The Manila API serves as the primary interface for users and other OpenStack services to interact with the Manila shared file system service. It enables users to perform various operations, such as creating and managing shares, managing share access rules, and retrieving information about shares and share servers. The API follows the principles of the OpenStack RESTful API guidelines, which means it uses HTTP methods and URLs to interact with the service.
Here are some key features and concepts related to the Manila API:
- Shares: A share represents a shared file system that can be accessed by multiple instances in an OpenStack cloud. The Manila API allows users to create, delete, and manage shares, including operations like extending, shrinking, and managing quotas.
- Share Types: Share types provide a way to define different characteristics and behaviors for shares. Users can specify a share type when creating a share, which determines the backend storage driver to be used and any specific configuration options associated with that share type.
- Access Rules: Access rules control the access to shares by specifying the allowed IP addresses or network ranges. The Manila API allows users to manage access rules, including creating, updating, and deleting rules to control who can access the shares.
- Share Servers: Share servers are the backend resources that provide the actual file storage for shares. The Manila API handles the management of share servers, including provisioning, maintenance, and scaling of these resources.
- Security Services: Security services, such as Active Directory or LDAP, can be integrated with Manila to provide authentication and authorization services for share access. The Manila API allows users to manage security services and associate them with shares.
- Share Snapshots: Share snapshots allow users to create point-in-time copies of shares for backup or recovery purposes. The Manila API provides operations to create, delete, and manage share snapshots.
- Quotas: Quotas define the limits on the resources that can be consumed by shares. The Manila API allows users to manage quotas, including setting limits on the size and number of shares.
The Manila API is designed to be extensible and supports versioning to allow for backward compatibility. It provides a comprehensive set of operations and features to manage shared file systems within an OpenStack environment, enabling users to leverage shared storage capabilities for their applications and workloads.