Persistent Disk (PD)
Durable, high-performance network block storage attached to Compute Engine and GKE workloads.
Durable, high-performance network block storage attached to Compute Engine and GKE workloads.
What is Persistent Disk (PD)?
Google Cloud Persistent Disk provides durable, high-performance block storage devices that can be attached to Compute Engine VMs and GKE container pods. Because Persistent Disks are networked block devices located on Google's high-speed internal fabric, their lifecycle is completely decoupled from VM instances, allowing you to detach, resize, take point-in-time snapshots, and reattach disks across instances with zero data loss.
Decision Guide: When to Choose This Service
Use Persistent Disk when your VM or GKE Pod requires a standard POSIX filesystem for database engines (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL), operating system boot disks, and applications requiring low block-level I/O latency.
Do NOT use Persistent Disk for shared file storage across hundreds of concurrent VMs (use Filestore/NFS or Cloud Storage) or for unstructured object storage.
Core Architectural Pillars
Standard HDD (`pd-standard`), Balanced SSD (`pd-balanced`), Extreme SSD (`pd-extreme`), and Hyperdisk.
Synchronously replicates block writes across two zones in a region for active-passive automated failover in HA clusters.
Expand disk size on the fly without stopping the VM or detaching the volume.
Incremental differential snapshots backed by GCS; Read-Only or Multi-Writer mode allows multiple VMs to attach simultaneously.