Manila

Manila is the OpenStack shared file systems service that provides an Application Programming Interface (API) for managing and provisioning shared file systems across heterogeneous back-end storage systems in cloud environments.

• Shared file system management (storage orchestration)
• Unified API for provisioning and managing shares, access, and quotas (infrastructure automation)
• Pluggable drivers for multiple storage back ends and protocols such as NFS and CIFS/SMB (storage integration)
• Multi-tenant shared file storage with access control and quotas (cloud infrastructure)
• Support for snapshots, share types, and share networks (data management)

More About Manila

Manila is the shared file systems service in the OpenStack cloud computing platform and provides a common API for provisioning and managing network-accessible file shares. It targets the problem space of offering shared, POSIX-style file storage to workloads running in cloud environments, where tenants require data to be accessible concurrently from multiple instances using established file protocols such as NFS and CIFS/SMB (storage orchestration).

The service exposes Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs (infrastructure automation) through which operators and tenants can create, delete, resize, and manage shared file systems referred to as “shares.” Manila abstracts the underlying storage systems through a driver model (storage integration), allowing the same API and operational model to work across different vendor storage arrays, software-defined storage platforms, or reference implementations. Capabilities such as share snapshots, share types, and share networks (data management) enable administrators to define service tiers and network contexts, and to provide features like backup, cloning, or environment separation.

Architecturally, Manila follows the service patterns used by other OpenStack components, with API services, scheduler services, and share services (cloud infrastructure) typically deployed on controller and storage nodes. The scheduler selects appropriate back-end storage pools based on capacity and capabilities, while share services interact with vendor or generic drivers to perform the actual provisioning. Shares are exposed to client instances over network file protocols such as NFS or CIFS/SMB, which aligns with existing enterprise infrastructure and client tooling.

In enterprise and institutional environments, Manila enables cloud operators to provide shared file storage as a managed service to multiple projects and tenants (enterprise storage). Tenants can request file shares, control access rules based on client IP or user credentials, and manage quotas within their projects. Administrators can configure share types that Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) to specific back ends or performance and policy profiles, and can use quotas and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) through the broader OpenStack identity service to govern usage.

Manila’s plugin and driver framework (platform extensibility) allows integration with a range of commercial and open-source storage systems, giving operators flexibility in how they connect existing storage investments to their OpenStack deployments. As part of the OpenStack ecosystem managed under the Open Infrastructure Foundation, Manila interoperates with other OpenStack services for networking, identity, and compute. In a technical directory, Manila fits in the category of shared file storage for cloud infrastructures, with roles in storage orchestration, multi-tenant file service provisioning, and policy-based management of network file shares.