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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt | 67 |
1 files changed, 51 insertions, 16 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt index 801d9d1cf82b..3370bc4d7b98 100644 --- a/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt +++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ Introduction ============ -This document descibes a collection of device-mapper targets that +This document describes a collection of device-mapper targets that between them implement thin-provisioning and snapshots. The main highlight of this implementation, compared to the previous @@ -75,10 +75,12 @@ less sharing than average you'll need a larger-than-average metadata device. As a guide, we suggest you calculate the number of bytes to use in the metadata device as 48 * $data_dev_size / $data_block_size but round it up -to 2MB if the answer is smaller. The largest size supported is 16GB. +to 2MB if the answer is smaller. If you're creating large numbers of +snapshots which are recording large amounts of change, you may find you +need to increase this. -If you're creating large numbers of snapshots which are recording large -amounts of change, you may need find you need to increase this. +The largest size supported is 16GB: If the device is larger, +a warning will be issued and the excess space will not be used. Reloading a pool table ---------------------- @@ -167,6 +169,38 @@ ii) Using an internal snapshot. dmsetup create snap --table "0 2097152 thin /dev/mapper/pool 1" +External snapshots +------------------ + +You can use an external _read only_ device as an origin for a +thinly-provisioned volume. Any read to an unprovisioned area of the +thin device will be passed through to the origin. Writes trigger +the allocation of new blocks as usual. + +One use case for this is VM hosts that want to run guests on +thinly-provisioned volumes but have the base image on another device +(possibly shared between many VMs). + +You must not write to the origin device if you use this technique! +Of course, you may write to the thin device and take internal snapshots +of the thin volume. + +i) Creating a snapshot of an external device + + This is the same as creating a thin device. + You don't mention the origin at this stage. + + dmsetup message /dev/mapper/pool 0 "create_thin 0" + +ii) Using a snapshot of an external device. + + Append an extra parameter to the thin target specifying the origin: + + dmsetup create snap --table "0 2097152 thin /dev/mapper/pool 0 /dev/image" + + N.B. All descendants (internal snapshots) of this snapshot require the + same extra origin parameter. + Deactivation ------------ @@ -189,7 +223,13 @@ i) Constructor <low water mark (blocks)> [<number of feature args> [<arg>]*] Optional feature arguments: - - 'skip_block_zeroing': skips the zeroing of newly-provisioned blocks. + + skip_block_zeroing: Skip the zeroing of newly-provisioned blocks. + + ignore_discard: Disable discard support. + + no_discard_passdown: Don't pass discards down to the underlying + data device, but just remove the mapping. Data block size must be between 64KB (128 sectors) and 1GB (2097152 sectors) inclusive. @@ -237,16 +277,6 @@ iii) Messages Deletes a thin device. Irreversible. - trim <dev id> <new size in sectors> - - Delete mappings from the end of a thin device. Irreversible. - You might want to use this if you're reducing the size of - your thinly-provisioned device. In many cases, due to the - sharing of blocks between devices, it is not possible to - determine in advance how much space 'trim' will release. (In - future a userspace tool might be able to perform this - calculation.) - set_transaction_id <current id> <new id> Userland volume managers, such as LVM, need a way to @@ -262,7 +292,7 @@ iii) Messages i) Constructor - thin <pool dev> <dev id> + thin <pool dev> <dev id> [<external origin dev>] pool dev: the thin-pool device, e.g. /dev/mapper/my_pool or 253:0 @@ -271,6 +301,11 @@ i) Constructor the internal device identifier of the device to be activated. + external origin dev: + an optional block device outside the pool to be treated as a + read-only snapshot origin: reads to unprovisioned areas of the + thin target will be mapped to this device. + The pool doesn't store any size against the thin devices. If you load a thin target that is smaller than you've been using previously, then you'll have no access to blocks mapped beyond the end. If you |
