[Gluster-users] Network Block device (NBD) on top of glusterfs

[Xiubo Li]

On 2019/3/25 14:36, Vijay Bellur wrote:
>
> Hi Xiubo,
>
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 5:48 PM Xiubo Li <xiubli at redhat.com 
> <mailto:xiubli at redhat.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 2019/3/21 11:29, Xiubo Li wrote:
>>
>>     All,
>>
>>     I am one of the contributor forgluster-block
>>     <https://github.com/gluster/gluster-block>[1] project, and also I
>>     contribute to linux kernel andopen-iscsi
>>     <https://github.com/open-iscsi> project.[2]
>>
>>     NBD was around for some time, but in recent time, linux kernel’s
>>     Network Block Device (NBD) is enhanced and made to work with more
>>     devices and also the option to integrate with netlink is added.
>>     So, I tried to provide a glusterfs client based NBD driver
>>     recently. Please refergithub issue #633
>>     <https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/633>[3], and good
>>     news is I have a working code, with most basic things @nbd-runner
>>     project <https://github.com/gluster/nbd-runner>[4].
>>
>
> This is nice. Thank you for your work!
>
>     As mentioned the nbd-runner(NBD proto) will work in the same layer
>     with tcmu-runner(iSCSI proto), this is not trying to replace the
>     gluster-block/ceph-iscsi-gateway great projects.
>
>     It just provides the common library to do the low level stuff,
>     like the sysfs/netlink operations and the IOs from the nbd kernel
>     socket, and the great tcmu-runner project is doing the sysfs/uio
>     operations and IOs from the kernel SCSI/iSCSI.
>
>     The nbd-cli tool will work like the iscsi-initiator-utils, and the
>     nbd-runner daemon will work like the tcmu-runner daemon, that's all.
>
>
> Do you have thoughts on how nbd-runner currently differs or would 
> differ from tcmu-runner? It might be useful to document the 
> differences in github (or elsewhere) so that users can make an 
> informed choice between nbd-runner & tcmu-runner.

Yeah, this makes sense and I will figure it out in the github. Currently 
for the open-iscsi/tcmu-runner, there are already many existing tools to 
help product it, and for NBD we may need to implement them, correct me 
if I am wrong here :-)

>
>     In tcmu-runner for different backend storages, they have separate
>     handlers, glfs.c handler for Gluster, rbd.c handler for Ceph, etc.
>     And what the handlers here are doing the actual IOs with the
>     backend storage services once the IO paths setup are done by
>     ceph-iscsi-gateway/gluster-block....
>
>     Then we can support all the kind of backend storages, like the
>     Gluster/Ceph/Azure... as one separate handler in nbd-runner, which
>     no need to care about the NBD low level's stuff updates and changes.
>
>
> Given that the charter for this project is to support multiple backend 
> storage projects, would not it be better to host the project in the 
> github repository associated with nbd [5]? Doing it that way could 
> provide a more neutral (as perceived by users) venue for hosting 
> nbd-runner and help you in getting more adoption for your work.
>
This is a good idea, I will try to push this forward.

Thanks very much Vijay.

BRs

Xiubo Li


> Thanks,
> Vijay
>
> [5] https://github.com/NetworkBlockDevice/nbd
>
>
>     Thanks.
>
>
>>     While this email is about announcing the project, and asking for
>>     more collaboration, I would also like to discuss more about the
>>     placement of the project itself. Currently nbd-runner project is
>>     expected to be shared by our friends at Ceph project too, to
>>     provide NBD driver for Ceph. I have personally worked with some
>>     of them closely while contributing to open-iSCSI project, and we
>>     would like to take this project to great success.
>>
>>     Now few questions:
>>
>>      1. Can I continue to usehttp://github.com/gluster/nbd-runneras
>>         home for this project, even if its shared by other filesystem
>>         projects?
>>
>>       * I personally am fine with this.
>>
>>      2. Should there be a separate organization for this repo?
>>
>>       * While it may make sense in future, for now, I am not planning
>>         to start any new thing?
>>
>>     It would be great if we have some consensus on this soon as
>>     nbd-runner is a new repository. If there are no concerns, I will
>>     continue to contribute to the existing repository.
>>
>>     Regards,
>>     Xiubo Li (@lxbsz)
>>
>>     [1] -https://github.com/gluster/gluster-block
>>     [2] -https://github.com/open-iscsi
>>     [3] -https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/633
>>     [4] -https://github.com/gluster/nbd-runner
>>
>>
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