Glance has a number of options that you can use to configure the Glance API server, the Glance Registry server, and the various storage backends that Glance can use to store images.
Most configuration is done via configuration files, with the Glance API server and Glance Registry server using separate configuration files.
When starting up a Glance server, you can specify the configuration file to use (see the documentation on controller Glance servers). If you do not specify a configuration file, Glance will look in the following directories for a configuration file, in order:
The Glance API server configuration file should be named glance-api.conf. Similarly, the Glance Registry server configuration file should be named glance-registry.conf. If you installed Glance via your operating system’s package management system, it is likely that you will have sample configuration files installed in /etc/glance.
In addition to this documentation page, you can check the etc/glance-api.conf and etc/glance-registry.conf sample configuration files distributed with Glance for example configuration files for each server application with detailed comments on what each options does.
The PasteDeploy configuration (controlling the deployment of the WSGI application for each component) may be found by default in <component>-paste.ini alongside the main configuration file, <component>.conf. For example, glance-api-paste.ini corresponds to glance-api.conf. This pathname for the paste config is configurable, as follows:
[paste_deploy]
config_file = /path/to/paste/config
Glance has a few command-line options that are common to all Glance programs:
Optional. Default: False
Can be specified on the command line and in configuration files.
Turns on the INFO level in logging and prints more verbose command-line interface printouts.
Optional. Default: False
Can be specified on the command line and in configuration files.
Turns on the DEBUG level in logging.
Optional. Default: See below for default search order.
Specified on the command line only.
Takes a path to a configuration file to use when running the program. If this CLI option is not specified, then we check to see if the first argument is a file. If it is, then we try to use that as the configuration file. If there is no file or there were no arguments, we search for a configuration file in the following order:
The filename that is searched for depends on the server application name. So, if you are starting up the API server, glance-api.conf is searched for, otherwise glance-registry.conf.
Optional. Default: None
Specified on the command line only.
Takes a path to a configuration directory from which all *.conf fragments are loaded. This provides an alternative to multiple –config-file options when it is inconvenient to explicitly enumerate all the config files, for example when an unknown number of config fragments are being generated by a deployment framework.
If –config-dir is set, then –config-file is ignored.
An example usage would be:
$ glance-api –config-dir=/etc/glance/glance-api.d
- $ ls /etc/glance/glance-api.d
- 00-core.conf 01-s3.conf 02-swift.conf 03-ssl.conf ... etc.
The numeric prefixes in the example above are only necessary if a specific parse ordering is required (i.e. if an individual config option set in an earlier fragment is overridden in a later fragment).
You can put the following options in the glance-api.conf and glance-registry.conf files, under the [DEFAULT] section. They enable startup and binding behaviour for the API and registry servers, respectively.
The address of the host to bind to.
Optional. Default: 0.0.0.0
The port the server should bind to.
Optional. Default: 9191 for the registry server, 9292 for the API server
Number of backlog requests to configure the socket with.
Optional. Default: 4096
Sets the value of TCP_KEEPIDLE in seconds for each server socket. Not supported on OS X.
Optional. Default: 600
Number of Glance API worker processes to start. Each worker process will listen on the same port. Increasing this value may increase performance (especially if using SSL with compression enabled). Typically it is recommended to have one worker process per CPU. The value 0 will prevent any new processes from being created.
Optional. Default: 1
Whether to automatically create the database tables. Otherwise you can manually run glance-manage db_sync.
Optional. Default: False
Path to the certificate file the server should use when binding to an SSL-wrapped socket.
Optional. Default: not enabled.
Path to the private key file the server should use when binding to an SSL-wrapped socket.
Optional. Default: not enabled.
Path to the CA certificate file the server should use to validate client certificates provided during an SSL handshake. This is ignored if cert_file and ‘’key_file`` are not set.
Optional. Default: not enabled.
If you run a secure Registry server, you need to set this value to https and also set registry_client_key_file and optionally registry_client_cert_file.
Optional. Default: http
The path to the key file to use in SSL connections to the registry server, if any. Alternately, you may set the GLANCE_CLIENT_KEY_FILE environ variable to a filepath of the key file
Optional. Default: Not set.
Optional. Default: Not set.
The path to the cert file to use in SSL connections to the registry server, if any. Alternately, you may set the GLANCE_CLIENT_CERT_FILE environ variable to a filepath of the cert file
Optional. Default: Not set.
The path to a Certifying Authority’s cert file to use in SSL connections to the registry server, if any. Alternately, you may set the GLANCE_CLIENT_CA_FILE environ variable to a filepath of the CA cert file
Optional. Default: False.
When using SSL in connections to the registry server, do not require validation via a certifying authority. This is the registry’s equivalent of specifying –insecure on the command line using glanceclient for the API
Optional. Default: 600.
The period of time, in seconds, that the API server will wait for a registry request to complete. A value of ‘0’ implies no timeout.
There are a number of configuration options in Glance that control how Glance servers log messages.
Optional. Default: None
Specified on the command line only.
Takes a path to a configuration file to use for configuring logging.
You will want to place the different logging options in the [DEFAULT] section in your application configuration file. As an example, you might do the following for the API server, in a configuration file called etc/glance-api.conf:
[DEFAULT]
log_file = /var/log/glance/api.log
The filepath of the file to use for logging messages from Glance’s servers. If missing, the default is to output messages to stdout, so if you are running Glance servers in a daemon mode (using glance-control) you should make sure that the log_file option is set appropriately.
The filepath of the directory to use for log files. If not specified (the default) the log_file is used as an absolute filepath.
The format string for timestamps in the log output.
Defaults to %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S. See the logging module documentation for more information on setting this format string.
Use syslog logging functionality.
Defaults to False.
There are a number of configuration options in Glance that control how Glance stores disk images. These configuration options are specified in the glance-api.conf config file in the section [DEFAULT].
Optional. Default: file
Can only be specified in configuration files.
Sets the storage backend to use by default when storing images in Glance. Available options for this option are (file, swift, s3, or rbd).
Optional. Default: /var/lib/glance/images/
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the filesystem storage backend.
Sets the path where the filesystem storage backend write disk images. Note that the filesystem storage backend will attempt to create this directory if it does not exist. Ensure that the user that glance-api runs under has write permissions to this directory.
Required when using the Swift storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Sets the authentication URL supplied to Swift when making calls to its storage system. For more information about the Swift authentication system, please see the Swift auth documentation and the overview of Swift authentication.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Swift authentication addresses use HTTPS by default. This means that if you are running Swift with authentication over HTTP, you need to set your swift_store_auth_address to the full URL, including the http://.
Required when using the Swift storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Sets the user to authenticate against the swift_store_auth_address with.
Required when using the Swift storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Sets the authentication key to authenticate against the swift_store_auth_address with for the user swift_store_user.
Optional. Default: glance
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Sets the name of the container to use for Glance images in Swift.
Optional. Default: False
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
If true, Glance will attempt to create the container swift_store_container if it does not exist.
Optional. Default: 5120
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
What size, in MB, should Glance start chunking image files and do a large object manifest in Swift? By default, this is the maximum object size in Swift, which is 5GB
Optional. Default: 200
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
When doing a large object manifest, what size, in MB, should Glance write chunks to Swift? The default is 200MB.
Optional. Default: False
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
If set to True enables multi-tenant storage mode which causes Glance images to be stored in tenant specific Swift accounts. When set to False Glance stores all images in a single Swift account.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Optional. Default: Not set.
A list of swift ACL strings that will be applied as both read and write ACLs to the containers created by Glance in multi-tenant mode. This grants the specified tenants/users read and write access to all newly created image objects. The standard swift ACL string formats are allowed, including:
<tenant_id>:<username> <tenant_name>:<username> *:<username>
Multiple ACLs can be combined using a comma separated list, for example: swift_store_admin_tenants = service:glance,*:admin
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Optional. Default: 2
A string indicating which version of Swift OpenStack authentication to use. See the project python-swiftclient for more details.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Optional. Default: object-store
A string giving the service type of the swift service to use. This setting is only used if swift_store_auth_version is 2.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Optional. Default: Not set.
A string giving the region of the swift service endpoint to use. This setting is only used if swift_store_auth_version is 2. This setting is especially useful for disambiguation if multiple swift services might appear in a service catalog during authentication.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the Swift storage backend.
Optional. Default: publicURL
A string giving the endpoint type of the swift service endpoint to use. This setting is only used if swift_store_auth_version is 2.
Required when using the S3 storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the S3 storage backend.
Default: s3.amazonaws.com
Sets the main service URL supplied to S3 when making calls to its storage system. For more information about the S3 authentication system, please see the S3 documentation
Required when using the S3 storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the S3 storage backend.
Sets the access key to authenticate against the s3_store_host with.
You should set this to your 20-character Amazon AWS access key.
Required when using the S3 storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the S3 storage backend.
Sets the secret key to authenticate against the s3_store_host with for the access key s3_store_access_key.
You should set this to your 40-character Amazon AWS secret key.
Required when using the S3 storage backend.
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the S3 storage backend.
Sets the name of the bucket to use for Glance images in S3.
Note that the namespace for S3 buckets is global, therefore you must use a name for the bucket that is unique. It is recommended that you use a combination of your AWS access key, lowercased with “glance”.
For instance if your Amazon AWS access key is:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST
then make your bucket value be:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstglance
Optional. Default: False
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the S3 storage backend.
If true, Glance will attempt to create the bucket s3_store_bucket if it does not exist.
Optional. Default: the platform's default temporary directory
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the S3 storage backend.
When sending images to S3, what directory should be used to buffer the chunks? By default the platform’s temporary directory will be used.
Note: the RBD storage backend requires the python bindings for librados and librbd. These are in the python-ceph package on Debian-based distributions.
Optional. Default: rbd
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the RBD storage backend.
Sets the RADOS pool in which images are stored.
Optional. Default: 4
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the RBD storage backend.
Images will be chunked into objects of this size (in megabytes). For best performance, this should be a power of two.
Optional. Default: /etc/ceph/ceph.conf, ~/.ceph/config, and ./ceph.conf
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the RBD storage backend.
Sets the Ceph configuration file to use.
Optional. Default: admin
Can only be specified in configuration files.
This option is specific to the RBD storage backend.
Sets the RADOS user to authenticate as. This is only needed when RADOS authentication is enabled.
A keyring must be set for this user in the Ceph configuration file, e.g. with a user glance:
[client.glance]
keyring=/etc/glance/rbd.keyring
To set up a user named glance with minimal permissions, using a pool called images, run:
rados mkpool images
ceph-authtool --create-keyring /etc/glance/rbd.keyring
ceph-authtool --gen-key --name client.glance --cap mon 'allow r' --cap osd 'allow rwx pool=images' /etc/glance/rbd.keyring
ceph auth add client.glance -i /etc/glance/rbd.keyring
Glance API servers can be configured to have a local image cache. Caching of image files is transparent and happens using a piece of middleware that can optionally be placed in the server application pipeline.
This pipeline is configured in the PasteDeploy configuration file, <component>-paste.ini. You should not generally have to edit this file directly, as it ships with ready-made pipelines for all common deployment flavors.
To enable the image cache middleware, the cache middleware must occur in the application pipeline after the appropriate context middleware.
The cache middleware should be in your glance-api-paste.ini in a section titled [filter:cache]. It should look like this:
[filter:cache]
paste.filter_factory = glance.api.middleware.cache:CacheFilter.factory
A ready-made application pipeline including this filter is defined in the glance-api-paste.ini file, looking like so:
[pipeline:glance-api-caching]
pipeline = versionnegotiation context cache apiv1app
To enable the above application pipeline, in your main glance-api.conf configuration file, select the appropriate deployment flavor like so:
[paste_deploy]
flavor = caching
There is an optional cachemanage middleware that allows you to directly interact with cache images. Use this flavor in place of the cache flavor in your api config file.
[paste_deploy] flavor = cachemanage
Note
These configuration options must be set in both the glance-cache and glance-api configuration files.
One main configuration file option affects the image cache.
- image_cache_dir=PATH
Required when image cache middleware is enabled.
Default: /var/lib/glance/image-cache
This is the base directory the image cache can write files to. Make sure the directory is writeable by the user running the glance-api server
- image_cache_driver=DRIVER
Optional. Choice of sqlite or xattr
Default: sqlite
The default sqlite cache driver has no special dependencies, other than the python-sqlite3 library, which is installed on virtually all operating systems with modern versions of Python. It stores information about the cached files in a SQLite database.
The xattr cache driver required the python-xattr>=0.6.0 library and requires that the filesystem containing image_cache_dir have access times tracked for all files (in other words, the noatime option CANNOT be set for that filesystem). In addition, user_xattr must be set on the filesystem’s description line in fstab. Because of these requirements, the xattr cache driver is not available on Windows.
- image_cache_sqlite_db=DB_FILE
Optional.
Default: cache.db
When using the sqlite cache driver, you can set the name of the database that will be used to store the cached images information. The database is always contained in the image_cache_dir.
- image_cache_max_size=SIZE
Optional.
Default: 10737418240 (10 GB)
Size, in bytes, that the image cache should be constrained to. Images files are cached automatically in the local image cache, even if the writing of that image file would put the total cache size over this size. The glance-cache-pruner executable is what prunes the image cache to be equal to or less than this value. The glance-cache-pruner executable is designed to be run via cron on a regular basis. See more about this executable in Controlling the Growth of the Image Cache
There are a number of configuration options in Glance that control how this registry server operates. These configuration options are specified in the glance-registry.conf config file in the section [DEFAULT].
IMPORTANT NOTE: The glance-registry service is only used in conjunction with the glance-api service when clients are using the v1 REST API. See Configuring Glance APIs for more info.
Optional. Default: None
Can be specified in configuration files. Can also be specified on the command-line for the glance-manage program.
Sets the SQLAlchemy connection string to use when connecting to the registry database. Please see the documentation for SQLAlchemy connection strings online. You must urlencode any special characters in CONNECTION_STRING.
Optional. Default: 3600
Can only be specified in configuration files.
Sets the number of seconds after which SQLAlchemy should reconnect to the datastore if no activity has been made on the connection.
Glance can optionally generate notifications to be logged or sent to a RabbitMQ queue. The configuration options are specified in the glance-api.conf config file in the section [DEFAULT].
Optional. Default: noop
Sets the strategy used for notifications. Options are logging, rabbit, qpid and noop. For more information Glance notifications
Optional. Default: localhost
Host to connect to when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: 5672
Port to connect to when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: false
Boolean to use SSL for connecting when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: guest
Userid to use for connection when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: guest
Password to use for connection when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: /
Virtual host to use for connection when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: glance
Exchange name to use for connection when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: notifications
Topic to use for connection when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: 0
Number of retries on communication failures when using rabbit strategy. A value of 0 means to retry forever.
Optional. Default: 2
Number of seconds to wait before reconnecting on failures when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: 30
Maximum seconds to wait before reconnecting on failures when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: False
Controls durability of exchange and queue when using rabbit strategy.
Optional. Default: glance
Message exchange to use when using the qpid notification strategy.
Optional. Default: glanice_notifications
This is the topic prefix for notifications when using the qpid notification strategy. When a notification is sent at the info priority, the topic will be notifications.info. The same idea applies for the error and warn notification priorities. To receive all notifications, you would set up a receiver with a topic of notifications.*.
Optional. Default: localhost
This is the hostname or IP address of the Qpid broker that will be used when Glance has been configured to use the qpid notification strategy.
Optional. Default: 5672
This is the port number to connect to on the Qpid broker, qpid_host, when using the qpid notification strategy.
Optional. Default: None
This is the username that Glance will use to authenticate with the Qpid broker if using the qpid notification strategy.
Optional. Default: None
This is the username that Glance will use to authenticate with the Qpid broker if using the qpid notification strategy.
Optional. Default: None
This is a space separated list of SASL mechanisms to use for authentication with the Qpid broker if using the qpid notification strategy.
Optional. Default: None
This option specifies a timeout in seconds for automatic reconnect attempts to the Qpid broker if the qpid notification strategy is used. In general, it is safe to leave all of the reconnect timing options not set. In that case, the Qpid client’s default behavior will be used, which is to attempt to reconnect to the broker at exponential back-off intervals (in 1 second, then 2 seconds, then 4, 8, 16, etc).
Optional. Default: None
This option specifies a maximum number of reconnect attempts to the Qpid broker if the qpid notification strategy is being used. Normally the Qpid client will continue attempting to reconnect until successful.
Optional. Default: None
This option specifies the minimum number of seconds between reconnection attempts if the qpid notification strategy is being used.
Optional. Default: None
This option specifies the maximum number of seconds between reconnection attempts if the qpid notification strategy is being used.
This option specifies the exact number of seconds between reconnection attempts if the qpid notification strategy is being used. Setting this option is equivalent to setting qpid_reconnect_interval_max and qpid_reconnect_interval_min to the same value.
Optional. Default: 5
This option is used to specify the number of seconds between heartbeat messages exchanged between the Qpid client and Qpid broker if the qpid notification strategy is being used. Heartbeats are used to more quickly detect that a connection has been lost.
Optional. Default: tcp
This option is used to specify the transport protocol to use if using the qpid notification strategy. To enable SSL, set this option to ssl.
Optional. Default: True
This option can be used to disable the TCP NODELAY option. It effectively disables the Nagle algorithm for the connection to the Qpid broker. This option only applies if the qpid notification strategy is used.
Access rules may be configured using a Policy Configuration file. Two configuration options tell the Glance API server about the policies to use.
Optional. Default: Looks for a file called policy.json or glance.policy.json in standard configuration directories.
Policy file to load when starting the API server
Optional. Default: “default”
Name of the rule in the policy configuration file to use as the default rule
The glance-api service implents versions 1 and 2 of the OpenStack Images API. Disable either version of the Images API using the following options:
Optional. Default: True
Optional. Default: True
IMPORTANT NOTE: The v1 API is implemented on top of the glance-registry service while the v2 API is not. This means that in order to use the v2 API, you must copy the necessary sql configuration from your glance-registry service to your glance-api configuration file.