Cluster storage configuration

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Configuring storage settings

You must be a database or organization administrator to modify these settings. Adjusting these settings may incur additional charges. To learn more about pricing for storage, see pricing.

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Disk configuration

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Disk size

Configure the minimum disk size for your database cluster. This setting determines the initial storage capacity allocated to your database. The disk size is specified in GB and serves as the baseline storage allocation for your cluster.

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Enable autoscaling

When enabled, autoscaling automatically increases storage when your database approaches a disk size utilization threshold, preventing storage-related outages without manual intervention. Autoscaling will grow the cluster’s storage without you needing to make any configuration changes or updates to the configuration of the database cluster. The new additional space will become available as soon as the scaling action has completed.

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Autoscaling thresholds and behaviors

Disk size utilization thresholds

Volume size	% used
< 4 TiB	70%
> 4 TiB	90%

Key behaviors of PlanetScale’s storage autoscaling:

• Cluster storage can only scale once in a multi-hour period
• Cluster storage scales proportionally based on current size
  • Smaller disks receive larger percentage increases, while larger disks receive smaller percentage increases
• All disks grow by a minimum of 50% when autoscaling occurs
• If you need to scale cluster storage by more than 200% within 24 hours, manually scale disk size ahead of time
• Autoscaling will not scale past your configured Storage limit

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Surge resizes

Cloud providers like AWS and GCP limit how frequently network-attached disks can be resized. In both cases, there is a multi-hour cooldown period between resizing operations. Also, these volumes typically do not support shrinking. When our disk auto-scaler is able to spread out disk scale-up sufficiently, no downtime is needed to scale the disks. This is true in the vast majority of cases. When data growth is rapid, the auto-scaler may need to complete a surge resize to support the writes. In this case, PlanetScale creates brand new, larger network-attached storage volumes to replace the old ones. If the surge autoscaler is able to complete the resize before your disk fills, downtime will be minimal for growing the disk (seconds). If your disk fills before the new disks are ready, you will experience a longer period of downtime. We make every effort to keep your network-attached storage disk from filling, but it’s important for the database administrators to pay close attention to storage and take manual intervention when necessary.

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Storage limit

The storage limit sets the maximum amount of storage that can be allocated to your database cluster through autoscaling. This acts as a ceiling to prevent unlimited storage growth and helps control costs. When autoscaling is enabled, your storage can grow from the minimum disk size up to the storage limit you specify. The storage limit should be set higher than your initial disk size to allow for growth while providing a reasonable upper bound for your storage costs.

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IOPS

Configure the maximum input/output operations per second for your database. This will be limited by your database cluster size and disk size.

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Storage volume type and IOPS

Storage type	Default IOPS	Maximum IOPS
AWS gp3	3000	16,000 (at 32GB or larger disk size)

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Bandwidth

The maximum amount of data that can be read or written to your database in a single second. This will be limited by your database cluster size and configured IOPS.

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Storage volume type and bandwidth

Storage type	Default bandwidth	Maximum bandwidth
AWS gp3	125 MiB/s	1,000 MiB/s (at 4,000 IOPS or higher)

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Storage throughput limits

For databases created on AWS-based clusters the maximum configurable throughput your cluster can support is based on CPU architecture and cluster size.

CPU Architecture	Cluster Size	Maximum Throughput (in MiB/s)
AWS x86-64	PS-DEV, PS-10, PS-20, PS-40, PS-80, PS-160, PS-320, PS-640, PS-1280, PS-2560	1000
AWS aarch64/ARM64	PS-DEV, PS-10, PS-20, PS-40, PS-80, PS-160, PS-320, PS-640, PS-1280	593
AWS aarch64/ARM64	PS-2560	1000

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Monthly storage cost

Displays the estimated monthly cost for your current storage configuration. If you adjust your storage configuration the number shown represents the new monthly estimate for the configured values. Billing for storage changes begins once the storage change has completed.

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Tracking changes to storage settings

You can click on the “Changes” tab on the Cluster configuration page to view a log of any changes made to your storage settings. The log will include the settings affected, the original and updated values, status, user that made the changes, start time, and end time.

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Need help?

Get help from the PlanetScale Support team, or join our GitHub discussion board to see how others are using PlanetScale.