[pve-devel] [PATCHv2] Add support for multipath-backed direct attached storage

[Dmitry Petuhov]

Thanks for feedback!

Using file is just single use case, to show idea. I'm currently working on Netapp-specific extension to fully control its LUNs from PVE and to get wwn-name associations from there. I think, it will take couple weeks (it was hard to find API for "7-mode" Netapp SANs, but I did it today). I'll post all together once it's done.

Still, file-based approach can be useful if someone write UI part of it. I'm just don't know JS to do so.

05.07.2016 17:20, Wolfgang Bumiller wrote:
> We're still unsure about the real use case. If you can add a device to a
> list manually then it's also not much more work to add a raw device to a
> VM via the commandline. In both cases you need to access the console,
> and you typically don't add/remove/move disks around constantly, so it's
> just a setup issue. So we're currently not convinced to include this by
> default.
>
> At the same time adding devices automatically instead seems like a
> non-trivial task (and security critical).
>
> Still, a note about the implementation: You might want to add a storage
> name column to the list so that you can define more than just one such
> storage. This would allow a more flexible permission management.
> Also if you're already listing device names there's no real reason to
> restrict it to multipath devices. But if you don't need more than this
> it might be easier to just leave it the way it is, since there are no
> promises this will get merged.
>
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 01:21:27PM +0300, Dmitry Petuhov wrote:
>> This patch series adds storage type "mpdirect". Before using it, multipath-tools
>> package must be installed. After that, multipathd will create /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x*
>> devices, which can be directly attached to VMs via GUI. Partitions are ignored.
>>
>> I'm not skilled in UI programming, so there's no storage addition via UI. Just add
>>
>> mpdirect: STORNAME
>>         content images,rootdir
>>
>> to storage.cfg.
>>
>> Because of usage of multipath, this plugin is media-independent:
>> it was tested with iSCSI, but should also work with FC and SAS/SCSI.
>>
>> May need manual storage bus rescans to dynamically add new LUNs.
>>
>> In 2nd version we use text file /etc/pve/multipath.list. File format:
>> $wwn\s+\$name
>>
>> $name must be in format vm-$N-disk-$M
>>
>> Other storage-specific wwn-name mapping methods can be added later by using
>> LunCmd/* modules.