Cloud Volumes

SkyPilot supports mounting reattachable network volumes (e.g., GCP Persistent Disks) or temporary instance volumes (e.g., GCP Local SSDs) to a SkyPilot cluster.

Currently, the following volume types are supported:

• GCP

  • Network volumes: Persistent Disks

  • Instance volumes: Local SSDs (temporary)

Use cases

Use volumes for regional storage with high performance. A volume is created in a particular region and can only be attached to instances in the same region.

Use Cloud Buckets for object storage that works across zones, regions, and clouds.

Usage

Volumes are specified using the file_mounts field in a SkyPilot task.

There are three ways to mount volumes:

1. Mount an existing volume

2. Create and mount a new network volume (reattachable)

3. Create and mount a new instance volume (temporary)

Mount existing volume

To mount an existing volume:

1. Ensure the volume exists

2. Specify the volume name using name: volume-name

3. Specify the region or zone in the resources section to match the volume’s location

file_mounts:
  /mnt/path:
    name: volume-name
    store: volume
    persistent: true

resources:
  # Must specify cloud, and region or zone.
  # These need to match the volume's location.
  cloud: gcp
  region: us-central1
  # zone: us-central1-a

Create network volume

To create and mount a new network volume:

1. Specify the volume name using name: volume-name

2. Specify the desired volume configuration (disk_size, disk_tier, etc.)

file_mounts:
  /mnt/path:
    name: new-volume
    store: volume
    persistent: true  # If false, delete the volume when cluster is downed.
    config:
      disk_size: 100  # GiB.

resources:
  # Must specify cloud, and region or zone.
  cloud: gcp
  region: us-central1
  # zone: us-central1-a

SkyPilot will automatically create and mount the volume to the specified path.

Create instance volume

To create and mount a new instance volume (temporary disk; will be lost when the cluster is stopped or terminated):

file_mounts:
  /mnt/path:
    store: volume
    config:
      storage_type: instance

resources:
  # Must specify cloud.
  cloud: gcp

Note that the name and config.disk_size fields are unsupported, and will be ignored even if specified.

SkyPilot will automatically create and mount the volume to the specified path.

Configuration options

Here’s a complete example showing all available configuration options:

file_mounts:
  /mnt/path:
    store: volume

    # Name of the volume to mount.
    #
    # Required for network volume, ignored for instance volume.  If the volume
    # doesn't exist in the specified region, it will be created in the region.
    name: volume-name

    # Source local path.
    #
    # Do not set if no need to sync data from local to volume.  If specified,
    # the data will be synced to the /mnt/path/data directory.
    source: /local/path

    # If set to false, the volume will be deleted when the cluster is downed.
    # Default: false
    persistent: false

    config:
      # Size of the volume in GiB. Ignored for instance volumes.
      disk_size: 100

      # Type of the volume, either 'network' or 'instance'.
      # Default: 'network'
      storage_type: network

      # Tier of the volume, same as `resources.disk_tier`.
      # Default: best
      disk_tier: best

      # Attach mode, either 'read_write' or 'read_only'.
      # Default: read_write
      attach_mode: read_write

See YAML spec for volumes for more details.