[marcstreeter]

The purpose of the block storage in this instance isn't about giving your vm/droplet more space. It's separation. That way any data that's on that device can be attached to another vm/droplet. It probably would be more cost effective just to upgrade the vm/droplet if space were a concern. It's at least how we've marketed the same feature for the past year or two via Codero's portal. Not to say I don't like how DO has entered the space: keeping it simple.

[walkertraylor]

Exactly! It's about having an easy upgrade path, generally reducing the amount of work for common operations, and for more flexibility engineering your cloud architecture. It's nice that it happens to be SSD, but highest performance or lowest cost per GB isn't necessarily the only cost saving factor.

This a main reason I still use Amazon AWS: I can create an instance and if it doesn't perform, upgrade it until it does. Then when I'm finished, kill the instance and save the volume. Next time I need it, just create the instance for the job, perhaps at spot pricing, then kill it again.

[drtse4]

What you describe was already possible on DO using snapshots (that can be stored for free), and that's what I usually do too.