Share server migration

Share server migration is a functionality that lets administrators migrate a share server, and all its shares and snapshots, to a new destination.

As with share migration, a 2-phase approach was implemented for share server migration, which allows to control the right time to complete the operation, that usually ends on clients disruption.

The process of migrating a share server involves different operations over the share server, but can be achieved by invoking two main operations: “start” and “complete”. You’ll need to begin with the “start” operation and wait until the service has completed the first phase of the migration to call the “complete” operation. When a share server is undergoing the first phase, it’s possible to choose to “cancel” it, or get a report of the progress.

A new operation called “migration check” is available to assist on a pre-migration phase, by validating within the destination host if the migration can or not be completed, providing an output with the compatible capabilities supported by the driver.

Share server migration is driven by share drivers, which means that both source and destination backends must support this functionality, and the driver must provide such operation in an efficient way.

Server migration workflows

Before actually starting the migration, you can use the operation migration_check to verify if the destination host and the requested capabilities are supported by the driver. If the answer is compatible equal to True, you can proceed with the migration process, otherwise you’ll need to identify the conflicting parameters or, in more complex scenarios, search for messages directly in the manila logs. The available capabilities are: writable, nondisruptive, preserve_snapshots and new_share_network_id, which are detailed in Migration check and migration start parameters.

The migration process starts by invoking the migration_start operation for a given share server. This operation will start the first phase of the migration that copies all data, from source to destination, including all shares, their access rules and even snapshots if supported by the driver controlling the destination host.

For all ongoing migrations, you can optionally request the current status of a share server migration using migration_get_progress operation to retrieve the total progress of the data copy and its current task state. If supported by the driver, you can also cancel this operation by issuing migration_cancel and wait until all status become active and available again.

After completing the data copy, the first phase is completed and the next operation, migration_complete, can be initiated to finish the migration. The migration_complete operation usually disrupts clients access, since the export locations of the shares will change. The new export locations will be derived from the new share server that is provisioned at the destination, which is instantiated with distinct network allocations.

A new field task_state is available in the share server model to help track which operation is being executed during this process. The following tables show, for each phase, the expected task_state, along with their order of execution and a brief description of the actions that are being executed in the back end.

Share server migration states - 1st phase

Sequence

task_state

Description

1

migration_starting

All initial validations passed, all shares and snapshots can’t be modified until the end of the migration.

2

migration_in_progress

The destination host started the process of migration. If the driver doesn’t support remain writable, all access rules are modified to read only.

3

migration_driver_starting

The driver was called to initiate the process of migrating the share server. Manila will wait for driver’s answer.

4

migration_driver_in_progress

The driver accepted the request and started copying the data to the new share server. It will remain in this state until the end of the data copy.

5

migration_driver_phase1_done

Driver finished copying the data and it’s ready to complete the migration.

Along with the share server migration progress (in percentage) and the the current task state, the API also provides the destination share server ID. Alternatively, you may check the destination share server ID by querying the share server for a source_share_server_id set to the ID of the share server being migrated. During the entire migration process, the source source share server will remain with server_migrating status while the destination share server will remain with server_migrating_to status.

If an error occurs during the 1st phase of the migration, the source share server has its status reverted to active again, while the destination server has its status set to error. Both share servers will have their task_state updated to migration_error. All shares and snapshots are updated to available and any read-only rules are reset to allow writing into the shares.

Share server migration states - 2nd phase

Sequence

task_state

Description

1

migration_completing

The destination host started processing the operation and the driver is called to complete the share server migration.

2

migration_success

The migration was completed with success. All shares and snapshots are available again.

After finishing the share server migration, all shares and snapshots have their status updated to available. The source share server status is set to inactive and the destination share server to active.

If an error occurs during the 2nd phase of the migration, both source and destination share servers will have their status updated to error, along with their shares and snapshots, since it’s not possible to infer if they are working properly and the current status of the migration. In this scenario, you will need to manually verify the health of all share server’s resources and manually fix their statuses. Both share servers will have their task_state set to migration_error.

Share server migration states - migration cancel

Sequence

task_state

Description

1

migration_cancel_in_progress

The destination host started the cancel process. It will remain in this state until the driver finishes all tasks that are in progress.

2

migration_cancelled

The migration was successfully cancelled.

If an error occurs during the migration cancel operation, the source share server has its status reverted to active again, while the destination server has its status updated to error. Both share servers will have their task_state set to migration_error. All shares and snapshots have their statuses updated to available.

Using share server migration CLI

The available commands to interact with the share server migration API are the following:

  • migration_check: call a migration check operation to validate if the provided destination host is compatible with the requested operation and its parameters. The output shows if the destination host is compatible or not and the migration capabilities supported by the back end.

     $ manila share-server-migration-check f3089d4f-89e8-4730-b6e6-7cab553df071 stack@dummy2 --nondisruptive False --writable True --preserve_snapshots True

+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property               | Value                                                                                                                                                                                        |
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| compatible             | True                                                                                                                                                                                         |
| requested_capabilities | {'writable': 'True', 'nondisruptive': 'False', 'preserve_snapshots': 'True', 'share_network_id': None, 'host': 'stack@dummy2'}                                                               |
| supported_capabilities | {'writable': True, 'nondisruptive': False, 'preserve_snapshots': True, 'share_network_id': 'ac8e103f-c21a-4442-bddc-fdadee093099', 'migration_cancel': True, 'migration_get_progress': True} |
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

    The share_network_id attribute in the supported_capabilities will correspond to the value --new_share_network option if provided, otherwise it will be the same as the source share network. In the output it is possible to identify if the destination host supports the migration_cancel and migration_get_progress operations before starting the migration. The request parameters are the same for both migration_check and migration_start operations and are detailed in the following section.

    Note

    Back ends might use this operation to do many other validations with regards of storage compatibility, free space checks, share-type extra-specs validations, and so on. A compatible equal to False answer may not carry the actual conflict. You must check the manila-share logs for more details.

  • migration_start: starts a share server migration to the provided destination host. This command starts the 1st phase of the migration that is an asynchronous operation and can take long to finish, depending on the size of the share server and the efficiency of the storage on copying all the data.

    $ manila share-server-migration-start f3089d4f-89e8-4730-b6e6-7cab553df071 stack@dummy2 --nondisruptive False --writable True --preserve_snapshots True

    The parameters description is detailed in the following section.

    Note

    This operation doesn’t support migrating share servers with shares that have replicas or that belong to share groups.

    Note

    The current migration state and progress can be retrieved using the migration-get-progress command.

    Note

    This command has no output.

  • migration_complete: completes a migration that already finished the 1st phase. This operation can’t be cancelled and might end up on disrupting clients’ access after all shares migrate to the new share server.

     $ manila share-server-migration-complete f3089d4f-89e8-4730-b6e6-7cab553df071

+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Property                    | Value                                |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| destination_share_server_id | f3fb808f-c2a4-4caa-9805-7caaf55c0522 |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------+

  • migration_cancel: cancels an in-progress share server migration. This operation can only be started while the migration is still on the 1st phase of the migration.

    $ manila share-server-migration-cancel f3089d4f-89e8-4730-b6e6-7cab553df071

    Note

    This command has no output.

  • migration_get_progress: obtains the current progress information of a share server migration.

     $ manila share-server-migration-get-progress f3089d4f-89e8-4730-b6e6-7cab553df071

+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Property                    | Value                                |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| total_progress              | 50                                   |
| task_state                  | migration_driver_in_progress         |
| destination_share_server_id | f3fb808f-c2a4-4caa-9805-7caaf55c0522 |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------+

Migration check and migration start parameters

Share server migration_check and migration_start operations have specific parameters that have the semantic detailed below. From these, only new_share_network stands as an optional parameter.

  • share_server_id: The ID of the share server that will be migrated.

  • destination_host: The destination host to which the share server should be migrated to, in format host@backend.

  • preserve_snapshots: enforces when the preservation of snapshots is mandatory for the requested migration. If the destination host doesn’t support it, the operation will be denied. If this parameter is set to False, it will be the driver’s supported capability that will define if the snapshots will be preserved or not.

    Note

    If the driver doesn’t support preserving snapshots but at least one share has a snapshot, the operation will fail and the you will need to manually remove the remaining snapshots before proceeding.

  • writable: enforces whether the source share server should remain writable for the requested migration. If the destination host doesn’t support it, the operation will be denied. If this parameter is set to False, it will be the driver’s supported capability that will define if all shares will remain writable or not.

  • nondisruptive: enforces whether the migration should keep clients connected throughout the migration process. If the destination host doesn’t support it, the operation will be denied. If this parameter is set to False, it will be the driver’s supported capability that will define if all clients will remain connected or not.

In order to appropriately move a share server to a different host, it may be required to change the destination share network to be used by the new share server. In this case, a new share network can be provided using the following optional parameter:

  • new_share_network_id: specifies the ID of the share network that should be used when setting up the new share server.

    Note

    It is not possible to choose the destination share network subnet since it will be automatically selected according to the destination host’s availability zone. If the new share network doesn’t have a share network subnet in the destination host’s availability zone or doesn’t have a default subnet, the operation will fail.

Configuration

For share server migration to work it is necessary to have compatible back end stanzas present in the manila configuration of all manila-share nodes.

Some drivers may provide some driver-specific configuration options that can be changed to adapt to specific workload. Check Share drivers documentation for more details.

Important notes

  • Once the migration of a share server has started, the user will see that the status of all associated resources change to server_migrating and this will block any other share actions, such as adding or removing access rules, creating or deleting snapshots, resizing, among others.

  • Since this is a driver-assisted migration, there is no guarantee that the destination share server will be cleaned up after a migration failure. For this reason, the destination share server will be always updated to error if any failure occurs. The same assumption is made for a source share server after a successful migration, where manila updates its status to inactive to avoid being reused for new shares.

  • If a failure occurs during the 2nd phase of the migration, you will need to manually identify the current status of the source share server in order to revert it back to active again. If the share server and all its resources remain healthy, you will need to reset the status using reset_status API for each affected resource.

  • Each step in the migration process is saved to the field task_state present in the share server model. If for any reason the state is not set to migration_error after a failure, it will need to be reset using the reset_task_state API, to unlock new share actions.

  • After a failure occurs, the destination share server will have its status updated to error and will continue pointing to the original source share server. This can help you to identify the failed share servers when running multiple migrations in parallel.