How to Identify Ephemeral vs Boot-From-Volume Instances in OpenStack

Problem

In OpenStack, instances may be provisioned with either an ephemeral storage or persistent (volume) storage. How can the two be differentiated and filtered accordingly among currently-provisioned instances within a Platform9 Managed OpenStack environment?

Environment

• Platform9 Managed OpenStack - All Versions
• Nova

Procedure

Clarity UI

1. In Clarity UI, navigate to the Instances tab.
2. Ensure that "attached volumes" is shown as an active column. If not, click on the cog icon and add it to the active columns.

Screen_Shot_2020-11-05_at_2.01.18_PM.png

3. Inspect the instances view. Boot from volume instances will show an attached volume, whereas ephemeral instances will not.

Screen_Shot_2020-11-05_at_1_56_32_PM.png

OpenStack CLI

1. Query the list of instances, (optionally) filtered by host – selecting any where the "Image" value is populated, indicating they are ephemeral and not boot from volume.

openstack server list --all-projects --host=[HOST_UUID] -f json | jq -r '.[] | select(.Image != "").ID'

Note: To select boot from volume instances, change '!=' to '==' and the opposite results would be shown.