I'm sponsoring the following case, entitled "Logical Domains Agents on
Solaris" for Alexandre Chartre. The timer is set for Sep 1 2009.
The case and manual page are included below.
-dp
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1. Introduction
1.1 Project/Component Working Name
Logical Domains Agents on Solaris
1.2 Name of Document Author/Supplier
Alexandre Chartre
1.3 Date of This Document
13-AUG-2009
1.4 Name of Major Document Customer(s)/Consumer(s)
1.4.1 The PAC or CPT you expect to review your project
1.4.2 The ARC(s) you expect to review your project
PSARC
1.4.3 The Director/VP who is sponsoring this project
jerriann.meyer at sun.com
1.4.4 The Name of Your Business Unit
Solaris Core OS
1.5 Email Aliases
1.5.1 Responsible Manager: jay.jayachandran at sun.com
1.5.2 Responsible Engineer: alexandre.chartre at sun.com
1.5.3 Marketing Manager: duncan.hardie at sun.com
1.5.4 Interest List: ldoms-internal at sun.com
2. Project Summary
2.1 Project Description
This project will implement Logical Domains Agents on
Solaris. A Logical Domains Agent is an entity running in a
LDoms domain and able to provide information or to interact
with the control domain. The full description of Logical
Domains Agents is available in FWARC 2009/426 (Logical Domains
Agents).
On the Solaris operating system, Logical Domains agents will
be implemented as a SMF service and a userland daemon using
the libds library provided by PSARC 2008/568 (Logical Domain's
Domain Services).
2.2 Risks and Assumptions
None.
3. Business Summary
3.1 Problem Area
In an LDoms system, the control domain has no way to query
information about the system configuration of another domain.
For example, it is unable to validate a device path which is
associated with (i.e., local to) another domain, or to know
what release of an operating system another domain is running.
This causes various operational problems when creating virtual
device services in other domains which in turn are exported to
guest domains, or to know if domain is able to support a
particular LDoms operation.
For example, an LDoms system allows the creation of "service
domains" which provide services to other guest domains, such
as a domain with a vds (virtual disk service) which can export
virtual disk devices to other domains. When exporting devices
hosted by a vds in another domain, the user specifies a
backend (a simple file, a disk slice, a disk drive, etc.)
for the vds device by supplying the filesystem path of that
backend.
If the user supplies an invalid backend path, the LDoms
Manager has currently no way to determine if the path to the
backend is valid. Even at the time the service domain is
bound, such an error remains undetected. A similar situation
occurs when specifying the physical network interface
associated with a virtual switch.
An example of the type of problem this can cause is when the
virtual disk which relies on an invalid backend path is the
boot device. In that case, the boot of the domain will fail
in a such a way that the cause of the problem is difficult for
the user to determine.
3.2 Market/Requestor
See FWARC 2005/633.
3.3 Business Justification
See FWARC 2005/633.
3.4 Competitive Analysis
The problems listed in 3.1 have been the subject of bug
reports from customers. Virtualization solutions provided by
competitors do not suffer this type of problem.
3.5 Opportunity Window/Exposure
See FWARC 2005/663.
3.6 How will you know when you are done?
The work will be completed when the final code changes to
implement Logical Domains agents are integrated into the
Solaris Nevada gate and Solaris 10 Update gates.
4. Technical Description
4.1 Overview
On the Solaris operating system, Logical Domains agents will
be implemented as a SMF service "svc:/ldoms/agents" and a
userland daemon "/usr/lib/ldoms/ldmad" using the libds
library provided by PSARC/2008/568 (Logical Domain's Domain
Services). To simplify Logical Domains installation and
deployment and for ease of use, the Logical Domains agents SMF
service will be enabled by default. The Logical Domains agents
service has to be enabled to ensure proper functionality of
all features provided by the domain manager on the control
domain.
See FWARC/2009/426 for more information about the mechanism
used by Logical Domains agents to communicate with the control
domain.
4.2 Bug/RFE Number(s)
6813200 Logical Domains Agents
6734518 LDoms needs Domain Service to allow device paths to be
validated across domains
6447740 Ldom Mgr should validate specified vdsdev & net-dev entries
6669994 Add a domain service to support OS identification (Solaris)
6506767 Add a domain service to support OS identification (LDoms
Manager)
4.3 Scope
Not Applicable.
4.4 Out of Scope
Not Applicable.
4.5 Interfaces
4.5.1 Interfaces
The new interface is embodied in the format of the
messages passed between the control domain and the
different agents. See FWARC/2009/426.
4.5.2 Imported Interfaces
Interface Classification Comments
=================================================================
Domain Services API Consolidation Private PSARC/2008/568
(libds.so.1)
Service Management Evolving PSARC/2002/547
Facility (SMF)
4.5.3 Exported Interfaces
Interface Classification Comments
================================================================
Domain Services ID Sun Private service id ("ldm-agent-device"
and "ldm-agent-system") to
represent the new agents.
See FWARC/2009/426.
Agent Message Sun Private Describes format of
Formats messages exchanged between
the LDoms Manager and the
agents. See FWARC/2009/426.
4.6 Doc Impact
Man page for the Solaris LDoms agent daemon, ldmad(1M).
4.7 Admin/Config Impact
Current behavior:
Pathname errors when specifying devices in certain LDoms Manager CLI
commands go undetected until a guest domain attempting to use the
corresponding service encounters a problem.
New behavior:
Such pathname errors will be detected by LDoms Manager when binding
a domain which references a service for which an invalid path was
specified.
4.8 HA Impact
None.
4.9 I18N/L10N
Not affected.
4.10 Packaging & Delivery
The Logical Domains Agents daemon and SMF service will be
delivered as part of the existing Solaris LDoms packages
(SUNWldomu and SUNWldomr).
4.11 Security Impact
None.
4.12 Dependencies
None.
5. Reference Documents
FWARC 2009/426 Logical Domains Agents
PSARC 2008/568 Logical Domain's Domain Services
6. Resources and Schedule
6.1 Projected Availability
Q4FY10 (S10U9)
6.2 Cost of Effort
2 person month
6.3 Cost of Capital Resources
6.4 Product Approval Committee requested information
6.4.1 Consolidation Or Component Name
OS-Networking (ON)
6.4.3 Type of CPT Approval Expected
FastTrack
6.4.4 Project Boundary Conditions
6.4.5 Is this a necessary project for OEM agreements:
No.
6.4.6 Notes
6.4.7 Target RTI Date/Release
September 2009
6.4.8 Target Code Design Review Date:
6.4.9 Update approval addition:
Not applicable
6.5 ARC review type
FastTrack
6.6 ARC Exposure
open
7. Prototype Availability:
7.1 Prototype Availability
A prototype is already available.
7.2 Prototype Cost:
A prototype is already available.
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System Administration Commands ldmad(1M)
NAME
ldmad - Logical Domains Agents daemon
SYNOPSIS
/usr/lib/ldoms/ldmad
DESCRIPTION
The ldmad daemon is part of the framework that enables Logi-
cal Domain agents to run on a Logical Domain. A Logical Do-
main agent is a component which interacts with the control
domain for providing features or information.
ldmad is responsible for running agents on a Logical Domain
and must be enabled to ensure proper functionality of all
features provided by the domain manager on the control do-
main. It is started at boot time and has no configuration
options.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWldomu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Unstable |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
svcs(1), svcadm(1M), syslog(3C), syslog.conf(4), attri-
butes(5), smf(5)
ERRORS
ldmad uses syslog(3C) to report status and error messages.
All of the messages are logged with the LOG_DAEMON facility.
Error messages are logged with the LOG_ERR and LOG_NOTICE
priorities, and informational messages are logged with the
LOG_INFO priority. The default entries in the
/etc/syslog.conf file log all the ldmad error messages to
the /var/adm/messages log.
NOTES
The ldmad service is managed by the service management fac-
ility, smf(5), under the service identifier:
svc:/ldoms/agents:default
Administrative actions on this service, such as enabling,
disabling, or requesting restart, can be performed using
svcadm(1M). The service's status can be queried using the
svcs(1) command.
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--
Daniel Price, Solaris Kernel Engineering http://blogs.sun.com/dp
