While nova-volume does not directly use the network, you must have networking set up for Compute prior to configuring the volumes. On Ubuntu, install nova-volume and lvm2. $ apt-get install lvm2 nova-volume On RHEL and derivatives, the nova-volume service should already be installed. Configure Volumes for use with nova-volume The openstack-nova-volume service requires an LVM Volume Group called nova-volumes to exist. If you do not already have LVM volumes on hand, but have free drive space, you will need to create a LVM volume before proceeding. Here is a short run down of how you would create a LVM from free drive space on your system. Start off by issuing an fdisk command to your drive with the free space: $ fdisk /dev/sda Once in fdisk, perform the following commands: Press n to create a new disk partition, Press p to create a primary disk partition, Press 1 to denote it as 1st disk partition, Either press ENTER twice to accept the default of 1st and last cylinder – to convert the remainder of hard disk to a single disk partition -OR- press ENTER once to accept the default of the 1st, and then choose how big you want the partition to be by specifying +size[K,M,G] e.g. +5G or +6700M. Press t and select the new partition that you have created. Press 8e change your new partition to 8e, i.e. Linux LVM partition type. Press p to display the hard disk partition setup. Please take note that the first partition is denoted as /dev/sda1 in Linux. Press w to write the partition table and exit fdisk upon completion. Refresh your partition table to ensure your new partition shows up, and verify with fdisk. We then inform the OS about the table partition update: $ partprobe $ fdisk -l You should see your new partition in this listing. Here is how you can set up partitioning during the OS install to prepare for this nova-volume configuration: root@osdemo03:~# fdisk -l Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 12158 97280 83 Linux /dev/sda2 12158 24316 97655808 83 Linux /dev/sda3 24316 24328 97654784 83 Linux /dev/sda4 24328 42443 145507329 5 Extended /dev/sda5 24328 32352 64452608 8e Linux LVM /dev/sda6 32352 40497 65428480 8e Linux LVM /dev/sda7 40498 42443 15624192 82 Linux swap / Solaris Now that you have identified a partition has been labeled for LVM use, perform the following steps to configure LVM and prepare it as nova-volumes. You must name your volume group ‘nova-volumes’ or things will not work as expected: $ pvcreate /dev/sda5 $ vgcreate nova-volumes /dev/sda5