openstack-manuals/doc/config-reference/compute/section_compute-configure-backing-storage.xml
Diane Fleming b417259465 Update headings plus edits for consistency and clarity in Config Reference
Partial-Bug: #1250515

author: diane fleming

Change-Id: I92c9ad25ee5bbd2c9334c4860637faa1b358718b
backport: havana
2013-11-19 12:44:14 -06:00

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 disks. 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>