Help:Adding disk space to Cloud VPS instances
Cloud VPS provides attachable block storage for VMs via the OpenStack Cinder component. A Cinder volume is created separately from a VM; it can then be 'attached' to a VM, formatted, and mounted within that VM's filesystem. A Cinder volume can also be detached and re-attached to a different VM and will persist after any associated VM is deleted.
Volumes can be created, deleted, expanded, and attached via the 'Volumes' tab in Horizon.

Quick start
To add storage to a cloud-vps instance under /extrastorage
:
- Create a volume in the Horizon Volumes interface with the 'Create Volume' button. Set name, size, and description. Leave the other settings as defaults.
- Attach that volume to your instance using the 'Manage Attachements' action in Horizon.
- On the VM, run
sudo wmcs-prepare-cinder-volume
.
user@cloud-vm:~$ sudo wmcs-prepare-cinder-volume
This tool will partition, format, and mount a block storage device.
Attached storage devices:
vda: the primary volume containing /
vdb: already contains ext4 filesystem
vdc:
The only block device device available to mount is vdc. Selecting.
Where would you like to mount it? </srv> /extrastorage
Ready to prepare and mount vdc on /extrastorage. OK to continue? <Y|n>
Formatting as ext4...
mke2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
Creating filesystem with 1048576 4k blocks and 262144 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 116f7a72-1e26-4ca1-b546-fd7015632900
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (16384 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
Mounting on /extrastorage...
Updating fstab with UUID=116f7a72-1e26-4ca1-b546-fd7015632900 /extrastorage ext4 nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=2s 0 2
...
Done.
Alternatively, instead of running sudo wmcs-prepare-cinder-volume
, you can add the profile::labs::cindermount::srv
Puppet profile to the instance or a relevant prefix.
Useful Commands
wmcs-prepare-cinder-volume
The custom wmcs-prepare-cinder-volume
script is useful for setting up new Cinder devices. It will format and mount the new volume and add an entry to /etc/fstab
so that the volume is re-mounted after a reboot.
This tool is only useful for newly-created block devices. It can not be used to reattach formatted volumes or move volumes between instances.
user@cloud-vm:~$ sudo wmcs-prepare-cinder-volume
This tool will partition, format, and mount a block storage device.
Attached storage devices:
vda: the primary volume containing /
vdb:
vdd:
vde: already contains ext4 filesystem
What device would you like to format and mount? <vdb>
Detecting available volumes
The lsblk
tool is useful for locating available devices and volumes and seeing where they're mounted. Typically, your instance's root drive will be vda
; other attached volumes will be vd<something>
.
user@cloud-vm:~$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda 254:0 0 20G 0 disk
├─vda1 254:1 0 1007.5K 0 part
├─vda2 254:2 0 19G 0 part /
└─vda3 254:3 0 1023M 0 part
vdb 254:16 0 1G 0 disk /moreofmydata
vdd 254:48 0 1G 0 disk
vde 254:64 0 1G 0 disk
Extend a volume
Volumes can be extended using the 'Extend Volume' action in Horizon. This option is only available for volumes that are not currently attached to an instance.
Once the volume has been extended and re-attached to an instance, the filesystem must be resized. Remount on your VM, check the device name (with lsblk
), and then resize with resize2fs
:
user@cloud-vm:~$ sudo resize2fs /dev/vdc
resize2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
Filesystem at /dev/vdc is mounted on /extrastorage; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
The filesystem on /dev/vdc is now 2097152 (4k) blocks long.
Storage Quotas
The default block storage quota for a project is 80Gb. To request additional quota for your project, open a quota request ticket in Phabricator. Most reasonable requests will be granted within 7 days.
Communication and support
Support and administration of the WMCS resources is provided by the Wikimedia Foundation Cloud Services team and Wikimedia movement volunteers. Please reach out with questions and join the conversation:
- Chat in real time in the IRC channel #wikimedia-cloud connect or the bridged Telegram group
- Discuss via email after you have subscribed to the cloud@ mailing list
- Subscribe to the cloud-announce@ mailing list (all messages are also mirrored to the cloud@ list)
- Read the News wiki page
Use a subproject of the #Cloud-Services Phabricator project to track confirmed bug reports and feature requests about the Cloud Services infrastructure itself
Read the Cloud Services Blog (for the broader Wikimedia movement, see the Wikimedia Technical Blog)