What is a characteristic of block volumes in OCI?

Block volumes in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) are designed to offer high performance and low-latency storage solutions suitable for a variety of workloads. This high throughput capability makes them ideal for I/O-intensive applications such as databases, big data analytics, and enterprise applications. They can handle heavy workloads efficiently, ensuring that applications requiring quick access to data can operate smoothly and effectively.

The other characteristics associated with block volumes highlight some limitations that do not apply to them. For instance, while it's true that block volumes are often deployed within a single availability domain for purpose of performance, their design allows for replication across multiple availability domains, enhancing availability. Additionally, block volumes can be used with a range of applications beyond just Oracle databases, supporting various operating systems and other application types. Lastly, block volumes can indeed be backed up. Oracle provides functionalities to create snapshots of block volumes, which can then be used for recovery and backup purposes.

Overall, the ability to provide high throughput is a definitive characteristic of block volumes, making them a suitable choice for demanding applications within OCI.