openstack-manuals/doc/config-reference/block-storage/drivers/ibm-gpfs-volume-driver.xml
Diane Fleming b417259465 Update headings plus edits for consistency and clarity in Config Reference
Partial-Bug: #1250515

author: diane fleming

Change-Id: I92c9ad25ee5bbd2c9334c4860637faa1b358718b
backport: havana
2013-11-19 12:44:14 -06:00

190 lines
8.3 KiB
XML

<section xml:id="GPFS-driver" xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0">
<title>IBM GPFS volume driver</title>
<para>IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) is a cluster file
system that provides concurrent access to file systems from
multiple nodes. The storage provided by these nodes can be
direct attached, network attached, SAN attached, or a
combination of these methods. GPFS provides many features
beyond common data access, including data replication, policy
based storage management, and space efficient file snapshot
and clone operations.</para>
<section xml:id="GPFS-driver-background">
<title>How the GPFS driver works</title>
<para>The GPFS driver enables the use of GPFS in a fashion
similar to that of the NFS driver. With the GPFS driver, instances do not
actually access a storage device at the block level.
Instead, volume backing files are created in a GPFS file
system and mapped to instances, which emulate a block
device.</para>
<para>
<note>
<para>GPFS software must be installed and running on
nodes where Block Storage and Compute
services run in the OpenStack environment.
A GPFS file system must also be created and
mounted on these nodes before starting the
<literal>cinder-volume</literal> service. The
details of these GPFS specific steps are covered
in <citetitle>GPFS: Concepts, Planning, and Installation Guide</citetitle>
and <citetitle>GPFS: Administration and Programming Reference</citetitle>.
</para>
</note>
</para>
<para>Optionally, the Image Service can be configured to store images on
a GPFS file system. When a Block Storage volume is created from
an image, if both image data and volume data reside in the
same GPFS file system, the data from image file is moved
efficiently to the volume file using copy-on-write
optimization strategy.</para>
</section>
<section xml:id="GPFS-driver-options">
<title>Enable the GPFS driver</title>
<para>To use the Block Storage Service with the GPFS driver, first set the
<literal>volume_driver</literal> in
<filename>cinder.conf</filename>:</para>
<programlisting>volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.gpfs.GPFSDriver</programlisting>
<para>The following table contains the configuration options
supported by the GPFS driver.</para>
<xi:include
href="../../../common/tables/cinder-storage_gpfs.xml"/>
<note>
<para>The <literal>gpfs_images_share_mode</literal>
flag is only valid if the Image Service is configured to
use GPFS with the <literal>gpfs_images_dir</literal> flag.
When the value of this flag is
<literal>copy_on_write</literal>, the paths
specified by the
<literal>gpfs_mount_point_base</literal> and
<literal>gpfs_images_dir</literal> flags must both
reside in the same GPFS file system and in the same
GPFS file set.</para>
</note>
</section>
<section xml:id="GPFS-volume-options">
<title>Volume creation options</title>
<para>It is possible to specify additional volume
configuration options on a per-volume basis by specifying
volume metadata. The volume is created using the specified
options. Changing the metadata after the volume is created
has no effect. The following table lists the volume
creation options supported by the GPFS volume
driver.</para>
<table rules="all">
<caption>Volume Create Options for GPFS Volume
Drive</caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Metadata Item Name</th>
<th>Description</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><literal>fstype</literal></td>
<td>Specifies whether to create a file system or a swap
area on the new volume. If
<literal>fstype=swap</literal> is
specified, the mkswap command is used to
create a swap area. Otherwise the mkfs command
is passed the specified file system type, for example
ext3, ext4 or ntfs.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>fslabel</literal></td>
<td>Sets the file system label for
the file system specified by <literal>fstype</literal> option.
This value is only used if <literal>fstype</literal> is
specified.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>data_pool_name</literal></td>
<td>
<para>Specifies the GPFS storage pool to which the volume is to be assigned.
Note: The GPFS storage pool must already have been
created.</para>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>replicas</literal></td>
<td>
<para>Specifies how many copies of the volume
file to create. Valid values are 1, 2,
and, for GPFS V3.5.0.7 and later, 3. This
value cannot be greater than the value of
the <literal>MaxDataReplicas</literal> attribute of the file
system.</para>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>dio</literal></td>
<td>
<para>Enables or disables the Direct I/O caching
policy for the volume file. Valid values
are <literal>yes</literal> and <literal>no</literal>.</para>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>write_affinity_depth</literal></td>
<td>
<para>Specifies the allocation policy to be used
for the volume file. Note: This option
only works if <literal>allow-write-affinity</literal> is
set for the GPFS data pool.</para>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>block_group_factor</literal></td>
<td>
<para>Specifies how many blocks are laid out
sequentially in the volume file to behave
as a single large block. Note: This option
only works if <literal>allow-write-affinity</literal> is
set for the GPFS data pool.</para>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><literal>write_affinity_failure_group</literal></td>
<td>
<para>Specifies the range of nodes (in GPFS
shared nothing architecture) where
replicas of blocks in the volume file are
to be written. See <citetitle>GPFS: Administration and
Programming Reference</citetitle> for more
details on this option.</para>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<simplesect>
<title>Example: Volume creation options</title>
<para>This example shows the creation of a 50GB volume
with an ext4 file system labeled
<literal>newfs</literal>and direct IO
enabled:</para>
<screen><prompt>$</prompt><userinput>cinder create --metadata fstype=ext4 fslabel=newfs dio=yes --display-name volume_1 50</userinput> </screen>
</simplesect>
</section>
<section xml:id="GPFS-operational-notes">
<title>Operational notes for GPFS driver</title>
<simplesect>
<title>Snapshots and clones</title>
<para>Volume snapshots are implemented using the GPFS file
clone feature. Whenever a new snapshot is created, the
snapshot file is efficiently created as a read-only
clone parent of the volume, and the volume file uses
copy-on-write optimization strategy to minimize data
movement.</para>
<para>Similarly when a new volume is created from a
snapshot or from an existing volume, the same approach
is taken. The same approach is also used when a new
volume is created from a Glance image, if the source
image is in raw format, and
<literal>gpfs_images_share_mode</literal> is set
to <literal>copy_on_write</literal>.</para>
</simplesect>
</section>
</section>