10 pvesm - Proxmox VE Storage Manager
16 include::pvesm.1-synopsis.adoc[]
30 The {pve} storage model is very flexible. Virtual machine images
31 can either be stored on one or several local storages, or on shared
32 storage like NFS or iSCSI (NAS, SAN). There are no limits, and you may
33 configure as many storage pools as you like. You can use all
34 storage technologies available for Debian Linux.
36 One major benefit of storing VMs on shared storage is the ability to
37 live-migrate running machines without any downtime, as all nodes in
38 the cluster have direct access to VM disk images. There is no need to
39 copy VM image data, so live migration is very fast in that case.
41 The storage library (package `libpve-storage-perl`) uses a flexible
42 plugin system to provide a common interface to all storage types. This
43 can be easily adopted to include further storage types in the future.
49 There are basically two different classes of storage types:
53 File level based storage technologies allow access to a fully featured (POSIX)
54 file system. They are in general more flexible than any Block level storage
55 (see below), and allow you to store content of any type. ZFS is probably the
56 most advanced system, and it has full support for snapshots and clones.
60 Allows to store large 'raw' images. It is usually not possible to store
61 other files (ISO, backups, ..) on such storage types. Most modern
62 block level storage implementations support snapshots and clones.
63 RADOS and GlusterFS are distributed systems, replicating storage
64 data to different nodes.
67 .Available storage types
68 [width="100%",cols="<2d,1*m,4*d",options="header"]
69 |===========================================================
70 |Description |PVE type |Level |Shared|Snapshots|Stable
71 |ZFS (local) |zfspool |file |no |yes |yes
72 |Directory |dir |file |no |no^1^ |yes
73 |BTRFS |btrfs |file |no |yes |technology preview
74 |NFS |nfs |file |yes |no^1^ |yes
75 |CIFS |cifs |file |yes |no^1^ |yes
76 |Proxmox Backup |pbs |both |yes |n/a |yes
77 |GlusterFS |glusterfs |file |yes |no^1^ |yes
78 |CephFS |cephfs |file |yes |yes |yes
79 |LVM |lvm |block |no^2^ |no |yes
80 |LVM-thin |lvmthin |block |no |yes |yes
81 |iSCSI/kernel |iscsi |block |yes |no |yes
82 |iSCSI/libiscsi |iscsidirect |block |yes |no |yes
83 |Ceph/RBD |rbd |block |yes |yes |yes
84 |ZFS over iSCSI |zfs |block |yes |yes |yes
85 |===========================================================
87 ^1^: On file based storages, snapshots are possible with the 'qcow2' format.
89 ^2^: It is possible to use LVM on top of an iSCSI or FC-based storage.
90 That way you get a `shared` LVM storage.
96 A number of storages, and the Qemu image format `qcow2`, support 'thin
97 provisioning'. With thin provisioning activated, only the blocks that
98 the guest system actually use will be written to the storage.
100 Say for instance you create a VM with a 32GB hard disk, and after
101 installing the guest system OS, the root file system of the VM contains
102 3 GB of data. In that case only 3GB are written to the storage, even
103 if the guest VM sees a 32GB hard drive. In this way thin provisioning
104 allows you to create disk images which are larger than the currently
105 available storage blocks. You can create large disk images for your
106 VMs, and when the need arises, add more disks to your storage without
107 resizing the VMs' file systems.
109 All storage types which have the ``Snapshots'' feature also support thin
112 CAUTION: If a storage runs full, all guests using volumes on that
113 storage receive IO errors. This can cause file system inconsistencies
114 and may corrupt your data. So it is advisable to avoid
115 over-provisioning of your storage resources, or carefully observe
116 free space to avoid such conditions.
119 Storage Configuration
120 ---------------------
122 All {pve} related storage configuration is stored within a single text
123 file at `/etc/pve/storage.cfg`. As this file is within `/etc/pve/`, it
124 gets automatically distributed to all cluster nodes. So all nodes
125 share the same storage configuration.
127 Sharing storage configuration makes perfect sense for shared storage,
128 because the same ``shared'' storage is accessible from all nodes. But it is
129 also useful for local storage types. In this case such local storage
130 is available on all nodes, but it is physically different and can have
131 totally different content.
137 Each storage pool has a `<type>`, and is uniquely identified by its
138 `<STORAGE_ID>`. A pool configuration looks like this:
148 The `<type>: <STORAGE_ID>` line starts the pool definition, which is then
149 followed by a list of properties. Most properties require a value. Some have
150 reasonable defaults, in which case you can omit the value.
152 To be more specific, take a look at the default storage configuration
153 after installation. It contains one special local storage pool named
154 `local`, which refers to the directory `/var/lib/vz` and is always
155 available. The {pve} installer creates additional storage entries
156 depending on the storage type chosen at installation time.
158 .Default storage configuration (`/etc/pve/storage.cfg`)
162 content iso,vztmpl,backup
164 # default image store on LVM based installation
168 content rootdir,images
170 # default image store on ZFS based installation
174 content images,rootdir
178 Common Storage Properties
179 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
181 A few storage properties are common among different storage types.
185 List of cluster node names where this storage is
186 usable/accessible. One can use this property to restrict storage
187 access to a limited set of nodes.
191 A storage can support several content types, for example virtual disk
192 images, cdrom iso images, container templates or container root
193 directories. Not all storage types support all content types. One can set
194 this property to select what this storage is used for.
202 Allow to store container data.
210 Backup files (`vzdump`).
218 Snippet files, for example guest hook scripts
222 Mark storage as shared.
226 You can use this flag to disable the storage completely.
230 Deprecated, please use `prune-backups` instead. Maximum number of backup files
231 per VM. Use `0` for unlimited.
235 Retention options for backups. For details, see
236 xref:vzdump_retention[Backup Retention].
240 Default image format (`raw|qcow2|vmdk`)
244 Preallocation mode (`off|metadata|falloc|full`) for `raw` and `qcow2` images on
245 file-based storages. The default is `metadata`, which is treated like `off` for
246 `raw` images. When using network storages in combination with large `qcow2`
247 images, using `off` can help to avoid timeouts.
249 WARNING: It is not advisable to use the same storage pool on different
250 {pve} clusters. Some storage operation need exclusive access to the
251 storage, so proper locking is required. While this is implemented
252 within a cluster, it does not work between different clusters.
258 We use a special notation to address storage data. When you allocate
259 data from a storage pool, it returns such a volume identifier. A volume
260 is identified by the `<STORAGE_ID>`, followed by a storage type
261 dependent volume name, separated by colon. A valid `<VOLUME_ID>` looks
264 local:230/example-image.raw
266 local:iso/debian-501-amd64-netinst.iso
268 local:vztmpl/debian-5.0-joomla_1.5.9-1_i386.tar.gz
270 iscsi-storage:0.0.2.scsi-14f504e46494c4500494b5042546d2d646744372d31616d61
272 To get the file system path for a `<VOLUME_ID>` use:
274 pvesm path <VOLUME_ID>
280 There exists an ownership relation for `image` type volumes. Each such
281 volume is owned by a VM or Container. For example volume
282 `local:230/example-image.raw` is owned by VM 230. Most storage
283 backends encodes this ownership information into the volume name.
285 When you remove a VM or Container, the system also removes all
286 associated volumes which are owned by that VM or Container.
289 Using the Command Line Interface
290 --------------------------------
292 It is recommended to familiarize yourself with the concept behind storage
293 pools and volume identifiers, but in real life, you are not forced to do any
294 of those low level operations on the command line. Normally,
295 allocation and removal of volumes is done by the VM and Container
298 Nevertheless, there is a command line tool called `pvesm` (``{pve}
299 Storage Manager''), which is able to perform common storage management
308 pvesm add <TYPE> <STORAGE_ID> <OPTIONS>
309 pvesm add dir <STORAGE_ID> --path <PATH>
310 pvesm add nfs <STORAGE_ID> --path <PATH> --server <SERVER> --export <EXPORT>
311 pvesm add lvm <STORAGE_ID> --vgname <VGNAME>
312 pvesm add iscsi <STORAGE_ID> --portal <HOST[:PORT]> --target <TARGET>
314 Disable storage pools
316 pvesm set <STORAGE_ID> --disable 1
320 pvesm set <STORAGE_ID> --disable 0
322 Change/set storage options
324 pvesm set <STORAGE_ID> <OPTIONS>
325 pvesm set <STORAGE_ID> --shared 1
326 pvesm set local --format qcow2
327 pvesm set <STORAGE_ID> --content iso
329 Remove storage pools. This does not delete any data, and does not
330 disconnect or unmount anything. It just removes the storage
333 pvesm remove <STORAGE_ID>
337 pvesm alloc <STORAGE_ID> <VMID> <name> <size> [--format <raw|qcow2>]
339 Allocate a 4G volume in local storage. The name is auto-generated if
340 you pass an empty string as `<name>`
342 pvesm alloc local <VMID> '' 4G
346 pvesm free <VOLUME_ID>
348 WARNING: This really destroys all volume data.
354 List storage contents
356 pvesm list <STORAGE_ID> [--vmid <VMID>]
358 List volumes allocated by VMID
360 pvesm list <STORAGE_ID> --vmid <VMID>
364 pvesm list <STORAGE_ID> --iso
366 List container templates
368 pvesm list <STORAGE_ID> --vztmpl
370 Show file system path for a volume
372 pvesm path <VOLUME_ID>
374 Exporting the volume `local:103/vm-103-disk-0.qcow2` to the file `target`.
375 This is mostly used internally with `pvesm import`.
376 The stream format qcow2+size is different to the qcow2 format.
377 Consequently, the exported file cannot simply be attached to a VM.
378 This also holds for the other formats.
380 pvesm export local:103/vm-103-disk-0.qcow2 qcow2+size target --with-snapshots 1
387 * link:/wiki/Storage:_Directory[Storage: Directory]
389 * link:/wiki/Storage:_GlusterFS[Storage: GlusterFS]
391 * link:/wiki/Storage:_User_Mode_iSCSI[Storage: User Mode iSCSI]
393 * link:/wiki/Storage:_iSCSI[Storage: iSCSI]
395 * link:/wiki/Storage:_LVM[Storage: LVM]
397 * link:/wiki/Storage:_LVM_Thin[Storage: LVM Thin]
399 * link:/wiki/Storage:_NFS[Storage: NFS]
401 * link:/wiki/Storage:_CIFS[Storage: CIFS]
403 * link:/wiki/Storage:_Proxmox_Backup_Server[Storage: Proxmox Backup Server]
405 * link:/wiki/Storage:_RBD[Storage: RBD]
407 * link:/wiki/Storage:_CephFS[Storage: CephFS]
409 * link:/wiki/Storage:_ZFS[Storage: ZFS]
411 * link:/wiki/Storage:_ZFS_over_iSCSI[Storage: ZFS over iSCSI]
417 // backend documentation
419 include::pve-storage-dir.adoc[]
421 include::pve-storage-nfs.adoc[]
423 include::pve-storage-cifs.adoc[]
425 include::pve-storage-pbs.adoc[]
427 include::pve-storage-glusterfs.adoc[]
429 include::pve-storage-zfspool.adoc[]
431 include::pve-storage-lvm.adoc[]
433 include::pve-storage-lvmthin.adoc[]
435 include::pve-storage-iscsi.adoc[]
437 include::pve-storage-iscsidirect.adoc[]
439 include::pve-storage-rbd.adoc[]
441 include::pve-storage-cephfs.adoc[]
443 include::pve-storage-btrfs.adoc[]
445 include::pve-storage-zfs.adoc[]
449 include::pve-copyright.adoc[]