Difference between disk types

[Bruno Vincent]

Not sure what this means:

• Standard persistent disks (pd-standard) are backed by standard hard disk drives (HDD).
• Balanced persistent disks (pd-balanced) are backed by solid-state drives (SSD). They are an alternative to SSD persistent disks that balance performance and cost.
• SSD persistent disks (pd-ssd) are backed by solid-state drives (SSD).
  
  

Are these disks for backups or what the machine will run on?

I mean, if you look at standard disk, that's HDD, now way you can run a website on that?

Are these backup disks or will the website sit on them?

This is what I HOPE, this means?

-  Standard persistent disks = Website runs on SSD, maybe an NVME, and the backup runs on HDD

-  Balanced persistent disks = Website runs on SSD, maybe an NVME, and the backup runs on an hybrid HDD/SSD

-  SSD persistent disks = Website runs on SSD, maybe an NVME, and the backup runs on an SSD

Can anybody confirm what this actually means?

Thanks

[mghaya...@google.com]

local SSD = locally-attached to the VM, SSD
standard persistent = network-attached, persistent, HDD**
SSD persistent = network-attached, persistent, SSD
Type 1 is lower latency than types 2 and 3, because type 1 is physically attached to the VM.
Type 2 and 3 persist beyond instance stop/delete. Type 1 does not.
Type 2 and 3 are durable/redundant (Google replicates them, like Raid 1). Type 1 is not.
Type 2 and 3 can be attached to multiple VMs simultaneously (in read mode). Type 1 cannot.

You can see more specific data at Storage Options[1], but in summary:

local SSD is the fastest (by far)
SSD persistent has much higher read/write IOPS than standard persistent
SSD persistent is more expensive (4x) than standard persistent

[1] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks