23.3G  0 disk /mnt/block-volume
    vda     252:0    0 18.6G  0 disk
    ├─vda1  252:1    0 18.5G  0 part /
    └─vda15 252:15   0  100M  0 part /boot/efi

Using fstab for Persistent Mounting

With the current configuration, the block device will not be mounted automatically upon reboot. Use the fstab file to make sure the reboot does not impact your filesystem.

Add this line to the /etc/fstab file of your Instance:

echo "UUID=$(blkid --output value /dev/sda | head -n1) /mnt/block-volume ext4 defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

Transferring data from your local machine to the remote Block volume

You may wish to transfer files from your local machine to your Instance’s remote Block volume. This can be simply achieved with rsync, a tool for efficiently transferring and copying files. The rsync utility is pre-installed on most Linux distributions and macOS.

  1. Check that rsync is installed on your local machine with the following command:

    rsync --version

    You should see an output similar to the following:

    rsync  version 3.1.3  protocol version 31
    Copyright (C) 1996-2018 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
    Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/
    Capabilities:
        64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
        socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace,
        append, ACLs, xattrs, iconv, symtimes, prealloc
    rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you
    are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  See the GNU
    General Public Licence for details.
    Tip

    If you get a command not found output (or similar), you need to install rsync. On Linux Ubuntu and Debian systems, you can do this with the APT package tool using the command sudo apt install rsync. For Linux CentOS/ Fedora, use the YUM package manager: sudo yum install rsync. On Mac OSX with the Homebrew package manager, use brew install rsync.

  2. On your local machine, use nano to create a file called hello-world.txt:

    nano hello-world.txt

    Enter the text Hello World!, then save and exit the file.

  3. Enter the following command to transfer the file to your Instance’s mounted block volume. Ensure that you use your own Instance’s IP address:

    rsync -a hello-world-2.txt root@<your.IP.address.here>:/mnt/block-volume

The file is now transferred. You can connect to your Instance again, and use the command cd /mnt/block-volume ; ls to check that the file appears in the directory.

Increasing the partition size of the volume

Tip

We recommend that you make a backup of your data using the snapshot feature, before increasing the partition size of your volume. This helps you avoid any potential data loss.

  1. Connect to your Instance using SSH.

  2. Use the lsblk command to identify your Block Storage volume’s mount point. In the following example the volume is mounted at /mnt/block-volume:

    root@scw-distracted-keldysh:~# lsblk
    NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
    loop0     7:0    0  63.3M  1 loop /snap/core20/1852
    loop1     7:1    0 111.9M  1 loop /snap/lxd/24322
    loop2     7:2    0  49.8M  1 loop /snap/snapd/18596
    sda       8:0    0   9.3G  0 disk
    ├─sda1    8:1    0   9.2G  0 part /
    ├─sda14   8:14   0     4M  0 part
    └─sda15   8:15   0   106M  0 part /boot/efi

  3. Use growpart to increase the partition size of your block storage volume (here /dev/sdb1):

    growpart /dev/sdX 1
    Tip

    Take note of the space between the device identifier and the partition number.

  4. Increase the partition size of the volume using resize2fs. Replace /dev/sdX with the name of your block volume in the following command:

    resize2fs -p /dev/sdX1

  5. Check the new block volume size using lsblk:

    root@scw-distracted-keldysh:~# lsblk
    NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
    loop0     7:0    0  63.3M  1 loop /snap/core20/1852
    loop1     7:1    0 111.9M  1 loop /snap/lxd/24322
    loop2     7:2    0  49.8M  1 loop /snap/snapd/18596
    sda       8:0    0  18.6G  0 disk
    ├─sda1    8:1    0  18.5G  0 part /
    ├─sda14   8:14   0     4M  0 part
    └─sda15   8:15   0   106M  0 part /boot/efi
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