<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <!-- This file is autogenerated from archstorage.html.in Do not edit this file. Changes will be lost. --> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="main.css" /> <link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="32favicon.png" /> <title>libvirt: Storage management architecture</title> <meta name="description" content="libvirt, virtualization, virtualization API" /> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <div id="headerLogo"></div> <div id="headerSearch"> <form action="search.php" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" method="get"><div> <input id="query" name="query" type="text" size="12" value="" /> <input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="Search" /> </div></form> </div> </div> <div id="body"> <div id="menu"> <ul class="l0"><li> <div> <a title="Front page of the libvirt website" class="inactive" href="index.html">Home</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Details of new features and bugs fixed in each release" class="inactive" href="news.html">News</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Get the latest source releases, binary builds and get access to the source repository" class="inactive" href="downloads.html">Downloads</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Information for users, administrators and developers" class="active" href="docs.html">Documentation</a> <ul class="l1"><li> <div> <a title="Information about deploying and using libvirt" class="inactive" href="deployment.html">Deployment</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Overview of the logical subsystems in the libvirt API" class="active" href="intro.html">Architecture</a> <ul class="l2"><li> <div> <a title="Terminology and goals of libvirt API" class="inactive" href="goals.html">Goals</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="The libvirt API concepts" class="inactive" href="api.html">API concepts</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Managing virtual machines" class="inactive" href="archdomain.html">Domains</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Providing isolated networks and NAT based network connectivity" class="inactive" href="archnetwork.html">Network</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <span class="active">Storage</span> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Enumerating host node devices" class="inactive" href="archnode.html">Node Devices</a> </div> </li></ul> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Description of the XML formats used in libvirt" class="inactive" href="format.html">XML format</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Hypervisor specific driver information" class="inactive" href="drivers.html">Drivers</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Reference manual for the C public API" class="inactive" href="html/index.html">API reference</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Bindings of the libvirt API for other languages" class="inactive" href="bindings.html">Language bindings</a> </div> </li></ul> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="User contributed content" class="inactive" href="http://wiki.libvirt.org">Wiki</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Frequently asked questions" class="inactive" href="FAQ.html">FAQ</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="How and where to report bugs and request features" class="inactive" href="bugs.html">Bug reports</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="How to contact the developers via email and IRC" class="inactive" href="contact.html">Contact</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Miscellaneous links of interest related to libvirt" class="inactive" href="relatedlinks.html">Related Links</a> </div> </li><li> <div> <a title="Overview of all content on the website" class="inactive" href="sitemap.html">Sitemap</a> </div> </li></ul> </div> <div id="content"> <h1>Storage management architecture</h1> <p> The storage management APIs are based around 2 core concepts </p> <ol><li> <strong>Volume</strong> - a single storage volume which can be assigned to a guest, or used for creating further pools. A volume is either a block device, a raw file, or a special format file. </li><li> <strong>Pool</strong> - provides a means for taking a chunk of storage and carving it up into volumes. A pool can be used to manage things such as a physical disk, a NFS server, a iSCSI target, a host adapter, an LVM group. </li></ol> <p> These two concepts are mapped through to two libvirt objects, a <code>virStorageVolPtr</code> and a <code>virStoragePoolPtr</code>, each with a collection of APIs for their management. </p> </div> </div> <div id="footer"> <p id="sponsor"> Sponsored by:<br /><a href="http://et.redhat.com/"><img src="et.png" alt="Project sponsored by Red Hat Emerging Technology" /></a></p> </div> </body> </html>