Open Stack

On Fri, Jan 08, 2016 at 10:01:45AM -0430, Flavio Percoco wrote:
> On 29/12/15 07:41 -0600, Sam Matzek wrote:
> >On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 7:49 AM, Mikhail Fedosin <mfedosin at mirantis.com> wrote:
> >>Hello, it's another topic about glance v2 adoption in Nova, but it's
> >>different from the others. I want to declare that there is a set of commits,
> >>that make Nova version agnostic and allow to work with both glance apis. The
> >>idea of the solution is to determine the current api version in the
> >>beginning and make appropriate requests after.
> >>(https://review.openstack.org/#/c/228578/,
> >>https://review.openstack.org/#/c/238309/,
> >>https://review.openstack.org/#/c/259097/)
> >>
> >>Indeed, it requires some additional (and painful) work, but now all tempest
> >>tests pass in Jenkins.
> >>
> >>Note: this thread is not about xenplugin, there is another topic, called
> >>'Xenplugin + Glance_v2 = Hate'
> >>
> >>Here the main issues we faced and how we've solved them:
> >>
> >>1. "changes-since" filter for image-list is not supported in v2 api. Steve
> >>Lewis made a great job and implemented a set of filters with comparison
> >>operators https://review.openstack.org/#/c/197388/. Filtering by
> >>'changes-since' is completely similar to 'gte:updated_at'.
> >>
> >>2. Filtering by custom properties must have prefix 'property-'. In v2 it's
> >>not required.
> >>
> >>3. V2 states that all custom properties must be image attributes, but Nova
> >>assumes that they are included in 'properties' dictionary. It's fixed with
> >>glanceclient's method 'is_base_property(prop_name)', that returns False in
> >>case of custom property.
> >>
> >>4. is_public=True/False is visibility="public"/"private" respectively.
> >>
> >>5. Deleting custom image properties in Nova is performed with 'purge_props'
> >>flag. If it's set to True, then all prop names, that are not included in
> >>updated data, will be removed. In case of v2 we have to explicitly specify
> >>prop names in the list param 'remove_props'. To implement this behaviour, if
> >>'purge_props' is set, we make additional 'get' request to determine the
> >>existing properties and put in 'remove_prop' list only those, that are not
> >>in updated_data.
> >>
> >>6. My favourite:
> >>There is an ability to activate an empty image by just providing 'size = 0':
> >>https://review.openstack.org/#/c/9715/, in this case image will be a
> >>collection of metadata. Glance v2 doesn't support this "feature" and that's
> >>why we have to implement a very dirty workaround:
> >>    * v2 requires, that disk_format and container-format must be set before
> >>the activation. if these params are not provided to 'create' method then we
> >>hardcode it to 'qcow2' and 'bare'.
> >>    * we call 'upload' method with empty data (data = '') to activate image.
> >>Me (and the rest glance team) think that this image activation with
> >>zero-size is inconsistent and we won't implement it in v2. So, I'm going to
> >>ask if Nova really needs this feature and maybe it's possible to make it
> >>work without it.
> >
> >Nova uses this functionality when it creates snapshots of volume
> >backed instances, that is, instances that only have Cinder volumes
> >attached and do not have an ephemeral disk.
> >In this case Nova API creates Cinder snapshots for the Cinder volumes
> >and builds the block_device_mapping property with block devices that
> >reference the Cinder snapshots.  Nova activates this image with size=0
> >because this image does not have a disk and simply refers to the
> >collection of Cinder snapshots that collectively comprise the binary
> >image.  Callers of Glance outside of Nova may also use the APIs to
> >create "block device mapping" images as well that contain references
> >to Cinder volumes to attach, blank volumes to create, snapshots to
> >create volumes from, etc during the server creation.  Not having the
> >ability to create these images with V2 is a loss of function.
> 
> I disagree. Being able to activate empty images breaks the consistency
> of Glances API and I don't think it should be considered a feature but
> a bug. An active image is an image that can be used to *boot* a VM. If
> the image is empty, you simply can't do that.

NB if an empty image is associated with a kernel/initrd image then it
could conceptually still be bootable, as the VM could run entirely from
content contained in the initrd, or the initrd might have activated
some network accessed root device. Whether this works in practice
with glance empty images though I don't know. Just from a conceptual
POV, images don't need to contain any content at all.

Regards,
Daniel
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