5 :title: Storage: Directory
8 Storage pool type: `dir`
10 {pve} can use local directories or locally mounted shares for
11 storage. A directory is a file level storage, so you can store any
12 content type like virtual disk images, containers, templates, ISO images
15 NOTE: You can mount additional storages via standard linux `/etc/fstab`,
16 and then define a directory storage for that mount point. This way you
17 can use any file system supported by Linux.
19 This backend assumes that the underlying directory is POSIX
20 compatible, but nothing else. This implies that you cannot create
21 snapshots at the storage level. But there exists a workaround for VM
22 images using the `qcow2` file format, because that format supports
25 TIP: Some storage types do not support `O_DIRECT`, so you can't use
26 cache mode `none` with such storages. Simply use cache mode
29 We use a predefined directory layout to store different content types
30 into different sub-directories. This layout is used by all file level
34 [width="100%",cols="d,m",options="header"]
35 |===========================================================
37 |VM images |`images/<VMID>/`
38 |ISO images |`template/iso/`
39 |Container templates |`template/cache/`
40 |Backup files |`dump/`
41 |===========================================================
47 This backend supports all common storage properties, and adds an
48 additional property called `path` to specify the directory. This
49 needs to be an absolute file system path.
51 .Configuration Example (`/etc/pve/storage.cfg`)
59 Above configuration defines a storage pool called `backup`. That pool
60 can be used to store up to 7 backups (`maxfiles 7`) per VM. The real
61 path for the backup files is `/mnt/backup/dump/...`.
64 File naming conventions
65 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
67 This backend uses a well defined naming scheme for VM images:
69 vm-<VMID>-<NAME>.<FORMAT>
73 This specifies the owner VM.
77 This can be an arbitrary name (`ascii`) without white space. The
78 backend uses `disk-[N]` as default, where `[N]` is replaced by an
79 integer to make the name unique.
83 Specifies the image format (`raw|qcow2|vmdk`).
85 When you create a VM template, all VM images are renamed to indicate
86 that they are now read-only, and can be used as a base image for clones:
88 base-<VMID>-<NAME>.<FORMAT>
90 NOTE: Such base images are used to generate cloned images. So it is
91 important that those files are read-only, and never get modified. The
92 backend changes the access mode to `0444`, and sets the immutable flag
93 (`chattr +i`) if the storage supports that.
99 As mentioned above, most file systems do not support snapshots out
100 of the box. To workaround that problem, this backend is able to use
101 `qcow2` internal snapshot capabilities.
103 Same applies to clones. The backend uses the `qcow2` base image
104 feature to create clones.
106 .Storage features for backend `dir`
107 [width="100%",cols="m,m,3*d",options="header"]
108 |==============================================================================
109 |Content types |Image formats |Shared |Snapshots |Clones
110 |images rootdir vztmpl iso backup |raw qcow2 vmdk subvol |no |qcow2 |qcow2
111 |==============================================================================
117 Please use the following command to allocate a 4GB image on storage `local`:
119 # pvesm alloc local 100 vm-100-disk10.raw 4G
120 Formatting '/var/lib/vz/images/100/vm-100-disk10.raw', fmt=raw size=4294967296
121 successfully created 'local:100/vm-100-disk10.raw'
123 NOTE: The image name must conform to above naming conventions.
125 The real file system path is shown with:
127 # pvesm path local:100/vm-100-disk10.raw
128 /var/lib/vz/images/100/vm-100-disk10.raw
130 And you can remove the image with:
132 # pvesm free local:100/vm-100-disk10.raw
140 * link:/wiki/Storage[Storage]