Introduction to storage in KVM/libvirt

Storage is a foundational part of virtualization: it determines how and where virtual machine disks are stored, how snapshots are handled, and what performance and protection options are available. In the KVM/libvirt ecosystem storage is organized around two basic concepts: Storage pools: logical groupings that represent a storage source (for example, a directory, an LVM volume group, an iSCSI target or a Ceph pool). Libvirt exposes and manages these pools to simplify storage usage for VMs. Storage volumes: the units inside a pool that act as virtual disks for guests. Types of pools Libvirt supports several pool types. A practical summary: