What is persistent local storage?

As discussed in the Storage docs, our virtual machines come with up to 30 TB of local direct attached storage (DAS) . This local storage is ideal for caching model checkpoints and training datasets to minimize IO bottlenecks. For on-demand usage, DAS volumes are always ephemeral. Users are responsible for formatting, mounting, and syncing data to these volumes. DAS volumes are erased when virtual machines are stopped, requiring any valuable data to be backed up to our network attached storage (NAS) volumes. For reserved capacity, users can configure persistent direct attached storage (PDAS) and optionally request the volume be automatically formatted and mounted. The data on these volumes will be preserved across instances stops and restarts. However, this will also pin your virtual machine to the reserved host machine where the DAS is located.