[OpenAFS] shadow volumes?

[Matt Benjamin]

Christopher,

These are, sort of, new in OpenAFS.

A vos copy, or a vos create followed by a vos shadow, allows you to 
replicate the contents of one AFS volume, to another, otherwise 
unrelated volume.  The copy might be on a different fileserver from the 
original.  Shadow has an incremental option, so a series of shadow 
operations can be done to incrementally update the copy.  So essentially 
the topic is backup.  No new type of AFS volume (eg, "shadow volume") 
has been created.

A vos clone operation triggers cloning of a volume, giving you 
additional clone versions in a volume group to the traditional ones, if 
you want them.  Without Jason's patch, these clones don't appear in 
VLDB.  This is the part of the patch that needs most looking at--but I 
didn't, so, I don't say anything about it :)

Jason's patch tweaks these operations somewhat to fit a backup strategy 
he explained partially in an earlier post.  Something like,

1. Periodically shadow rw volumes to surrogates on another server, 
marking them readonly
2. In between shadow updates, use "vos clone" to get a COW snapshot of 
the surrogate, so one or a few snapshot versions are available
3. Put the clones in VLDB (but I didn't look at what the entries look like)

There are issues you run into quickly with cloning.  One is, limit of 4 
(?) non-traditional clones of a volume stored on a namei fileserver.  
You can make as many volume copies as you like, at the cost of the disk 
to store them.  I think there's a bit more to do here, but _I think_ 
that's the state of things at present.  I was going to ask Jason for 
more details on his sequence of operations, but I didn't get around to it. 

Matt

Christopher D. Clausen wrote:

>Someone recently posted a patch (to openafs-devel) about shadow volumes.
>What exactly are shadow volumes?  When and why would I want to use them?
>
>I found no mention of them in the IBM documentation, on the AFSLore wiki
>or anything more than just the name itself mentioned in the openafs-info
>archives.
>
>Any additional info would be appreciated!  Thanks!
>
><<CDC
>Christopher D. Clausen
>ACM@UIUC SysAdmin
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>OpenAFS-info mailing list
>OpenAFS-info@openafs.org
>https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info
>
>  
>


-- 

Matt Benjamin

The Linux Box
206 South Fifth Ave. Suite 150
Ann Arbor, MI  48104

http://linuxbox.com

tel. 734-761-4689
fax. 734-769-8938
cel. 734-216-5309