Detach and attach boot volumes¶
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/detach-boot-volume
It is sometimes useful for a cloud user to be able to detach and attach the boot volume of an instance when the instance is not running. Currently nova does not allow this at all and some operations assume it does not happen. This spec proposes allowing the detach and attach of boot volumes when an instance is shelved and adding safeguards to ensure it is safe.
Problem description¶
There is an implicit assumption in the nova code that an instance always has a cinder boot volume attached or an ephemeral boot disk. Nova allows cinder volumes to be detached and attached at any time, but the detach operation is limited to exclude boot volumes to preserve the above assumption.
This limitation means it is not possible to change the boot volume attached to an instance except by deleting the instance and creating a new one. However, it is safe to change boot volume attachments when an instance is not running, so preventing this altogether is unnecessarily limiting.
There are use cases that require a boot volume to be detached when an instance is not running, so we propose relaxing the inherent assumption to say that a boot volume attachment can be changed when an instance is shelved. To ensure safety we can prevent it being unshelved without a boot volume.
Use Cases¶
The first use case is based on a disaster recovery scenario. In this scenario a system of VMs attached to a network and using persistent volumes at site A is executing an online application. To provide a remote failure recovery capability the data on the persistent volumes is being replicated to volumes at remote site B. The persistent volumes include boot volumes.
The use case is the following:
As a cloud user I want to be able to failover my application to a remote site with minimal down time and the assurance that the remote site is able to take over.
The ability to detach and attach boot volumes is required for this use case as implemented by the following failover from site A to site B:
Build the virtual infrastructure in advance at site B and check that the new infrastructure is complete, correctly configured and operable. Then shelve the instances and detach the disks. This infrastructure is now ready to take over when supplied with replica disks.
Set up continuous replication of disks from site A to site B
The failover procedure: stop replication to site B; attach replica disks to the shelved instances; unshelve the instances.
The outline above shows that the virtual infrastructure at site B is built in advance and is kept in a dormant state. The volumes are detached and kept up to date as replicas of the volumes at site A, to be swapped back in later. This satisfies the requirements of the use case:
Firstly, the build of the infrastructure, including instances that will receive replica volumes, can be done and checked to be correct before performing the failover. This gives a higher level of assurance that the switchover will be successful.
Secondly, by removing the virtual infrastructure build from the critical path of the failover (steps 3-7), the down time caused by the failover is minimised.
A bug registered against nova describes further use cases (see [1]). An example is the following:
As a user I want to run a VM with a windows instance. I will take snapshots of the boot volume from time to time. I may want to revert to a snapshot. If I delete my instance and recreate it from the snapshot I will incur additional costs from licensing and may invalidate my license.
Proposed change¶
This change assumes that only cinder volumes can be dynamically changed in this way. We will not support detaching ephemeral disks.
Volume backed instances are always offloaded when shelved, so the instance will not be on a host. As a result the implementation will be to change the recorded block device mapping and register the attachment/detachment with cinder.
The usual detach volume API call will be used to detach the boot volume. The guard on this call will be changed to allow the detach if the instance is shelved_offloaded.
When a boot volume is detached its block device mapping will be replaced with a block device mapping that indicates there is no volume. A new boolean field called device_present will be added for this purpose; device_present = False means the device is missing and cannot be used.
The usual attach volume API call will be used to attach the boot volume. The volume attach operation allows a user to specify the name of the device. The boot device name of an instance is known so that is used to determine that the user is attempting to attach the volume as the root device. The attachment will only be allowed if the instance is shelved_offloaded and it has a “no volume” block device mapping for the root device.
The unshelve operation will be guarded with a check for the “no volume” block device mapping. An instance will not be allowed to unshelve when its boot volume has been detached unless another has been attached in its place.
There is a race condition identified in this bug [2] between volume operations and instance state changes. The same race condition will exist between the boot volume detach and the unshelve operations until that bug is fixed. That bug will be addressed by spec [3].
Alternatives¶
One alternative is simply not to allow a boot volume to be detached. This implies that root devices can only be changed by deleting and recreating an instance. Currently many devices on an instance can be added and removed dynamically.
We could generalize further and allow a boot volume to be detached and attached when an instance is shutdown as well. This would involve affecting the connection to the hypervisor on the compute node. The ability to do this for boot volumes is inherent in the existing volume device code, so it seems unnecessary to disable it. However, this throws open many more corner cases in the code and is not needed for the above use cases.
Another alternative is to be more general by allowing any type of boot device to be removed and any type added. This would include images on local ephemeral disks, snapshots and volumes. Because this goes beyond the existing volume API this generalization would suggest the need for a new API. This is not needed to satisfy the use cases provided so we propose restricting this behavior to the existing APIs.
Another alternative is to only allow boot volumes to be swapped in a single operation. This retains the assumption that an instance always has a volume (except during the operation) but removes some flexibility. In the disaster recovery use case an instance could be shelved and its boot volume detached. If the instance must have a volume at all times this will require a second volume (besides the replica) for each instance that is not being used. This is wasteful of resources.
Data model impact¶
A boolean field called device_present will be added to the BlockDeviceMapping object and to the block_device_mapping database table. The default value for this field will be True.
Setting the device_present field to False will indicate that the block device mapping is a place holder for a missing device and cannot be used.
REST API impact¶
There will be no change to the operations or parameters of the REST API.
An attempt to detach a boot volume currently always returns the error:
“Can’t detach root device volume (HTTP: 403)”
This will change in the case of an instance being in the shelved_offloaded state to allow the detach.
An attempt to unshelve an instance that has a missing boot volume because it has been detached will return an error:
“Can’t unshelve instance without a root device volume (HTTP: 403)”
These error changes will require an API micro version increment.
Security impact¶
None.
Notifications impact¶
None.
Other end user impact¶
None.
Performance Impact¶
None.
Other deployer impact¶
None.
Developer impact¶
None.
Implementation¶
Assignee(s)¶
- Primary assignee:
- Other contributors:
Work Items¶
This spec will build on the ground work of [4]. The following changes are part of this spec.
Add device_present field to BlockDeviceMapping object and block_device_mapping database table.
Add “no volume” block device mapping utility methods to indicate a boot device has been removed. These will create the “no volume” block device mapping setting the device_present field and inspect the mapping for a volume that is not present.
Extend methods to attach/detach volumes for shevled_offloaded instances to deal with boot volume and “no volume” block device mapping.
Add guard in API for “no volume” mapping before unshelving an instance.
Change conditional guard on compute api to allow detach of boot device when instance is shelved_offloaded.
Dependencies¶
This spec extends the volume operations enabled by [4].
There is a parallel (but not dependant) spec [3] that addresses bug [2]. That spec is not required for this one, but it is worth noting that this feature will benefit from the general bug fix dealt with there.
Testing¶
All the existing volume operations have both unit tests and system tests. The changes described here can be covered in nova by unit tests.
We will also add system tests to tempest after the changes are made to ensure coverage of the new use cases for the detach and attach operations.
Documentation Impact¶
Document when a root device volume can be detached and attached.
Error return when trying to start an instance with no root device.
References¶
- [1] Add capability to detach root device volume of an instance, when in
shutoff state. https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/1396965
- [2] Volume operations should set task state.
[3] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/avoid-parallel-conflicting-api-operations
[4] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/volume-ops-when-shelved
History¶
Release Name |
Description |
|---|---|
Mitaka |
Introduced |
