From 487707a46add326f15e35001bdb9a9b3ea37925b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Sheetal Pamecha <spamecha@redhat.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2024 02:18:01 +0530
Subject: [PATCH] Add design proposal for common CG constraints

Signed-off-by: Sheetal Pamecha <spamecha@redhat.com>
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 .../proposals/CG-Common-Design-Goals.md       | 92 +++++++++++++++++++
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 create mode 100644 docs/design/proposals/CG-Common-Design-Goals.md

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+# Design notes for grouping volumes for consistency group based DR
+
+## Grouping decision
+
+DRPC will carry an additional `spec.group` (or, `spec.async.group`) boolean,
+denoting if grouping of volumes is desired for consistency group (CG) based
+protection. VRG would also carry a similar spec field, that would be populated
+by the DRPC reconciler.
+
+- This is to facilitate upgrades from existing single PVC protection to
+  protecting PVCs via consistency groups.
+    - This field would be immutable, and hence existing DRPCs would default to
+      non-group behavior
+    - To shift to grouping behavior, the workload needs to be disabled for DR
+      protection and reenabled for DR protection with the grouping set to true
+- This also mandates that all PVCs SHOULD be grouped and hence enables VRG to
+  strictly group PVCs
+    - Any PVC that cannot be added to a CG would hence fail protection for the
+      entire workload
+
+## PVC grouping labels
+
+Both VolumeGroupSnapshot and VolumeGroupReplication definitions require a PVC
+label selector that can uniquely identify a group of PVCs that belong to the
+request. PVCs in this group should be an exact set belonging to a storage
+instance, such that the backing CSI implementation can snapshot/replicate the
+list of volume handles that are passed to it.
+
+This requires that PVCs that are to be protected, based on the VRG/DRPC
+`spec.pvcSelector` needs an additional label to separate this set into disjoint
+sets of PVCs, when they are provisioned by different storage instances.
+
+For the purposes of this grouping the `storageID`, that is matched across the
+StorageClass that the PVC is referring to with the VolumeGroupSnapshotClass,
+would be used to label the PVCs. (see storageID related design for properties of
+this label).
+
+The proposed label name is `ramendr.openshift.io/consistency-group`, with the
+value being the `storageID`.
+
+The VGS or the VGR label selector would be an AND of the `spec.pvcSelector` and
+the `ramendr.openshift.io/consistency-group` label with its specific `storageID`
+value.
+
+## DRPC status enhancements
+
+DRPC status for ProtectedPVCs would be enhanced to support information regarding
+which PVCs are grouped and protected within a CG. The current
+`status.resourceConditions.resourceMeta` would be enhanced as follows,
+
+```
+protectedPVCs: []string
+protectedGroups: []PVCGroups
+
+PVCGroups:
+    - name: string
+    - protectedPVCs: []string
+```
+
+When a DRPC opts into group support `resourceMeta.protectedPVCs` would be empty,
+and all information would be present in `resourceMeta.protectedGroups` and
+vice versa.
+
+TODO: A PVCGroup needs a `name`, which can be extended based on the backend
+created VGS or VGR request for the group.
+
+## Metrics and monitoring
+
+VRG currently reports a `lastGroupSyncTime` status, which is the oldest
+timestamp of sync time across all PVCs that are protected by VRG. This includes
+PVCs protected by volsync or volrep scheme.
+
+With strict grouping, each group would report a similar `lastGroupSyncTime` and
+the same status field would report the oldest sync time as the point of
+synchronization.
+
+Similar scheme would apply to the `lastSyncDuration` and `lastSyncBytes` status
+fields.
+
+DRPC, as is currently, would pick these fields and convert them to respective
+metrics and alerts from these metrics.
+
+## Limitations
+
+1. A workload that has PVCs sub-grouped, due to being provisioned from different
+  storage instances or types, would only maintain consistency of the group and not
+  consistency of volumes across these sub-groups.
+
+  For example, if a workload contains a PVC protected by a volsync group and
+  another protected by a volrep group, the consistency of data across these groups
+  are independent of each other.
+1. ...