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authorHumble Chirammal <hchiramm@redhat.com>2014-05-22 17:31:11 +0530
committerVijay Bellur <vbellur@redhat.com>2014-05-29 23:33:03 -0700
commit748175e35e9d2d2506a875bafd6b63889512b7e5 (patch)
tree521e977bc062678e3ce8903a9f69e3e078a879b2 /doc/features
parent8049696c48dc1a51a76629c2bd2fdc1cf187a5b5 (diff)
doc: Add 'expose volume capabilities' details of bd-xlator
Change-Id: If7a89a36c2eca653e4fa7f59597ac8b03e4bc747 BUG: 1086749 Signed-off-by: Humble Chirammal <hchiramm@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Bharata B Rao <bharata.rao@gmail.com> Reviewed-on: http://review.gluster.org/7844 Reviewed-by: Vijay Bellur <vbellur@redhat.com> Tested-by: Vijay Bellur <vbellur@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/features')
-rw-r--r--doc/features/bd-xlator.md67
1 files changed, 65 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/doc/features/bd-xlator.md b/doc/features/bd-xlator.md
index 743e78b1eb0..1771fb6e24b 100644
--- a/doc/features/bd-xlator.md
+++ b/doc/features/bd-xlator.md
@@ -309,8 +309,6 @@ Now /mnt/thin-lv is a thin provisioned file that is backed by a thin LV and size
As can be seen from above, creation of a file resulted in creation of a thin LV in the brick.
-For more information on bd translator wrt snapshots and clones,
-refer # http://raobharata.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/glusterfs-block-device-translator/
###Improvisation on BD translator:
@@ -404,3 +402,68 @@ bricks/volumes. After deleting a gluster volume, one has to manually
remove the associated tag using vgchange <vg-name> --deltag
`<trusted.glusterfs.volume-id:<volume-id>>`
+
+#### Exposing volume capabilities
+
+With multiple storage translators (posix and bd) being supported in GlusterFS, it becomes
+necessary to know the volume type so that user can issue appropriate calls that are relevant
+only to the a given volume type. Hence there needs to be a way to expose the type of
+the storage translator of the volume to the user.
+
+BD xlator is capable of providing server offloaded file copy, server/storage offloaded
+zeroing of a file etc. This capabilities should be visible to the client/user, so that these
+features can be exploited.
+
+BD xlator exports capability information through gluster volume info (and --xml) output. For eg:
+
+`snip of gluster volume info output for a BD based volume`
+
+ Xlator 1: BD
+ Capability 1: thin
+
+`snip of gluster volume info --xml output for a BD based volume`
+
+ <xlators>
+ <xlator>
+ <name>BD</name>
+ <capabilities>
+ <capability>thin</capability>
+ </capabilities>
+ </xlator>
+ </xlators>
+
+But this capability information should also exposed through some other means so that a host
+which is not part of Gluster peer could also avail this capabilities.
+
+* Type
+
+BD translator supports both regular files and block device, i,e., one can create files on
+GlusterFS volume backed by BD translator and this file could end up as regular posix file or
+a logical volume (block device) based on the user''s choice. User can do a setxattr on the
+created file to convert it to a logical volume.
+
+Users of BD backed volume like QEMU would like to know that it is working with BD type of volume
+so that it can issue an additional setxattr call after creating a VM image on GlusterFS backend.
+This is necessary to ensure that the created VM image is backed by LV instead of file.
+
+There are different ways to expose this information (BD type of volume) to user.
+One way is to export it via a `getxattr` call. That said, When a client issues getxattr("volume_type")
+on a root gfid, bd xlator will return 1 implying its BD xlator. But posix xlator will return ENODATA
+and client code can interpret this as posix xlator. Also capability list can be returned via
+getxattr("caps") for root gfid.
+
+* Capabilities
+
+BD xlator supports new features such as server offloaded file copy, thin provisioned VM images etc.
+
+There is no standard way of exploiting these features from client side (such as syscall
+to exploit server offloaded copy). So these features need to be exported to the client so that
+they can be used. BD xlator latest version exports these capabilities information through
+gluster volume info (and --xml) output. But if a client is not part of GlusterFS peer
+it can''t run volume info command to get the list of capabilities of a given GlusterFS volume.
+For example, GlusterFS block driver in qemu need to get the capability list so that these features are used.
+
+
+
+Parts of this documentation were originally published here
+#http://raobharata.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/glusterfs-block-device-translator/