How to manage storage pools

See the following sections for instructions on how to create, configure, view and resize Storage pools.

Create a storage pool

Incus creates a storage pool during initialization. You can add more storage pools later, using the same driver or different drivers.

To create a storage pool, use the following command:

incus storage create <pool_name> <driver> [configuration_options...]

Unless specified otherwise, Incus sets up loop-based storage with a sensible default size (20% of the free disk space, but at least 5 GiB and at most 30 GiB).

See the Storage drivers documentation for a list of available configuration options for each driver.

Examples

See the following examples for how to create a storage pool using different storage drivers.

Create a directory pool named pool1:

incus storage create pool1 dir

Use the existing directory /data/incus for pool2:

incus storage create pool2 dir source=/data/incus

Create a storage pool in a cluster

If you are running an Incus cluster and want to add a storage pool, you must create the storage pool for each cluster member separately. The reason for this is that the configuration, for example, the storage location or the size of the pool, might be different between cluster members.

Therefore, you must first create a pending storage pool on each member with the --target=<cluster_member> flag and the appropriate configuration for the member. Make sure to use the same storage pool name for all members. Then create the storage pool without specifying the --target flag to actually set it up.

For example, the following series of commands sets up a storage pool with the name my-pool at different locations and with different sizes on three cluster members:

user@host:~$ incus storage create my-pool zfs source=/dev/sdX size=10GiB --target=vm01
Storage pool my-pool pending on member vm01
user@host:~$ incus storage create my-pool zfs source=/dev/sdX size=15GiB --target=vm02
Storage pool my-pool pending on member vm02
user@host:~$ incus storage create my-pool zfs source=/dev/sdY size=10GiB --target=vm03
Storage pool my-pool pending on member vm03
user@host:~$ incus storage create my-pool zfs
Storage pool my-pool created

Also see How to configure storage for a cluster.

Note

For most storage drivers, the storage pools exist locally on each cluster member. That means that if you create a storage volume in a storage pool on one member, it will not be available on other cluster members.

This behavior is different for Ceph-based storage pools (ceph, cephfs and cephobject) where each storage pool exists in one central location and therefore, all cluster members access the same storage pool with the same storage volumes.

Configure storage pool settings

See the Storage drivers documentation for the available configuration options for each storage driver.

General keys for a storage pool (like source) are top-level. Driver-specific keys are namespaced by the driver name.

Use the following command to set configuration options for a storage pool:

incus storage set <pool_name> <key> <value>

For example, to turn off compression during storage pool migration for a dir storage pool, use the following command:

incus storage set my-dir-pool rsync.compression false

You can also edit the storage pool configuration by using the following command:

incus storage edit <pool_name>

View storage pools

You can display a list of all available storage pools and check their configuration.

Use the following command to list all available storage pools:

incus storage list

The resulting table contains the storage pool that you created during initialization (usually called default or local) and any storage pools that you added.

To show detailed information about a specific pool, use the following command:

incus storage show <pool_name>

To see usage information for a specific pool, run the following command:

incus storage info <pool_name>

Resize a storage pool

If you need more storage, you can increase the size of your storage pool by changing the size configuration key:

incus storage set <pool_name> size=<new_size>

This will only work for loop-backed storage pools that are managed by Incus. You can only grow the pool (increase its size), not shrink it.