Data Disks¶

The Data Disks tab (press 2 or Tab) manages persistent disks that live independently of your VMs. Keep datasets, results, and anything else you can't afford to lose on a data disk — destroying a VM never touches them.

Why data disks¶

vmup VMs are designed to be disposable: spin one up for a job, destroy it when done. The boot disk dies with the VM. A data disk persists across that cycle — destroy the VM on Friday, launch a bigger one on Monday, attach the same disk, and your data is right where you left it.

The disk list¶

Disks are listed with their name, zone, type, size, status, and which VMs they're attached to. Navigation, filtering (/), and refresh (R) work exactly like the instance list.

vmup - 1.6.2 - GCP Instance Manager

 1 Instances 2 Data Disks                             refreshed 3:04:05 PM

  Disk Name        Project          Size     Zone            Type          Status     Attached To
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> reference-data   my-gcp-project   100 GB   us-central1-a   pd-balanced   READY      rstudio-demo
  scratch-disk     my-gcp-project   50 GB    us-central1-a   pd-ssd        READY      —
  archive-disk     my-gcp-project   500 GB   us-central1-a   pd-standard   CREATING   —
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

  Disk Name:   reference-data
  Zone:        us-central1-a
  Type:        pd-balanced
  Size:        100 GB
  Status:      READY
  Attached To: rstudio-demo

  ↑/↓/←/→ navigate • : command • / filter • r refresh • ? help

Disk operations¶

Key	Action	Notes
`N`	Create	New persistent disk: name, project, zone, type, size
`Shift`+`I`	Import	Bring an existing GCP disk under vmup management
`E`	Resize	Grow a disk (GCP disks cannot shrink)
`A`	Attach	Attach to a running VM and mount it
`D`	Detach	Detach from one VM, or from all VMs at once
`Shift`+`D`	Delete	Two-step confirmation; only possible while detached

Creating a disk¶

Press N on the Data Disks tab. You choose:

Disk type — pd-standard (cheapest), pd-balanced (default), or pd-ssd (fastest)
Size — default 50 GB; you can grow it later with E
Zone — a disk can only attach to VMs in the same zone

vmup provisions the disk with Terraform and formats it on first attach.

Create New Data Disk

  Disk Name
  Must be lowercase, no underscores
  reference-data▎          

  Project ID
  GCP project to create the disk in
  my-gcp-project           

  Zone
  us-central1-a            

  Disk Type
  pd-balanced (Balanced SSD) ▼

  Disk Size (GB)
  Minimum 10 GB
  100                      

  ✓ Submit  Cancel

  esc/ctrl+c cancel

Attaching and mounting¶

Press A from either tab — attach a disk to the selected VM, or a VM to the selected disk. vmup attaches the disk, formats it if it's brand new, and mounts it at your chosen mount path on the VM.

A disk can be attached to multiple VMs in read-only mode, which is handy for sharing a reference dataset across a fleet of workers. Read-write attachment is exclusive to one VM.

Attach Disk to: rstudio-demo

  Project: my-gcp-project • Zone: us-central1-a

  Disk
  Select a managed data disk to attach
  reference-data (100 GB, pd-balanced) ▼

  Mode
  Read/Write is exclusive to one VM. Read-Only allows multiple VMs to share.
  Read-Only (shareable across VMs) ▼

  Mount after attaching?
  (•) Yes, configure mount
  ( ) No, attach only

  Mount Point
  Directory path where the disk will be mounted
  /mnt/disks/reference-data

  ✓ Submit  Cancel

  esc/ctrl+c cancel

For brand-new (unformatted) disks attached read-write, the mount step also offers a Format disk? choice (ext4 or xfs) and an owner for the mount point.

Detaching¶

Press D to detach — from a single VM or from all VMs at once. Detach before deleting a disk or destroying its zone's resources.

Attachment status from the Instances tab¶

The instance detail pane shows attached data disks, and the attach/detach keys (A/D) work from the Instances tab too, operating on the selected VM.

Disks survive everything except Shift+D on the disk itself

Stopping, restarting, even destroying VMs leaves data disks intact. The only way to lose one is to explicitly delete it from the Data Disks tab — which requires it to be detached and asks you to type its name to confirm.