Open Stack

Hi Murali,

I think the idea to provide enhanced data protection in OpenStack is a
great idea, and I have been thinking about  backup in OpenStack for a while
now.
I just not sure a new project is the only way to do.

(as disclosure, I contributed code to enable IBM TSM as a Cinder backup
driver)

I wonder what is the added-value of a project approach versus enhancements
to the current Nova and Cinder implementations of backup. Let me elaborate.

Nova has a "nova backup" feature that performs a backup of a VM to Glance,
the backup is managed by tenants in the same way that you propose.
While today it provides only point-in-time full backup, it seems reasonable
that it can be extended support incremental and consistent backup as well -
as the actual work is done either by the Storage or Hypervisor in any case.

Cinder has a cinder backup command that performs a volume backup to Swift,
Ceph or TSM. The Ceph implementation also support incremental backup (Ceph
to Ceph).
I envision that Cinder could be expanded to support incremental backup (for
persistent storage) by adding drivers/plug-ins that will leverage
incremental backup features of either the storage or Hypervisors.
Independently, in Havana the ability to do consistent volume snapshots was
added to GlusterFS. I assume that this consistency support could be
generalized to support other volume drivers, and be utilized as part of a
backup code.

Looking at the key features in Raksha, it seems that the main features
(2,3,4,7) could be addressed by improving the current mechanisms in Nova
and Cinder. I didn't included 1 as a feature as it is more a statement of
intent (or goal) than a feature.
Features 5 (dedup) and 6 (scheduler) are indeed new in your proposal.

Looking at the source de-duplication feature, and taking Swift as an
example, it seems reasonable that if Swift will implement de-duplication,
then doing backup to Swift will give us de-duplication for free.
In fact it would make sense to do the de-duplication at the Swift level
instead of just the backup layer to gain more duplication opportunities.

Following the above, and assuming it all come true (at times I am known to
be an optimistic), then we are left with backup job scheduling, and I
wonder if that is enough for a new project.

My question is, would it make sense to add to the current mechanisms in
Nova and Cinder than add the complexity of a new project?

Thanks,

Regards,
__________________________________________
Ronen I. Kat
Storage Research
IBM Research - Haifa
Phone: +972.3.7689493
Email: ronenkat at il.ibm.com

From:	Murali Balcha <Murali.Balcha at triliodata.com>
To:	"openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org"
            <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>,
            "openstack at list.openstack.org" <openstack at list.openstack.org>,
Date:	29/08/2013 01:18 AM
Subject:	[openstack-dev] Proposal for Raksha, a Data Protection As a
            Service project



Hello Stackers,
We would like to introduce a new project Raksha, a Data Protection As a
Service (DPaaS) for OpenStack Cloud.
Raksha’s primary goal is to provide a comprehensive Data Protection for
OpenStack by leveraging Nova, Swift, Glance and Cinder. Raksha has
following key features:
      1.       Provide an enterprise grade data protection for OpenStack
      based clouds
      2.       Tenant administered backups and restores
      3.       Application consistent backups
      4.       Point In Time(PiT) full and incremental backups and restores
      5.       Dedupe at source for efficient backups
      6.       A job scheduler for periodic backups
      7.       Noninvasive backup solution that does not require service
      interruption during backup window

You will find the rationale behind the need for Raksha in OpenStack in its
Wiki. The wiki also has the preliminary design and the API description.
Some of the Raksha functionality may overlap with Nova and Cinder projects
and as a community lets work together to coordinate the features among
these projects. We would like to seek out early feedback so we can address
as many issues as we can in the first code drop. We are hoping to enlist
the OpenStack community help in making Raksha a part of OpenStack.
Raksha’s project resources:
Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Raksha
Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/raksha
Github: https://github.com/DPaaS-Raksha/Raksha (We will upload a prototype
code in few days)
If you want to talk to us, send an email to
openstack-dev at lists.launchpad.net with "[raksha]" in the subject or use
#openstack-raksha irc channel.

Best Regards,
Murali Balcha_______________________________________________
OpenStack-dev mailing list
OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
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