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===============
Server concepts
===============
For the OpenStack Compute API, a server is a virtual machine (VM) instance,
a physical machine or a container.
Server status
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can filter the list of servers by image, flavor, name, and status
through the respective query parameters.
Server contains a status attribute that indicates the current server
state. You can filter on the server status when you complete a list
servers request. The server status is returned in the response body. The
server status is one of the following values:
**Server status values**
- ``ACTIVE``: The server is active.
- ``BUILD``: The server has not yet finished the original build process.
- ``DELETED``: The server is deleted.
- ``ERROR``: The server is in error.
- ``HARD_REBOOT``: The server is hard rebooting. This is equivalent to
pulling the power plug on a physical server, plugging it back in, and
rebooting it.
- ``MIGRATING``: The server is migrating. This is caused by a
live migration (moving a server that is active) action.
- ``PASSWORD``: The password is being reset on the server.
- ``PAUSED``: The server is paused.
- ``REBOOT``: The server is in a soft reboot state. A reboot command
was passed to the operating system.
- ``REBUILD``: The server is currently being rebuilt from an image.
- ``RESCUE``: The server is in rescue mode.
- ``RESIZE``: Server is performing the differential copy of data that
changed during its initial copy. Server is down for this stage.
- ``REVERT_RESIZE``: The resize or migration of a server failed for
some reason. The destination server is being cleaned up and the
original source server is restarting.
- ``SHELVED``: The server is in shelved state. Depends on the shelve offload
time, the server will be automatically shelved off loaded.
- ``SHELVED_OFFLOADED``: The shelved server is offloaded (removed from the
compute host) and it needs unshelved action to be used again.
- ``SHUTOFF``: The server was powered down by the user, either through the
OpenStack Compute API or from within the server. For example, the user
issued a :command:`shutdown -h` command from within the server.
If the OpenStack Compute manager detects that the VM was powered down,
it transitions the server to the SHUTOFF status.
- ``SOFT_DELETED``: The server is marked as deleted but will remain in the
cloud for some configurable amount of time. While soft-deleted, an
authorized user can restore the server back to normal state. When the time
expires, the server will be deleted permanently.
- ``SUSPENDED``: The server is suspended, either by request or
necessity. See the
:nova-doc:`feature support matrix <user/support-matrix.html#operation_suspend>`
for supported compute drivers. When you suspend a server, its state is stored
on disk, all memory is written to disk, and the server is stopped.
Suspending a server is similar to placing a device in hibernation and its
occupied resource will not be freed but rather kept for when the server is
resumed. If an instance is infrequently used and the occupied resource needs
to be freed to create other servers, it should be shelved.
- ``UNKNOWN``: The state of the server is unknown. It could be because a part
of the infrastructure is temporarily down (see :doc:`down_cells`
for more information). Contact your cloud provider.
- ``VERIFY_RESIZE``: System is awaiting confirmation that the server is
operational after a move or resize.
Server status is caculated from vm_state and task_state, which
are exposed to administrators:
- vm_state describes a VM's current stable (not transition) state. That is, if
there is no ongoing compute API calls (running tasks), vm_state should reflect
what the customer expect the VM to be. When combined with task states,
a better picture can be formed regarding the server's health and progress.
Refer to :nova-doc:`VM States <reference/vm-states.html>`.
- task_state represents what is happening to the instance at the
current moment. These tasks can be generic, such as `spawning`, or specific,
such as `block_device_mapping`. These task states allow for a better view into
what a server is doing.
Server creation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Status Transition:
- ``BUILD``
.. todo:: Add more details.
- ``ACTIVE``
.. todo:: Add more details.
- ``ERROR`` (on error)
When you create a server, the operation asynchronously provisions a new
server. The progress of this operation depends on several factors
including location of the requested image, network I/O, host load, and
the selected flavor. The progress of the request can be checked by
performing a **GET** on /servers/*{server_id}*, which returns a progress
attribute (from 0% to 100% complete). The full URL to the newly created
server is returned through the ``Location`` header and is available as a
``self`` and ``bookmark`` link in the server representation. Note that
when creating a server, only the server ID, its links, and the
administrative password are guaranteed to be returned in the request.
You can retrieve additional attributes by performing subsequent **GET**
operations on the server.
Server query
~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are two APIs for querying servers ``GET /servers`` and
``GET /servers/detail``. Both of those APIs support filtering the query result
by using query options.
For different user roles, the user has different query options set:
- For general user, there is limited set of attributes of the servers can be
used as query option. The supported options are:
- ``changes-since``
- ``flavor``
- ``image``
- ``ip``
- ``ip6`` (New in version 2.5)
- ``name``
- ``not-tags`` (New in version 2.26)
- ``not-tags-any`` (New in version 2.26)
- ``reservation_id``
- ``status``
- ``tags`` (New in version 2.26)
- ``tags-any`` (New in version 2.26)
- ``changes-before`` (New in version 2.66)
- ``locked`` (New in version 2.73)
Other options will be ignored by nova silently.
- For administrator, most of the server attributes can be used as query
options. Before the Ocata release, the fields in the database schema of
server are exposed as query options, which may lead to unexpected API
change. After the Ocata release, the definition of the query options and
the database schema are decoupled. That is also the reason why the naming of
the query options are different from the attribute naming in the servers API
response.
Precondition: there are 2 servers existing in cloud with following info::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
"OS-EXT-STS:vm_state": "active",
...
},
{
"name": "t2",
"OS-EXT-STS:vm_state": "stopped",
...
}
]
}
**Example: General user query server with administrator only options**
Request with non-administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail?vm_state=active``
.. note::
The ``vm_state`` query parameter is only for administrator users and
the query parameter is ignored if specified by non-administrator users.
Thus the API returns servers of both ``active`` and ``stopped``
in this example.
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
...
},
{
"name": "t2",
...
}
]
}
**Example: Administrator query server with administrator only options**
Request with administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail?vm_state=active``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
...
}
]
}
There are also some special query options:
- ``changes-since`` returns the servers updated after the given time.
Please see: :doc:`polling_changes`
- ``changes-before`` returns the servers updated before the given time.
Please see: :doc:`polling_changes`
- ``deleted`` returns (or excludes) deleted servers
- ``soft_deleted`` modifies behavior of 'deleted' to either include or exclude
instances whose vm_state is SOFT_DELETED
- ``all_tenants`` is an administrator query option, which allows the
administrator to query the servers in any tenant.
**Example: User query server with special keys changes-since or changes-before**
Request: ``GET /servers/detail``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
"updated": "2015-12-15T15:55:52Z",
...
},
{
"name": "t2",
"updated": "2015-12-17T15:55:52Z",
...
}
]
}
Request: ``GET /servers/detail?changes-since='2015-12-16T15:55:52Z'``
Response::
{
{
"name": "t2",
"updated": "2015-12-17T15:55:52Z",
...
}
}
Request: ``GET /servers/detail?changes-before='2015-12-16T15:55:52Z'``
Response::
{
{
"name": "t1",
"updated": "2015-12-15T15:55:52Z",
...
}
}
Request:
``GET /servers/detail?changes-since='2015-12-10T15:55:52Z'&changes-before='2015-12-28T15:55:52Z'``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
"updated": "2015-12-15T15:55:52Z",
...
},
{
"name": "t2",
"updated": "2015-12-17T15:55:52Z",
...
}
]
}
There are two kinds of matching in query options: Exact matching and
regex matching.
**Example: User query server using exact matching on host**
Request with administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack"
...
},
{
"name": "t2",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack1"
...
}
]
}
Request with administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail?host=devstack``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "t1",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack"
...
}
]
}
**Example: Query server using regex matching on name**
Request with administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "test11",
...
},
{
"name": "test21",
...
},
{
"name": "t1",
...
},
{
"name": "t14",
...
}
]
}
Request with administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail?name=t1``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "test11",
...
},
{
"name": "t1",
...
},
{
"name": "t14",
...
}
]
}
**Example: User query server using exact matching on host and regex
matching on name**
Request with administrator context: ``GET /servers/detail``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "test1",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack"
...
},
{
"name": "t2",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack1"
...
},
{
"name": "test3",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack1"
...
}
]
}
Request with administrator context:
``GET /servers/detail?host=devstack1&name=test``
Response::
{
"servers": [
{
"name": "test3",
"OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:host": "devstack1"
...
}
]
}
Request: ``GET /servers/detail?changes-since='2015-12-16T15:55:52Z'``
Response::
{
{
"name": "t2",
"updated": "2015-12-17T15:55:52Z"
...
}
}
Server actions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- **Reboot**
Use this function to perform either a soft or hard reboot of a
server. With a soft reboot, the operating system is signaled to
restart, which allows for a graceful shutdown of all processes. A
hard reboot is the equivalent of power cycling the server. The
virtualization platform should ensure that the reboot action has
completed successfully even in cases in which the underlying
domain/VM is paused or halted/stopped.
- **Rebuild**
Use this function to remove all data on the server and replaces it
with the specified image. Server ID, flavor and IP addresses remain
the same.
- **Evacuate**
Should a nova-compute service actually go offline, it can no longer report
status about any of the servers on it. This means they'll be
listed in an 'ACTIVE' state forever.
Evacuate is a work around for this that lets an administrator
forcibly rebuild these servers on another node. It makes
no guarantees that the host was actually down, so fencing is
left as an exercise to the deployer.
- **Resize** (including **Confirm resize**, **Revert resize**)
Use this function to convert an existing server to a different
flavor, in essence, scaling the server up or down. The original
server is saved for a period of time to allow rollback if there is a
problem. All resizes should be tested and explicitly confirmed, at
which time the original server is removed. The resized server may be
automatically confirmed based on the administrator's configuration of
the deployment.
Confirm resize action will delete the old server in the virt layer.
The spawned server in the virt layer will be used from then on.
On the contrary, Revert resize action will delete the new server
spawned in the virt layer and revert all changes. The original server
will be used from then on.
- **Pause**, **Unpause**
You can pause a server by making a pause request. This request stores
the state of the VM in RAM. A paused server continues to run in a
frozen state.
Unpause returns a paused server back to an active state.
- **Suspend**, **Resume**
Administrative users might want to suspend a server if it is
infrequently used or to perform system maintenance. When you suspend
a server, its VM state is stored on disk, all memory is written to
disk, and the virtual machine is stopped. Suspending a server is
similar to placing a device in hibernation; memory and vCPUs become
available to create other servers.
Resume will resume a suspended server to an active state.
- **Snapshot**
You can store the current state of the server root disk to be saved
and uploaded back into the glance image repository.
Then a server can later be booted again using this saved image.
- **Backup**
You can use backup method to store server's current state in the glance
repository, in the mean time, old snapshots will be removed based on the
given 'daily' or 'weekly' type.
- **Start**
Power on the server.
- **Stop**
Power off the server.
- **Delete**, **Restore**
Power off the given server first then detach all the resources associated
to the server such as network and volumes, then delete the server.
The configuration option 'reclaim_instance_interval' (in seconds) decides whether
the server to be deleted will still be in the system. If this value is greater
than 0, the deleted server will not be deleted immediately, instead it will be
put into a queue until it's too old (deleted time greater than the value of
reclaim_instance_interval). Administrator is able to use Restore action to
recover the server from the delete queue. If the deleted server remains
longer than the value of reclaim_instance_interval, it will be deleted by compute
service automatically.
- **Shelve**, **Shelve offload**, **Unshelve**
Shelving a server indicates it will not be needed for some time and may be
temporarily removed from the hypervisors. This allows its resources to
be freed up for use by someone else.
By default the configuration option 'shelved_offload_time' is 0 and the shelved
server will be removed from the hypervisor immediately after shelve operation;
Otherwise, the resource will be kept for the value of 'shelved_offload_time'
(in seconds) so that during the time period the unshelve action will be faster,
then the periodic task will remove the server from hypervisor after
'shelved_offload_time' time passes. Set the option 'shelved_offload_time'
to -1 make it never offload.
Shelve will power off the given server and take a snapshot if it is booted
from image. The server can then be offloaded from the compute host and its
resources deallocated. Offloading is done immediately if booted from volume,
but if booted from image the offload can be delayed for some time or
infinitely, leaving the image on disk and the resources still allocated.
Shelve offload is used to explicitly remove a shelved server that has been
left on a host. This action can only be used on a shelved server and is
usually performed by an administrator.
Unshelve is the reverse operation of Shelve. It builds and boots the server
again, on a new scheduled host if it was offloaded, using the shelved image
in the glance repository if booted from image.
- **Lock**, **Unlock**
Lock a server so the following actions by non-admin users are not
allowed to the server.
- Delete Server
- Change Administrative Password (changePassword Action)
- Confirm Resized Server (confirmResize Action)
- Force-Delete Server (forceDelete Action)
- Pause Server (pause Action)
- Reboot Server (reboot Action)
- Rebuild Server (rebuild Action)
- Rescue Server (rescue Action)
- Resize Server (resize Action)
- Restore Soft-Deleted Instance (restore Action)
- Resume Suspended Server (resume Action)
- Revert Resized Server (revertResize Action)
- Shelf-Offload (Remove) Server (shelveOffload Action)
- Shelve Server (shelve Action)
- Start Server (os-start Action)
- Stop Server (os-stop Action)
- Suspend Server (suspend Action)
- Trigger Crash Dump In Server
- Unpause Server (unpause Action)
- Unrescue Server (unrescue Action)
- Unshelve (Restore) Shelved Server (unshelve Action)
- Attach a volume to an instance
- Update a volume attachment
- Detach a volume from an instance
- Create Interface
- Detach Interface
- Create Or Update Metadata Item
- Create or Update Metadata Items
- Delete Metadata Item
- Replace Metadata Items
- Add (Associate) Fixed Ip (addFixedIp Action) (DEPRECATED)
- Remove (Disassociate) Fixed Ip (removeFixedIp Action) (DEPRECATED)
..
NOTE(takashin):
The following APIs can be performed by administrators only by default.
So they are not listed in the above list.
- Migrate Server (migrate Action)
- Live-Migrate Server (os-migrateLive Action)
- Force Migration Complete Action (force_complete Action)
- Delete (Abort) Migration
- Inject Network Information (injectNetworkInfo Action)
- Reset Networking On A Server (resetNetwork Action)
But administrators can perform the actions on the server
even though the server is locked. By default, only owner or administrator
can lock the sever, and administrator can overwrite owner's lock along with
the locked_reason if it is specified.
Unlock will unlock a server in locked state so additional
operations can be performed on the server by non-admin users.
By default, only owner or administrator can unlock the server.
- **Rescue**, **Unrescue**
The rescue operation starts a server in a special configuration whereby
it is booted from a special root disk image. This enables the tenant to try
and restore a broken guest system.
Unrescue is the reverse action of Rescue. The server spawned from the special
root image will be deleted.
- **Set administrator password**
Sets the root/administrator password for the given server. It uses an
optionally installed agent to set the administrator password.
- **Migrate**, **Live migrate**
Migrate is usually utilized by administrator, it will move a server to
another host; it utilizes the 'resize' action but with same flavor, so during
migration, the server will be powered off and rebuilt on another host.
Live migrate also moves a server from one host to another, but it won't
power off the server in general so the server will not suffer a down time.
Administrators may use this to evacuate servers from a host that needs to
undergo maintenance tasks.
- **Trigger crash dump**
Trigger crash dump usually utilized by either administrator or the server's
owner, it will dump the memory image as dump file into the given server,
and then reboot the kernel again. And this feature depends on the setting
about the trigger (e.g. NMI) in the server.
Server passwords
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can specify a password when you create the server through the
optional adminPass attribute. The specified password must meet the
complexity requirements set by your OpenStack Compute provider. The
server might enter an ``ERROR`` state if the complexity requirements are
not met. In this case, a client can issue a change password action to
reset the server password.
If a password is not specified, a randomly generated password is
assigned and returned in the response object. This password is
guaranteed to meet the security requirements set by the compute
provider. For security reasons, the password is not returned in
subsequent **GET** calls.
Server metadata
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Custom server metadata can also be supplied at launch time. The maximum
size of the metadata key and value is 255 bytes each. The maximum number
of key-value pairs that can be supplied per server is determined by the
compute provider and may be queried via the maxServerMeta absolute
limit.
Block Device Mapping
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simply speaking, Block Device Mapping describes how block devices are
exposed to the server.
For some historical reasons, nova has two ways to mention the block device
mapping in server creation request body:
- ``block_device_mapping``: This is the legacy way and supports backward
compatibility for EC2 API.
- ``block_device_mapping_v2``: This is the recommended format to specify
Block Device Mapping information in server creation request body.
Users cannot mix the two formats in the same request.
For more information, refer to `Block Device Mapping
<https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/user/block-device-mapping.html>`_.
For the full list of ``block_device_mapping_v2`` parameters available when
creating a server, see the `API reference
<https://docs.openstack.org/api-ref/compute/?expanded=create-server-detail#create-server>`_.
**Example for block_device_mapping_v2**
This will create a 100GB size volume type block device from an image with UUID
of ``bb02b1a3-bc77-4d17-ab5b-421d89850fca``. It will be used as the first order
boot device (``boot_index=0``), and this block device will not be deleted after
we terminate the server. Note that the ``imageRef`` parameter is not required
in this case since we are creating a volume-backed server.
.. code-block:: json
{
"server": {
"name": "volume-backed-server-test",
"flavorRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37",
"block_device_mapping_v2": [
{
"boot_index": 0,
"uuid": "bb02b1a3-bc77-4d17-ab5b-421d89850fca",
"volume_size": "100",
"source_type": "image",
"destination_type": "volume",
"delete_on_termination": false
}
]
}
}
Scheduler Hints
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scheduler hints are a way for the user to influence on which host the scheduler
places a server. They are pre-determined key-value pairs specified as a
dictionary separate from the main ``server`` dictionary in the server create
request. Available scheduler hints vary from cloud to cloud, depending on the
`cloud's configuration`_.
.. code-block:: json
{
"server": {
"name": "server-in-group",
"imageRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f6f006e54",
"flavorRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37"
},
"os:scheduler_hints": {
"group": "05a81485-010f-4df1-bbec-7821c85686e8"
}
}
For more information on how to specify scheduler hints refer to
`the create-server-detail Request section`_ in the Compute API reference.
For more information on how scheduler hints are different from flavor extra
specs, refer to `this document`_.
.. _cloud's configuration: https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/admin/configuration/schedulers.html
.. _the create-server-detail Request section: https://docs.openstack.org/api-ref/compute/?expanded=create-server-detail#create-server
.. _this document: https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/reference/scheduler-hints-vs-flavor-extra-specs.html#scheduler-hints
Server Consoles
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Server Consoles can also be supplied after server launched. There are several
server console services available. First, users can get the console output
from the specified server and can limit the lines of console text by setting
the length. Second, users can access multiple types of remote consoles. The
user can use novnc, xvpvnc, rdp-html5, spice-html5, serial, and webmks(start
from microversion 2.8) through either the OpenStack dashboard or the command
line. Refer to :nova-doc:`Configure remote console access
<admin/remote-console-access.html>`. Specifically for Xenserver, it provides
the ability to create, delete, detail, list specified server vnc consoles.
Server networks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Networks to which the server connects can also be supplied at launch
time. One or more networks can be specified. User can also specify a
specific port on the network or the fixed IP address to assign to the
server interface.
Considerations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- The maximum limit refers to the number of bytes in the decoded data
and not the number of characters in the encoded data.
- The maximum number of file path/content pairs that you can supply is
also determined by the compute provider and is defined by the
maxPersonality absolute limit.
- The absolute limit, maxPersonalitySize, is a byte limit that is
guaranteed to apply to all images in the deployment. Providers can
set additional per-image personality limits.
- The file injection might not occur until after the server is built and
booted.
- After file injection, personality files are accessible by only system
administrators. For example, on Linux, all files have root and the root
group as the owner and group owner, respectively, and allow user and
group read access only (octal 440).
Server access addresses
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a hybrid environment, the IP address of a server might not be
controlled by the underlying implementation. Instead, the access IP
address might be part of the dedicated hardware; for example, a
router/NAT device. In this case, the addresses provided by the
implementation cannot actually be used to access the server (from
outside the local LAN). Here, a separate *access address* may be
assigned at creation time to provide access to the server. This address
may not be directly bound to a network interface on the server and may
not necessarily appear when a server's addresses are queried.
Nonetheless, clients that must access the server directly are encouraged
to do so via an access address. In the example below, an IPv4 address is
assigned at creation time.
**Example: Create server with access IP: JSON request**
.. code-block:: json
{
"server": {
"name": "new-server-test",
"imageRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f6f006e54",
"flavorRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37",
"accessIPv4": "67.23.10.132"
}
}
.. note:: Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses may be used as access addresses and both
addresses may be assigned simultaneously as illustrated below. Access
addresses may be updated after a server has been created.
**Example: Create server with multiple access IPs: JSON request**
.. code-block:: json
{
"server": {
"name": "new-server-test",
"imageRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f6f006e54",
"flavorRef": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37",
"accessIPv4": "67.23.10.132",
"accessIPv6": "::babe:67.23.10.132"
}
}
Moving servers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are several actions that may result in a server moving from one
compute host to another including shelve, resize, migrations and
evacuate. The following use cases demonstrate the intention of the
actions and the consequence for operational procedures.
Cloud operator needs to move a server
-------------------------------------
Sometimes a cloud operator may need to redistribute work loads for
operational purposes. For example, the operator may need to remove
a compute host for maintenance or deploy a kernel security patch that
requires the host to be rebooted.
The operator has two actions available for deliberately moving
work loads: cold migration (moving a server that is not active)
and live migration (moving a server that is active).
Cold migration moves a server from one host to another by copying its
state, local storage and network configuration to new resources
allocated on a new host selected by scheduling policies. The operation is
relatively quick as the server is not changing its state during the copy
process. The user does not have access to the server during the operation.
Live migration moves a server from one host to another while it
is active, so it is constantly changing its state during the action.
As a result it can take considerably longer than cold migration.
During the action the server is online and accessible, but only
a limited set of management actions are available to the user.
The following are common patterns for employing migrations in
a cloud:
- **Host maintenance**
If a compute host is to be removed from the cloud all its servers
will need to be moved to other hosts. In this case it is normal for
the rest of the cloud to absorb the work load, redistributing
the servers by rescheduling them.
To prepare the host it will be disabled so it does not receive
any further servers. Then each server will be migrated to a new
host by cold or live migration, depending on the state of the
server. When complete, the host is ready to be removed.
- **Rolling updates**
Often it is necessary to perform an update on all compute hosts
which requires them to be rebooted. In this case it is not
strictly necessary to move inactive servers because they
will be available after the reboot. However, active servers would
be impacted by the reboot. Live migration will allow them to
continue operation.
In this case a rolling approach can be taken by starting with an
empty compute host that has been updated and rebooted. Another host
that has not yet been updated is disabled and all its servers are
migrated to the new host. When the migrations are complete the
new host continues normal operation. The old host will be empty
and can be updated and rebooted. It then becomes the new target for
another round of migrations.
This process can be repeated until the whole cloud has been updated,
usually using a pool of empty hosts instead of just one.
- **Resource Optimization**
To reduce energy usage, some cloud operators will try and move
servers so they fit into the minimum number of hosts, allowing
some servers to be turned off.
Sometimes higher performance might be wanted, so servers are
spread out between the hosts to minimize resource contention.
Migrating a server is not normally a choice that is available to
the cloud user because the user is not normally aware of compute
hosts. Management of the cloud and how servers are provisioned
in it is the responsibility of the cloud operator.
Recover from a failed compute host
----------------------------------
Sometimes a compute host may fail. This is a rare occurrence, but when
it happens during normal operation the servers running on the host may
be lost. In this case the operator may recreate the servers on the
remaining compute hosts using the evacuate action.
Failure detection can be proved to be impossible in compute systems
with asynchronous communication, so true failure detection cannot be
achieved. Usually when a host is considered to have failed it should be
excluded from the cloud and any virtual networking or storage associated
with servers on the failed host should be isolated from it. These steps
are called fencing the host. Initiating these action is outside the scope
of Nova.
Once the host has been fenced its servers can be recreated on other
hosts without worry of the old incarnations reappearing and trying to
access shared resources. It is usual to redistribute the servers
from a failed host by rescheduling them.
Please note, this operation can result in data loss for the user's server.
As there is no access to the original server, if there were any disks stored
on local storage, that data will be lost. Evacuate does the same operation
as a rebuild. It downloads any images from glance and creates new
blank ephemeral disks. Any disks that were volumes, or on shared storage,
are reconnected. There should be no data loss for those disks.
This is why fencing the host is important, to ensure volumes and shared
storage are not corrupted by two servers writing simultaneously.
Evacuating a server is solely in the domain of the cloud operator because
it must be performed in coordination with other operational procedures to
be safe. A user is not normally aware of compute hosts but is adversely
affected by their failure.
User resizes server to get more resources
-----------------------------------------
Sometimes a user may want to change the flavor of a server, e.g. change
the quantity of cpus, disk, memory or any other resource. This is done
by restarting the server with a new flavor. As the server is being
moved, it is normal to reschedule the server to another host
(although resize to the same host is an option for the operator).
Resize involves shutting down the server, finding a host that has
the correct resources for the new flavor size, moving the current
server (including all storage) to the new host. Once the server
has been given the appropriate resources to match the new flavor,
the server is started again.
After the resize operation, when the user is happy their server is
working correctly after the resize, the user calls Confirm Resize.
This deletes the 'before-the-resize' server that was kept on the source host.
Alternatively, the user can call Revert Resize to delete the new
resized server and restore the old that was stored on the source
host. If the user does not manually confirm the resize within a
configured time period, the resize is automatically confirmed, to
free up the space the old is using on the source host.
As with shelving, resize provides the cloud operator with an
opportunity to redistribute work loads across the cloud according
to the operators scheduling policy, providing the same benefits as
above.
Resizing a server is not normally a choice that is available to
the cloud operator because it changes the nature of the server
being provided to the user.
User doesn't want to be charged when not using a server
-------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes a user does not require a server to be active for a while,
perhaps over a weekend or at certain times of day.
Ideally they don't want to be billed for those resources.
Just powering down a server does not free up any resources,
but shelving a server does free up resources to be used by other users.
This makes it feasible for a cloud operator to offer a discount when
a server is shelved.
When the user shelves a server the operator can choose to remove it
from the compute hosts, i.e. the operator can offload the shelved server.
When the user's server is unshelved, it is scheduled to a new
host according to the operators policies for distributing work loads
across the compute hosts, including taking disabled hosts into account.
This will contribute to increased overall capacity, freeing hosts that
are ear-marked for maintenance and providing contiguous blocks
of resources on single hosts due to moving out old servers.
Shelving a server is not normally a choice that is available to
the cloud operator because it affects the availability of the server
being provided to the user.
Configure Guest OS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Metadata API
------------
Nova provides a metadata API for servers to retrieve server specific metadata.
Neutron ensures this metadata API can be accessed through a predefined IP
address, ``169.254.169.254``. For more details, refer to the :nova-doc:`user
guide <user/metadata.html>`.
Config Drive
------------
Nova is able to write metadata to a special configuration drive that attaches
to the server when it boots. The server can mount this drive and read files
from it to get information that is normally available through the metadata
service. For more details, refer to the :nova-doc:`user guide
<user/metadata.html>`.
User data
---------
A user data file is a special key in the metadata service that holds a file
that cloud-aware applications in the server can access.
This information can be accessed via the metadata API or a config drive. The
latter allows the deployed server to consume it by active engines such as
cloud-init during its boot process, where network connectivity may not be an
option.
Server personality
------------------
You can customize the personality of a server by injecting data
into its file system. For example, you might want to insert ssh keys,
set configuration files, or store data that you want to retrieve from
inside the server. This feature provides a minimal amount of
launch-time personalization. If you require significant customization,
create a custom image.
Follow these guidelines when you inject files:
- The maximum size of the file path data is 255 bytes.
- Encode the file contents as a Base64 string. The maximum size of the
file contents is determined by the compute provider and may vary
based on the image that is used to create the server.
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