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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