OpenStack Manila - File Storage

This page documents the concept and vision for establishing a shared file system service for OpenStack. The development name for this project is Manila. We propose and are in the process of implementing a new OpenStack service (originally based on Cinder). Cinder presently functions as the canonical storage provisioning control plane in OpenStack for block storage as well as delivering a persistence model for instance storage. The File Share Service prototype, in a similar manner, provides coordinated access to shared or distributed file systems. While the primary consumption of file shares would be across OpenStack Compute instances, the service is also intended to be accessible as an independent capability in line with the modular design established by other OpenStack services. The design and prototype implementation provide extensibility for multiple backends (to support vendor or file system specific nuances / capabilities) but is intended to be sufficiently abstract to accommodate any of a variety of shared or distributed file system types. The team's intention is to introduce the capability as an OpenStack incubated project in the Juno time frame, graduate it and submit for consideration as a core service as early as the as of yet unnamed "K" release.