The OpenStack Block Storage Service, code named Cinder, allows users to choose one or more back-ends to create block storages. Since each back-end has different way to create/access the storage, back-ends are managed using drivers, for each storage technology or service there can be a separate driver. Adminitrator choose drivers depending on the infrastructure she has. More information about driver API can be found here. The SoftLayer Cinder Driver is one such driver, it allows user to use SoftLayer's block storage service from within OpenStack. This means user can create local storages as well as storages on SoftLayer.

Copy the SoftLayerOpenStack-x.x.x.tar.gz on the cinder volume node. Then run following command to install it:

$ sudo pip install <location of SoftLayerOpenStack-x.x.x.tar.gz>

The SoftLayer iSCSI targets requires CHAP authentication to discover, this requires the driver to change /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf file using sed. For this reason, before configuring Cinder to use SoftLayer Cinder Driver, you'll need to run following command.

$ # NOTE: before you run the command
$ # check '/etc/cinder/rootwrap.d/volume.filters' exists, if not check cinder.conf for rootwrap location
$ echo "sed:CommandFilter,/bin/sed,root" | sudo tee -a /etc/cinder/rootwrap.d/volume.filters

The SoftLayer Cinder Driver can now be configured to be used by cinder volume component.

To make cinder volume component use SoftLayer Cinder Driver you need to change the volume_driver value in /etc/cinder/cinder.conf

volume_driver=slos.cinder.driver.iscsi.SoftLayerISCSIDriver
# if iSCSI pool is to be used use following driver
volume_driver=slos.cinder.driver.iscsi.SoftLayerISCSIPoolDriver

The next thing to do is provide SoftLayer API access credentials in DEFAULT section:

sl_username=<YOUR_SL_USERNAME>
sl_api_key=<YOUR_SL_KEY>

Optionally you need to specify the datacenter in which you want the volumes to be created, if not specified default value will be dal05

sl_datacenter=<datanceter_name> # default: dal05