Cloned from launchpad blueprint https://blueprints.launchpad.net/cinder/+spec/cinder-device-management-api.

Description:

Cinder does a great job of letting an end user consume storage (create, delete, attach etc).  Something that's missing however is help for the storage-admin.  The philosophy currently is that it's up to the storage-admin to set everything up outside of OpenStack/Cinder and then "plug it in".

This blueprint proposes an admin oriented API specifically for things like configured raid, setting up pools etc.  Abstracting this and having a common API for it is a bit tricky, but I would propose we do something like report capabilities to determine what methods are valid for a specific backend device.

Given that this is geared toward an admin part of the thought here is that it doesn't have to have the same level of global abstraction.  That being said, it should still do something like provide one interface for devices that use RAID, another for those that don't etc.  

We'd need to gather some requirements and dig in to this a bit but it could be a very effective layer to add to Cinder and might actually be an ideal place for things like vendor extensions  and such.

Specification URL (additional information):

None