From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Cole Robinson Subject: Re: docs on storage pools? Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:10:28 -0400 Message-ID: <4AC91D54.9010708@redhat.com> References: <3dab2fd30910021304h639efc0dp677ca0f770e67d0d@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org To: Richard Wurman Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:13883 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758054AbZJDWHr (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Oct 2009 18:07:47 -0400 In-Reply-To: <3dab2fd30910021304h639efc0dp677ca0f770e67d0d@mail.gmail.com> Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Richard Wurman wrote: > So far I've been using files and/or LVM partitions for my VMs -- > basically by using virt-manager and modifying existing XML configs and > just copying my VM files to be reused. > > I'm wondering how KVM storage pools work -- at first I thought it was > something like KVM's version of LVM where you can just dump all your > VMs in one space .. .but it looks like it's really means "different > places you want to store your VMs": > The 'storage pool' concept you're talking about is libvirt functionality, not KVM/QEMU: http://libvirt.org/storage.html > - dir: Filesystem Directory > - disk: Physical Disk Device > - fs: Pre-Formatted Block Device > - iscsi: iSCSI Target > -logical: LVM Volume Group > - netfs: Network exported directory > > I understand things like LVM and storing VMs in a filesystem > directory.. but what real difference is there by going through the > GUI? I suppose nothing. Maybe I'm overthinking this -- it's just a > frontend to where you store your VMs? Exposing storage management through libvirt allows remote storage provisioning, and saves libvirt users (like virt-install and virt-manager) the trouble of knowing all the differing details between creating lvm LVs, disk partitions, raw/qcow2/vmdk images, etc. For desktop virt using raw files for storage, there isn't much need to concern yourself with the concept. Any further questions should be directed to libvirt-list@redhat.com (for libvirt) or virt-tools-list@redhat.com (for virt-manager). - Cole