What is the difference between boot disk and data disk in GCP especially AI platform

Question

I am using the AI platform of GCP. I need to choose the size of a boot disk and a data disk during the creation of the VM instance please see this attached image.

I have 500GB of data to be analysed in the AI platform. Should I choose more than 500GB disk size for both the boot disk and the data disk, OR is it enough to increase only one of the disk sizes (e.g., data disk size to be 500GB)? I am also not sure about the different roles between boot disk and data disk. Thank you.

Answer 1

Boot disk is dedicated to the boot system. 100 GB is generally enough for this task. Data disk can be used to store your data. It depends on the volume of data. However your data disk can store your data, it's not mandatory, it depends on how you store your data. You can also store your data on the boot disk. The boot disk is dependent on the VM whereas the data is not. This is why it is not a best practice.