[openstack-dev] Announcing Ekko -- Scalable block-based backup for OpenStack

Fausto Marzi fausto.marzi at gmail.com
Tue Jan 26 02:20:00 UTC 2016


Hi Sam,
My opinion would be to converge, so to have Ekko features exported from the freezer-api and horizon web interface. Also the freezer-scheduler can be integrated, that would enable Ekko to execute backup syncronized over multiple nodes.

By all mean, this does not mean you have to, it's just how I feel about it.

We are totally open, so please let us know if there's any interest from your side.

Thanks,
Fausto

Sent from my iPhone

> On 25 Jan 2016, at 08:58, Sam Yaple <samuel at yaple.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:45 AM, Thierry Carrez <thierry at openstack.org> wrote:
>> Sam Yaple wrote:
>>> We would like to introduce you to a new community-driven OpenStack
>>> project called Ekko.
>>> 
>>> The aim of Ekko is to provide incremental block-level backup and restore
>>> of Nova instances. We see backups as a key area that is missing in
>>> OpenStack. One issue that has previously prevented backups in OpenStack
>>> is the scalability of the storage backend. Object-storage is the answer
>>> to this scalability problem, but with block-based backups you often see
>>> large files that require POSIX operations to perform retention and
>>> deletions. These operations are not able to be performed in the
>>> traditional way in object storage, which has prevented leveraging
>>> object-storage to its full potential. With Ekko we can solve this issue
>>> allowing us to use storage that can scale with OpenStack.
>> 
>> Hi!
>> 
>> How does Ekko compare to / differ from Freezer, which is an official OpenStack project targeted to the same problem space ? I suspect this is more low-level ? Is there some potential for convergence between the two projects ?
> 
> Hello Thierry,
> 
> These are good questions. The biggest difference you already caught onto, Ekko is more low-level. Freezer is targeted at the filesystem and specific applications (like databases) directly.
> 
> There are only two places with overlapping goals that I know of*. The first is backup of a Cinder volume which is a future goal of Ekko and something Freezer can currently do for LVM backed Cinder. The second is backup of a nova instance. This isn't something freezer does directly, instead it leverages nova-snapshot which is very disruptive to the instance and will cause downtime for said instance. The current pursuit of Ekko is _live_ incremental block-level backup of an nova instance and in that regard there is no overlap with Freezer or any other project for that matter.
> 
> To answer the question of convergence between Ekko and Freezer, I would say it's possible. That being said both projects are addressing different problems in different ways. As discussed above, there is little overlap between the two projects and the areas where there is overlap of goals have drastically different implementations. I could put together a list of Ekko vs Freezer, but I think that would be comparing apples to oranges. To state this in terms of compatibility, Ekko and Freezer can run side-by-side without interfering with each other in anyway.
> 
> *Disclaimer: I am no expert on Freezer, I may be wrong in some statements and am open to correction.
> 
> Sam Yaple
> 
>> -- 
>> Thierry Carrez (ttx)
>> 
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