Overview

The OpenStack Block Storage service provides management of persistent block storage resources. In addition to acting as secondarily attached persistent storage, you can write images into a Cinder volume for Nova to utilize as a bootable, persistent root volume for an instance. The Block Storage service was originally a component within Nova called nova-volume, but emerged as an official, independent project in the Folsom release. Cinder is conceptually similar in function to the well-known Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) offering.

Cinder is typically deployed in conjunction with other OpenStack services (e.g. Compute, Object Storage, Image, etc) as part of a larger, more comprehensive cloud infrastructure. This is not an explicit requirement, as Cinder has been successfully deployed as a standalone solution for block storage provisioning and lifecycle management.

[Tip]Tip

As a management service, Cinder controls the provisioning and lifecycle management of block storage volumes. It does not reside in the I/O (data) path between the hypervisor and the storage controller, as depicted in Figure 4.1, “Cinder and Nova Logical Architecture”.

 

Figure 4.1. Cinder and Nova Logical Architecture

An logical architecture of how Cinder and Nova interact



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