Volume

A volume represents a logical area on that storage device. Any data that is stored on a volume is persisted until it is erased from the volume.

A volume must be mounted on a virtual machine for it to be accessible within the guest operating system of that VM.

A volume can be created from a volume snapshot, another volume, an image, or as an empty / blank volume. Volumes can be bootable or non-bootable. A bootable volume can be used to boot a VM from the persistent data store.

Volume Type

A volume type enables you to define a class of block storage for your Private Cloud Director environment. A volume type has following properties:

• Name - A descriptive name for the type

• Storage drive - The driver for the storage that you are creating this volume type for.

• Key - value metadata - This key-value metadata corresponds to specific properties for your storage that you'd like to configure as part of defining this storage type. Any new volume create using this storage type on this storage device will get the respective properties applied to it. For eg, the key-value metadata may represent QoS attributes, replication configuration etc. Each vendor has a specific schema that represents supported key value attributes you can configure. You can refer to the OpenStack Cinder driver configuration guide for your specific storage provider to find a detailed list of supported key-value attributes.

Volume Resize

You can resize a block storage volume regardless of whether its in use. Read the Resize a volume tutorial to see steps to resize a volume.

Storage Live Migration / Volume Retyping

You can live migrate in-use storage volumes both on the same underlying block storage backend as well as across different block storage backends using storage live migration or volume retyping feature.

Using the PCD UI, navigate to volumes menu. Then select the volume you'd like to migrate and choose the option 'Retype' from the Actions menu. This will present to you a dialog box which will provide options to switch the volume to a different storage type. Under the hood the volume will be live migrated from current storage backend to the new destination backend.

Log Files

See Log Files for locations of important log files, including the storage service logs.