Network block device

As an example, a local machine can access a hard disk drive that is attached to another computer.

[1] In 2011 the protocol was revised, formally documented, and is now developed as a collaborative open standard.

Network block device servers are typically implemented as a userspace program running on a general-purpose computer.

All of the function specific to network block device servers can reside in a userspace process because the process communicates with the client via conventional sockets and accesses the storage via a conventional file system interface.

The network block device client module is available on Unix-like operating systems, including Linux.