Description
Nova instances can be booted from volume, analogous to EBS-backed volumes in EC2.
We construct a bootable volume, fire up an instance backed by this volume, and then create a snapshot image of the volume-backed instance.
Setup
We assume that an instance has already been booted in a previous test, and we use this as a builder to facilitate the creation of a bootable volume.
Capture the instance name as an environment variable:
INSTANCE=<your instance name>
We also need a rootfs-style image, which may be download from:
$> wget http://images.ansolabs.com/cirros-0.3.0-x86_64-rootfs.img.gz
How to test
Create a 1Gb volume, which we will make bootable:
$> nova volume-create --display_name=bootable_volume 1 $> VOLUME_ID=$(nova volume-list | awk '/bootable_volume/ {print $2}')
and wait for the volume to become available:
$> watch "nova volume-show bootable_volume | grep status"
Temporarily attach volume to your builder instance, this will allow us to copy image data into the volume
$> nova volume-attach $INSTANCE $VOLUME_ID /dev/vdb
Wait for the volume status to show as in-use:
$> watch "nova volume-show bootable_volume | grep status"
Format and mount volume to a staging mount point:
$> ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no cirros@10.0.0.2 << EOF set -o errexit set -o xtrace sudo mkdir -p /tmp/stage sudo mkfs.ext3 -b 1024 /dev/vdb 1048576 sudo mount /dev/vdb /tmp/stage sudo touch /tmp/stage/cirros-0.3.0-x86_64-rootfs.img.gz sudo chown cirros /tmp/stage/cirros-0.3.0-x86_64-rootfs.img.gz EOF
Copy image to the staging directory on the builder instance:
$> scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no cirros-0.3.0-x86_64-rootfs.img.gz cirros@10.0.0.2:/tmp/stage
Unpack image into the volume (don't worry about an unmount failure).
$> ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i $KEY_FILE cirros@10.0.0.2 << EOF set -o errexit set -o xtrace cd /tmp/stage sudo mkdir -p /tmp/cirros sudo gunzip cirros-0.3.0-x86_64-rootfs.img.gz sudo mount cirros-0.3.0-x86_64-rootfs.img /tmp/cirros sudo cp -pr /tmp/cirros/* /tmp/stage/ cd sync sudo umount /tmp/cirros sudo umount /tmp/stage || true EOF
Detach volume for the builder instance:
$> nova volume-detach $INSTANCE $VOLUME_ID
and wait for the volume status to show as availble:
$> watch "nova volume-show bootable_volume | grep status"
Now snapshot the bootable volume we just created:
$> nova volume-snapshot-create --display_name bootable_snapshot $VOLUME_ID
and wait for the snapshot to become available:
$> nova volume-snapshot-show bootable_snapshot $> SNAPSHOT_ID=$(nova volume-snapshot-list | awk '/bootable_snapshot/ {print $2}')
Now we can boot from the bootable volume. We use the same image as the builder instance but that is only in order to retrieve the image properties (kernel and ramdisk IDs)
$> IMAGE_ID=$(nova show $INSTANCE | awk '/image/ {print $5}' | sed 's,(\(.*\)),\1,') $> nova boot --flavor 1 --image $INSTANCE --block_device_mapping vda=${SNAPSHOT_ID}:snap::0 volume_backed
Create an image fromt he running instance:
$> nova image-create volume_backed volume_backed_image
Boot the image created from the running volume-backed instance:
$> nova boot --flavor 1 --image $(glance image-list | awk '/volume_backed_image/ {print $2}') from_volume_backed
Expected Results
You should be able able to shh into both volume-backed instances.
Note the properties on the new image:
$> glance image-show $(glance image-list | awk '/volume_backed_image/ {print $2}')
and the lack of image data (as that is taken from the volume snapshot).
Note also that the EC2 API reports the image as being EBS-backed as opposed to instance-store:
$> euca-describe-images
Note that an additional snapshot now exists to back the image:
$> nova volume-snapshot-list
Also note for each of the two volume-backed instances you've fired up, there is a volume cloned from the corresponding snapshot:
$> nova volume-list