Manage Application Volumes

Graphical User Interface › Application Configuration › User Volumes Tab › Manage Application Volumes

Manage Application Volumes

This screen allows you to manage the volumes of your application -- view the set of volumes, add, delete or rename a volume, or access a particular volume for file/directory manipulation.

Each application has its own set of volumes that are separate from the volumes of all other applications.

Because all catalog appliances come with their own volumes (never shown in this list), there are only two reasons to have a volume here:

It is an application data or content volume that you will provide to fill a volume placeholder in an appliance. For example the volume is holding a database or a volume is holding website content, or

it is a class volume of a singleton appliance (for example, the boot volume of an appliance you have customized).

You can reach this screen from the editor by opening the right-click menu on the editor canvas, selecting the Application Configuration menu item, clicking on the User Volumes tab and then on the Manage Volumes... button.

Managing Volumes

Volume Information

Name: Name of the volume. This name represents the role of the volume in the application and should be unique within the application.
Size: Size of the volume, in bytes. The size cannot be changed. The size will not be shown, if the volume is unavailable (for example, the server is down).
Filesystem: Filesystem that is installed on the volume.

Operations

Add: Add a new volume to the application. Press this button to create a new volume and assign it to the application. See below for details.
Delete: Delete the selected volume. This operation permanently removes the volume from the application and from the grid. All volume content is lost. There is no undelete. You cannot remove a volume that is currently used in an appliance in the application.
Rename: Rename the selected volume. This operation changes any references to the volume from the application. If you try to rename a volume that is used from the application, this operation will fail and the volume will not be renamed.
Resize: Resize the selected volume. This operation changes the size of the volume.
Manage: Manage the selected volume. This operation provides access to the volume contents via a web browser. Files may be uploaded, downloaded, edited, deleted, and so on See the Volume Browser Reference for more information.

Important: Changing the volumes of an application should be done only when the application is stopped.

You can also manipulate application's volumes using the volume shell commands. It provides some additional operations, which have no graphical user interface yet (such as copying a volume from another application).

Adding Volumes

You can add a volume to the application by specifying the following three fields:

Name: Name for the new volume. The name should be a single word, case-sensitive, alphanumeric ([A-Za-z0-9_]). The name must be unique within the application.
Link: Create the volume as a symbolic link to an application user volume or global volume.
Size: Size for the new volume, in bytes. You can use a M or G suffix to specify the size in megabytes or gigabytes, respectively. For example, 128M.
Filesystem: Type of filesystem for the new volume. Click None to have no file system prepared on the volume; in most cases ext3 is a good choice. For very small volumes (for example, 1M), use ext2.

If you click the Link box, you are asked for the name of the application user volume or global volume to which the volume is to be linked to.

To create the volume, click on the Next button. The progress of the volume creation operation is displayed.

Notes:

If your CA AppLogic® for System z system has more than one server, CA AppLogic® for System z will automatically select a server for the volume. The server must be online, enabled and have sufficient disk space to be chosen.
You can also use the volume create command to add volumes. The volume create command provides some additional options, which have no graphical user interface yet (such as whether the volume is to be mirrored).
Once you add the volume to the application, you will likely want to assign it to one of the appliances in the application. You can do that by using the Instance Settings or Application Configuration property sheets. Alternatively, you can assign the volume to a singleton appliance class using the Class Editor.