Admin Guide

Shared File Systems service provides a set of services for management of shared file systems in a multi-project cloud environment. The service resembles OpenStack block-based storage management from the OpenStack Block Storage service project. With the Shared File Systems service, you can create a remote file system, mount the file system on your instances, and then read and write data from your instances to and from your file system.

The Shared File Systems service serves same purpose as the Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) does.

The Shared File Systems service can run in a single-node or multiple node configuration. The Shared File Systems service can be configured to provision shares from one or more back ends, so it is required to declare at least one back end. Shared File System service contains several configurable components.

It is important to understand these components:

  • Share networks

  • Shares

  • Multi-tenancy

  • Back ends

The Shared File Systems service consists of four types of services, most of which are similar to those of the Block Storage service:

  • manila-api

  • manila-data

  • manila-scheduler

  • manila-share

Installation of first three - manila-api, manila-data, and manila-scheduler is common for almost all deployments. But configuration of manila-share is backend-specific and can differ from deployment to deployment.

Supported share back ends

The manila share service must be configured to use drivers for one or more storage back ends, as described in general terms below. See the drivers section in the Configuration Reference for detailed configuration options for each back end.