CoprHD as a SDS Controller

Posted by Shujin Wu on February 18, 2016

CoprHD Overview:

CoprHD is an open source software defined storage (SDS) controller that discovers, pools and automates the management of a heterogeneous(合成的) storage ecosystem.

  • Discover different kinds of storage systems and provide visibility and control of all discovered resources.
    • Namely, it centralizes and transforms multivendor storage into a simple and extensible platform.
    • e.g. traditional, scale-out, SAN/IP networking, host config, across one or more DCs for new and existing storage.
  • Classify storage using policies20
    • abstracts the resources into virtual storage arrays and pools
    • capable of block, object and file storage provider
  • Self-service provisioning via REST APIs and catalogs
  • Integrate with traditional, cloud, cloud native computing stacks
  • End to end storage automation
    • Provide intelligent resource selection and placement
    • Local and remote protection
    • SAN Zoning
    • Host attach, migration and tech refresh

Note:

  • CoprHD itself does not provide storage.
  • It holds an inventory of all storage devices in the data center and understands their connectivity.
  • It allows the storage administrator to group these resources into either virtual arrays or virtual pools

Concepts: SDS Controller

SDS Controller enables granular(粒化) monitoring and QoS enforcement of storage data types(Volume, shares, containers)

  • Discover storage systems and capabilities. e.g. performance, capacity, tiers(层). etc
  • Administrators composed virtual storage pools
  • Application request storages services using SLOs
    • Controller allocates storage volume from pool that can best service the request
  • Storage gets assigned to applivation in VM
  • Controller work with compute, network to set QoS

Note:

Storage Quality of Service (QoS):

Storage QoS is a new cluster-wide feature in clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 that requires no additional license. It allows users to set throughput limits and/or monitor IOPS or MB/s on the storage object. A storage object can be:

  • A Vserver with FlexVol volumes
  • A FlexVol volumeQoS workload
  • A LUN
  • A file (typically represents a virtual machine)

Service Level Agreement (SLA) :

  • A part of a service contract where a service is formally defined.
  • Refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service or perfromance)
  • Include :
    • MTBF: mean time between failures
    • MTTR: mean time to repair or mean time ti recovery

Service Level Objective (SLO):

  • a key element of SLA between a service provider and a customer
  • a means of measuring the performance of the service provider
  • avoiding disputes(争议) between the two parties based on misunderstanding.

References:

[1] Delivering a standards based SDS Framework with an Open Stack SDS Controller Implementation [2] Introduction to CoprHD: An Open Source Software Defined Storage Controller [3] A short Guild to the CoprHD Architecture [4] FAQ: Storage Quality of Service (QoS)