Heya, I just saw a question on RDO forum related to $subject. Just posting some notes here, as this was in my drafts anyhow. (Will point a link to this on the Forum. Also, thanks to Giulio Fidente for reminding me on the qemu.conf bit below). NFS share to store nova instances --------------------------------- If you have an NFS share to store images, you could add it the below way. The default location where instances are stored -- `/var/lib/nova/instances` First, on the NFS server side : $ cat /etc/exports /home/kashyap *(rw,syn,no_root_squash) Mount an nfs share w/ nova specific SELinux context : $ mount --verbose -t nfs xx.yy.www.zzz:/home/kashyap \ /mnt -o "context=unconfined_u:object_r:nova_var_lib_t:s0" # Set correct permissions on mount point $ chown -R nova: /mnt/nova/ $ chgrp -R qemu /mnt/nova/instances/ $ chmod -R g+w /mnt/nova/instances Ensure to have nova own the QEMU instances invoked by : $ grep nova /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf user = "nova" group = "nova" Restart all 'running' OpenStack services : $ for j in `for i in $(ls -1 /etc/init.d/openstack-*) ; \ do $i status | grep running ; done | awk '{print $1}'`; \ do service $j restart ; done Later, ensure, your instances are indeed owned by nova :: $ ps -ef | grep -i qemu-kvm | grep -i nova -- /kashyap