[Gluster-devel] copy_file_range() syscall for offloading copying of files?

[Amar Tumballi]

Thanks for the email Niels!

At present we were not actively looking at this, and surely would be great
to get some activity going on this front. Happy to re-initiate the
discussions if there are any takers for the feature. From my team, I don't
see any sponsors for the feature in next 6 months, at least :-/

-Amar


On Thu, Jun 7, 2018 at 6:27 AM, Niels de Vos <ndevos at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi Pranith and Amar,
>
> The copy_file_range() syscall can support reflinks on the (local)
> filesystem. This is something I'd really like to see in Gluster soonish.
> There is https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/349 which discusses
> some of the technical bits, but there has not been an updated since the
> beginning of April.
>
> If we can support a copy_file_range() FOP in Gluster, support for
> reflinks can then be made transarant. The actual data copying will be
> done in the bricks, without transporting the data back and forth between
> client and server. Distribution of the data might not be optimal, but I
> think that is acceptible for many use-cases where the performance of
> 'file cloning' is important. Many of these environments will not have
> distributed volumes in any case.
>
> Note that copy_file_range() does not guarantee that reflinks are used.
> This depends on the support and implementation of the backend
> filesystem. XFS in Fedora already supports reflinks (needs special mkfs
> options), and we could really benefit of this for large files like VM
> disk-images.
>
> Please provide an updated status by replying to this email, and ideally
> adding a note to the GitHub issue.
>
> Thanks!
> Niels
>



-- 
Amar Tumballi (amarts)
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