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Local Storage Placement for VM Disks

This document describes a special handling of DataVolumes in the WaitForFirstConsumer state. WaitForFirstConsumer state is available from CDI v1.21.0, and the logic to handle this is available from KubeVirt v0.36.0

Use-case

When the Virtual Machine has a DataVolume disk (or disks) then bind Local Storage PVC to a PV on the same node where the VMI is going to be scheduled.

The problem

Virtual Machines are able to have a DataVolume disks that are based on Local Storage PVs. Local Storage PVs are bound to a specific node. Since DataVolumes involve preparing storage with an image before being consumed by the VMI, it's possible to result in an Unschedulable VMI in the event that a VMI can not be scheduled to the node the local storage PV was previously pinned to.

When the VM with a DataVolumeTemplate is defined a DataVolume is created from the template and the CDI creates a worker Pod to import/upload/clone data to the PVC (specified in a template). To run a VMI kubevirt creates a virtlauncher pod with all the VMI requirements. Kubernetes uses the virtlauncher pod requirements to schedule it on a specific node. Worker Pod might have different constraints than a kubevirt VM. When the VM is scheduled on a different node than the PVC it becomes unusable. This is especially problematic when using a VM with DataVolumeTemplate with many disks managed by CDI.

The solution

The solution is to leverage Kubernetes pod scheduler to bind the PVC to a PV on a correct node. By using a StorageClass with volumeBindingMode set to WaitForFirstConsumer the binding and provisioning of PV is delayed until a Pod using the PersistentVolumeClaim is created. KubeVirt can schedule a special ephemeral pod that becomes a first consumer of the PersistentVolumeClaim. Its only purpose is to be scheduled to a node capable of running VM and by using PVCs to trigger kubernetes to provision and bind PV's on the same node. After PVC are bound the CDI can do its work and KubeVirt can start the actual VM.

Implementation

Flow

  1. A StorageClass with volumeBindingMode=WaitForFirstConsumer is created
  2. User creates the VM with DataVolumeTemplate containing
  3. KubeVirt creates DataVolume
  4. The CDI sees that new DV has unbound PVC with storage class with volumeBindingMode=WaitForFirstConsumer, sets the phase of DV to WaitForFirstConsumer and waits for PVC to be bound by some external action.
  5. KubeVirt sees the DV in phase WaitForFirstConsumer, so it creates an ephemeral pod (basically a virtlauncher pod without a VM payload and with kubevirt.io/ephemeral-provisioning annotation) only used to force PV provisioning
  6. Kubernetes schedules the ephemeral pod, (the node selected meets all the VM requirements), pod requires the same PVC as the VM so kubenertes has to provision and bind the PV to PVC on a correct node before the pod can be started
  7. CDI sees that PVC is Bound, changes DV status to "ImportScheduled" (or clone/upload), and tries to start worker pods
  8. KubeVirt sees DV status is ImportScheduled, it can terminate the ephemeral provisioning pod
  9. CDI does the Import, marks DV as Succeeded
  10. KubeVirt creates the virtlauncher pod to start a VM

This flow differs from standard scenario (import/upload/clone on storage with Immediate binding) by steps 4, 5, 6 and 8.

Note: WaitForFirstConsumer state for DataVolumes is available in CDI from v1.21.0 and toggled by a HonorWaitForFirstConsumer feature gate. When the HonorWaitForFirstConsumer feature gate is enabled, the CDI is not starting any worker pods when the PVCs StorageClass binding mode is WaitForFirstConsumer. In such case the CDI puts the DataVolume in a new state WaitForFirstConsumer. More in CDI docs here.

Interaction with virtctl

This change solves the problem of node placement for the VMs. And everything works automatically when using VM with DV Template, but it makes it harder to use virtctl image-upload to upload images to cloud storage.

Right now it is not supported by the virtctl and the user has to do additional steps to upload an image to the storage with WaitForFirstConsumer binding.

  1. Start an upload with virtctl
virtctl image-upload dv fedora-dv --uploadproxy-url=https://cdi-uploadproxy.mycluster.com --image-path=/images/fedora30.qcow2

DataVolume default/fedora-dv created
Waiting for PVC fedora-dv upload pod to be ready...
cannot upload to DataVolume in state WaitForFirstConsumer

Current version of virtctl should immediatetly detect the problem and error. The older version will take all the time limit and finish with timeout.

  1. To bind the PVC create a consumer POD. With a nodeSelector to select a specific node ot without for a random node.

Find a pvc: k get pvc -l app=containerized-data-importer -o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,OWNER:.metadata.ownerReferences | grep fedora-dv

Create a pod to bind a pvc to any node using the following snippet with correct pvc name and namespace.

PVC=<PVC_NAME>
NAMESPACE=<PVC_NAMESPACE>

cat <<EOF | kubectl create -n $NAMESPACE -f -   
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: consumer-$PVC
spec:
  volumes:
    - name: pod1-storage
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: $PVC
  containers:
  - name: test-pod-container
    image: busybox
    command: ['sh', '-c', 'echo "Will bind the pvc!" ']
    volumeMounts:
      - mountPath: /disk
        name: pod1-storage
  nodeSelector:
    kubernetes.io/hostname: <NODE_HOSTNAME>

EOF

Check if the pvc is bound and kill the temporary pod.

kubectl delete pod consumer-$PVC -n $NAMESPACE
  1. Repeat the virtctl upload command.
virtctl image-upload dv fedora-dv --uploadproxy-url=https://cdi-uploadproxy.mycluster.com --image-path=/images/fedora30.qcow2

DataVolume default/fedora-dv created
Waiting for PVC fedora-dv upload pod to be ready...
Pod now ready
Uploading data to https://localhost:9443

 319.13 MiB / 319.13 MiB [================================================================================================================] 100.00% 0s

Uploading data completed successfully, waiting for processing to complete, you can hit ctrl-c without interrupting the progress
Processing completed successfully
Uploading /images/fedora30.qcow2 completed successfully