External

Internal

This article explains how to expose a pre-formatted block device partition as storage pool, using virsh.

Do not use this procedure to configure an entire disk as storage pool. Follow this procedure for that Disk-based Storage Pool Configuration.

Create a new partition to be exposed as the local storage pool. Use fdisk. For this example, the partition will be referred to as /dev/sda7.

Create a file system on the newly allocated partition, as described in mkfs.xfs or mkfs.ext4:

mkfs.xfs /dev/sda7

Create a new storage pool definition:

virsh pool-define-as main-storage-pool fs --source-dev /dev/sda7 --target /main-storage-pool

More details on the pool-define-as command in virsh pool-define-as.

Verify the new pool:

virsh pool-list --all

 Name                 State      Autostart
-------------------------------------------
 main-storage-pool    inactive   no

More details on the pool-list command in virsh pool-list.

Build the pool and create the mount point:

virsh pool-build main-storage-pool

Start the storage pool. This command mounts the filesystem onto the mount point created during the previous step:

virsh pool-start main-storage-pool

Configure the storage pool to start at boot:

virsh pool-autostart main-storage-pool