virsh-pool-info

List the name, UUID, state, persistence type, autostart status, capacity, space allocated, and space available for the storage pool specified by name or UUID (determine using virsh pool-list)

$ virsh pool-info --pool [name|uuid]

virsh-pool-info pool_name

While often colloquially referred to as a single command, this typically refers to the pool-info subcommand of the virsh utility.

Where:
pool_name: The name of the storage pool for which to display information. This is a mandatory argument.

The `virsh-pool-info` command, commonly understood as the pool-info subcommand of the virsh utility, serves as a crucial tool for managing virtual machines and hypervisors via the libvirt virtualization management library. This specific command is designed to provide detailed insights into a particular libvirt storage pool. A storage pool acts as a logical container for storage volumes, such as disk images used by virtual machines. The information presented includes the pool's current operational state (e.g., running, inactive), its persistence settings (whether it persists across libvirtd restarts), and its total capacity, allocated space, and available free space. This data is essential for administrators to effectively monitor storage health, manage capacity, identify potential resource constraints, and plan for future expansion within their virtualized environments. It facilitates rapid assessment of storage resources critical to virtual machine operations.

• The libvirtd service must be running for this command to function properly.
• Access to libvirt information typically requires root privileges or membership in the `libvirt` user group.
• The specified storage pool must exist and be known to libvirt. If the pool name is incorrect or the pool is not defined, the command will fail.
• This command provides aggregate information for the entire pool; to get details about individual storage volumes within the pool, use commands like virsh vol-list or virsh vol-info.

The `virsh-pool-info` command outputs several key pieces of information about the specified storage pool, typically including:

• Name: The name of the storage pool.
• UUID: The Universally Unique Identifier for the pool.
• State: The current operational status of the pool (e.g., 'running', 'inactive', 'stopped').
• Persistent: Indicates whether the pool is configured to persist across libvirtd daemon restarts (yes/no).
• Autostart: Indicates whether the pool is configured to automatically start when the libvirtd service starts (yes/no).
• Capacity: The total storage capacity of the pool.
• Allocation: The amount of space currently allocated within the pool by its volumes.
• Available: The remaining free space in the pool.

To display information about a storage pool named 'default', you would typically execute:
virsh pool-info default

A sample output might look like this:

Name: default
UUID: a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-1234-567890abcdef
State: running
Persistent: yes
Autostart: yes
Capacity: 931.51 GiB
Allocation: 8.00 GiB
Available: 923.51 GiB


The pool-info subcommand itself does not have any dedicated command-line options (flags). Its behavior is controlled solely by the mandatory pool_name argument. However, global virsh options, such as `--connect` for specifying a different hypervisor, can be used before the subcommand name.

The pool-info subcommand is an integral part of the virsh command-line utility, which serves as the primary interface to the libvirt virtualization management library. The libvirt project, initiated by Red Hat, provides a stable, open-source, and long-term API for managing various virtualization technologies. The ability to query storage pool information (pool-info) has been a fundamental requirement since the early days of libvirt's development (dating back to the mid-2000s), as managing and monitoring storage is critical for any virtualized environment. It has been a consistent feature, evolving with libvirt to support new storage backends and features, ensuring administrators always have visibility into their storage resources.

virsh(1), libvirtd(8), virsh pool-list(1), virsh pool-start(1), virsh pool-define(1), virsh pool-undefine(1), virsh vol-list(1), virsh vol-info(1)