3.5. Storage
Storage for virtual machines is abstracted from the physical storage used by the virtual machine. It is attached to the virtual machine using the paravirtualized or emulated block device drivers.
3.5.1. Storage Pools
A storage pool is a file, directory, or storage device managed by libvirt for the purpose of providing storage to virtual machines. Storage pools are divided into storage volumes that store virtual machine images or are attached to virtual machines as additional storage. Multiple guests can share the same storage pool, allowing for better allocation of storage resources. Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide for more information.
- Local storage pools
- Local storage pools are attached directly to the host server. They include local directories, directly attached disks, physical partitions, and Logical Volume Management (LVM) volume groups on local devices. Local storage pools are useful for development, testing and small deployments that do not require migration or large numbers of virtual machines. Local storage pools may not be suitable for many production environments, because they do not support live migration.
- Networked (shared) storage pools
- Networked storage pools include storage devices shared over a network using standard protocols. Networked storage is required when migrating virtual machines between hosts with virt-manager, but is optional when migrating with
virsh. Networked storage pools are managed by libvirt.
