Re: [libvirt] Extensions to the libvirt Storage API

Hi Everyone, I'm looking at implementing some functionality in libvirt that would allow it to call functions in an unpublished iSCSI library. Some of the functionality I wish to implement is not currently part of the libvirt storage API. I wanted to suggest the following additions to the storage API: grow volumes, show whether thin provisioning is enabled, enable thin provisioning, disable thin provisioning, create snapshots, and delete snapshots. I've added a patch at the end of the mail showing how I think these functions should be implemented. Note that I have not included details about the virStorageSnapshotDefPtr yet, that's the next step. Perhaps this should be in a separate mail for better threading, but it seems a bit strange to me that the storage interface isn't pluggable in the traditional sense. In order to add a backend to libvirt, one has to make modifications all over the place, for example: virt-inst, the Makefile.am, the configure.ac, storage_backend.h, and several other places. It would make sense to me to make this pluggable such that someone could just load in a library that implements the required functions and some identifying information (eg type of storage, description, etc). A list of supported backends could be stored in empty files in a directory somewhere, or some similar hack. This way someone could write a plugin for tgtd for example, or in my case the library I'm working with. I think this would also help others with writing plugins for more storage backends. How difficult do you think this would be? I'm willing to do a reasonable amount of work to get this implemented, but I want to know what the experts think!

/* File creation/cloning functions used for cloning between backends */ int virStorageBackendCreateRaw(virConnectPtr conn, @@ -76,6 +83,12 @@ virStorageBackendCreateVol createVol; virStorageBackendRefreshVol refreshVol; virStorageBackendDeleteVol deleteVol; + virStorageBackendGrowVol growVol;

+ virStorageBackendThinProvisionShow thinProvisionShow; + virStorageBackendThinProvisionEnable thinProvisionEnable; + virStorageBackendThinProvisionDisable thinProvisionDisable;

+ virStorageBackendCreateSnapshot createSnapshot; + virStorageBackendDeleteSnapshot deleteSnapshot;