[gpfsug-discuss] Mounting GPFS data on OpenStack VM

[Aaron Knister]

I think the 1st option creates the challenges both with security (e.g. 
do you fully trust the users of your VMs not to do bad things as root 
either maliciously or accidentally? how do you ensure userids are 
properly mapped inside the guest?) and logistically (as VMs come and go 
how do you automate adding them/removing them to/from the GPFS cluster).

I think the 2nd option is ideal perhaps using something like 9p 
(http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/9p_virtio) to export filesystems from the 
hypervisor to the guest. I'm not sure how you would integrate this with 
Nova and I've heard from others that there are stability issues, but I 
can't comment first hand. Another option might be to NFS/CIFS export the 
filesystems from the hypervisor to the guests via the 169.254.169.254 
metadata address although I don't know how feasible that may or may not 
be. The advantage to using the metadata address is it should scale well 
and it should take the pain out of a guest mapping an IP address to its 
local hypervisor using an external method.

Perhaps number 3 is the best way to go, especially (arguably only) if 
you use kerberized NFS or SMB. That way you don't have to trust anything 
about the guest and you theoretically should get decent performance.

I'm really curious what other folks have done on this front.

-Aaron

On 1/17/17 4:50 PM, Brian Marshall wrote:
> UG,
>
> I have a GPFS filesystem.
>
> I have a OpenStack private cloud.
>
> What is the best way for Nova Compute VMs to have access to data inside
> the GPFS filesystem?
>
> 1)Should VMs mount GPFS directly with a GPFS client?
> 2) Should the hypervisor mount GPFS and share to nova computes?
> 3) Should I create GPFS protocol servers that allow nova computes to
> mount of NFS?
>
> All advice is welcome.
>
>
> Best,
> Brian Marshall
> Virginia Tech
>
>
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-- 
Aaron Knister
NASA Center for Climate Simulation (Code 606.2)
Goddard Space Flight Center
(301) 286-2776