Best Free Block Storage Solutions

QuantaStor is a unified Software-Defined Storage platform designed to scale up and out to make storage management easy while reducing overall enterprise storage costs. With support for all major file, block, and object protocols including iSCSI/FC, NFS/SMB, and S3, QuantaStor storage grids may be configured to address the needs of complex workflows which span sites and datacenters. QuantaStor’s storage grid technology is a built-in federated management system which enables QuantaStor servers to be combined together to simplify management and automation via CLI and REST APIs. The layered architecture of QuantaStor provides solution engineers with unprecedented flexibility and application design options that maximizes workload performance and fault-tolerance for a wide range of storage workloads. QuantaStor includes end-to-end security coverage enabling multi-layer data protection “on the wire” and “at rest” for enterprise and cloud storage deployments.

Google Cloud Platform provides high-performance block storage through Google Cloud Persistent Disks, offering scalable and durable storage for virtual machine instances. These disks are available in different types, such as standard HDD and SSD, to accommodate varying workload demands. New customers can take advantage of $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads, allowing them to explore block storage options and assess how GCP's persistent disks can support their specific use cases. Persistent Disks also offer features like snapshots and automatic replication, which provide extra layers of data protection and recovery options. Additionally, businesses can attach persistent disks to any VM, allowing for flexibility in scaling storage requirements as applications evolve. These persistent storage solutions are fully integrated with GCP's compute services, ensuring fast and reliable access to data.

Simplyblock provides a distributed storage solution for IO-intensive and latency-sensitive container workloads in the cloud, offering an alternative to Elastic Block Storage services. The storage solution enables thin provisioning, encryption, compression, storage virtualization, and more. Ultra-high performance at low TCO, offering available for AWS, fully containerized, deployment. Up to 100x improved cost-to-performance over currently prevailing software-defined storage technologies like Ceph. Start from single node, grow to 255 nodes in a single cluster. Scales safely with zero downtime. Performance scales linearly. Storage entities (logical volumes) are provisioned and attached on cluster-level, no manual configuration required. Drop-in replacement for your current k8s storage solution. Offers easy integration via StorageClass. Write concurrently on multiple containers and nodes via distributed file system support.

DRBD® (Distributed Replicated Block Device) is an open source, software‑based, shared‑nothing block storage replication solution for Linux, designed primarily to deliver high-performance, high‑availability (HA) data services by mirroring local block devices between nodes in real time, either synchronously or asynchronously. Implemented deep in the Linux kernel as a virtual block‑device driver, DRBD ensures local read performance with efficient write‑through replication to peer(s). User‑space utilities like drbdadm, drbdsetup, and drbdmeta enable declarative configuration, metadata management, and administration across installations. Originally built for two‑node HA clusters, DRBD 9.x extends support to multi‑node replication and integration into software‑defined storage (SDS) systems such as LINSTOR, making it suitable for cloud‑native environments.

Enterprise-grade storage wherever your apps are. Cloud Volumes ONTAP enables you to optimize your cloud storage costs and performance while enhancing data protection, security and compliance. Easily calculate your storage costs on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud with Cloud Volumes ONTAP using this free, simplified and easy to navigate calculator.