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Community Blog An In-Depth Interview with ACK Distro – Part 3: How to Realize Container Local Storage through Open-Local

An In-Depth Interview with ACK Distro – Part 3: How to Realize Container Local Storage through Open-Local

Part 3 of this 3-part series explains how Open-Local was created and how to use Open-Local in ACK Distro.

Reporter: Hello again, Alibaba Cloud-Native readers. This is the last time our old friend Distribution of Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK Distro) will discuss its experiences. In the previous interviews, it brought us wonderful explanations and interpretations. If you missed those interviews, do not forget to go back and review them. Since its launch in December 2021, ACK Distro has received much attention and support and has achieved satisfying downloads. Do you have any comments on this?

ACK Distro: Yes, it was fortunate to receive more than 400 downloads in the first three months after launch (December 2021-March 2022). I have also exchanged technologies with you through different channels. Thank you for your attention, and I hope you have a better experience with container service.

Reporter: OK, let's start this interview. I learned before that Sealer can help you achieve rapid building and deployment, and Hybridnet can help build a hybrid cloud unified network plane, so which versatile partner will you introduce to us today?

ACK Distro: As we all know, stateful applications in the context of cloud-native need to use a set of storage solutions for persistent data storage. Compared with distributed storage, local storage is better in cost, usability, maintainability, and IO performance. Today, I will introduce an open-source local storage management system of Alibaba, Open-Local, and I will explain how I use it to realize container local storage. First of all, I will explain how Open-Local is created. Although the advantages of local storage compared with distributed storage were mentioned just now, local storage still has many problems with the low-cost delivery of Kubernetes clusters:

  • Kubernetes lacks the perception of storage resources. Local storage (as a non-standard resource) is much less supported in Kubernetes than a standard resource (such as CPUs, memory, etc.). Using local storage requires labor costs to limit the scheduling of pods by marking nodes, manually managing disks of different models, manually mounting specified disks to containers through Hostpath, and fulfilling other tasks. At the same time, there are some on-site delivery problems with privatized software. For example, binding the wrong host paths makes faults not be found in time. All of the problems affect the delivery efficiency of Kubernetes and the stability of application runtime.
  • Local storage lacks the capability for space isolation. If an application mounts to the inappropriate host directory (such as the root path of the host), it will cause host failures. For example, container runtime is unresponsive due to application data consuming all disk space. In addition, the failures include triggering pod eviction and IO affecting among other pods.
  • Kubernetes has insufficient support for stateful applications to use local storage. Hostpath cannot be used to realize node retention, which makes application data lost after pods drift. Semi-automatic static local persistent volumes (PVs) can be used to ensure node retention but cannot be fully automatic. Therefore, human participation is still required to create folder paths, mark nodes, etc. Some advanced storage capabilities (such as snapshots) cannot be used.

However, Open-Local can avoid those problems to the greatest extent to give everyone a better experience. Using local storage on Kubernetes is as simple as using centralized storage.

Architectural Components of Open-Local

Reporter: Can you explain the architectural components of Open-Local?

ACK Distro: Yes, Open-Local contains four components:

  1. Scheduler-Extender: As an extension component of the kube-scheduler, the scheduler-extender is implemented by the method of Extender. It expands the perception of local storage resources by the native scheduler to realize the scheduling decision on information, including disk capacity, multi-disk perception, and disk media (SSD or HDD), achieving hybrid scheduling of storage resources.
  2. CSI-Plugin: It has the Container Storage Interface (CSI)-compliant capability for local disk management, including creating, deleting, and expanding volumes, creating and deleting snapshots, and exposing metrics of PVs.
  3. Agent: Each node running in the cluster initializes storage devices according to the configuration list and reports the information of local storage devices in the cluster for scheduler-extender to realize decision scheduling.
  4. Controller: It obtains the initialization configuration of the cluster storage and sends a detailed resource configuration list to the agent running on each node.

At the same time, Open-Local contains two CRDs:

  1. NodeLocalStorage: Open-Local reports the information of storage devices on each node through a NodeLocalStorage resource. This resource is created by the controller, and its status is updated by the agent component of each node. This CRD is a global resource.
  2. NodeLocalStorageInitConfig: Open-Local controller can create each NodeLocalStorage resource using NodeLocalStorageInitConfig resources. NodeLocalStorageInitConfig resources contain the global default node configuration and the specific node configuration. If the node label of the node conforms with the expression, the specific node configuration is used. Otherwise, the default configuration is used.

Please refer to the following figure for the architecture diagram of Open-Local:

1

Application Scenarios of Open-Local

Reporter: Which demand scenarios will developers use Open-Local?

ACK Distro: I have summarized the following cases. You can choose which one matches your situation.

  1. Applications expect data volumes to have the capability for capacity isolation to avoid the situation where the system disk is full of logs.
  2. Applications require a large amount of local storage and depend on node retention, such as Hbase, etcd, ZooKeeper, and Elasticsearch.
  3. The number of local disks in the cluster is large, and it is hoped that schedulers can be used to realize the automatic deployment of stateful applications.
  4. Using the capability for storage snapshot can back up instantaneous data for database-like applications.

How to Use Open-Local in ACK Distro

Reporter: How does Open-Local exert its advantages? How do you use Open-Local to achieve best practices?

ACK Distro: Let me explain it in categories.

1. Initializing Setting

First, it should be ensured that LVM tools have been installed in the environment. During the installation and deployment step, I will install Open-Local by default, edit NodeLocalStorageInitConfig resources, and perform the initialization configuration of storage.

# kubectl edit nlsc open-local

Using Open-Local requires a VolumeGroup VG) in the environment. If a VG has already existed in your environment, and there is space left, you can configure Open-Local in a whitelist. If no VG exists in your environment, you need to provide a block device name for Open-Local to create a VG.

apiVersion: csi.aliyun.com/v1alpha1
kind: NodeLocalStorageInitConfig
metadata:
  name: open-local
spec:
  globalConfig: # The global default node configuration, which is populated into its Spec when the NodeLocalStorage is created in the initialization stage
    listConfig:
      vgs:
        include: # The VolumeGroup whitelist, which supports regular expressions.
        - open-local-pool-[0-9]+
        - your-vg-name # If there is a VG in the environment, it can be written to the whitelist and managed by open-local
    resourceToBeInited:
      vgs:
      - devices:
        - /dev/vdc  # If there is no VG in the environment, the user needs to provide a block device
        name: open-local-pool-0 # Initialize the block device /dev/vdc to a VG named open-local-pool-0

After the NodeLocalStorageInitConfig resources are edited, the controller and agent update the NodeLocalStorage resources of all nodes.

2. Dynamic Provisioning of PV

Open-Local deploys some storage class templates in the cluster by default. Let's take open-local-lvm, open-local-lvm-xfs, and open-local-lvm-io-throttling as examples:

# kubectl get sc
NAME                           PROVISIONER            RECLAIMPOLICY   VOLUMEBINDINGMODE      ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION   AGE
open-local-lvm                 local.csi.aliyun.com   Delete          WaitForFirstConsumer   true                   8d
open-local-lvm-xfs             local.csi.aliyun.com        Delete          WaitForFirstConsumer   true                   6h56m
open-local-lvm-io-throttling   local.csi.aliyun.com   Delete          WaitForFirstConsumer   true

Create a Statefulset that uses the open-local-lvm storage class template. In this case, the created PV file system is ext4. If the user designates an open-local-lvm-xfs storage template, the PV file system is xfs.

# kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alibaba/open-local/main/example/lvm/sts-nginx.yaml

Check the status of the pod, Persistent Volume Claim PVC), and PV to see that PV is created successfully:

# kubectl get pod
NAME          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-lvm-0   1/1     Running   0          3m5s
# kubectl get pvc
NAME               STATUS   VOLUME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS     AGE
html-nginx-lvm-0   Bound    local-52f1bab4-d39b-4cde-abad-6c5963b47761   5Gi        RWO            open-local-lvm   104s
# kubectl get pv
NAME                                         CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS   CLAIM                      STORAGECLASS    AGE
local-52f1bab4-d39b-4cde-abad-6c5963b47761   5Gi        RWO            Delete           Bound    default/html-nginx-lvm-0   open-local-lvm  2m4s
kubectl describe pvc html-nginx-lvm-0

3. Storage Expansion of PVs

The system edits the spec.resources.requests.storage field corresponding with PVC and expands the declared storage of the PVC from 5Gi to 20Gi.

# kubectl patch pvc html-nginx-lvm-0 -p '{"spec":{"resources":{"requests":{"storage":"20Gi"}}}}'

Check the status of PVC and PV:

# kubectl get pvc
NAME                    STATUS   VOLUME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS     AGE
html-nginx-lvm-0        Bound    local-52f1bab4-d39b-4cde-abad-6c5963b47761   20Gi       RWO            open-local-lvm   7h4m
# kubectl get pv
NAME                                         CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS   CLAIM                           STORAGECLASS     REASON   AGE
local-52f1bab4-d39b-4cde-abad-6c5963b47761   20Gi       RWO            Delete           Bound    default/html-nginx-lvm-0        open-local-lvm            7h4m

4. PV Snapshots

Open-Local has the following snapshot classes:

# kubectl get volumesnapshotclass
NAME             DRIVER                DELETIONPOLICY   AGE
open-local-lvm   local.csi.aliyun.com   Delete           20m

Create a VolumeSnapshot resource:

# kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alibaba/open-local/main/example/lvm/snapshot.yaml
volumesnapshot.snapshot.storage.k8s.io/new-snapshot-test created
# kubectl get volumesnapshot
NAME                READYTOUSE   SOURCEPVC          SOURCESNAPSHOTCONTENT   RESTORESIZE   SNAPSHOTCLASS    SNAPSHOTCONTENT                                    CREATIONTIME   AGE
new-snapshot-test   true         html-nginx-lvm-0                           1863          open-local-lvm   snapcontent-815def28-8979-408e-86de-1e408033de65   19s            19s
# kubectl get volumesnapshotcontent
NAME                                               READYTOUSE   RESTORESIZE   DELETIONPOLICY   DRIVER                VOLUMESNAPSHOTCLASS   VOLUMESNAPSHOT      AGE
snapcontent-815def28-8979-408e-86de-1e408033de65   true         1863          Delete           local.csi.aliyun.com   open-local-lvm        new-snapshot-test   48s

Create a new pod. The PV data corresponding with the pod is the same as the previous application snapshot point:

# kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alibaba/open-local/main/example/lvm/sts-nginx-snap.yaml
service/nginx-lvm-snap created
statefulset.apps/nginx-lvm-snap created
# kubectl get po -l app=nginx-lvm-snap
NAME               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-lvm-snap-0   1/1     Running   0          46s
# kubectl get pvc -l app=nginx-lvm-snap
NAME                    STATUS   VOLUME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS     AGE
html-nginx-lvm-snap-0   Bound    local-1c69455d-c50b-422d-a5c0-2eb5c7d0d21b   4Gi        RWO            open-local-lvm   2m11s

5. Native Block Devices

Open-Local supports a created PV that is mounted to containers as a block device. (In this case, the block device is in the container /dev/sdd path.):

# kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alibaba/open-local/main/example/lvm/sts-block.yaml

Check the status of the pod, PVC, and PV:

# kubectl get pod
NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-lvm-block-0   1/1     Running   0          25s
# kubectl get pvc
NAME                     STATUS   VOLUME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS     AGE
html-nginx-lvm-block-0   Bound    local-b048c19a-fe0b-455d-9f25-b23fdef03d8c   5Gi        RWO            open-local-lvm   36s
# kubectl describe pvc html-nginx-lvm-block-0
Name:          html-nginx-lvm-block-0
Namespace:     default
StorageClass:  open-local-lvm
...
Access Modes:  RWO
VolumeMode:    Block # Mount to the container as a block device
Mounted By:    nginx-lvm-block-0
...

6. IO Throttling

Open-Local supports setting IO throttling for PVs. The following storage class templates support IO throttling:

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: open-local-lvm-io-throttling
provisioner: local.csi.aliyun.com
parameters:
  csi.storage.k8s.io/fstype: ext4
  volumeType: "LVM"
  bps: "1048576" # The read/write throughput is limited to 1024KiB/s or so
  iops: "1024"   # The IOPS is limited to 1024 or so
reclaimPolicy: Delete
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
allowVolumeExpansion: true

Create a Statefulset that uses the open-local-lvm-io-throttling storage class template:

# kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alibaba/open-local/main/example/lvm/sts-io-throttling.yaml

After the pod is in the running state, it enters the pod container:

# kubectl exec -it test-io-throttling-0 sh

At this time, the PV is mounted to the /dev/sdd as a native block device and runs the fio command:

# fio -name=test -filename=/dev/sdd -ioengine=psync -direct=1 -iodepth=1 -thread -bs=16k -rw=readwrite -numjobs=32 -size=1G -runtime=60 -time_based -group_reporting

The result is listed below. The read/write throughput is limited to roughly 1024KiB/s:

......

Run status group 0 (all jobs):
   READ: bw=1024KiB/s (1049kB/s), 1024KiB/s-1024KiB/s (1049kB/s-1049kB/s), io=60.4MiB (63.3MB), run=60406-60406msec
  WRITE: bw=993KiB/s (1017kB/s), 993KiB/s-993KiB/s (1017kB/s-1017kB/s), io=58.6MiB (61.4MB), run=60406-60406msec

Disk stats (read/write):
    dm-1: ios=3869/3749, merge=0/0, ticks=4848/17833, in_queue=22681, util=6.68%, aggrios=3112/3221, aggrmerge=774/631, aggrticks=3921/13598, aggrin_queue=17396, aggrutil=6.75%
  vdb: ios=3112/3221, merge=774/631, ticks=3921/13598, in_queue=17396, util=6.75%

7. Temporary Volumes

Open-Local supports creating temporary volumes for pods. The lifecycle of a temporary volume is the same as a pod. Therefore, a temporary volume is deleted after a pod is deleted. It can be understood as the emptydir of the Open-Local version.

# kubectl apply -f ./example/lvm/ephemeral.yaml

The result is listed below:

# kubectl describe po file-server
Name:         file-server
Namespace:    default
......
Containers:
  file-server:
    ......
    Mounts:
      /srv from webroot (rw)
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from default-token-dns4c (ro)
Volumes:
  webroot:   # This is a CSI temporary volume
    Type:              CSI (a Container Storage Interface (CSI) volume source)
    Driver:            local.csi.aliyun.com
    FSType:
    ReadOnly:          false
    VolumeAttributes:      size=2Gi
                           vgName=open-local-pool-0
  default-token-dns4c:
    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-dns4c
    Optional:    false

8. Monitoring Dashboard

Open-Local is equipped with a monitoring dashboard. You can use Grafana to view the information of the local storage in the cluster, including the information about storage devices and PVs. The dashboard is shown in the following figure:

2

ACK Distro: In short, you can reduce the labor costs of O&M and improve the stability of cluster runtime with the help of Open-Local. In terms of features, it maximizes the advantages of local storage to provide users with the high performance of local disks and enrich application scenarios with various advanced storage features. It allows developers to experience the benefits of cloud-native. It is a crucial step for applications to move to the cloud, especially for stateful applications to realize cloud-native deployment.

Reporter: Thank you for your wonderful explanation, ACK Distro. These three interviews have given us a deeper understanding of ACK Distro and its partners. I also hope that this interview can help anyone reading the article.

ACK Distro: Yes, members of the Project Team and I expect all of you to consult us in the GitHub community!

References

[1] The Open-Source Repository Link of Open-Local:
https://github.com/alibaba/Open-Local

[2] The Official Website of Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK)
https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/kubernetes

[3] The Official GitHub of ACK Distro:
https://github.com/AliyunContainerService/ackdistro

[5] An In-Depth Interview with ACK Distro– Part 1:
https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/an-in-depth-interview-with-ack-distro-part-1-how-to-use-sealer-to-achieve-rapid-building-and-deployment_598923

[6] An In-Depth Interview with ACK Distro – Part 2:
https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/an-in-depth-interview-with-ack-distro-part-2-how-to-build-a-hybrid-cloud-unified-network-plane-with-hybridnet_598925

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