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8.2. Preparing and Adding NFS Storage

8.2.1. Preparing NFS Storage

Set up NFS shares that will serve as storage domains on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

Note

The export storage domain is deprecated. Storage data domains can be unattached from a data center and imported to another data center in the same environment, or in a different environment. Virtual machines, floating virtual disks, and templates can then be uploaded from the imported storage domain to the attached data center. See Section 8.7, “Importing Existing Storage Domains” for information on importing storage domains.

For information on the setup and configuration of NFS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, see Network File System (NFS) in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Storage Administration Guide or Network File System (NFS) in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Storage Administration Guide.

Specific system user accounts and system user groups are required by Red Hat Virtualization so the Manager can store data in the storage domains represented by the exported directories.

Configuring the Required System User Accounts and System User Groups

  1. Create the group kvm:

    # groupadd kvm -g 36
  2. Create the user vdsm in the group kvm:

    # useradd vdsm -u 36 -g 36
  3. Set the ownership of your exported directories to 36:36, which gives vdsm:kvm ownership:

    # chown -R 36:36 /exports/data
    # chown -R 36:36 /exports/export
    # chown -R 36:36 /exports/iso
  4. Change the mode of the directories so that read and write access is granted to the owner, and so that read and execute access is granted to the group and other users:

    # chmod 0755 /exports/data
    # chmod 0755 /exports/export
    # chmod 0755 /exports/iso

For more information on the required system users and groups see Appendix F, System Accounts.

8.2.2. Attaching NFS Storage

Attach NFS storage domains to the data center in your Red Hat Virtualization environment. These storage domains provide storage for virtual disks (data domain) and ISO boot media (ISO domain). This procedure assumes that you have already exported shares. You must create the data domain before creating the ISO and export domains. Use the same procedure to create the ISO and export domains, selecting ISO or Export from the Domain Function list.

  1. In the Administration Portal, click StorageDomains.
  2. Click New Domain.
  3. Enter a Name for the storage domain.
  4. Accept the default values for the Data Center, Domain Function, Storage Type, Format, and Use Host lists.
  5. Enter the Export Path to be used for the storage domain. The export path should be in the format of 123.123.0.10:/data (for IPv4), [2001:0:0:0:0:0:0:5db1]:/data (for IPv6), or domain.example.com:/data.
  6. Optionally, you can configure the advanced parameters:

    1. Click Advanced Parameters.
    2. Enter a percentage value into the Warning Low Space Indicator field. If the free space available on the storage domain is below this percentage, warning messages are displayed to the user and logged.
    3. Enter a GB value into the Critical Space Action Blocker field. If the free space available on the storage domain is below this value, error messages are displayed to the user and logged, and any new action that consumes space, even temporarily, will be blocked.
    4. Select the Wipe After Delete check box to enable the wipe after delete option. This option can be edited after the domain is created, but doing so will not change the wipe after delete property of disks that already exist.
  7. Click OK.

The new NFS data domain has a status of Locked until the disk is prepared. The data domain is then automatically attached to the data center.

8.2.3. Increasing NFS Storage

To increase the amount of NFS storage, you can either create a new storage domain and add it to an existing data center, or increase the available free space on the NFS server. For the former option, see Section 8.2.2, “Attaching NFS Storage”. The following procedure explains how to increase the available free space on the existing NFS server.

Increasing an Existing NFS Storage Domain

  1. Click StorageDomains.
  2. Click the NFS storage domain’s name to open the details view.
  3. Click the Data Center tab and click Maintenance to place the storage domain into maintenance mode. This unmounts the existing share and makes it possible to resize the storage domain.
  4. On the NFS server, resize the storage. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 systems, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Storage Administration Guide. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 systems, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Storage Administration Guide.
  5. In the details view, click the Data Center tab and click Activate to mount the storage domain.