Manage Application Volumes

This screen allows you to manage the volumes of your application -- view the set of volumes, add, delete or rename a volume, or access a particular volume for file/directory manipulation.

Each application has its own set of volumes that are separate from the volumes of all other applications.

Since all catalog appliances come with their own volumes (never shown in this list), there are only two reasons to have a volume here:

• it is an application data or content volume that you will provide to fill a volume placeholder in an appliance. For example the volume is holding a database or a volume is holding web site content, or
• it is a class volume of a singleton appliance (e.g., the boot volume of an appliance you have customized).

You can reach this screen from the editor by opening the right-click menu on the editor canvas, selecting the Application Configuration menu item, clicking on the User Volumes tab and then on the Manage Volumes... button.

Managing Volumes

Volume Information

Name

Name of the volume. This name represents the role of the volume in the application and should be unique within the application.

Size

Size of the volume, in bytes. The size cannot be changed. The size will not be shown, if the volume is unavailable (e.g., the server is down).

Filesystem

Filesystem that is installed on the volume.

Operations

Add

Add a new volume to the application. Press this button to create a new volume and assign it to the application. See below for details.

Delete

Delete the selected volume. This operation permanently removes the volume from the application and from the grid. All volume content is lost. There is no undelete.
You cannot remove a volume that is currently used in an appliance in the application.

Rename

Rename the selected volume. This operation changes any references to the volume from the application. If you try to rename a volume that is is used from the application, this operation will fail and the volume will not be renamed.

Manage

Manage the selected volume. This operation provides access to the volume contents via a web browser. Files may be uploaded, downloaded, edited, deleted, etc. See the Volume Browser Reference for more information.

Changing the volumes of an application should be done only when the application is stopped.

You can also manipulate application's volumes using the volume shell commands. It provides some additional operations, which have no graphical user interface yet (such as copying a volume from another application).

Comments and questions

Adding Volumes

You can add a volume to the application by specifying the following three fields:

Name

Name for the new volume. The name should be a single word, case-sensitive, alphanumeric ([A-Za-z0-9_]). The name must be unique within the application.

Size

Size for the new volume, in bytes. You can use a M or G suffix to specify the size in megabytes or gigabytes, respectively. For example, 128M.

Filesystem

Type of filesystem for the new volume. Choose None to have no file system prepared on the volume; in most cases ext3 is a good choice. For very small volumes (e.g., 1M), use ext2.

If your AppLogic system has more than one server, AppLogic will automatically choose a server for the volume. The server must be on-line, enabled and have sufficient disk space to be chosen.

You can also use the volume create command to add volumes. The volume create command provides some additional options, which have no graphical user interface yet (such as whether the volume is to be mirrored).

Once you add the volume to the application, you will likely want to assign it to one of the appliances in the application. You can do that by using the Instance Settings and/or Application Configuration property sheets. Alternatively, you can assign the volume to a singleton appliance class using the Class Editor.

Comments and questions