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Create An Empty Volume

An empty volume is like an unformatted USB stick. We'll attach it to an instance, create a filesystem on it, and mount it to the instance.

Using Horizon dashboard

Once you're logged in to NERC's Horizon dashboard, you can create a volume via the "Volumes -> Volumes" page by clicking on the "Create Volume" button.

Navigate to Project -> Volumes -> Volumes.

Volumes

Click "Create Volume".

In the Create Volume dialog box, give your volume a name. The description field is optional.

Create Volume

Choose "empty volume" from the Source dropdown. This will create a volume that is like an unformatted hard disk. Choose a size (In GiB) for your volume. Leave Type and Availibility Zone as it as. Only admin to the NERC OpenStack will be able to manage volume types.

Click "Create Volume" button.

Checking the status of created volume will show:

"downloading" means that the volume contents is being transferred from the image service to the volume service

In a few moments, the newly created volume will appear in the Volumes list with the Status "available". "available" means the volume can now be used for booting. A set of volume_image meta data is also copied from the image service.

Volumes List

Using the CLI

Prerequisites:

To run the OpenStack CLI commands, you need to have:

To create a volume using the CLI, do this:

Using the openstack client

This allows an arbitrary sized disk to be attached to your virtual machine, like plugging in a USB stick. The steps below create a disk of 20 gibibytes (GiB) with name "my-volume".

openstack volume create --size 20 my-volume

+---------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Field               | Value                                |
+---------------------+--------------------------------------+
| attachments         | []                                   |
| availability_zone   | nova                                 |
| bootable            | false                                |
| consistencygroup_id | None                                 |
| created_at          | 2024-02-03T17:06:05.000000           |
| description         | None                                 |
| encrypted           | False                                |
| id                  | 5b5380bd-a15b-408b-8352-9d4219cf30f3 |
| multiattach         | False                                |
| name                | my-volume                            |
| properties          |                                      |
| replication_status  | None                                 |
| size                | 20                                   |
| snapshot_id         | None                                 |
| source_volid        | None                                 |
| status              | creating                             |
| type                | tripleo                              |
| updated_at          | None                                 |
| user_id             | 938eb8bfc72e4ca3ad2b94e2eb4059f7     |
+---------------------+--------------------------------------+

To view newly created volume

openstack volume list
+--------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------+------+----------------------------------+
| ID                                   | Name            | Status    | Size | Attached to                      |
+--------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------+------+----------------------------------+
| 563048c5-d27b-4397-bb4e-034e0f4d9fa7 |                 | in-use    |   20 | Attached to test-vm on /dev/vda  |
| 5b5380bd-a15b-408b-8352-9d4219cf30f3 | my-volume       | available |   20 |                                  |
+--------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------+------+----------------------------------+