Chapter 25. Device Mapper Multipathing and Virtual Storage
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 also supports DM-Multipath and virtual storage. Both features are documented in detail in the Red Hat books DM Multipath and Virtualization Administration Guide.
25.1. Virtual Storage
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports the following file systems/online storage methods for virtual storage:
- Fibre Channel
- iSCSI
- NFS
- GFS2
Virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 uses
libvirt to manage virtual instances. The libvirt utility uses the concept of storage pools to manage storage for virtualized guests. A storage pool is storage that can be divided up into smaller volumes or allocated directly to a guest. Volumes of a storage pool can be allocated to virtualized guests. There are two categories of storage pools available:
- Local storage pools
- Local storage covers storage devices, files or directories directly attached to a host. Local storage includes local directories, directly attached disks, and LVM Volume Groups.
- Networked (shared) storage pools
- Networked storage covers storage devices shared over a network using standard protocols. It includes shared storage devices using Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, GFS2, and SCSI RDMA protocols, and is a requirement for migrating guest virtualized guests between hosts.
Important
For comprehensive information on the deployment and configuration of virtual storage instances in your environment, refer to the Virtualization Storage section of the Virtualization guide provided by Red Hat.
