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 an NVME cache. A storage slab is simply like an extra hard drive for your KVM Slice.

WARNING, please make sure you follow this guide correctly or you risk wiping your boot drive.

Step 1) Attach the slab to your desired KVM slice in the Storage Volumes section in Stallion.

Step 2) Run fdisk -l to find out what the device path is for the slab you've just attached.

$ 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

In this case, there are 2 drives. One of them is the boot drive which is usually /dev/vda. This is not the device we are looking for. What we're looking for is the newly attached slab's device path. You can usually tell which disk it is because every slab's Disk Model is “SLAB”. In this case, the device path is /dev/sda.

Step 3) Now, you need to create a partition on your slab. Run sudo fdisk /dev/sda to use the fdisk partitioner on /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):

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

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

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 4) Run fdisk -l again to see the new partition you just created (/dev/sda1).

$ fdisk -l
[... your boot drive ...]

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

Step 5) Now, you need to format the slab to have an actual filesystem. The most common filesystem is ext4 so we will be using that in this guide. To create an ext4 filesystem on your slab, run

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

This might take a few seconds depending on the size of your slab.

Step 6) Now you are going to prepare to mount the slab. To do this, you're going to need to run a few commands to figure out the UUID of the device.

First, you need to determine the slab's UUID. You can do that by running:

blkid

In this case, the device you're looking for is /dev/sda1. The line should look like:

/dev/sda1: UUID="1cb43a43-105c-46f1-9d7f-1c736c10ffdf" TYPE="ext4"

Now, you're going to add the slab's UUID to /etc/fstab so your slab will automatically mount when your server is booted. Open up /etc/fstab with your favorite text editor. At the end of the file, you will need to add the following line:

UUID=1cb43a43-105c-46f1-9d7f-1c736c10ffdf /mnt/slab ext4 defaults 0 0

This tells the system that /dev/sda1 (1cb43a43-105c-46f1-9d7f-1c736c10ffdf) should be mounted at /mnt/slab. You can change /mnt/slab to another directory if you'd like.

# /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
#SLAB
UUID=1cb43a43-105c-46f1-9d7f-1c736c10ffdf /mnt/slab ext4 defaults 0 0

Step 7) Creating the mount point

You're almost there! One of the last things you need to do is create the mount point. In this guide, /mnt/slab is being used as the mount point. So, run:

mkdir /mnt/slab/

This will create the directory for the slab to be mounted at and it will be the path you use to access the slab.

Step 8) Mounting the Slab!

mount -a

This will mount the device you just added in /etc/fstab at /mnt/slab/. You can check out the newly mounted slab with df -h.

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
[...]
/dev/sda1       251G  81M   250G 1% /mnt/slab
[...]

To setup your storage slab on Windows you need to make sure that the Slab is attached on the Stallion.

Once you have attached it follow these steps.

1. Go to the Start Menu (Windows logo on the taskbar)
2. Type “Disk Management” and open it
3. You will see a Window that pops up that says “Initialize Disk” and the storage slab should show up as “Disk 1”
4. Select the disk, click GPT and click OK
5. The disk will then show up on Disk Management
6. Right click on the unallocated space where your storage slab is and click “New Simple Volume”.
7. Then go to File Explorer and your slab should show up now.