Capabilities and Extra-Specs

Manila Administrators create share types with extra-specs to allow users to request a type of share to create. The Administrator chooses a name for the share type and decides how to communicate the significance of the different share types in terms that the users should understand or need to know. By design, most of the details of a share type (the extra- specs) are not exposed to users – only Administrators.

Share Types

Refer to the Manila client command-line help for information on how to create a share type and set “extra-spec” key/value pairs for a share type.

Extra-Specs

There are 3 types of extra-specs: required, scoped, and un-scoped.

Manila requires the driver_handles_share_servers extra-spec.

Scoped extra-specs use a prefix followed by a colon to define a namespace for scoping the extra-spec. A prefix could be a vendor name or acronym and is a hint that this extra-spec key/value only applies to that vendor’s driver. Scoped extra-specs are not used by the scheduler to determine where a share is created (except for the special capabilities prefix). It is up to each driver implementation to determine how to use scoped extra-specs and to document them.

The prefix “capabilities” is a special prefix to indicate extra-specs that are treated like un-scoped extra-specs. In the CapabilitiesFilter the “capabilities:” is stripped from the key and then the extra-spec key and value are used as an un-scoped extra-spec.

Un-scoped extra-specs have a key that either starts with “capabilities:” or does not contain a colon. When the CapabilitiesFilter is enabled (it is enabled by default), the scheduler will only create a share on a backend that reports capabilities that match the share type’s un-scoped extra-spec keys.

Refer to the CapabilitiesFilter for matching operators. For example, to match a boolean capability the extra-spec value would be ‘<is> True’.

For vendor-specific capabilities (which need to be visible to the CapabilityFilter), it is recommended to use the vendor prefix followed by an underscore. This is not a strict requirement, but will provide a consistent look along-side the scoped extra-specs and will be a clear indicator of vendor capabilities vs. common capabilities.

Common Capabilities

For capabilities that apply to multiple backends a common capability can be created.

  • driver_handles_share_servers is a special, required, user-visible common capability. Added in Kilo.
  • dedupe - indicates that a backend/pool can provide shares using some deduplication technology. The default value of the dedupe capability (if a driver doesn’t report it) is False. Drivers cannot report to the scheduler that they support both dedupe and non-deduped share. For each pool it’s either always on or always off. Administrators can make a share type use deduplication by setting this extra-spec to ‘<is> True’. Administrators can prevent a share type from using deduplication by setting this extra-spec to ‘<is> False’. Added in Liberty.
  • compression - indicates that a backend/pool can provide shares using some compression technology. The default value of the compression capability (if a driver doesn’t report it) is False. Drivers cannot report to the scheduler that they support both compression and non-compression. For each pool it’s either always on or always off. Administrators can make a share type use compression by setting this extra-spec to ‘<is> True’. Administrators can prevent a share type from using compression by setting this extra-spec to ‘<is> False’. Added in Liberty.
  • thin_provisioning - shares will not be space guaranteed and overprovisioning will be enabled. This capability defaults to False. Backends/pools that support thin provisioning must report True for this capability. Administrators can make a share type use thin provisioned shares by setting this extra-spec to ‘<is> True’. If a driver reports thin_provisioning=False (the default) then it’s assumed that the driver is doing thick provisioning and overprovisioning is turned off. If an array can technically support both thin and thick provisioning in a pool, the driver still needs to programmatically determine which to use. This should be done by configuring one pool for thin and another pool for thick. So, a Manila pool will always report thin_provisioning as True or False. Added in Liberty.

Reporting Capabilities

Drivers report capabilities as part of the updated stats (e.g. capacity) for their backend/pools. This is how a backend/pool advertizes its ability to provide a share that matches the capabilities requested in the share type extra-specs.

Developer impact

Developers should update their drivers to include all backend and pool capacities and capabilities in the share stats it reports to scheduler. Below is an example having multiple pools. “my” is used as an example vendor prefix:

{
    'driver_handles_share_servers': 'False', #\
    'share_backend_name': 'My Backend',      # backend level
    'vendor_name': 'MY',                     # mandatory/fixed
    'driver_version': '1.0',                 # stats & capabilities
    'storage_protocol': 'NFS_CIFS',          #/
                                             #\
    'my_capability_1': 'custom_val',         # "my" optional vendor
    'my_capability_2': True,                 # stats & capabilities
                                             #/
    'pools': [
        {'pool_name':
           'thin-dedupe-compression pool',   #\
         'total_capacity_gb': 500,           #  mandatory stats for
         'free_capacity_gb': 230,            #  pools
         'QoS_support': 'False',             # |
         'reserved_percentage': 0,           #/
                                             #\
         'dedupe': True,                     # common capabilities
         'compression': True,                #
         'thin_provisioning': True,          #
         'max_over_subscription_ratio': 10,  # (mandatory for thin)
         'provisioned_capacity_gb': 270,     # (mandatory for thin)
                                             #/
         'my_dying_disks': 100,              #\
         'my_super_hero_1': 'Hulk',          #  "my" optional vendor
         'my_super_hero_2': 'Spider-Man'     #  stats & capabilities
                                             #/
        },
        {'pool_name': 'thick pool',
         'total_capacity_gb': 1024,
         'free_capacity_gb': 1024,
         'QoS_support': 'False',
         'reserved_percentage': 0,
         'dedupe': False,
         'compression': False,
         'thin_provisioning': False,
         'my_dying_disks': 200,
         'my_super_hero_1': 'Batman',
         'my_super_hero_2': 'Robin',
        },
     ]
}

Work Flow

  1. Share Backends report how many pools and what those pools look like and are capable of to scheduler;
  2. When request comes in, scheduler picks a pool that fits the need best to serve the request, it passes the request to the backend where the target pool resides;
  3. Share driver gets the message and lets the target pool serve the request as scheduler instructed. Share type extra-specs (scoped and un-scoped) are available for the driver implementation to use as-needed.

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