Mohammed NaserAs OpenStack's cloud file sharing tool, Manila is a reliable solution providing high-performance, highly scalable storage to users. Read more.
File sharing and storage is a thriving entity within cloud-based environments. As OpenStack's cloud file sharing tool, Manila is a reliable solution providing high-performance, highly scalable storage to users. Here is an overview of the project and how it benefits OpenStack cloud users.
Basics of OpenStack Manila
Manila was originally derived from OpenStack's block storage tool, Cinder. Similar to Cinder offering canonical control plane for block storage, Manila provides canonical storage provisioning control plane for shared or distributed file systems in OpenStack. Like Cinder, users in Manila can configure multiple backends. With Manila, a user can store content repositories, web server farms, development environments, big data apps, home directories, and more. The service also has a share-server assigned to every tenant.
As an open source cloud file sharing service, Manila has certain objectives:
- To quickly add new behaviors through a component-based architecture
- Scaling serious workloads with high availability
- Be fault-tolerant by isolating processes and thus avoiding cascading failures
- Be recoverable by easily diagnosing, debugging, and rectifying failures
- Have open standards by being a reference implementation for community-driven API
Benefits of Cloud File Sharing with Manila
Cloud file sharing with OpenStack Manila gives users several benefits. Secure file sharing with user access control is one of the major advantages. This means that the service allows you to control access by various users. This access control is done by limiting permissions on mounting and operating files. The file-sharing can only be accessed through servers with appropriate credentials.
Another advantage of file sharing with Manila is its ability to provide a simplified integration with Cinder, OpenStack's block storage tool. Manila integrates with Cinder by installing the necessary software, which allows any designated system to access the file sharing with ease.
Finally, OpenStack Manila also allows your environment to have a performance conscious and efficient processing. Users have the ability to download the files that they specifically need instead of downloading the files as a whole. This capability will save a lot of processing power and time for the user. For big data use cases, this becomes particularly useful as the system can read part of the file and distribute the workload.
VEXXHOST and Cloud File Sharing
At VEXXHOST, we offer cloud file sharing among the various OpenStack services we provide to our customers. The pay as you go structure allows the user to scale storage as they fit the application needs, and the user only pays for the hours the service is used. Services such as Manila are deployed according to specific use cases through our cloud solutions, including highly scalable private clouds.
Speaking of private clouds, you can now run on a fully agile and customized cloud from VEXXHOST, with no licensing fees and smooth 2-week migration. In fact, we're ready to put our money where our mouth is. We're so confident in being able to save you at least 20% or more on your current cloud infrastructure expenditure that if proven wrong- we'll give you $1,000 credit to our public cloud.
Excited? Find out more.