openstack team mailing list archive

[Chuck Thier <cthier@xxxxxxxxx>]

See responses inline:

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Justin Santa Barbara
<justin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> There are many existing volume solutions.  Some are in production use (AoE,
> iSCSI).  There are enterprise-class SAN providers (Solaris, HP/LeftHand
> SANs).  There are existing projects to build 'cloud' storage solutions that
> are shaping up very well (SheepDog, RBD).
>
> While yes, there are many solutions currently available, they don't suit
our needs.  For example, a traditional SAN is cost prohibitive, and doesn't
really scale in large cloud deployments.  Our solution also isn't going to
be some radical new thing, but will likely build off of technologies like
iSCSI.  And as I said, more will be discussed at the design summit.

It's great that you're thinking about how to add another option to the mix.
>  I do think you should consider supporting one of the existing efforts
> unless you have a radically different approach, but it's open source, so
> you're free to scratch your own itch.
>
>
However: this should not be allowed to impact the volumes API.  I consider
> volumes to be a core feature of the cloud; and OpenStack has great volume
> support today.  We have API support for volumes today in the EC2 API, and if
> we want people to use the OpenStack API, then API support for volumes needs
> to be there as well.  This does not mean that volumes must be enabled on
> every OpenStack deployment, so even if CloudServers can't support volumes
> initially, we should still provide the API.
>
>
I would say that the current OpenStack volume support is very minimal at the
moment and not scalable to our needs as is.  We have no desire to make
drastic changes to the API, but more to provide a scalable solution to sit
behind the API, and perhaps to make the API more robust with features like
snap-shots to swift.

So: When can we expect volume support in nova?  If I repackaged my volumes
> API as an extension, can we get it merged into Cactus?
>
>
This is not up to me, as I am not a core nova dev, nor do I lay any claim to
being the  volume API gatekeeper, just replying to John's question :)

--
Chuck