cinder-specs/specs/liberty/cinder-backend-report-discard.rst
Daniel Wilson f6312699b1 Update backend capabilities on discard/trim/unmap
Updating the spec to reflect the fact that hw_disk_discard is
not needed and to add detail on how to fully enable this
functionality.

Implements: bp cinder-backend-report-discard
Change-Id: Ibd8fa43bb67b8160c8ba36e817bd83e28f82ec22
2015-09-11 22:31:52 +00:00

3.9 KiB

Add ability for Cinder backend to report discard/unmap/trim

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/cinder/+spec/cinder-backend-report-discard

Currently, libvirt/qemu has support for a discard option when attaching a volume to an instance. With this feature, the unmap/trim command can be sent from guest to the physical storage device.

A cinder back-end should report a connection capability that can be used to instruct Nova how to attach a volume.

This spec aims to add the assist to support enabling discard for cinder volumes.

Problem description

Currently there is no way for Nova to know if a Cinder back end supports discard/trim/unmap functionality. This aims to provide that info to Nova.

Use Cases

If a Cinder backed uses media that can make use of discard functionality there should be a way to do this. This will improve long term performance of such back ends.

Proposed change

Any driver which wants to support this will just add an entry to the properties returned by intialize_connection.

"discard": True,

An example from the Pure Storage driver would be

properties = {
    "driver_volume_type": "iscsi",
    "data": {
        "target_iqn": target_port["iqn"],
        "target_portal": target_port["portal"],
        "target_lun": connection["lun"],
        "target_discovered": True,
        "access_mode": "rw",
        "discard": True,
    },
}

Alternatives

Alternatives include adding a setting to cinder.conf for each backend that supports this. This includes a manual step that would be more error prone.

Data model impact

None

REST API impact

Documentation on the response to 'initialize_connection' will need to be updated with notes explaining that this new info is provided.

Security impact

None

Notifications impact

None

Other end user impact

None

Performance Impact

There will be a performance gain for back ends that benefit from having discard functionality.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing) for more info.

Other deployer impact

Deployers will need to add some properties to Glance images to make this work. Once an instance is booted from the modified image the discard capability reported by the driver will be activated.

hw_scsi_model=virtio-scsi hw_disk_bus=scsi

glance image-update --property hw_scsi_model=virtio-scsi

--property hw_disk_bus=scsi <image-uuid>

This causes the correct controller to be created on the instance via code changes here https://review.openstack.org/#/c/70263/. Once the correct controller is in place the unmap functionality specified by the Cinder backend will be utilized.

A secondary volume attachment will be treated separately and will honor the discard settings provided at connection time.

Developer impact

None

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

  • Daniel Wilson

Work Items

Add the "discard": True line to the Pure Storage driver.

Implement the funcionality in Nova as well. https://review.openstack.org/#/c/205726/1

Dependencies

None

Testing

Tempest tests will not be needed for this spec. Pure Storage CI will test this code path with existing tempest tests.

Documentation Impact

Documentation on the response to 'initialize_connection' will need to be updated with notes explaining that this new info is provided.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)