This document discusses storage as a service and how OpenStack provides storage options. It describes Storage as a Service and the types of storage available in OpenStack, including ephemeral, object, block, and file storage. It provides overviews of the OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) and Block Storage (Cinder) projects and how they work. The document also discusses filesystem storage in OpenStack using protocols like NFS and CIFS.

1. Storage as a Service and
OpenStack
Sajid Akhtar
TME – OpenSource Cloud
Solution
@mail2fashion
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2. Cloud storage subscription growth statistics are huge
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3. Storage as a Service
 CAPEX to OPEX based business model.
 Manage storage by well-defined set of remotely Accessible APIs
 Abstracts the actual storage implementation
 This service offers specialized functions: DR, backup, document
sharing, etc.
Using Storage as a Service
 Object
 Block
 File
 Ephemeral
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4. What Is OpenStack?
Global collaboration
 Developers
 Cloud computing technologists
Open source cloud computing platform
- Public clouds
- Private clouds
Solutions for all types of clouds
Simple to implement
Massively scalable
Feature rich
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5. Quick OpenStack Overview
An Open Source Cloud Computing Platform
 Provides for all types of clouds
– Simple
– Scalable
– Feature rich
 Total cloud infrastructure solution
– Combination of interrelated projects
 Open source software around 3 years old
 OpenStack Foundation established 2012
 Over 700+ organizations contributing to development
 Established and growing number of production deployments
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6. OpenStack Services diagram
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9. Type of storage available on OpenStack
Ephemeral(On-instance) :
-Used for running Operating System and scratch space
-Persists until VM is terminated
-Access associated with a VM
-Implemented as a filesystem underlying OpenStack Compute
-Administrator configures size setting, based on flavors
-Example: 10GB first disk, 30GB/core second disk
For desktop user PC's internal disk drives are ephemeral;
persistent storage can be considered similar to an external
USB drive.
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10. OpenStack Object Storage (Swift)
What Is It?
 Object Storage is ideal for cost effective, scale-out storage. It
provides a fully distributed, API-accessible storage platform that
can be integrated directly into applications or used for backup,
archiving and data retention.
 Highly available & distributed object / blob store(known as a
binary large object, collection of binary data stored as a single
entity in a database management system. Blobs are typically
images, audio or other multimedia objects)
– Ring architecture
 In production today
– Rackspace’s Cloud Files, Internap, Wikimedia Foundation
 Architectural overview:
– http://swift.openstack.org/overview_architecture.html

11. OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder)
What Is It?
 Block Storage allows block devices to be exposed and
connected to compute instances for expanded storage, better
performance and integration with enterprise storage platforms.
 This persistent block level storage devices can be exposed to
applications as well.
 The block storage system manages the creation, attaching and
detaching of the block devices to servers.
 Block storage volumes are fully integrated into OpenStack
Compute and the Dashboard allowing for cloud users to manage
their own storage needs.

12. Contd..
 This is block storage (or volumes) and currently there are
blueprints for filesystems like NFS or CIFS share
 Persists until deleted
 Mounted via OpenStack Block-Storage controlled protocol (for
example, iSCSI, LVM)
 Sizings based on need
 Example: 1TB "extra hard drive"

13. OpenStack Cinder
Database Cinder API
Queue
C-scheduler
Cinder
Vol Cinder Vol
Cinder
Vol
iSCSI NFS
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14. Cinder (Contd.)
 cinder-api accepts API requests and routes them to cinder-volume for action.
 cinder-volume acts upon the requests by reading or writing to the Cinder database to
maintain state, interacting with other processes (like cinder-scheduler) through a message
queue and directly upon block storage providing hardware or software. It can interact with a
variety of storage providers through a driver architecture. Currently, there are drivers for IBM,
SolidFire, NetApp, Nexenta, Zadara, linux iSCSI and other storage providers.
 Much like nova-scheduler, the cinder-scheduler daemon picks the optimal block storage
provider node to create the volume on.
 Cinder deployments will also make use of a messaging queue to route information between
the cinder processes as well as a database to store volume state.

15. Minimum Driver Features
 In order to be accepted for a given milestone release, Cinder
driver must implement the following features
 Grizzly Release:
– Volume Create/Delete
– Volume Attach/Detach
– Snapshot Create/Delete
– Create Volume from Snapshot
– Get Volume Stats (driver_version/ free_capacity_gb
/reserved_percentage /storage_protocol /total_capacity_gb
/vendor_name /volume_backend_name )

16. OpenStack Cinder
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17. Filesystem as a service – basic idea
 NAS shares to share data across VM
instances
– Brings the benefits of shared storage to
OpenStack
 Simple and widely accepted protocols
– NFS and CIFS
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18. Filesystem as a service
Storage Controller
S1 S2
VM1 VM2
Hypervisor
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19. Why filesystems?
 NAS – built to share storage
– CIFS/NFS
– In-built locking, sharing and permissions
– Metadata stored with data
 Cheap!
 Legacy applications
 Applications in scalable compute
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20. Use case
 Simple: sharing data across VMs
– Can use as isolated disk too!
 Migration
– VM crashes doesn’t affect stored data
 Scalable compute with shared storage
– Parallel compilation of large C/C++ projects
– Rendering pipelines for animation studios and
electronic chip design workloads
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21. OpenStack
 Massively scalable, open source cloud
operating systems
– Compute (Nova)
– Object Storage (Swift)
– Block Storage + File Storage? (Cinder)
– Imaging service (Glance)
– Dashboard (Horizon)
– Network (Quantum)
– File Storage (New project) ?
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22. Current implementation
 Separate service inside Cinder
 Shares API
– Share create/delete
– Share Snapshot create/delete
– Allow/Deny access
– Publish capabilities to scheduler
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23. Filesystem inside Cinder
Database Cinder API++
Queue
C-scheduler
Cinder Cinder
Vol Share
Cinder
Share
iSCSI NFS
CIFS
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24. Quick references for Cinder
 Source code: https://github.com/openstack/cinder
 Bug tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/cinder
 Blueprints: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/cinder
 Developer doc: http://docs.openstack.org/developer/cinder/
 API complete reference: http://api.openstack.org/api-ref.html

25. How to start contributing ?
• Become a member and create profile : https://www.openstack.org/join
• Sign User license
• Create launchpad account and review the projects
 .
• Openstack Wiki : http://wiki.openstack.org/
• Join IRC channel and register to OpenStack mailing list.
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26. We are everywhere !!!!
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27. Questions?
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