[libvirt] [PATCH 1/1] Add detail to documentation on storage pools and volumes.

Eric Blake eblake at redhat.com
Thu Feb 2 22:26:28 UTC 2012


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 at redhat.com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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