The OpenStack Shared File Systems service (openstack-manila) provides the means to easily provision shared file systems that can be consumed by multiple instances. In the past, OpenStack users needed to manually deploy shared file systems before mounting them on instances. The OpenStack Shared File Systems service, on the other hand, allows users to easily provision shares from a pre-configured storage pool, ready to be mounted securely. This pool, in turn, can be independently managed and scaled to meet demand.

This release includes a technology preview of the necessary driver for Red Hat CephFS (namely, manila.share.drivers.cephfs.cephfs_native.CephFSNativeDriver). This driver allows the Shared File System service to use CephFS as a back end.

While you can manually configure the Shared File System service by directly editing its node’s /etc/manila/manila.conf file, any settings can be overwritten by the Red Hat OpenStack Platform director in future overcloud updates. As such, the recommended method for configuring a Shared File System back end is through the director. Doing so involves writing a custom environment file.

With this release, the director can now deploy the Shared File System with a CephFS back end on the overcloud. This document explains how to do so.