BuyVM offers storage slabs for all KVM Slice customers in all locations.

Storage slabs cost $5 per TB and are running on enterprise 7200RPM hard drives with lots of NVME cache.

A storage slab is simply like a extra “hard drive” for your KVM Slice that runs on a different partition.

This guide will help you setup your Storage Slab.

Warning, make sure you follow this correctly or you could risk wiping your boot drive.

Step 1) Enable the slab in the Storage Volumes section on the Stallion.

Step 2) Run fdisk -l to find out what the file system is for that slab.

$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/vda: 20 GiB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x19ed42f3

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/vda1  *        2048 39843455 39841408  19G 83 Linux
/dev/vda2       39843456 41940607  2097152   1G 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Disk /dev/sda: 256 GiB, 274877906944 bytes, 536870912 sectors
Disk model: SLAB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x716cfadf

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type

You should see your boot drive, which we don't have to touch. We want to find the slabs filesystem. For example, on my VPS the filesystem is /dev/sda. You can tell because it's 256 GiB.

Step 3) Run

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda # or whatever filesystem your slab is in

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.33.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help):

Step 4) Type the letter g to create a new GPT partition table.

Step 5) Type the letter n to create a new partition. Use the default partition letter and sectors by pressing enter.

Step 6) You can now quit fdisk by typing the letter w to write the new changes to the slab and quit.

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.33.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help): g
Created a new GPT disklabel (GUID: ECA757E9-5304-594C-A9CA-17E061B2E516).
The old dos signature will be removed by a write command.

Command (m for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-536870878, default 2048): 2048
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-536870878, default 536870878): 536870878 # Set this to your own default by pressing enter.

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux filesystem' and of size 256 GiB.

Command (m for help): w

Step 7) Run fdisk -l again to see what the new partition is.

$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/vda: 20 GiB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x19ed42f3

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/vda1  *        2048 39843455 39841408  19G 83 Linux
/dev/vda2       39843456 41940607  2097152   1G 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Disk /dev/sda: 256 GiB, 274877906944 bytes, 536870912 sectors
Disk model: SLAB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x716cfadf

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1        2048 536870911 536868864  256G 83 Linux

You should be able to see a new partition on the bottom. We want to keep note of the device, for example, mine is /dev/sda1.

Step 8) Now we can mount the slab. Either run

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/slab # FOR TEMPORARY MOUNT

or edit /etc/fstab with your favorite text editor for permanent mount.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/vda1 during installation
UUID=813b9d75-c617-4db0-b0f2-6758d17b31f4 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/vda2 during installation
UUID=a1103972-6b3e-49d1-ac18-d6bf16ea0f68 none            swap    sw              0       0
# Your slab goes here, as always replace /dev/sda1 with your slabs filesystem.
/dev/sda1 /mnt/slab ext4 defaults 0 0

Step 9) Run

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 (or whatever your slab is)

This will format the drive and make it EXT4

Step 10) Run df -h to check if the drive has been correctly formatted. If it has you should be able to see your slab. It will say 0G used for you, but I'm already using my slab.

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            474M     0  474M   0% /dev
tmpfs            98M   11M   88M  11% /run
/dev/vda1        19G   16G  2.4G  87% /
tmpfs           490M     0  490M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           490M     0  490M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1       251G  221G   18G  93% /mnt/slab
tmpfs            98M  4.0K   98M   1% /run/user/0

You can now use your slab for whatever you'd like! Such as storing backups or many other things!