[doc][rfe] Need to call out Generic Driver limitations

Bug #1867950 reported by Goutham Pacha Ravi
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
OpenStack Shared File Systems Service (Manila)
Fix Released
Medium
Vida Haririan

Bug Description

The "Generic" backend/driver in Manila is a community maintained software defined storage backend/driver. It provisions and uses OpenStack compute (Nova) VMs as NFS/CIFS share servers and creates backing storage via Cinder volumes.

There are some limitations that need to be acknowledged for considering this driver in a production deployment of OpenStack Manila. Currently, there is no documentation on what these limitations are, besides the note that some Nova backends can only support 26 shares due to a limitation on the number of PCI devices [1]

[1] https://docs.openstack.org/manila/latest/admin/generic_driver.html#known-restrictions

Revision history for this message
Goutham Pacha Ravi (gouthamr) wrote :

One of the limitations that severely affects availability in the cloud is the Single Point of Failure (SPOF) issue. The driver uses a Nova VM as its NAS (NFS/CIFS) server. If/When the server goes down, there is no way to continue serving data.

Revision history for this message
Goutham Pacha Ravi (gouthamr) wrote :

Some more notes on the SPOF issue can be found on this specification: https://review.opendev.org/#/c/504987/

Revision history for this message
Tom Barron (tpb) wrote :

The generic driver assumes the manila-share service is running on a node where there is an integration bridge where it can plug in the service VM (nova instance in this case). This condition does not hold in a common deployment topology where manila-share is run on a controller node and networking services are run on a separate dedicated node.

Revision history for this message
Clifford Emeka (emclidon) wrote :

Hi Can I still take on this bug if it's still open?

Vida Haririan (vhariria)
Changed in manila:
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack) wrote : Fix proposed to manila (master)

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/manila/+/884403

Changed in manila:
status: Triaged → In Progress
Changed in manila:
importance: Undecided → Medium
assignee: nobody → Vida Haririan (vhariria)
milestone: none → bobcat-2
Revision history for this message
OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack) wrote : Fix merged to manila (master)

Reviewed: https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/manila/+/884403
Committed: https://opendev.org/openstack/manila/commit/52445fde2eb4fe21a797a9be1a01c6605cb61c84
Submitter: "Zuul (22348)"
Branch: master

commit 52445fde2eb4fe21a797a9be1a01c6605cb61c84
Author: Vida Haririan <email address hidden>
Date: Thu May 25 10:15:21 2023 -0400

    Update the generic driver 'Known restrictions' section

    This change addresses some limitations for considering this
    driver in a production deployment of OpenStack Manila.

    Closes-Bug: #1867950
    Change-Id: If45d1eabb33b57440c8946a56b5af39447514792

Changed in manila:
status: In Progress → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack) wrote : Fix included in openstack/manila 17.0.0.0rc1

This issue was fixed in the openstack/manila 17.0.0.0rc1 release candidate.

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.