Open Stack

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 04:59:39PM -0700, Preston L. Bannister wrote:
> QEMU has the ability to directly connect to iSCSI volumes. Running the
> iSCSI connections through the nova-compute host *seems* somewhat
> inefficient.
> 
> There is a spec/blueprint and implementation that landed in Kilo:
> 
> https://specs.openstack.org/openstack/nova-specs/specs/kilo/implemented/qemu-built-in-iscsi-initiator.html
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/qemu-built-in-iscsi-initiator
> 
> From looking at the OpenStack Nova sources ... I am not entirely clear on
> when this behavior is invoked (just for Ceph?), and how it might change in
> future.
> 
> Looking for a general sense where this is headed. (If anyone knows...)
> 
> If there is some problem with QEMU and directly attached iSCSI volumes,
> that would explain why this is not the default. Or is this simple inertia?
> 
> 
> I have a concrete concern. I work for a company (EMC) that offers backup
> products, and we now have backup for instances in OpenStack. To make this
> efficient, we need to collect changed-block information from instances.
> 
> 1)  We could put an intercept in the Linux kernel of the nova-compute host
> to track writes at the block layer. This has the merit of working for
> containers, and potentially bare-metal instance deployments. But is not
> guaranteed for instances, if the iSCSI volumes are directly attached to
> QEMU.
> 
> 2)  We could use the QEMU support for incremental backup (first bit landed
> in QEMU 2.4). This has the merit of working with any storage, by only for
> virtual machines under QEMU.
> 
> As our customers are (so far) only asking about virtual machine backup. I
> long ago settled on (2) as most promising.
> 
> What I cannot clearly determine is where (1) will fail. Will all iSCSI
> volumes connected to QEMU instances eventually become directly connected?

Our long term goal is that 100% of all network storage will be connected
to directly by QEMU. We already have the ability to partially do this with
iSCSI, but it is lacking support for multipath. As & when that gap is
addressed though, we'll stop using the host OS for any iSCSI stuff.

So if you're requiring access to host iSCSI volumes, it'll work in the
short-medium term, but in the medium-long term we're not going to use
that so plan accordingly.

> Xiao's unanswered query (below) presents another question. Is this a
> site-choice? Could I require my customers to configure their OpenStack
> clouds to always route iSCSI connections through the nova-compute host? (I
> am not a fan of this approach, but I have to ask.)

In the short term that'll work, but long term we're not intending to
support that once QEMU gains multi-path. There's no timeframe on when
that will happen though.



Regards,
Daniel
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