Open Stack

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Anne Gentle <anne at openstack.org> wrote:

> For the Cinder project, the admin docs currently refer to the Volume
> service and the Volume API, with an explanation about the cinder services
> replacing the nova-volume service here.[1]
>
> Going forward, should we use "Block Storage" instead of volumes throughout
> the admin docs and is there a good reason to keep "volumes" as what the
> Managing Volumes chapter [2] describes? What are the differentiators so we
> can give guidance on the naming convention going forward?
>
> I ask because the openstack/volume-api repo has a doc patch proposed now
> that uses Block Storage throughout, and John Griffth, the Cinder PTL,
> prefers that term and also named the project Cinder Block Storage.
>
> I'm fine with Block Storage but then wondered what affect the naming
> choice has on the current admin docs.
>
> Input needed, thanks!
> Anne
>
> 1.
> http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/admin/content/overview-block-storage-arch.html
> 2.
> http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/admin/content/managing-volumes.html <http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/admin/content/managing-volumes.html>
>
>

I think changing the terminology to "Block Storage" sounds like the right
thing to do. As a side note, it looks like [2] currently implies
that nova-volumes only supports LVM on Linux as the back-end. This isn't
true, and it's contradicted by the "Volume drivers" section in the next
section [3], so if as we change the language in that section, we should
update that as well.

To play devil's advocate, I should point out that there's been discussion
on the openstack-dev mailing list about Cinder potentially supporting
filesystem storage (e.g., NFS, CIFS) [4]. Here's Joe Topjian voicing the
opposing argument:

"As an operator, I too see storage as storage--whether it's block or
network shares--and should all be in one project. I'll go a step further
and think that it should all be grouped under the concept of a "volume". A
volume is storage - if a user wants a volume, they click create, and then
they can choose what type they want (whether block, network, or whatever
else the operator has enabled)." [5]

For now, it probably makes sense to call it "Block Storage" in the admin
docs (assuming that doc patch lands in openstack/volume-api) to make things
consistent across the docs. But it's possible that we may need to change it
to "Volume" or some other more general term sometime in the future if
support ever does get added for non-block-based storage in Cinder.


3.
http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/admin/content/volume-drivers.html
4.
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2012-November/003196.html
5.
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2012-November/003199.html

-- 
Lorin Hochstein
Lead Architect - Cloud Services
Nimbis Services, Inc.
www.nimbisservices.com
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