Block storage usually means a dedicated SAN, a separate silo from the rest of your infrastructure. VAST removes that requirement. In this hands-on lab, you'll create, attach, and format an NVMe/TCP volume on a Linux host, served from the same platform that already handles your files and objects. You'll configure multipathing and load balancing across CNodes, then run a quick benchmark to confirm the volume performs as expected. Then you'll bring the same capability to Kubernetes with the VAST CSI driver: define a StorageClass, dynamically provision a block PersistentVolumeClaim, and mount it in a pod. You'll compare the CSI-provisioned volume against your manually configured one, so you leave with a practical foundation for deploying block storage on VAST, both by hand and through automated, declarative workflows.