CompTIA Cloud+ (CV0-004)Cloud ArchitectureHard
A financial institution is building a new application that processes real-time stock market data. This application requires extremely low-latency access to frequently updated data and high I/O operations per second (IOPS). The data does not need to persist beyond the lifespan of the processing instance. Which storage tier is most suitable for this use case?
- AFile Storage
- BArchival Storage
- CBlock Storage
- DObject Storage
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Block Storage
Block storage provides raw, unformatted storage volumes that can be attached to compute instances, offering the lowest latency and highest IOPS performance, making it ideal for databases, high-performance computing, and temporary, high-speed data processing where data persistence is tied to the instance or managed separately.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. File storage (NFS/SMB) provides shared access and hierarchical organization but generally has higher latency and lower IOPS compared to block storage for direct application access.
- B. Archival storage is designed for long-term retention of infrequently accessed data, with high latency and low cost, unsuitable for real-time processing.
- D. Object storage is highly scalable and cost-effective but typically optimized for large, unstructured data with higher latency than block storage, not ideal for high IOPS.
Block Storage
A type of data storage that divides data into uniformly sized blocks, each with a unique address. These blocks can be accessed as independent hard drives and are typically attached to virtual machines, offering high performance and low latency.
- Presented as raw, unformatted volumes to an OS
- High performance, low latency, high IOPS
- Ideal for databases, OS volumes, transactional workloads
- Examples: AWS EBS, Azure Disk Storage, Google Persistent Disk
Memory trick: Block is fast, Object is vast, File is shared.