tiCrypt 2.18.1

Drives

Prerequisites

User Role:

Sub-admin, Admin, Super-admin

Permission Requirements

• View their drives (Virtual Machines): Shows the Drives table, together with the Sub-admin role or higher.
• Create drives (Virtual Machines): Shows Create new drive.
• Get drive keys (needed to share and attach drives) and Share drives (Virtual Machines): Show Share.
• Edit drives (name and backup setting) (Virtual Machines): Shows Edit drive and Migrate drive.
• Tag what they own with a project they are active in, Remove project tags of projects they manage, or Tag anything with any project (Projects, Project Management, Project Administration): Any one of them shows Change project. Only Tag anything with any project allows a forced change.
• Transfer ownership of their files and drives (Miscellaneous): Shows Transfer ownership.
• Unshare drives (Virtual Machines): Shows Unshare from everyone else, and lets the owner remove keys in the Share dialog.
• Delete drives they own or Delete any drive (Virtual Machines, VM Administration): Shows Delete. Only Delete any drive deletes drives that other users own.

Import external drive, Merge snapshots and Backing chain are shown only to Super-admins.

A drive is an encrypted virtual disk that VMs attach to store data. The Drives table lists every drive in the system, regardless of its owner and sharing status. A drive is not a Vault file: its content is reachable only from a VM it is attached to, and access to it is granted by sharing its drive key, not by your role.

Drives table columns

The following table describes the columns of the Drives table.

Column	Description
Name	The name of the drive. Click it to open the drive's details pane.
Owner	The user who owns the drive.
Project	The project the drive is tagged with.
Team	The team the drive belongs to.
State	The state of the drive.
Shares	The number of additional users holding a key to the drive. It is empty when only one user holds a key, and shows No key when nobody holds one yet.
ID	The drive's ID, with a copy button.
Capacity	The capacity of the drive.
Used	The space the drive uses on disk.
Format	The file system of the drive.
Type	The disk type of the drive.
Pool	The Libvirt storage pool the drive is in, or default.
Last attached	The date the drive was last attached to a VM.
Backup	Whether the drive may be backed up. The column appears only when drive backups are enabled in the system settings.

A row is red when the space the drive uses on disk is unknown.

Access the Drives from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.

View All Drives Charts in Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Scroll down to the Charts subsection at the bottom.
5. View the drive type, format, state, team, project, and size charts as necessary.

View Details About a Drive in Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to view basic information.
5. Click the View button in the top right panel, or click the drive's name.
6. In the left panel, review the drive's details pane, headed Drive, or Attached Drive when the drive is attached to a VM.

The following table describes the cards of the drive details pane.

Card	Contents
Team and project	The team and the project of the drive.
Specification	Format, Type, Mounting options, Capacity, Used space, Allowed attachment, Pool, Snapshot, Snapshot pool, and Permission management.
Basic info	Owner, State, Realm, Backup, Cache strategy, IO strategy, Created on, Last changed, and Last attached.
Shared with N users	Each user holding a key to the drive, marked Read-write or Readonly.
VM attachment	The VMs the drive is attached to, under Attached read-write to 1 VM or Attached read-only to N VMs, or "This drive is not attached to any VMs".

Create a New Drive

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Click the Create new drive button in the top panel.
5. In the Create new drive pop-up, enter the drive name, capacity, format, optional drive owner, team, optional project, realm, and type.
6. Optionally, click Advanced Options to set permission management, compression, cache and IO strategies, and the Libvirt pool.
7. Click Create.

The following table describes the fields of the Create new drive dialog.

Field	Description
Name	Required. The name of the drive. NTFS drive names cannot be changed after creation.
Capacity	The size of the drive, in GB by default.
Format	EXT4 (Linux), BTRFS (Linux), or NTFS (Windows). The format determines what kind of VM the drive can be attached to.
Drive owner (optional)	The owner of the drive. Leaving this blank means you will be the owner.
Team	The team whose quota the drive uses.
Project	The project to tag the drive with.
Realm	The realm the drive is created in.
Type	QCOW2 (default) or Raw.
Backup settings	Never back up this drive or This drive may be backed up. Appears only when drive backups are enabled in the system settings.
No permission management (Advanced Options)	Enable or Disable. When enabled, tiCrypt does not manage permissions for the drive, no access directories can be created on it, and the data is not available to regular users. Use it for applications such as databases.
BTRFS compression algorithm (Advanced Options)	For BTRFS drives: ZLIB, LZO, or ZSTD, with a compression level from 1 to 9 for ZLIB and ZSTD.
Cache Strategy (Advanced Options)	Use value from realm configuration (default), default, none, writethrough, writeback, or directsync.
IO Strategy (Advanced Options)	Use value from realm configuration (default), threads, or native.
Libvirt Pool (Optional) (Advanced Options)	The Libvirt storage pool for the drive. Appears once a team is selected and a pool has space.

note

If the team does not have enough quota for the capacity, tick Override quotas with admin privileges to create the drive anyway. When no pool has space under the quota, the dialog shows "No space available on any pool due to quota restrictions." and Create stays disabled until you tick the override.

Result: The drive appears in the Drives table.

Create a Project-Tagged Drive

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Click the Create new drive button in the top panel.
5. In the pop-up, enter the drive name, format, and team.
6. Select the project to tag the drive, optional drive owner, realm, capacity and type.
7. Click Create.

info

When creating a new drive for a project-tagged VM, the project tagging the VM is locked to the drive to ensure compatibility with the VM.

Import an External Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Click the Import external drive button in the top panel.
5. In the pop-up, click the Load file button or paste the manifest file produced by ticrypt-driveimport.
6. Find the file on your local machine.
7. Click Open to load the file.
8. View drive name, OS, path, format, capacity, owner, realm and team.
9. Click Import.

note

Import external drive is shown only to Super-admins.

Create an External Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Click the Create external drive button in the top right panel.
5. In the pop-up, enter the external drive user, name, capacity, realm, team, and optional project.
6. Click Cut-and-paste config to copy the external drive configuration to the clipboard or click Download config to download the external drive configuration locally.

info

• The dialog does not register anything in tiCrypt. It only builds the external drive configuration that you copy or download.
• The Cut-and-paste config command copies only the external drive configuration to the clipboard, replacing any previous clipboard contents.

Share a Drive with Other User(s) from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to share.
5. Click the Share button in the top right panel.
6. In the prompt, click the Share with a user button on the right.
7. Enter and select the user(s) by name or email to share the drive with.
8. Once selected, click Share.
9. Click Close to exit the prompt.

info

A drive can be shared after it has been formatted and attached to a virtual machine.

caution

• Your role does not let you share other users' drives. You can add keys only to drives you own or hold a read-write key for; otherwise the Share dialog is read-only and says that only users with read-write keys can add keys.
• Share appears for one drive at a time, when you have the Get drive keys (needed to share and attach drives) and Share drives permissions and the drive's project is active in your session.
• You can share a drive either as Read-only or with Full access (read-write).

Give Full Drive Access to a User from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to give full access.
5. Click the Share button in the top right panel.
6. In the prompt, filter the shared user by name or email.
7. Next, select Full access next to the shared user(s) in the right column.
8. Once done, click Close.

warning

Full access grants read, write, and delete permissions on all data on the drive.

Give Read-Only Drive Access to a User from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to give read-only access.
5. Click the Share button in the top right panel.
6. In the prompt, filter the shared user by name or email.
7. Next, select Read-Only next to the shared user(s) in the right column.
8. Once done, click Close.

Remove Drive Access from a User from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to remove user access.
5. Click the Share button in the top right panel.
6. In the prompt, filter the users by name or email.
7. Click the Delete button by the user whose drive access you want to remove.
8. Once done, click Close.

note

• Only the drive owner, with the Unshare drives permission, can remove other users' keys.
• You can remove multiple users' access from a drive using the same steps.

Edit a Drive’s Name or Team in Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive whose name or relation you want to edit.
5. Click the Edit drive button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, under Name, enter the new drive name.
7. Alternatively, under the Relation subsection, select a new team, and under Backup settings, choose whether the drive may be backed up.
8. Click Update followed by the drive name.

note

• The Relation subsection holds only the team. To change the project, use Change Project in a Drive. The realm cannot be changed.
• If the new team does not have enough quota for the drive, tick Override quotas with admin privileges.
• Backup settings appears only when drive backups are enabled in the system settings.
• NTFS drive names cannot be changed after creation.

Set Up a Drive for Applications and Databases Storage from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to set up for application and database storage.
5. Click the Edit drive button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, click Advanced Options.
7. Under the No permission management subsection, select Enable.
8. Click Update followed by the drive name.

Set Up a Cache Strategy for a Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive for which you want to set up a cache strategy.
5. Click the Edit drive button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, click Advanced Options.
7. Under Cache Strategy, select Use value from realm configuration (default), default, none, writethrough, writeback, or directsync.
8. Click Update followed by the drive name.

Set Up an IO Strategy for a Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to set up an IO strategy.
5. Click the Edit drive button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, click Advanced Options.
7. Under IO Strategy, select Use value from realm configuration (default), threads, or native.
8. Click Update followed by the drive name.

Change Project in a Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive whose project you want to change.
5. Click the Change project button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, select the project to tag the drive.
7. Click Classify.

note

Change project works on one drive at a time, and the drive must not be attached to a VM. Otherwise, the message a message says the drive's project cannot be modified while it is attached to a VM appears.

Forcefully Change Project in a Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive whose project you want to change.
5. Click the Change project button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, tick Use my permission to override rules, re-tag resources with any visible project, regardless of current project relations.
7. Select the project to tag the drive.
8. Click Force change with admin privilege.

note

The override checkbox appears only if you have the Tag anything with any project permission. The permission, not your role, allows the forced change.

Remove Project from a Drive in Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the tagged drive from which you want to remove the project.
5. Click the Change project button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, select No project (unlocked) to remove the project from the drive.
7. Click Declassify.

note

Declassifying a drive unlocks it for all shared users, irrespective of their project membership.

Migrate Drive to a Different Libvirt Storage Pool from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive to migrate.
5. Click the Migrate drive button in the top right panel.
6. In the pop-up, select the new storage pool for migration.
7. View the drive format, capacity, creation date, team, project, owner, and state.
8. Click Migrate.

Bulk Email the Owners of Drives from Management

bulk-action

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive(s) whose owners you want to email.
5. Click the Open full menu button in the top right panel.
6. Select Bulk email.
7. In the pop-up, click Copy to copy the emails or click Download to download the emails.
8. Once done, click Close.

note

• The list contains the owners of the selected drives.
• The Prefer contact email? checkbox is ticked by default, and the list uses each user's contact email, or the login email for users without one. Untick it to use the login email of every user.

Transfer Ownership of a Drive to a Different User from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive whose ownership you want to transfer.
5. Click the Open full menu button in the top right panel.
6. Select Transfer ownership.
7. In the pop-up, under New Owner, select the user to transfer ownership to.
8. View drive format, capacity, creation date, team, project, owner and state.
9. Click Transfer ownership.

note

• Transfer ownership works on one drive at a time.
• Only users who hold a read-write key to the drive can become its owner. If nobody else does, a message says the drive has not been shared read-write with anyone, and no pop-up opens.

Unshare the Drive from Everyone Else from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive you want to unshare from everyone else.
5. Click the Open full menu button in the top right panel.
6. Select Unshare from everyone else.
7. In the prompt, review the users who will lose access to the drive.
8. Click Unshare.

note

• Only the owner of a drive can unshare it. For other users' drives, the message "Only the owner of a drive may delete keys for it" appears.
• If a user who loses access co-owns a VM configuration that uses the drive, the prompt also lists those configurations. The owner of each VM then sees a Repair prompt for the drive.

Delete a Drive from Management

bulk-action

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive(s) to delete.
5. Click the Open full menu button in the top right panel.
6. Click Delete.
7. In the prompt, tick each drive listed without an error, and type Confirm in the field below.
8. Click Delete followed by the number of drives, for example Delete 1 drive(s).
9. The drives are deleted after 30 seconds. Until then, you can undo the deletion from its task.

note

• A drive shows an error, and is skipped, when it is attached to a VM ("Drive currently attached to a VM") or when it belongs to another user and you lack the Delete any drive permission.
• Deleting a VM configuration does not delete its drives.

warning

• You must shut down the VM to delete its drive, then detach the drive.
• You cannot delete a drive that is attached (in use).
• Deleting a drive is a permanent action, and all data on the drive will be lost.
• Bulk deleting drives is a dangerous action for the system. Only super-admins should perform this action in rare scenarios.

Merge the Snapshots of Drives from Management

bulk-action

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select the drive(s) whose snapshots you want to merge.
5. Click the Open full menu button in the top right panel.
6. Select Merge snapshots.
7. In the prompt, click Merge Snapshots.

Result: All snapshots of the selected drives are merged into the base drive, and the message "Snapshots merged" appears.

note

Merge snapshots is shown only to Super-admins, and only when every selected drive is Ready and has a snapshot.

View the Backing Chain of a Drive from Management

1. Go to the Management icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Navigate to the Virtual Machines section.
3. Click the Drives in the left panel.
4. Select one drive that has a snapshot.
5. Click the Open full menu button in the top right panel.
6. Select Backing chain.
7. In the pop-up, view the drive's backing chain in JSON.

note

Backing chain is shown only to Super-admins.