openstack-manuals/doc/config-reference/compute/section_compute-configure-backing-storage.xml
Shilla Saebi 177c61c3f2 Cleaned up section_compute-configure-backing-storage
Fixed typo, removed "s"
disk should not be plural, changed from disks to disk

Change-Id: I7e0d0fdb89e26f4b3a08a4ab6251476c08220be1
2013-12-11 23:47:14 -05:00

35 lines
1.8 KiB
XML

<section xml:id="section_configure-backing-storage"
version="5.0"
xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
xmlns:ns5="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:ns4="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:ns3="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"
xmlns:ns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook">
<title>Configure Compute backing storage</title>
<para>Backing Storage is the storage used to provide
the expanded operating system image, and any ephemeral storage.
Inside the virtual machine, this is normally presented as two
virtual hard disks (for example, /dev/vda and /dev/vdb respectively).
However, inside OpenStack, this can be derived from one of three
methods: LVM, QCOW or RAW, chosen using the
<literal>libvirt_images_type</literal> option in <filename>nova.conf</filename>
on the compute node.</para>
<para>QCOW is the default backing store. It uses a copy-on-write philosophy to
delay allocation of storage until it is actually needed. This means that the
space required for the backing of an image can be significantly less on the real
disk than what seems available in the virtual machine operating system.
</para>
<para>RAW creates files without any sort of file formatting, effectively creating
files with the plain binary one would normally see on a real disk. This can
increase performance, but means that the entire size of the virtual disk is
reserved on the physical disk.
</para>
<para>Local <link xlink:href="http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux)">LVM volumes</link>
can also be used.
Set <literal>libvirt_images_volume_group=nova_local</literal> where <literal>nova_local</literal> is the name
of the LVM group you have created.
</para>
</section>