ISCSISupportXenAPI

Launchpad Entry: NovaSpec:bexar-iscsi-support-xenapi
Created: 16 November 2010
Contributors: Armando Migliaccio

Summary

This feature will enable XenServer (and XCP) hosted VMs to see iSCSI storage and attach/detach EBS-like volumes to/from them. This specification covers Nova support for XenServer and XCP through XenAPI. Note that this does not imply support for other Xen-based platforms such as those shipped with RHEL 5 or SUSE.

Glossary:

     XenServer: Commercial, supported product from Citrix

     Xen Cloud Platform (XCP): Open-source equivalent of XenServer (and the development project for the toolstack). Everything said about XenServer below applies equally to XCP

     XenAPI: The management API exposed by XenServer and XCP

     xapi: The primary daemon on XenServer and Xen Cloud Platform; the one that exposes the XenAPI

Release Note

This spec will provide iSCSI back-end storage for XenServer hosted virtual machines via XenAPI.

Rationale

Currently commands like euca-attach-volume/euca-detach-volume have no effect on XenServer hosted virtual machines. Volumes can be created/destroyed on AoE/iSCSI storage, but there is lack of support in the XenAPI abstraction layer available in Nova today. This spec plans to fix that.

User stories

A user has Nova running on a XenServer. He/She wants his/her data to persist once the VM is terminated. He can use the euca-create-volume/euca-attach-volume/euca-detach-volume set of commands to make this possible.

Assumptions

None.

Design

Basically, the work that Ewan has done for euca-run-instances/euca-terminate-instances need to be done to enable the volume related API commands.

Implementation

A few files (mainly in the compute directory) need to be updated, and the changes should follow a similar pattern of what Ewan already did for other VM related commands.

UI Changes

none

Code Changes

TBD

Migration

none

Test/Demo Plan

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Unresolved issues

This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.

BoF agenda and discussion

Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarising what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.