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* dm thin: provide userspace access to pool metadataJoe Thornber2012-06-031-0/+11
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This patch implements two new messages that can be sent to the thin pool target allowing it to take a snapshot of the _metadata_. This, read-only snapshot can be accessed by userland, concurrently with the live target. Only one metadata snapshot can be held at a time. The pool's status line will give the block location for the current msnap. Since version 0.1.5 of the userland thin provisioning tools, the thin_dump program displays the msnap as follows: thin_dump -m <msnap root> <metadata dev> Available here: https://github.com/jthornber/thin-provisioning-tools Now that userland can access the metadata we can do various things that have traditionally been kernel side tasks: i) Incremental backups. By using metadata snapshots we can work out what blocks have changed over time. Combined with data snapshots we can ensure the data doesn't change while we back it up. A short proof of concept script can be found here: https://github.com/jthornber/thinp-test-suite/blob/master/incremental_backup_example.rb ii) Migration of thin devices from one pool to another. iii) Merging snapshots back into an external origin. iv) Asyncronous replication. Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
* dm thin: add pool target flags to control discardJoe Thornber2012-03-281-1/+7
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Add dm thin target arguments to control discard support. ignore_discard: Disables discard support no_discard_passdown: Don't pass discards down to the underlying data device, but just remove the mapping within the thin provisioning target. Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
* dm thin: support read only external snapshot originsJoe Thornber2012-03-281-1/+38
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Support the use of an external _read only_ device as an origin for a thin device. Any read to an unprovisioned area of the thin device will be passed through to the origin. Writes trigger allocation of new blocks as usual. One possible use case for this would be VM hosts that want to run guests on thinly-provisioned volumes but have the base image on another device (possibly shared between many VMs). Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
* dm thin: relax hard limit on the maximum size of a metadata deviceMike Snitzer2012-03-281-3/+5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The thin metadata format can only make use of a device that is <= THIN_METADATA_MAX_SECTORS (currently 15.9375 GB). Therefore, there is no practical benefit to using a larger device. However, it may be that other factors impose a certain granularity for the space that is allocated to a device (E.g. lvm2 can impose a coarse granularity through the use of large, >= 1 GB, physical extents). Rather than reject a larger metadata device, during thin-pool device construction, switch to allowing it but issue a warning if a device larger than THIN_METADATA_MAX_SECTORS_WARNING (16 GB) is provided. Any space over 15.9375 GB will not be used. Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
* dm thin: correct commentsJoe Thornber2012-03-281-10/+0
| | | | | | | | | | | Remove documentation for unimplemented 'trim' message. I'd planned a 'trim' target message for shrinking thin devices, but this is better handled via the discard ioctl. Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
* Documentation: Fix typo in thin-provisioning.txtMasanari Iida2012-02-211-1/+1
| | | | | | | | Correct spelling "descibes" to "describes" in Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt Signed-off-by: Masanari Iida <standby24x7@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
* dm: add thin provisioning targetJoe Thornber2011-10-311-0/+285
Initial EXPERIMENTAL implementation of device-mapper thin provisioning with snapshot support. The 'thin' target is used to create instances of the virtual devices that are hosted in the 'thin-pool' target. The thin-pool target provides data sharing among devices. This sharing is made possible using the persistent-data library in the previous patch. The main highlight of this implementation, compared to the previous implementation of snapshots, is that it allows many virtual devices to be stored on the same data volume, simplifying administration and allowing sharing of data between volumes (thus reducing disk usage). Another big feature is support for arbitrary depth of recursive snapshots (snapshots of snapshots of snapshots ...). The previous implementation of snapshots did this by chaining together lookup tables, and so performance was O(depth). This new implementation uses a single data structure so we don't get this degradation with depth. For further information and examples of how to use this, please read Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <thornber@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>