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Introduction

Purpose

The objective of this API is to enable storage vendor side snapshots of virtual disk when using managed hardware as Primary Storage. When using the Primary storage plugins such as SolidFire vendor, each virtual disks are LUNs on the storage array. Using the storage array snapshot capability benefits for performance and feature set supported by the storage vendor.

StorageSnapshot does not fit in the VolumeSnapshot API because it would not perform the same tasks, a Volume Snapshot uses the hypervisor capability to create a volume snapshot then extract it and archive it into the secondary storage. The intent of a StorageSnapshot is to perform a snapshot at the hardware vendor level, and keep it there for rollback purposes and disk cloning. StorageSnapshot is more aligned with the VMsnapshot API capability but is intent to be per virtual disk basis.

. References

relevant links

Document History

Glossary

Feature Specifications

The initial scope of work is to define the API and enable it for infrastructure specific: SolidFire storage plugin with XenServer 6.5, but also create the API skeleton for other deployment scenario.
When using VDI-per-LUN (storage plugin for vendor specific)
- Create storage snapshots of a volume;
  - support multiple snapshots of the same volume.
  - keep track of snapshot inventory/hierarchy in cloudstack database.
- Revert volume from a snapshot
- Create new volume from a snapshot "clone".
- Scheduling auto snapshot ?
UI would support the feature in the snapshot drop down, as "StorageSnapshot"
Usage report should be track per volume or snapshots and tracked secondary storage usage, TBD

Use cases

When using VDI-per-LUN with XenServer 6.5 + SolidFire storage array, all VirtualDisks are unique LUNs on the storage array so it leverages snapshot capabilities of the storage vendor for volumes.

On XenServer each VDI resides on a dedicated SR which occupies the whole LUN, and the LUN is presented as an iSCSI-LVM SR to Xenserver. Storage snapshots would allow the creation of volumes more efficiently by creating a clone on the backend instead of doing a hypervisor copy.

Architecture and Design description

The API skeleton should allow other storage vendors to implement their own methods

Web Services APIs

New API	params	Description
createStorageSnapshot	id: volume ID	Create storage-snapshot of a volume
createVolumeFromStorageSnapshot	id: StorageSnapshot ID	Create a volume from a storage snapshot by cloning it on the device
deleteStorageSnapshot	id: StorageSnapshot ID	Delete a single storage-snapshot
listStorageSnapshot	volumeID: volume ID storageID: storage array ID (admin)?	List storage-snapshot of a volume

UI flow

StorageSnapshots would be listed in the Storage section under the StorageSnapshot dropdown.

IP Clearance

what dependencies will you be adding to the project?
are you expecting to include any code developed outside the Apache CloudStack project?

Usage Impact

Are there any entities being created that require usage reporting for billing purposes?
Does this change any existing entities for which usage is being tracked already?

Appendix

Appendix A:

Appendix B: