openstack/nova-powervm
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RETIRED, PowerVM virtualization driver for OpenStack Nova
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Drew Thorstensen 15e400c8a4 Do not map to management partition for NPIV 
NPIV based deploys attempted to put the client vFC adapters on to the
fabric by creating the WWPNs ahead of time and mapping them to the
management partition.  This created several issues and led to poor
performance.

There were issues around migration:
- Querying for a host could leave a stale adapter on the mgmt partition

There were issues with speed:
- Deploys could take over 120 seconds
- Migrations had additional delays

There were issues with some standard operations:
- Attaching a volume on a powered off VM required logging in the WWPNs

Subsequent analysis in Cinder showed that only some Cinder drivers had
this requirement.  Many could work without this.  Given the challenges
the code is removing the need to log in the WWPNs on the mgmt partition.
This resolves all of the above issues.

While it does limit some of the Cinder drivers when paired with NPIV,
ongoing work will be done to meet with the Cinder driver owners to see
if the requirements in their drivers can be relaxed.

For those that can not, the vSCSI Cinder Volume attach is also an option
and should provide the use cases that they need.

Change-Id: Id77650545ca4e0def9977f1c2572b9f13f451e0d
2015-10-14 21:34:15 -04:00
doc/source Do not map to management partition for NPIV 2015-10-14 21:34:15 -04:00
nova_powervm Do not map to management partition for NPIV 2015-10-14 21:34:15 -04:00
.gitignore Dev-ref update 2015-10-08 15:09:42 -04:00
.gitreview HEAD cleanup of repository before open sourcing 2015-01-26 13:56:39 -06:00
.testr.conf Initial Load of Nova PowerVM Project 2014-10-21 15:03:58 -05:00
babel.cfg Add babel config 2015-09-03 10:16:58 -04:00
CONTRIBUTING.rst Update documentation framework, add base devref details 2015-08-25 08:42:21 -05:00
HACKING.rst Initial Load of Nova PowerVM Project 2014-10-21 15:03:58 -05:00
LICENSE Initial Load of Nova PowerVM Project 2014-10-21 15:03:58 -05:00
openstack-common.conf Initial Load of Nova PowerVM Project 2014-10-21 15:03:58 -05:00
README.rst Do not map to management partition for NPIV 2015-10-14 21:34:15 -04:00
requirements.txt Rebase the requirements levels 2015-07-09 15:31:55 -04:00
setup.cfg Get 'cover' working and remove pypy 2014-10-29 16:55:50 -05:00
setup.py Initial Load of Nova PowerVM Project 2014-10-21 15:03:58 -05:00
sonar-project.properties Adding sonar property file 2014-11-12 15:49:42 -06:00
test-requirements.txt Rebase the requirements levels 2015-07-09 15:31:55 -04:00
tox.ini Update documentation framework, add base devref details 2015-08-25 08:42:21 -05:00

README.rst

PowerVM Nova Driver

The IBM PowerVM hypervisor provides virtualization on POWER hardware. PowerVM admins can see benefits in their environments by making use of OpenStack. This driver (along with a Neutron ML2 compatible agent and Ceilometer agent) provides the capability for operators of PowerVM to use OpenStack natively.

Problem Description

As ecosystems continue to evolve around the POWER platform, a single OpenStack driver does not meet all of the needs for the various hypervisors. The standard libvirt driver provides support for KVM on POWER systems. This nova driver provides PowerVM support to OpenStack environment.

This driver meets the following:

  • Built within the community
  • Fits the OpenStack model
  • Utilizes automated functional and unit tests
  • Enables use of PowerVM systems through the OpenStack APIs
  • Allows attachment of volumes from Cinder over supported protocols

This driver makes the following use cases available for PowerVM:

  • As a deployer, all of the standard lifecycle operations (start, stop, reboot, migrate, destroy, etc.) should be supported on a PowerVM based instance.
  • As a deployer, I should be able to capture an instance to an image.
  • VNC console to instances deployed.

Overview of Architecture

The driver enables the following:

  • Provide deployments that work with the OpenStack model.
  • Driver is implemented using a new version of the PowerVM REST API.
  • Ephemeral disks are supported either with Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) hosted local disks or via Shared Storage Pools (a PowerVM cluster file system).
  • Volume support is provided via Cinder through supported protocols for the Hypervisor (virtual SCSI and N-Port ID Virtualization).
  • Live migration support is available when using Shared Storage Pools or boot from volume.
  • Network integration is supported via the ML2 compatible Neutron Agent. This is the openstack/networking-powervm project.
  • Automated Functional Testing is provided to validate changes from the broader OpenStack community against the PowerVM driver.
  • Thorough unit, syntax, and style testing is provided and enforced for the driver.

The intention is that this driver follows the OpenStack Nova model and will be a candidate for promotion (via a subsequent blueprint) into the nova core project.

Data Model Impact

No data model impacts are anticipated as part of this work.

REST API Impact

The intent of this work item is to enable PowerVM to fit within the broader OpenStack ecosystem, without requiring changes to the REST API.

As such, no REST API impacts are anticipated.

Security Impact

No new security impacts are anticipated.

Notifications Impact

No new notifications are anticipated.

Other End User Impact

The administrator will notice new logging messages in the nova compute logs.

Performance Impact

It is a goal of the driver to deploy systems with similar speed and agility as the libvirt driver within OpenStack.

Most operations are comparable in speed. Deployment, attach/detach volumes, lifecycle, etc... are quick.

The driver is written to support concurrent operations. It has been tested performing 10 concurrent deploys to a given compute node.

Due to the nature of the project, performance impacts are limited to the Compute Driver. The API processes for instance are not impacted.

Other Deployer Impact

The cloud administrator will need to refer to documentation on how to configure OpenStack for use with a PowerVM hypervisor.

A 'powervm' configuration group is used to contain all the PowerVM specific configuration settings. Existing configuration file attributes will be reused as much as possible (e.g. vif_plugging_timeout). This reduces the number of PowerVM specific items that will be needed.

It is the goal of the project to only require minimal additional attributes. The deployer may specify additional attributes to fit their configuration.

There is no impact to customers upgrading their cloud stack as this is a genesis driver and does not have database impacts.

Developer Impact

The code for this driver is currently contained within a powervm project. The driver is within the /nova_powervm/virt/powervm/ package and extends the nova.virt.driver.ComputeDriver class.

The code interacts with PowerVM through the pypowervm library. This python binding is a wrapper to the PowerVM REST API. All hypervisor operations will interact with the PowerVM REST API via this binding. The driver will be maintained to support future revisions of the PowerVM REST API as needed.

For ephemeral disk support, either a Virtual I/O Server hosted local disk or a Shared Storage Pool (a PowerVM clustered file system) is supported. For volume attachments, the driver supports Cinder based attachments via protocols supported by the hypervisor (e.g. Fibre Channel).

For networking, the networking-powervm project provides a Neutron ML2 Agent. The agent provides the necessary configuration on the Virtual I/O Server for networking. The PowerVM Nova driver code creates the VIF for the client VM, but the Neutron agent creates the VIF for VLANs.

Automated functional testing is provided through a third party continuous integration system. It monitors for incoming Nova change sets, runs a set of functional tests (lifecycle operations) against the incoming change, and provides a non-gating vote (+1 or -1).

Developers should not be impacted by these changes unless they wish to try the driver.

Community Impact

The intent of this project is to bring another driver to OpenStack that aligns with the ideals and vision of the community. The eventual impact is ideally to promote this to core Nova.

Alternatives

No alternatives appear viable to bring PowerVM support into the OpenStack community.

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

kyleh

Other contributors:

thorst ijuwang efried

Dependencies

  • Utilizes the PowerVM REST API specification for management. Will utilize future versions of this specification as it becomes available: http://ibm.co/1lThV9R
  • Builds on top of the pypowervm library. This is a prerequisite to utilizing the driver.

Testing

Tempest Tests

Since the tempest tests should be implementation agnostic, the existing tempest tests should be able to run against the PowerVM driver without issue.

Thorough unit tests exist within the project to validate specific functions within this implementation.

Functional Tests

A third party functional test environment will be created. It monitors for incoming nova change sets. Once it detects a new change set, it will execute the existing lifecycle API tests. A non-gating vote (+1 or -1) will be provided with information provided (logs) based on the result.

API Tests

Existing APIs should be valid. All testing is planned within the functional testing system and via unit tests.

Documentation Impact

User Documentation

See the dev-ref for documentation on how to configure, contribute, use, etc. this driver implementation.

Developer Documentation

The existing Nova developer documentation should typically suffice. However, until merge into Nova, we will maintain a subset of dev-ref documentation.

References