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Chapter 14.
129
Working With Storage
14.1. Storage Overview
CloudPlatform defines two types of storage: primary and secondary. Primary storage can be accessed
by either iSCSI or NFS. Additionally, direct attached storage may be used for primary storage.
Secondary storage is always accessed using NFS or a combination of NFS and object storage.
There is no ephemeral storage in CloudPlatform. All volumes on all nodes are persistent.
14.2. Primary Storage
This section gives concepts and technical details about CloudPlatform primary storage. In addition to
the material in this section, please see:
• For a basic overview, see Section 3.6, “About Primary Storage”.
• For information about how to install and configure primary storage through the CloudPlatform UI,
see Section 8.7, “Adding Primary Storage”.
14.2.1. Best Practices for Primary Storage
• The speed of primary storage will impact guest performance. If possible, choose smaller, higher
RPM drives for primary storage.
• Ensure that nothing is stored on the server. Adding the server to CloudPlatform will destroy any
existing data
14.2.2. Runtime Behavior of Primary Storage
Root volumes are created automatically when a virtual machine is created. Root volumes are deleted
when the VM is destroyed. Data volumes can be created and dynamically attached to VMs (although,
when the Oracle VM hypervisor is used, the VM must be stopped before an additional volume can be
attached). Data volumes are not deleted when VMs are destroyed.
Administrators should monitor the capacity of primary storage devices and add additional primary
storage as needed. See the Advanced Installation Guide.
Administrators add primary storage to the system by creating a CloudPlatform storage pool. Each
storage pool is associated with a cluster.
14.2.3. Hypervisor Support for Primary Storage
The following table shows storage options and parameters for different hypervisors.
VMware
vSphere
Citrix
XenServer
KVM Oracle VM
Format for Disks, Templates,
and Snapshots
VMDK VHD QCOW2 RAW
iSCSI support VMFS Clustered
LVM
Yes, via
Shared
Mountpoint
Yes, via
OCFS2M