Summary
Enable VM hosts to discover new SAN storage, issue NPIV operations and do basic configuration of multipath devices.
This functionality is currently a work in progress, and this page will be updated as it is developed.
Owner
- Name: Dave Allan
- Email: dallan at redhat dot com
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 12
- Last updated: 2009-07-16
- Percentage of completion: 80%
Detailed Description
Background
Guest virtual machines can currently use SAN storage and multipath devices, but administrators must do the storage configuration manually using separate tools from libvirt. This feature will permit administrators to discover storage and present it to virtual machines using libvirt.
Datacenter operations are usually split along functional lines: the server administration team, the SAN administration team, and others (network, etc.) not relevant to this discussion. Within the server admin group, there are often sub-groups for each OS. When a new application is deployed the SAN admins provision the storage and notify whichever OS team is responsible for the server to proceed with the OS install.
There may be more or less information transmitted from the SAN admins to the server admins when the storage becomes available. The minimal message is something along the lines of, "I've provisioned the LUNs, and you should be able to see them now. The LUNs are 27, 28, 29 and 53." The server admin may not know what targets or hosts the new storage is accessible through, but a rescan of all host adapters will show up new logical units of the size requested with numbers 27, 28, 29 and 53 on some target on some host, and the server admin assumes, usually reasonably, that these logical units are the new storage.
While libvirt is currently capable of using SAN storage, it lacks the ability to trigger scans for new storage, create virtual host adapters using NPIV and discover multipath devices. The OS admin team that manages the VM host must get involved to get the VM host to recognize the new storage. Giving libvirt the ability to manage storage allows the OS admin team responsible for the guest OS to complete the VM build out itself.
Implementation
The libvirt APIs already permit storage discovery and pool creation. These functions will be extended to discover and rescan storage on a per-SCSI-host basis and discover multipath devices. The node device APIs will be extended to create and destroy vitrual adapters using NPIV.
Benefit to Fedora
Administrators will be able to provision storage for VMs from the single set of tools that they are already using to manage the VMs.
Scope
As described above, changes are required in libvirt. Eventually the tools using libvirt will need to be updated to take advantage of the new features, but that is not within the scope of this work.
TODO
- Implement storage discovery
- Implement NPIV operations
- Implement multipath configuration
Completed
- SCSI storage discovery and rescan are complete.
- The creation and destruction of virtual HBAs using NPIV is complete.
How To Test
Use cases
Discover SAN storage
Provision a new logical unit on iSCSI or fibre channel storage. Use virsh to trigger a scan for it, and confirm that it appears correctly.
TBD: Fill in how to configure & test this
Create a virtual HBA with NPIV
Issue an NPIV create call and confirm that the VM host has instantiated a new host adapter and that any storage zoned to it is usable.
To create virtual HBAs using libvirt, it is of course necessary to have an NPIV capable HBA and switch. You can confirm that you have those by manually creating a new HBA by an echo into sysfs.
The file you echo into may be in one of two places, depending on which kernel version you have. On recent kernels it's in:
/sys/class/fc_host/hostN
on older kernels it's in:
/sys/class/scsi_host/hostN
Note also that the example WWN given below is bogus. If you try to use it, the kernel will reject it. You should pick a WWN that makes sense for your SAN.
For example on a recent kernel:
echo '1111222233334444:5555666677778888' > /sys/class/fc_host/host5/vport_create
where '1111222233334444:5555666677778888' is the WWPN:WWNN and host5 is the physical HBA you want to use to create the virtual HBA. If the create is successful, you'll get a new HBA in the system with the next available host number.
You can then destroy the test virtual HBA with:
echo '1111222233334444:5555666677778888' > /sys/class/fc_host/host5/vport_delete
Testing the libvirt API
The libvirt API implementation is intended to be used by client applications, but the functionality can be tested with virsh.
Creating a new virtual adapter using virsh is a two step process. First, find the node device name of the HBA that's going to be used to create the virtual adapter. You can get a list of all the HBAs on your system with:
virsh nodedev-list --cap=scsi_host
For example:
<pre> # virsh nodedev-list --cap=scsi_host pci_10df_fe00_0_scsi_host pci_10df_fe00_0_scsi_host_0 pci_10df_fe00_scsi_host pci_10df_fe00_scsi_host_0 pci_10df_fe00_scsi_host_0_scsi_host pci_10df_fe00_scsi_host_0_scsi_host_0 <pre>
Dump the XML for each HBA until you find the host number of the physical HBA you want to use:
<nowiki>
- virsh nodedev-dumpxml pci_10df_fe00_scsi_host
<device>
<name>pci_10df_fe00_scsi_host</name>
<parent>pci_10df_fe00</parent>
<capability type='scsi_host'>
<host>5</host>
<capability type='fc_host'>
<wwnn>20000000c9848140</wwnn>
<wwpn>10000000c9848140</wwpn>
</capability>
<capability type='vport_ops' />
</capability>
</device> <nowiki> HBAs that are capable of creating virtual adapters will have a capability type='vport_ops'.
Once you know the node device name of the parent HBA, create a file containing XML describing the virtual HBA you want to create:
<device>
<parent>pci_10df_fe00_0_scsi_host</parent>
<capability type='scsi_host'>
<capability type='fc_host'>
<wwpn>1111222233334444</wwpn>
<wwnn>5555666677778888</wwnn>
</capability>
</capability>
</device>
The parent element is the name of the parent HBA as listed by virsh nodedev-list. wwpn and wwnn are, as you would expect, the WWNN and WWPN for the virtual HBA to be created. Libvirt does not do any validation of the WWPN/WWNN; invalid WWNs are rejected by the kernel and libvirt reports the failure. The error reported by the kernel is somewhat misleading, however:
- virsh nodedev-create badwwn.xml
error: Failed to create node device from badwwn.xml error: Write of '1111222233334444:5555666677778888' to '/sys/class/fc_host/host6/vport_create' during vport create/delete failed: No such file or directory
To create the new virtual HBA, feed the file to virsh:
virsh nodedev-create new.xml
If the operation succeeds, you'll get a message similar to:
- virsh nodedev-create dpa/newhost.xml
Node device pci_10df_fe00_0_scsi_host_0_scsi_host created from new.xml
and you will see the new HBA in the OS. The create command output gives you the node device name of the newly created device.
To destroy the device, use virsh nodedev-destroy:
- virsh nodedev-destroy pci_10df_fe00_0_scsi_host_0_scsi_host
Destroyed node device 'pci_10df_fe00_0_scsi_host_0_scsi_host'
and you will see the HBA disappear from the OS.
Create all available multipath devices
Issue the call to create all available multipath devices and confirm that they are created and usable.
TBD: Fill in how to configure & test this
User Experience
See the previous section.
Dependencies
None, outside of the implementation efforts detailed above.
Contingency Plan
This functionality is independent of all other features. If it is not ready, administrators can continue to configure storage manually.
Documentation
Release Notes
This functionality adds the ability in libvirt to discover storage on a per-SCSI-host basis, issue NPIV operations and configure multipath devices. This enables administrators to discover, configure and provision storage for virtual machines without having to use multiple tools.