There are no special requirements or software dependencies to use the Files Datastore. The recommended drivers make use of standard filesystem utils (cp, ln, mv, tar, mkfs…) that should be installed in your system.

Most of the configuration considerations used for disk images datastores do apply to the Files Datastore (e.g. driver setup, cluster assignment, datastore management…). However, given the special nature of the Files Datastore most of these attributes can be fixed as summarized in the following table:

Attribute	Description
NAME	The name of the datastore
TYPE	Use FILE_DS to setup a Files datastore
DS_MAD	The DS type, use fs to use the file-based drivers
TM_MAD	Transfer drivers for the datastore, use ssh to transfer the files
RESTRICTED_DIRS	Paths that can not be used to register images. A space separated list of paths.
SAFE_DIRS	If you need to un-block a directory under one of the RESTRICTED_DIRS. A space separated list of paths.
LIMIT_TRANSFER_BW	Specify the maximum transfer rate in bytes/second when downloading images from a http/https URL. Suffixes K, M or G can be used.
DATASTORE_CAPACITY_CHECK	If “yes”, the available capacity of the datastore is checked before creating a new image

This will prevent users registering important files as VM images and accessing them thourgh their VMs. OpenNebula will automatically add its configuration directories: /var/lib/one, /etc/one and oneadmin's home. If users try to register an image from a restricted directory, they will get the following error message: “Not allowed to copy image file”.

For example, the following illustrates the creation of File Datastore. <xterm>

cat kernels_ds.conf

NAME = kernels DS_MAD = fs TM_MAD = ssh TYPE = FILE_DS SAFE_DIRS = /var/tmp/files

onedatastore create kernels_ds.conf

ID: 100

onedatastore list

ID NAME                      CLUSTER         IMAGES TYPE DS       TM      
 0 system                    -                    0 sys  -        dummy   
 1 default                   -                    0 img  dummy    dummy   
 2 files                     -                    0 fil  fs       ssh   

100 kernels - 0 fil fs ssh

</xterm>

The DS and TM MAD can be changed later using the onedatastore update command. You can check more details of the datastore by issuing the onedatastore show command.

The recommended ssh driver for the File Datastore does not need any special configuration for the hosts. Just make sure that there is enough space under $DATASTORE_LOCATION to hold the VM files in the front-end and hosts.

For more details refer to the Filesystem Datastore guide, as the same configuration guidelines applies.