Hypervisor Host Based CephFS pass through with VirtioFS

docker-cephfs-virtiods.md

Using VirtioFS backed by CephFS for bind mounts

This is currently a work-in-progress documentation - rough notes for me, maybe missing a lot or wrong

The idea is to replace GlusterFS running inside the VM with storage on my cephfs cluster. This is my proxmox cluster and it runs both the storage and is the hypervisor for my docker VMs.

Other possible approaches:

• ceph fuse clien in VM to mount cephFS or CephRBD over IP
• use of ceph docker volume plugin (no useable version of this yet exists but it is being worked on)

Assumptions:

• I already have a working Ceph Cluster - this will not be documented in this gist. See my proxmox gist for a working example.
• this is for proxmox as a hypervisor+ceph cluster and the VMs are hosted on the same proxmox that is the ceph cluster

Workflow

Create a new cephFS on the proxmox cluster

I created one called docker

The storage ID is docker-cephFS (i chose this name as I will play with ceph in a varity of other ways too)

Add this to directory mappings

Configure docker host VMs to pass through

In each VM

In each VM

• sudo mkdir /mnt/docker-cephFS/
• sudo nano /etc/fstab
  • add #for virtiofs mapping docker-cephFS /mnt/docker-cephFS virtiofs defaults 0 0
  • save the file
• sudo systemctl daemon-reload
• sudo mount -a

Migrating Docker Swarm Stacks for exising Stack

basically its

• stop the stack

• mv the data from /mnt/gluster-vol1/dirname to /mnt/docker-cephFS/dirname

• Edit the stack to change the volume defitions from my gluster defition to a local volume - this mean no editing of the service volme lines

Example from my wordpress stack

volumes:
  dbdata:
    driver: gluster-vol1
  www:
    driver: gluster-vol1

to

volumes:
  dbdata:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: none
      device: "/mnt/docker-cephFS/wordpress_dbdata"
      o: bind

  www:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: none
      device: "/mnt/docker-cephFS/wordpress_www"
      o: bind

• triple check everything
• restart the stack

if you get an error about the volumen already being defined you may need to delete the old volume defition by had - thi can easily be done in portainer or using the docker volume command

Backup

havent figured out an ideal strategy for backing up the cephFS on the host or from the vm - with glsuter the bricks were stored on a dedicated vdisk - this was backed up as part of the pbs backup of the vm

As the virtioFS is not presented as a disk this doesn't happen (this is reasonable as the cephFS is not VM specific)

1. I'm not sure if it includes.
2. Here https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest is example compose
3. The disadvantage is that you have to create Backrest separately on each vm if you use seperate vm and docker container

• Now with Swarm and VirtioFS i need only one instance of Backrest because all VM have same data over VirtioFS.

• Backrest/Restic can not meet all your needs.

• First, you need to create a repository where you will store your backup data

• Second you create Plan where you select what you want to backup
  This is my Jellyfin VM where i backup Jellyfin config
  
  

My backup plan is:

• backup VM once a day every 24h with Proxmox Backup Server
• backup docker container volumes with Backrest to my NAS every hour
• backup from NAS to cloud every hour
• i don't backup physical hosts.

I have data on Proxmox, NAS and cloud.
There is one copy at each location.
It's not ideal Strategy but it works for me.

Helpful thanks, got it backrest is configured on each devce that will back itself up to the 'repo', any opinion on using the REST server for restic - seems to have could apped functionality to reduce backup sizes

I already backup all my VMs and CTs to PBS every 2 hours, the pbs is a VM on 2015 synology (i.e. not powerful), I don't care about the containers in the swarm, everything is in the swarm is ephemeral, except for the bind mounts (which today get backed up in the VMs accidentally because the gluster volume bricks are there.

Now my bind data is going to move into a cepFS volume - so i need to figure out how to back that up... given there are 3 copies.... one on each cephnode - hmm maybe a restic client in a HA-CT, that way only one process is ever trying backup the cephFS to a cephFS end point....

I need, to go noodle... lots to think about and tinker with....

oh do you replicate yout pbs backup data else where. so ineffect

PVE VMs & CT > PBS Machine > NAS
                           > CLOUD

i have now moved all my containers from using glusterfs to cephfs

my quick and dirty backup method was to drop a file in /etc/cron.hourly on pve1 called ceph-backup it contains
(and of course i chmod +x'd the file).

#!/bin/sh

export PBS_REPOSITORY=root@[email protected]:syn01.mydomain.com
export PBS_PASSWORD=<redacted>
export PBS_FINGERPRINT="<redacted>"

/usr/bin/proxmox-backup-client backup cephfs.pxar:/mnt/pve/docker-cephFS --change-detection-mode=metadata

this will do for now, if pve1 is down i have bigger things to worry about, also i love having it in PBS, PBS has all my prune jobs (next up need to start using namespaces so i can have different server side prune job schedules)