Portable Workspaces
Name a directory once. Attach it to a VM, work, and it syncs on a tick — detach it, deploy on a different provider, attach it there, and your files are waiting.
Provider coverage
Offered for VM deployments only — not yet available when deploying JupyterLab, ComfyUI, or a Models template. It also requires Aquanode-managed storage; a bring-your-own bucket has no attach option. Where those two conditions are met, it works across every active marketplace provider (Cudo Compute is retired and excluded from that list).
A directory, not a running box
Create a portable workspace from the console and give it a name. Attach it to a VM deployment and it restores at the workspace's mount path — /workspace by default — with whatever was last synced. While it's attached, the box syncs the directory back on a tick, or on demand with Sync now.
This is a file sync, not a process resume. Attaching a workspace puts your files back on disk. It does not restart whatever was running, reload anything from memory, or pick up a job mid-execution — the box you attach to boots cold and reads what's on disk.
Held by one box at a time — advisory, not a lock
A workspace is attached to at most one running deployment at a time, and the console won't let you attach an already-held workspace to a second deployment without force-detaching it first. That's the normal path.
It's advisory, not an enforced lock. If the box holding a workspace goes unreachable — a network partition, a host outage — rather than cleanly detaching, another box can still attach the same workspace. Both can end up writing into the same underlying repo, and the next restore silently takes whichever sync happened most recently, with no conflict error raised anywhere. Don't rely on it as a safety guarantee against two boxes touching the same files at once.
It only has what was synced
A brand-new workspace that's never been synced restores nothing on first attach — that's expected, not a bug. Force-detaching a workspace to free it from an unreachable box doesn't sync anything first either, so anything changed on that box since its last successful sync isn't in the workspace. If the box holding a workspace has been unreachable for a while, confirm syncing has resumed before you treat the workspace as current — the deployment's Overview tab shows when it last synced.
FAQ
Is this the same as a 'workspace' team?
No. Some Aquanode account settings use "workspace" for a team — a group of people sharing deployments and balance. A portable workspace is unrelated: a named directory of files that follows a VM deployment.
Does attaching a workspace resume my running job?
No. It restores files onto disk at the workspace's mount path as of the last sync. Anything that was running in memory on the previous box — a loaded model, a live process — is not part of that sync and does not resume.
Can two boxes use the same workspace at once?
The console prevents attaching an already-held workspace to a second deployment under normal conditions, but the lease is advisory, not an enforced lock. If a box goes unreachable instead of cleanly detaching, another box can attach the same workspace, and a later restore silently takes whichever sync happened most recently.
Which deployments can attach a portable workspace?
VM deployments, with Aquanode-managed storage selected. It isn't offered yet for JupyterLab, ComfyUI, or Models deploys, and a bring-your-own storage bucket doesn't support attach.
How is this different from a workspace backup?
A workspace backup is a snapshot you explicitly restore onto a deployment you choose. A portable workspace instead auto-restores at attach time and keeps syncing on a tick while it's mounted, without you managing individual restores.
