Theory of Operation: Storage Service Catalog and Manila Share Types¶

The Storage Service Catalog (SSC) is a concept that describes a set of capabilities that enables efficient, repeated, and consistent use and management of storage resources by the definition of policy-based services and the mapping of those services to the backend storage technology. It is meant to abstract away the actual technical implementations of the features at a storage backend into a set of simplified configuration options.

The storage features are organized or combined into groups based on the customer needs to achieve a particular scenario or use case. Based on the catalog of the storage features, intelligent provisioning decisions are made by infrastructure or software enabling the storage service catalog. In OpenStack, this is achieved together by the Manila filter scheduler and the NetApp driver by making use of share type extra-specs support together with the filter scheduler.

When the NetApp unified driver is used with an ONTAP storage system, you can leverage extra specs with Manila share types to ensure that Manila shares are created on storage backends that have certain properties (e.g. thin provisioning, disk type, RAID type, QoS Support) configured.

Extra specs are associated with Manila share types, so that when users request shares of a particular share type, they are created on storage backends that meet the list of requirements (e.g. available space, extra specs, etc). You can use the specs in Table 6.10, “NetApp supported Extra Specs for use with Manila Share Types” when defining Manila share types with the manila type-key command.

Extra spec	Type	Description
`netapp_aggregate`	String	Limit the candidate aggregate (pool) list to a specific aggregate.
`netapp_raid_type`	String	Limit the candidate aggregate (pool) list based on one of the following raid types: `raid4`, `raid_dp`.
`netapp_disk_type`	String	Limit the candidate aggregate (pool) list based on one of the following disk types: `ATA`, `BSAS`, `EATA`, `FCAL`, `FSAS`, `LUN`, `MSATA`, `SAS`, `SATA`, `SCSI`, `XATA`, `XSAS`, or `SSD`.
`netapp_hybrid_aggregate`	Boolean	Limit the candidate aggregate (pool) list to hybrid aggregates.
`netapp:dedup`	Boolean	Enable deduplication on the share. Note that this option is deprecated in favor of the standard Manila extra spec ‘dedupe’.
`dedupe`	String	Enable deduplication on the share. This value should be set to `"<is> True"` or `"<is> False"`.
`netapp:compression`	Boolean	Enable compression on the share. When compression is enabled on a share, deduplication is also automatically enabled on that share. Note that this option is deprecated in favor of the standard Manila extra spec ‘compression’.
`compression`	String	Enable compression on the share. When compression is enabled on a share, deduplication is also automatically enabled on that share. This value should be set to `"<is> True"` or `"<is> False"`.
`netapp:thin_provisioned`	Boolean	Enable thin provisioning (a space guarantee of `None`) on the share. Note that this option is deprecated in favor of the standard Manila extra spec ‘thin_provisioning’.
`thin_provisioning`	String	Enable thin provisioning (a space guarantee of `None`) on the share. This value should be set to `"<is> True"` or `"<is> False"`.
`netapp:snapshot_policy`	String	Apply the specified snapshot policy to the created FlexVol volume. Note that the snapshots created by applying a policy will not have corresponding Manila snapshot records.
`netapp:hide_snapdir`	Boolean	Control visibility of the `.snapshot` directory for each newly created share. By default, each share allows access to its `.snapshot` directory, which contains files of each snapshot that is taken. To restrict access to the directory, this option should be set to `True`. For shares that have already been created, refer [2].
`netapp:language`	String	Apply the specified language to the FlexVol volume that corresponds to the Manila share. The language of the FlexVol volume determines the character set ONTAP uses to display file names and data for that volume. The default value for the language of the volume is the language of the SVM.
`netapp:max_files`	String	Change the maximum number of files for the FlexVol volume that corresponds to the Manila share. By default, the maximum number of files is proportional to the size of the share. This spec can be used to increase the number of files for very large shares (greater than 1TB), or to place a smaller limit on the number of files on a given share.
`netapp:split_clone_on_create`	Boolean	Choose whether a FlexVol volume that corresponds to the Manila share is immediately split from its parent when creating a share from a snapshot. By default, the FlexVol is not split so that no additional space is consumed. Setting this value to ‘true’ may be appropriate for shares that are created from a template share and that will encounter high rates of change.
`snapshot_support`	Boolean	Choose whether to allow the creation of snapshots for a share type.
`create_share_from_snapshot_support`	Boolean	Enable the creation of a share from a snapshot.
`revert_to_snapshot_support`	Boolean	Allow a share to be reverted to the most recent snapshot.
`netapp_flexvol_encryption`	Boolean	Create FlexVol with NVE encryption at rest enabled.
`qos`	Boolean	Allow scheduling to an aggregate (pool) that supports defining QoS. See how this is determined by the driver in [1]. See the NetApp driver specific QoS extra-specs in Table 6.11, ?~@~NetApp QoS Specs for use with Manila Share Types?~@~].

Table 6.10. NetApp supported Extra Specs for use with Manila Share Types

QoS Extra spec	Type	Description
`netapp:maxiops`	String	The maximum IOPS allowed.
`netapp:maxbps`	String	The maximum bytes per second allowed.
`netapp:maxiopspergib`	String	The maximum IOPS allowed per GiB of the Manila share size.
`netapp:maxbpspergib`	String	The maximum bytes per second allowed per GiB of the Manila share size.

Table 6.11. NetApp specific QoS Extra Specs for use with Manila Share Types that have qos=True.

Caution

When using the Manila driver without share server management, you can specify a value for the netapp_login option that only has SVM administration privileges (rather than cluster administration privileges); you should note some advanced features of the driver may not work and you may see warnings in the Manila logs, unless appropriate permissions are set. See the section called “Account Permission Considerations” for more details on the required access level permissions for an SVM admin account.

Footnotes

[1]

qos is reported as a capability by the Manila driver to the Manila scheduler for each ONTAP aggregate (Manila storage pool). This value will either be True (QoS is supported) or False (QoS is not supported) for all aggregates belonging to a backend.

Defining QoS throughput limits is supported by all platforms running ONTAP > 8.2 with no additional license. However, you must configure the Manila ONTAP driver with an ONTAP user that has permissions to create and modify ONTAP QoS policy groups if you want the driver to support Manila QoS. (See “Account Permission Considerations”). Be aware that ONTAP Users with Vsadmin (SVM administrator) role do not have permission to create or modify QoS policy groups.

[2] To hide the .snapshot directory of shares that have already been created, the netapp_reset_snapdir_visibility config option can be set to hidden for the associated backend in manila.conf. Upon restarting the Manila service, the changes will take effect. The config option may be set to visible to make the .snapshot directory of shares visible. The config option can be set to default to retain the current value for existing Manila shares on subsequent restarts of the Manila service.