Storage pools explained

What a storage pool is

A storage pool is a named pool of storage capacity that virtual disks are allocated from.

• Every virtual disk — and therefore every VM that has disks — is placed on a storage pool.
• Each pool has a guaranteed size and tracks how much of that capacity is currently used.
• Storage pools are tenant-scoped: each account manages its own pools within its own account.
• Pools are managed under Compute → Storage Pools, where overview cards show each pool’s guarantee, available GB, and percentage used.

Guaranteed vs available capacity

A pool’s capacity is expressed as a guarantee, and what remains is its available capacity.

• The guarantee is the amount of storage reserved for the pool, in whole GB.
• Available capacity is the guarantee minus what is already allocated to disks on the pool.
• A new or resized disk cannot exceed the pool’s available capacity, and disk sizes can be increased later but never reduced.
• The percentage-used indicator rises as disks are placed, helping you plan before a pool fills up.

How placement works

You choose which pool a disk lives on when you create it.

• When you add a disk (on its own under Compute → Disks, or while creating a VM), you select the storage pool it is placed on.
• The disk consumes capacity from that pool for its whole life; deleting the disk frees the capacity back to the pool.
• Because placement is per-disk, a single VM can have disks on different pools.

Tenant scope and quotas

Storage pools are tenant-scoped — a tenant sets up and manages its own pools; the parent’s control is exercised through the storage quota, not by creating pools for the tenant.

• Each account manages its own storage pools, so within a tenant the pools are created and maintained by the tenant, not assigned down by the parent.
• The parent governs how much a tenant can consume through the tenant’s storage quota — a guaranteed number of GB, optionally billed pay-as-you-go (PAYG).
• A storage quota left at 0 or unset means unlimited, bounded only by the parent’s own remaining capacity.
• A disk draws against both its pool’s available capacity and the tenant’s storage quota.
• See Quotas explained (click here) for the concept and the Quotas reference (click here) for the exact dimensions and units.

For the step-by-step of creating and managing pools, see the Storage Pools (click here) feature guide.