Re: [libvirt-users] couple of ceph/rbd questions

Hi, I've recently been working on setting up a set of libvirt compute nodes that will be using a ceph rbd pool for storing vm disk image files. I've got a couple of issues I've run into. First, per the standard ceph documentation examples [1], the way to add a disk is to create a block in the VM definition XML that looks something like this: <disk type='network' device='disk'> <source protocol='rbd' name='libvirt-pool/new-libvirt-image'> <host name='{monitor-host-1}' port='6789'/> <host name='{monitor-host-2}' port='6789'/> <host name='{monitor-host-3}' port='6789'/> </source> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> <auth username='libvirt'> <secret type='ceph' uuid='9ec59067-fdbc-a6c0-03ff-df165c0587b8'/> </auth> </disk> The trouble with this approach is that those ceph cluster details (secret uuid and monitor host lists), need to be stored separately in every single VM disk definition separately. That makes for a lot of maintenance when those details need to change (eg: replace a monitor host (common), or change the auth details (less common)).

I'd prefer to be able to define a libvirt storage pool that contains those details, and then reference the disks within each VM as volumes, so that I only need to change the ceph monitor/auth details once per libvirt compute host, rather than for every single VM disk definition. I've rebuilt my libvirt packages using --with-rbd-support so that I can successfully define a libvirt storage pool as follows: <pool type='rbd'> <name>libvirt-rbd-pool</name> <source> <name>libvirt-pool</name> <host name='{monitor-host-1}' port='6789'/> <host name='{monitor-host-2}' port='6789'/> <host name='{monitor-host-3}' port='6789'/> <auth username='libvirt' type='ceph'> <secret uuid='9ec59067-fdbc-a6c0-03ff-df165c0587b8'/> </auth> </source> </pool> However, when I go to start a VM with a volume created in that pool as follows, I get an error: <disk type='volume' device='disk'> <source pool='libvirt-rbd-pool' volume='{rbd-volume-name}'/> <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writethrough'/> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> </disk> "using 'rbd' pools for backing 'volume' disks isn't yet supported" When I dug through the code, it appears that there's an explicit check for RBD type storage pools (VIR_STORAGE_POOL_RBD) that disables that (libvirt-1.2.13/src/storage/storage_driver.c:3159). Is there a particular reason for that? Has it just not been implemented yet, or am I specifying the disk definition in the wrong way?

Second, using the former disk definition method, I'm able to run VMs under qemu, *and* migrate them. Very slick. Nice work all. However, I found that since by default virt-manager leaves the VM defined on both the source and destination, I'm actually able to start the VM in both places. I didn't see an option to disable that, so I just wrote a simple wrapper script to do the right thing via virsh using --undefinesource, but I can't guarantee that some other admin might not skip that and just use the GUI. It appears that libvirt (or is it qemu?) doesn't set rbd locks on the disk image files by default. After running across [2], I had originally thought about writing some hooks to set and release locks on the VMs using the rbd cli, but after reading the docs on the migration process [3], I think that's probably not possible since the VM is started in both places temporarily.

I think my other option is to setup some shared fs (maybe cephfs) and point virtlockd at it so that all of the libvirt compute hosts register locks on VMs properly. However, I thought I'd ask if anyone knows if there's some magic other parameter or setting I can use to have libvirt/qemu just use rbd locks natively. Or, is that not implemented either? Thanks for your help. Cheers, Brian [1] <http://ceph.com/docs/master/rbd/libvirt/#configuring-the-vm> [2] <https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvirt-users/2014-January/msg00058.html> [3] <https://libvirt.org/hooks.html#qemu_migration> _______________________________________________ libvirt-users mailing list libvirt-users(a)redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvirt-users