What is the difference between Boot volume and Block volume?

Question

Do Boot volume refers to disk volume that contains the operating system files? What are the definitions for boot volume and block volume?

Answer 1

Yes, in general boot volumes serve as the operating system disks for the compute instances, and block volumes as data storage, though boot volumes are also a type of block volumes.

Some differences:

• You don't need a block volume to start an instance, but you need a boot volume.
• Block volumes can be detached from running instances, boot volumes can't.

Some more details can be found in the FAQs on block volumes.