Portworx

Create and manage volumes using pxctl

In this section, we are going to focus on creating and managing volumes with pxctl. You can use the created volumes directly in Docker with the -v option.

To view a list of the available commands, run the following:

/opt/pwx/bin/pxctl volume -h
Manage volumes

Usage:
  pxctl volume [flags]
  pxctl volume [command]

Aliases:
  volume, v

Examples:
pxctl volume create -s 100 myVolName

Available Commands:
  access               Manage volume access by users or groups
  clone                Create a clone volume
  create               Create a volume
  delete               Delete a volume
  ha-update            Update volume HA level
  import               Import data into a volume
  inspect              Inspect a volume
  list                 List volumes in the cluster
  locate               Locate volume
  requests             Show all pending requests
  restore              Restore volume from snapshot
  snap-interval-update Update volume configuration
  snapshot             Manage volume snapshots
  stats                Volume Statistics
  update               Update volume settings
  usage                Show volume usage information

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for volume

Global Flags:
      --ca string        path to root certificate for ssl usage
      --cert string      path to client certificate for ssl usage
      --color            output with color coding
      --config string    config file (default is $HOME/.pxctl.yaml)
      --context string   context name that overrides the current auth context
  -j, --json             output in json
      --key string       path to client key for ssl usage
      --raw              raw CLI output for instrumentation
      --ssl              ssl enabled for portworx

Use "pxctl volume [command] --help" for more information about a command.

In the next sections, we will take a look at these commands individually.

Creating volumes with pxctl

Portworx creates volumes from the global capacity of a cluster. You can expand the capacity and throughput by adding new nodes to the cluster. Portworx protects storage volumes from hardware and node failures through automatic replication.

Things to consider when creating a new volume with pxctl:

  • Durability: Set the replication level through policy, using the High Availability setting.
  • Each write is synchronously replicated to a quorum set of nodes.
  • Any hardware failure means that the replicated volume has the latest acknowledged writes.
  • Elastic: Add capacity and throughput at each layer, at any time.
  • Volumes are thinly provisioned, only using capacity as needed by the container.
  • You can expand and contract the volume’s maximum size, even after data has been written to the volume.

A volume can be created before being used by its container or by the container directly at runtime. Creating a volume returns the volume’s ID. The same volume ID shown by pxctl is returned by Docker commands (such as Docker volume ls).

To create a volume named myVol, type:

pxctl volume create myVol

pxctl will create the volume and will print its id:

3903386035533561360

Throughput is controlled per container and can be shared. Volumes have fine-grained control, set through policy.

Before you move on, take a bit of time to make sure you understand the following points:

  • Throughput is set by the IO Priority setting. Throughput capacity is pooled.
  • Adding a node to the cluster expands the available throughput for reads and writes.
  • The best node is selected to service reads, whether that read is from local storage devices or another node’s storage devices.
  • Read throughput is aggregated, where multiple nodes can service one read request in parallel streams.
  • Fine-grained controls: Policies are specified per volume and give full control to storage.
  • Policies enforce how the volume is replicated across the cluster, IOPs priority, filesystem, blocksize, and additional parameters described below.
  • Policies are specified at create time and can be applied to existing volumes.

pxctl provides a multitude of options for setting the policies on a volume. Let’s get a feel for the available options by running:

pxctl volume create -h
Create a volume

Usage:
  pxctl volume create [flags]

Aliases:
  create, c

Examples:
pxctl volume create [flags] volume-name

Flags:
      --shared                              make this a globally shared namespace volume
      --secure                              encrypt this volume using AES-256
      --use_cluster_secret                  Use cluster wide secret key to fetch secret_data
      --journal                             Journal data for this volume
      --early_ack                           Reply to async write requests after it is copied to shared memory
      --async_io                            Enable async IO to backing storage
      --nodiscard                           Disable discard support for this volume
      --sticky                              sticky volumes cannot be deleted until the flag is disabled
      --sharedv4                            export this volume via Sharedv4 at /var/lib/osd/exports
      --enforce_cg                          enforce group during provision
      --best_effort_location_provisioning   requested nodes, zones, racks are optional
      --secret_key string                   secret_key to use to fetch secret_data for the PBKDF2 function
  -l, --label pairs                         list of comma-separated name=value pairs
      --io_priority string                  IO Priority (Valid Values: [high medium low]) (default "low")
      --io_profile string                   IO Profile (Valid Values: [sequential cms db db_remote]) (default "sequential")
  -a, --aggregation_level string            aggregation level (Valid Values: [1 2 3 auto]) (default "1")
      --nodes string                        comma-separated Node Ids
      --zones string                        comma-separated Zone names
      --racks string                        comma-separated Rack names
  -g, --group string                        group
  -p, --periodic mins,k                     periodic snapshot interval in mins,k (keeps 5 by default), 0 disables all schedule snapshots
      --policy string                       policy names separated by comma
      --storagepolicy string                storage policy name
  -s, --size uint                           volume size in GB (default 1)
  -b, --block_size uint                     block size in Bytes (default 32768)
  -q, --queue_depth uint                    block device queue depth (Valid Range: [1 256]) (default 128)
  -r, --repl uint                           replication factor (Valid Range: [1 3]) (default 1)
      --scale uint                          auto scale to max number (Valid Range: [1 1024]) (default 1)
  -d, --daily hh:mm,k                       daily snapshot at specified hh:mm,k (keeps 7 by default)
  -w, --weekly weekday@hh:mm,k              weekly snapshot at specified weekday@hh:mm,k (keeps 5 by default)
  -m, --monthly day@hh:mm,k                 monthly snapshot at specified day@hh:mm,k (keeps 12 by default)
  -h, --help                                help for create

Global Flags:
      --ca string        path to root certificate for ssl usage
      --cert string      path to client certificate for ssl usage
      --color            output with color coding
      --config string    config file (default is $HOME/.pxctl.yaml)
      --context string   context name that overrides the current auth context
  -j, --json             output in json
      --key string       path to client key for ssl usage
      --raw              raw CLI output for instrumentation
      --ssl              ssl enabled for portworx
These options can also be passed in through the scheduler or using the inline volume spec. See the section Inline volume spec below for more details.

Using the –nodes Argument

Adding the --nodes=LocalNode argument while creating a volume with pxctl will place at least one replica of the volume on the node where the command is run.

This is useful when using a script to create a volume locally on a node.

Let’s look at a simple example. Say you want to create a volume named localVolume and place a replica of the volume on the local node. If so, you should run something like the following:

pxctl volume create --nodes=LocalNode localVolume
Volume successfully created: 756818650657204847

Now, let’s quickly check that the volume’s replica is on the node where the command was run:

pxctl volume inspect localVolume
Volume  :  756818650657204847
        Name                     :  localVolume
        Size                     :  1.0 GiB
        Format                   :  ext4
        HA                       :  1
        IO Priority              :  LOW
        Creation time            :  Mar 20 00:30:05 UTC 2019
        Shared                   :  no
        Status                   :  up
        State                    :  detached
        Reads                    :  0
        Reads MS                 :  0
        Bytes Read               :  0
        Writes                   :  0
        Writes MS                :  0
        Bytes Written            :  0
        IOs in progress          :  0
        Bytes used               :  340 KiB
        Replica sets on nodes:
                Set 0
                  Node           : 70.0.29.90 (Pool 1)
        Replication Status       :  Detached
The replicas are visible in the “Replica sets on nodes” section.

Creating volumes with Docker

All docker volume commands are reflected in Portworx. For example, a docker volume create command provisions a storage volume in a Portworx storage cluster.

The following docker volume command creates a volume named testVol:

docker volume create -d pxd --name testVol
testVol

Just to make sure the command is reflected into Portworx, try running this command:

pxctl volume list --name testVol
ID			NAME		SIZE	HA	SHARED	ENCRYPTED	IO_PRIORITY	STATUS		SNAP-ENABLED
426544812542612832	testVol	1 GiB	1	no	no		LOW		up - detached	no

The –opt flag

As part of the docker volume command, you can add optional parameters through the --opt flag. The parameters are the same, whether you use Portworx storage through the Docker volume or the pxctl command.

The command below uses the --opt flag to set the container’s filesystem and volume size:

docker volume create -d pxd --name opt_example --opt fs=ext4 --opt size=1G
opt_example

Now, let’s check by running this command:

pxctl volume list --name opt_example

ID			NAME		SIZE	HA	SHARED	ENCRYPTED	IO_PRIORITY	STATUS		SNAP-ENABLED
282820401509248281	opt_example	1 GiB	1	no	no		LOW		up - detached	no

We’re all set.

Inline volume spec

Portworx supports passing the volume spec inline along with the volume name. This is useful if you want to create a volume with your scheduler application template inline and do not want to create volumes beforehand.

For example, a Portworx inline spec looks like this:

docker volume create -d pxd io_priority=high,size=10G,repl=3,snap_schedule="periodic=60#4;daily=12:00#3",name=demovolume

Let’s look at another example that uses docker run to create a volume dynamically:

docker run --volume-driver pxd -it -v io_priority=high,size=10G,repl=3,snap_schedule="periodic=60#4;daily=12:00#3",name=demovolume:/data busybox sh

The above command will create a volume called demovolume with an initial size of 10G, HA factor of 3, snap schedule with periodic and daily snapshot creation, and a high IO priority level. Next, it will start the busybox container dynamically.

The spec keys must be comma separated.

pxctl provides support for the following key value pairs:

IO priority      - io_priority=[high|medium|low]
Volume size      - size=[1..9][G|M|T]
HA factor        - repl=[1,2,3]
Block size       - bs=[4096...]
Shared volume    - shared=true
File System      - fs=[xfs|ext4]
Encryption       - passphrase=secret
snap_schedule    - "periodic=mins#k;daily=hh:mm#k;weekly=weekday@hh:mm#k;monthly=day@hh:mm#k" where k is the number of snapshots to retain.

The inline specs can be passed in through the scheduler application template. For example, below is a snippet from a marathon configuration file:

"parameters": [
	{
		"key": "volume-driver",
		"value": "pxd"
	},
	{
		"key": "volume",
		"value": "size=100G,repl=3,io_priority=high,name=mysql_vol:/var/lib/mysql"
	}],

Global Namespace (Shared Volumes)

Through shared and sharedv4 volumes (also known as a global namespace), a single volume’s filesystem is concurrently available to multiple containers running on multiple hosts.

Note 1: You do not need to use shared/sharedv4 volumes to have your data accessible on any host in the cluster. Any Portworx volumes can be exclusively accessed from any host as long as they are not simultaneously accessed. Shared volumes are for providing simultaneous (concurrent or shared) access to a volume from multiple hosts at the same time.
Note 2: You do not necessarily need a replication factor of greater than 1 on your volume in order for it to be shared. Even a volume with a replication factor of 1 can be shared on as many nodes as there are in your cluster.

A typical pattern is for a single container to have one or more volumes. Conversely, many scenarios would benefit from multiple containers being able to access the same volume, possibly from different hosts. Accordingly, the shared volume feature enables a single volume to be read/write accessible by multiple containers. Example use cases include:

  • A technical computing workload sourcing its input and writing its output to a shared volume.
  • Scaling a number of Wordpress containers based on load while managing a single shared volume.
  • Collecting logs to a central location
Note: Usage of shared/sharedv4 volumes for databases is not recommended, since they have a small metadata overhead. Along with that, typical databases do not support concurrent writes to the underlying database at the same time.

Difference between shared and sharedv4 volumes, is the underlying protocol that is used to share this global namespace across multiple hosts.

Deleting volumes

Volumes can be deleted like so:

pxctl volume delete myOldVol
Delete volume 'myOldVol', proceed ? (Y/N): y
Volume myOldVol successfully deleted.

Importing volumes

Files can be imported from a directory into an existing volume. Files already existing on the volume will be retained or overwritten.

As an example, you can import files from /path/to/files into myVol with the following:

pxctl volume import --src /path/to/files myVol
Starting import of  data from /path/to/files into volume myVol...Beginning data transfer from /path/to/files myVol
Imported Bytes :   0% [>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------] 14ms
Imported Files :   0% [>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------] 16ms

Volume imported successfully

Inspecting volumes

To find out more information about a volume’s settings and its usage, run:

pxctl volume inspect clitest
Volume	:  970758537931791410
	Name            	 :  clitest
	Size            	 :  1.0 GiB
	Format          	 :  ext4
	HA              	 :  1
	IO Priority     	 :  LOW
	Creation time   	 :  Feb 26 16:29:53 UTC 2019
	Shared          	 :  no
	Status          	 :  up
	State           	 :  detached
	Reads           	 :  0
	Reads MS        	 :  0
	Bytes Read      	 :  0
	Writes          	 :  0
	Writes MS       	 :  0
	Bytes Written   	 :  0
	IOs in progress 	 :  0
	Bytes used      	 :  33 MiB
	Replica sets on nodes:
		Set  0
			Node 	 :  10.99.117.133
	Replication Status	 :  Detached
You can also inspect multiple volumes in one command.

To inspect the volume in json format, run pxctl volume inspect with the --json flag:

pxctl --json volume inspect 486256711004992211
[{
 "id": "486256711004992211",
 "source": {
  "parent": "",
  "seed": ""
 },
 "readonly": false,
 "locator": {
  "name": "pvc-2910e5ab-1b5e-11e8-97a3-0269077ba1bd",
  "volume_labels": {
   "namespace": "default",
   "pvc": "px-nginx-shared-pvc"
  }
 },
 "ctime": "2018-02-27T01:33:16Z",
 "spec": {
  "ephemeral": false,
  "size": "1073741824",
  "format": "ext4",
  "block_size": "65536",
  "ha_level": "2",
  "cos": "low",
  "io_profile": "sequential",
  "dedupe": false,
  "snapshot_interval": 0,
  "volume_labels": {
   "kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration": "{\"apiVersion\":\"v1\",\"kind\":\"PersistentVolumeClaim\",\"metadata\":{\"annotations\":{\"volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class\":\"px-nginx-shared-sc\"},\"name\":\"px-nginx-shared-pvc\",\"namespace\":\"default\"},\"spec\":{\"accessModes\":[\"ReadWriteOnce\"],\"resources\":{\"requests\":{\"storage\":\"1Gi\"}}}}\n",
   "repl": "2",
   "shared": "true",
   "volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class": "px-nginx-shared-sc",
   "volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-provisioner": "kubernetes.io/portworx-volume"
  },
  "shared": true,
  "aggregation_level": 1,
  "encrypted": false,
  "passphrase": "",
  "snapshot_schedule": "",
  "scale": 0,
  "sticky": false,
  "group_enforced": false,
  "compressed": false,
  "cascaded": false,
  "journal": false,
  "nfs": false
 },
 "usage": "33964032",
 "last_scan": "2018-02-27T01:33:16Z",
 "format": "ext4",
 "status": "up",
 "state": "detached",
 "attached_on": "",
 "attached_state": "ATTACH_STATE_INTERNAL_SWITCH",
 "device_path": "",
 "secure_device_path": "",
 "replica_sets": [
  {
   "nodes": [
    "k2n3",
    "k2n1"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "runtime_state": [
  {
   "runtime_state": {
    "FullResyncBlocks": "[{0 0} {1 0} {-1 0} {-1 0} {-1 0}]",
    "ID": "0",
    "ReadQuorum": "1",
    "ReadSet": "[0 1]",
    "ReplNodePools": "1,1",
    "ReplRemoveMids": "",
    "ReplicaSetCurr": "[0 1]",
    "ReplicaSetCurrMid": "k2n3,k2n1",
    "ReplicaSetNext": "[0 1]",
    "ReplicaSetNextMid": "k2n3,k2n1",
    "ResyncBlocks": "[{0 0} {1 0} {-1 0} {-1 0} {-1 0}]",
    "RuntimeState": "clean",
    "TimestampBlocksPerNode": "[0 0 0 0 0]",
    "TimestampBlocksTotal": "0",
    "WriteQuorum": "2",
    "WriteSet": "[0 1]"
   }
  }
 ],
 "error": ""
}]

Listing volumes

To list all volumes within a cluster, use this command:

pxctl volume list
ID			NAME		SIZE	HA	SHARED	ENCRYPTED	IO_PRIORITY	STATUS				SNAP-ENABLED
951679824907051932	objectstorevol	10 GiB	1	no	no		LOW		up - attached on 192.168.99.101	no
810987143668394709	testvol		1 GiB	1	no	no		LOW		up - detached			no
1047941676033657203	testvol2	1 GiB	1	no	no		LOW		up - detached			no
800735594334174869	testvol3	1 GiB	1	no	no		LOW		up - detached			no

Locating volumes

pxctl shows where a given volume is mounted in the containers running on the node:

pxctl volume locate 794896567744466024
host mounted:
  /directory1
  /directory2

In this example, the volume is mounted in two containers via the /directory1 and /directory2 mount points.

Volume snapshots

Snapshots are efficient point-in-time read-only copies of volumes. Once created, you can use a snapshot to read data, restore data, and to make clones from a given snapshot.

Under the hood, snapshots are using a copy-on-write technique, so that they store only the modified data. This way, snapshots significantly reduce the consumption of resources.

Snapshots can be created explicitly by running the pxctl volume snapshot create command (called henceforth user created snapshots) or through a schedule that is set on the volume.

Here’s an example of how to create a snapshot:

pxctl volume snapshot create --name mysnap --label color=blue,fabric=wool myvol
Volume snap successful: 234835613696329810

The string of digits in the output is the volume ID of the new snapshot. You can use this ID(234835613696329810) or the name(mysnap), to refer to the snapshot in subsequent pxctl commands.

The label values allow you to tag the snapshot with descriptive information of your choosing. You can use them to filter the output of the pxctl volume list command.

There is an implementation limit of 64 snapshots per volume.

Snapshots are read-only. To restore a volume from a snapshot, use the pxctl volume restore command.

  • For information about creating snapshots of your Portworx volumes through Kubernetes, refer to the Create and use snapshots page.

Volume Clone

In order to create a volume clone from a volume or snapshot, use the pxctl volume clone command.

Let’s first refer to the in-built help, which can be accessed by giving the --help argument:

pxctl volume clone --help
Create a clone volume

Usage:
  pxctl volume clone [flags]

Aliases:
  clone, cl

Examples:
pxctl volume clone [flags] volName

Flags:
      --name string    clone name
  -l, --label string   list of comma-separated name=value pairs
  -h, --help           help for clone

Global Flags:
      --ca string        path to root certificate for ssl usage
      --cert string      path to client certificate for ssl usage
      --color            output with color coding
      --config string    config file (default is $HOME/.pxctl.yaml)
      --context string   context name that overrides the current auth context
  -j, --json             output in json
      --key string       path to client key for ssl usage
      --raw              raw CLI output for instrumentation
      --ssl              ssl enabled for portworx

As an example, if we want to make a clone named myvol_clone from the parent volume myvol, we can run:

pxctl volume clone -name myvol_clone myvol
Volume clone successful: 55898055774694370
  • For information about creating a clone from a snapshot through Kubernetes, refer to the On-demand snapshots page.

Volume Restore

In order to restore a volume from snapshot use the pxctl volume restore command:

/opt/pwx/bin/pxctl volume restore -h
NAME:
   pxctl volume restore - Restore volume from snapshot

USAGE:
   pxctl volume restore [command options] volume-name-or-ID

OPTIONS:
   --snapshot value, -s value  snapshot-name-or-ID

In the below example parent volume myvol is restored from its snapshot mysnap. Make sure volume is detached in order to restore from the snapshot.

pxctl volume restore --snapshot mysnap myvol
Successfully started restoring volume myvol from mysnap.
  • For information about restoring a Portworx volume with data from a snapshot through Kubernetes, refer to the Restore snapshots page.

Update the snap interval of a volume

Please see the documentation for snapshots for more details.

  • For information about creating scheduled snapshots of a Portworx volume through Kubernetes, refer to the Scheduled snapshots page.

Volume stats

pxctl shows the realtime read/write IO throughput:

pxctl volume stats mvVol
TS			Bytes Read	Num Reads	Bytes Written	Num Writes	IOPS		IODepth		Read Tput	Write Tput	Read Lat(usec)	Write Lat(usec)
2019-3-4:11 Hrs		0 B		0		0 B		0		0		0		0 B/s		0 B/s		0		0
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Last edited: Thursday, Apr 16, 2020
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