Defining Block Storage – Cinder

Cinder provides persistent storage for instances. The Block Storage service has been extensively developed through each OpenStack release to support more features and vendors’ backend drivers, allowing for a variety of storage devices to be used. Most of the used storage backends include logical volume management (LVM), IBM storage drivers, NetApp, and Dell storage. Within the latest OpenStack releases, new backend drivers have been supported, such as Yadro, TOYOU, and Pure Storage FlashArray.

The storage device is reached by Cinder via its management access API and grants direct access to the instances to access and attach volumes. A volume attached to an instance is shown as an additional hard drive can be partitioned and mounted onto the filesystem of a virtual machine. The volumes are generally accessed by the defined storage path, which could use iSCSI, NFS, and Fiber Channels to do so. It is important to bear in mind that Block...