Re: [libvirt] [PATCH 1/1] Add detail to documentation on storage pools and volumes.
On 02/02/2012 03:06 PM, Dave Allan wrote:
The storage pools page contains details about the capabilities of
the
various pool types, but not an overview of how they are intended to be
used. This patch adds some explanation of what pools and volumes can
be used for and why an administrator might want to use them.
---
docs/storage.html.in | 82 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
1 files changed, 79 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
More documentation is always a good thing!
+ <p>
+ Once the pool is started, the files in the NFS share are
+ reported as volumes, and the storage volumes' paths may be
+ queried using the libvirt APIs. The volumes' paths can then be
+ copied into the section of a VM's XML definition describing the
+ source storage for the VM's block devices.
This almost makes it sound like we could use domain XML to refer to
pool='p' volume='v' instead of file='/path/to/p/v'. Someday,
I'd really
like to extend the XML to support that, as well as to extend the notion
of storage pools to create a transient pool for any /path/to/file used
by a domain but not otherwise tied to a pool, so that you can query a
domain for all of its storage volumes. Oh well, that's on my wish list,
and I think your wording is okay as is for now.
+ <p>
+ If at this point the value of pools and volumes over traditional
+ system administration tools is unclear, note that one of the
+ features of libvirt is its remote protocol, so it's possible to
+ manage all aspects of a virtual machine's lifecycle as well as
+ the configuration of the resources required by the VM. These
+ operations can be performed on a remote host entirely within the
+ libvirt API. In other words, a management application using
+ libvirt can enable a user to perform all the required tasks for
+ configuring the host for a VM: allocating resources, running the
+ VM, shutting it down and deallocating the resources, without
+ requiring shell access or any other control channel.
That is indeed true! I love how virt-manager can let me create or
remove files within a pool while connected to a remote connection, but
won't let me browse the remote machine's file system outside of the pool.
ACK, and I'll push this shortly.
--
Eric Blake eblake(a)redhat.com +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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