Drives for Vercel Sandbox are now in public beta

The introduction of Drives in Vercel Sandbox allows developers to maintain persistence of data across multiple sandbox sessions. Drives can be mounted as directories, enabling the reuse of datasets and models, which is particularly beneficial for complex applications that require consistent data access.

Each Drive has a maximum size of 1 TiB by default (1 GiB on Hobby) and can be configured up to 16 TiB, with the option for higher limits available upon request. This flexibility allows teams to scale their storage needs according to their project requirements, but understanding the cost implications is crucial for budgeting.

While Drives can enhance collaboration by permitting multiple sandboxes to access the same data, it’s important to note that only one sandbox can write to a Drive at a time. Subsequent sandboxes can only access read-only snapshots of the Drive, which means developers must carefully manage how and when data is written to ensure everyone has the latest information.

Pricing for Drives is determined by the amount of storage used, along with the number of reads and writes. For example, in the iad1 region, storage costs $0.05 per GB-month, which can add up quickly, especially for larger projects. Understanding these costs will help engineers optimize their usage while balancing performance and budget constraints.

Drives must remain within the same region as the sandbox in which they were created, limiting failover options. This region restriction means that engineers should be mindful of their geographical deployment strategy when utilizing Drives for their projects.