Here it is the logic.
1. Default value is taken from a global configuration
vmware.root.disk.controller
2. To override add the same config to template or VM (starting from 4.10 UI
allows adding advanced settings to templates and/or VMs). If added to a
template all VMs deployed from it will inherit this value. If added to VM and
then template is created it will also inherits all advanced settings.
On 2/21/17, 7:06 PM, "Nathan Johnson" <njohn...@ena.com> wrote:
Sergey Levitskiy <sergey.levits...@autodesk.com> wrote:
> On vmware rootdiskcontroller is passed over to the hypervisor in VM start
> command. I know for the fact that the following rootdiskcontroller option
> specified in template/vm details work fine:
> ide
> scsi
> lsilogic
> lsilogic1068
>
> In general, any scsi controller option that vmware recognizes should work.
>
> Thanks,
> Sergey
Thanks Sergey! So do you happen to know where on the management server
side the determination is made as to which rootDiskController parameter to
pass?
>
>
> On 2/21/17, 6:13 PM, "Nathan Johnson" <njohn...@ena.com> wrote:
>
> Wido den Hollander <w...@widodh.nl> wrote:
>
>>> Op 25 januari 2017 om 4:44 schreef Simon Weller <swel...@ena.com>:
>>>
>>>
>>> Maybe this is a good opportunity to discuss modernizing the OS
>>> selections so that drivers (and other features) could be selectable per
>>> OS.
>>
>> That seems like a good idea. If you select Ubuntu 16.04 or CentOS 7.3
>> then for example it will give you a VirtIO SCSI disk on KVM, anything
>> previous to that will get VirtIO-blk.
>
> So one thing I noticed, there is a possibility of a rootDiskController
> parameter passed to the Start Command. So this means that the
Management
> server could control whether to use scsi or virtio, assuming I’m
reading
> this correctly, and we shouldn’t necessarily have to rely on the os
type
> name inside the agent code. From a quick glance at the vmware code,
it
> looks like maybe they already use this parameter? It would be great
if
> someone familiar with the vmware code could chime in here.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nathan
>
>
>
>> Wido
>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: Syed Ahmed <sah...@cloudops.com>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 10:46 AM
>>> To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
>>> Cc: Simon Weller
>>> Subject: Re: Adding VirtIO SCSI to KVM hypervisors
>>>
>>> To maintain backward compatibility we would have to add a config option
>>> here unfortunately. I do like the idea however. We can make the default
>>> VirtIO ISCSI and keep the VirtIO-blk as an alternative for existing
>>> installations.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 8:05 AM, Wido den Hollander
>>> <w...@widodh.nl<mailto:w...@widodh.nl>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Op 21 januari 2017 om 23:50 schreef Wido den Hollander
>>>> <w...@widodh.nl<mailto:w...@widodh.nl>>:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Op 21 jan. 2017 om 22:59 heeft Syed Ahmed
>>>>> <sah...@cloudops.com<mailto:sah...@cloudops.com>> het volgende
>>>>> geschreven:
>>>>>
>>>>> Exposing this via an API would be tricky but it can definitely be
>>>>> added as
>>>>> a cluster-wide or a global setting in my opinion. By enabling that,
>>>>> all the
>>>>> instances would be using VirtIO SCSI. Is there a reason you'd want
some
>>>>> instances to use VirtIIO and others to use VirtIO SCSI?
>>>>
>>>> Even a global setting would be a bit of work and hacky as well.
>>>>
>>>> I do not see any reason to keep VirtIO, it os just that devices will be
>>>> named sdX instead of vdX in the guest.
>>>
>>> To add, the Qemu wiki [0] says:
>>>
>>> "A virtio storage interface for efficient I/O that overcomes virtio-blk
>>> limitations and supports advanced SCSI hardware."
>>>
>>> At OpenStack [1] they also say:
>>>
>>> "It has been designed to replace virtio-blk, increase it's performance
>>> and improve scalability."
>>>
>>> So it seems that VirtIO is there to be removed. I'd say switch to VirtIO
>>> SCSI at version 5.X? :)
>>>
>>> Wido
>>>
>>> [0]: http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/VirtioSCSI
>>> [1]: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/LibvirtVirtioScsi
>>>
>>>> That might break existing Instances when not using labels or UUIDs in
>>>> the Instance when mounting.
>>>>
>>>> Wido
>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 4:22 PM, Simon Weller
>>>>>> <swel...@ena.com<mailto:swel...@ena.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For the record, we've been looking into this as well.
>>>>>> Has anyone tried it with Windows VMs before? The standard virtio
>>>>>> driver
>>>>>> doesn't support spanned disks and that's something we'd really like
to
>>>>>> enable for our customers.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Simon Weller/615-312-6068<tel:615-312-6068> <(615)%20312-6068>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> *From:* Wido den Hollander [w...@widodh.nl<mailto:w...@widodh.nl>]
>>>>>> *Received:* Saturday, 21 Jan 2017, 2:56PM
>>>>>> *To:* Syed Ahmed [sah...@cloudops.com<mailto:sah...@cloudops.com>];
>>>>>> dev@cloudstack.apache.org<mailto:dev@cloudstack.apache.org> [
>>>>>> dev@cloudstack.apache.org<mailto:dev@cloudstack.apache.org>]
>>>>>> *Subject:* Re: Adding VirtIO SCSI to KVM hypervisors
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Op 21 januari 2017 om 16:15 schreef Syed Ahmed
>>>>>>> <sah...@cloudops.com<mailto:sah...@cloudops.com>>:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Wido,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Were you thinking of adding this as a global setting? I can see why
>>>>>>> it
>>>>>> will
>>>>>>> be useful. I'm happy to review any ideas you might have around this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Well, not really. We don't have any structure for this in place right
>>>>>> now
>>>>>> to define what type of driver/disk we present to a guest.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> See my answer below.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>> -Syed
>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 04:46 Laszlo Hornyak
>>>>>>> <laszlo.horn...@gmail.com<mailto:laszlo.horn...@gmail.com>>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Wido,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If I understand correctly from the documentation and your examples,
>>>>>> virtio
>>>>>>>> provides virtio interface to the guest while virtio-scsi provides
>>>>>>>> scsi
>>>>>>>> interface, therefore an IaaS service should not replace it without
>>>>>>>> user
>>>>>>>> request / approval. It would be probably better to let the user set
>>>>>> what
>>>>>>>> kind of IO interface the VM needs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You'd say, but we already do those. Some Operating Systems get a IDE
>>>>>> disk,
>>>>>> others a SCSI disk and when Linux guest support it according to our
>>>>>> database we use VirtIO.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> CloudStack has no way of telling how to present a volume to a guest.
I
>>>>>> think it would be a bit to much to just make that configurable. That
>>>>>> would
>>>>>> mean extra database entries, API calls. A bit overkill imho in this
>>>>>> case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> VirtIO SCSI is supported by all Linux distributions for a very long
>>>>>> time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Wido
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>>>> Laszlo
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 10:21 PM, Wido den Hollander
>>>>>>>> <w...@widodh.nl<mailto:w...@widodh.nl>>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> VirtIO SCSI [0] has been supported a while now by Linux and all
>>>>>> kernels,
>>>>>>>>> but inside CloudStack we are not using it. There is a issue for
>>>>>>>>> this
>>>>>> [1].
>>>>>>>>> It would bring more (theoretical) performance to VMs, but one of
>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> motivators (for me) is that we can support TRIM/DISCARD [2].
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This would allow for RBD images on Ceph to shrink, but it can also
>>>>>> give
>>>>>>>>> back free space on QCOW2 images if quests run fstrim. Something
all
>>>>>>>> modern
>>>>>>>>> distributions all do weekly in a CRON.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Now, it is simple to swap VirtIO for VirtIO SCSI. This would
>>>>>>>>> however
>>>>>> mean
>>>>>>>>> that disks inside VMs are then called /dev/sdX instead of
/dev/vdX.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> For GRUB and such this is no problems. This usually work on UUIDs
>>>>>> and/or
>>>>>>>>> labels, but for static mounts on /dev/vdb1 for example things
>>>>>>>>> break.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> We currently don't have any configuration method on how we want to
>>>>>>>> present
>>>>>>>>> a disk to a guest, so when attaching a volume we can't say that we
>>>>>> want
>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>> use a different driver. If we think that a Operating System
>>>>>>>>> supports
>>>>>>>> VirtIO
>>>>>>>>> we use that driver in KVM.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Any suggestion on how to add VirtIO SCSI support?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wido
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [0]: http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/VirtioSCSI
>>>>>>>>> [1]: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CLOUDSTACK-8239
>>>>>>>>> [2]: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CLOUDSTACK-8104
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> EOF
>
>
> Nathan Johnson
> R&D Engineer
>
>
>
> 618 Grassmere Park Drive, Suite 12
> Nashville, TN 37211
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