The OpenStack Shared File System (Manila) service provides management of persistent shared file system resources. The Shared File System service was originally conceived as an extension to the Block Storage service (Cinder), but emerged as an official, independent project in the Grizzly release.
Manila 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 Manila has been successfully deployed as a standalone solution for shared file system provisioning and lifecycle management.
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As a management service, Manila controls the provisioning and lifecycle management of shared filesystems. It does not reside in the I/O (data) path between clients and the storage controller hosting the filesystem.
This document is licensed under Apache 2.0 license.