Virtual Machines

Manage Disks

Attach, detach, and resize virtual disks.

Each VM has a boot disk created during provisioning and can have additional data disks attached at any time. You can add, remove, and resize disks without recreating the VM. Disk management is available from the Disks tab on the VM detail page.

The attach disk form lets you select a storage profile and specify the disk size in gigabytes.

Attach a disk

Add a new data disk to an existing VM. Navigate to the VM's Disks tab and click Attach Disk. You specify the storage profile (which determines the disk tier and I/O limits) and the size in gigabytes.

The new disk appears as a block device inside the VM. You will need to partition, format, and mount it from within the guest OS.

VMs support multiple data disks. Each disk is independently managed. Different disks can use different storage profiles, so you can mix SSD and HDD tiers on the same VM.
After attaching a disk, run lsblk inside the VM to see the new device. On Linux, it typically shows up as /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc.

Detach a disk

Remove a disk from a VM. On the Disks tab, find the disk you want to remove and click Detach.

Detaching a disk destroys the disk and its data. Make sure you have backed up anything important before detaching. Unmount the disk inside the guest OS first to avoid data corruption.
You cannot detach the boot disk. The boot disk is permanently tied to the VM and can only be removed by deleting the VM itself.

Resize a disk

Increase the size of an existing disk. On the Disks tab, click Resize next to the disk you want to grow. Enter the new total size — disk resizing only supports growing. You cannot shrink a disk.

After resizing the virtual disk, you need to extend the filesystem inside the guest OS to use the additional space. For example, on Linux with ext4:

# Grow the partition (if using a partition table)
sudo growpart /dev/sda 1

# Resize the filesystem
sudo resize2fs /dev/sda1
You can resize both boot disks and data disks. Resizing a boot disk is a common way to give a VM more root filesystem space without adding a separate data disk.