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CephFS Snapshot Mirroring¶

CephFS supports asynchronous replication of snapshots to a remote CephFS file system via cephfs-mirror tool. Snapshots are synchronized by mirroring snapshot data followed by creating a snapshot with the same name (for a given directory on the remote file system) as the snapshot being synchronized.

Requirements¶

The primary (local) and secondary (remote) Ceph clusters version should be Pacific or later.

Creating Users¶

Start by creating a user (on the primary/local cluster) for the mirror daemon. This user requires write capability on the metadata pool to create RADOS objects (index objects) for watch/notify operation and read capability on the data pool(s):

$ ceph auth get-or-create client.mirror mon 'profile cephfs-mirror' mds 'allow r' osd 'allow rw tag cephfs metadata=*, allow r tag cephfs data=*' mgr 'allow r'

Create a user for each file system peer (on the secondary/remote cluster). This user needs to have full capabilities on the MDS (to take snapshots) and the OSDs:

$ ceph fs authorize <fs_name> client.mirror_remote / rwps

This user should be used (as part of peer specification) when adding a peer.

Starting Mirror Daemon¶

Mirror daemon should be spawned using systemctl(1) unit files:

$ systemctl enable cephfs-mirror@mirror
$ systemctl start cephfs-mirror@mirror

cephfs-mirror daemon can be run in foreground using:

$ cephfs-mirror --id mirror --cluster site-a -f

Note

The user specified here is mirror, the creation of which is described in the Creating Users section.

Multiple cephfs-mirror daemons may be deployed for concurrent synchronization and high availability. Mirror daemons share the synchronization load using a simple M/N policy, where M is the number of directories and N is the number of cephfs-mirror daemons.

When cephadm is used to manage a Ceph cluster, cephfs-mirror daemons can be deployed by running the following command:

ceph orch apply cephfs-mirror

To deploy multiple mirror daemons, run a command of the following form:

ceph orch apply cephfs-mirror --placement=<placement-spec>

For example, to deploy 3 cephfs-mirror daemons on different hosts, run a command of the following form:

$ ceph orch apply cephfs-mirror --placement="3 host1,host2,host3"

Interface¶

The Mirroring module (manager plugin) provides interfaces for managing directory snapshot mirroring. These are (mostly) wrappers around monitor commands for managing file system mirroring and is the recommended control interface.

Mirroring Module¶

The mirroring module is responsible for assigning directories to mirror daemons for synchronization. Multiple mirror daemons can be spawned to achieve concurrency in directory snapshot synchronization. When mirror daemons are spawned (or terminated), the mirroring module discovers the modified set of mirror daemons and rebalances directory assignments across the new set, thus providing high-availability.

Note

Deploying a single mirror daemon is recommended. Running multiple daemons is untested.

The mirroring module is disabled by default. To enable the mirroring module, run the following command:

ceph mgr module enable mirroring

The mirroring module provides a family of commands that can be used to control the mirroring of directory snapshots. To add or remove directories, mirroring must be enabled for a given file system. To enable mirroring for a given file system, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror enable <fs_name>

Note

“Mirroring module” commands are prefixed with fs snapshot mirror. This distinguishes them from “monitor commands”, which are prefixed with fs mirror. Be sure (in this context) to use module commands.

To disable mirroring for a given file system, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror disable <fs_name>

After mirroring is enabled, add a peer to which directory snapshots are to be mirrored. Peers are specified by the <client>@<cluster> format, which is referred to elsewhere in this document as the remote_cluster_spec. Peers are assigned a unique-id (UUID) when added. See the Creating Users section for instructions that describe how to create Ceph users for mirroring.

To add a peer, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_add <fs_name> <remote_cluster_spec> [<remote_fs_name>] [<remote_mon_host>] [<cephx_key>]

<remote_cluster_spec> is of the format client.<id>@<cluster_name>.

<remote_fs_name> is optional, and defaults to <fs_name> (on the remote cluster).

For this command to succeed, the remote cluster’s Ceph configuration and user keyring must be available in the primary cluster. For example, if a user named client_mirror is created on the remote cluster which has rwps permissions for the remote file system named remote_fs (see Creating Users) and the remote cluster is named remote_ceph (that is, the remote cluster configuration file is named remote_ceph.conf on the primary cluster), run the following command to add the remote filesystem as a peer to the primary filesystem primary_fs:

ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_add primary_fs client.mirror_remote@remote_ceph remote_fs

To avoid having to maintain the remote cluster configuration file and remote ceph user keyring in the primary cluster, users can bootstrap a peer (which stores the relevant remote cluster details in the monitor config store on the primary cluster). See the Bootstrap Peers section.

The peer_add command supports passing the remote cluster monitor address and the user key. However, bootstrapping a peer is the recommended way to add a peer.

Note

Only a single peer is supported right now.

To remove a peer, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_remove <fs_name> <peer_uuid>

To list file system mirror peers, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_list <fs_name>

To configure a directory for mirroring, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror add <fs_name> <path>

To stop mirroring directory snapshots, run a command of the following form:

ceph fs snapshot mirror remove <fs_name> <path>

Only absolute directory paths are allowed.

Paths are normalized by the mirroring module. This means that /a/b/../b is equivalent to /a/b. Paths always start from the CephFS file-system root and not from the host system mount point.

For example:

$ mkdir -p /d0/d1/d2
$ ceph fs snapshot mirror add cephfs /d0/d1/d2
{}
$ ceph fs snapshot mirror add cephfs /d0/d1/../d1/d2
Error EEXIST: directory /d0/d1/d2 is already tracked

After a directory is added for mirroring, the additional mirroring of subdirectories or ancestor directories is disallowed:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror add cephfs /d0/d1
Error EINVAL: /d0/d1 is a ancestor of tracked path /d0/d1/d2
$ ceph fs snapshot mirror add cephfs /d0/d1/d2/d3
Error EINVAL: /d0/d1/d2/d3 is a subtree of tracked path /d0/d1/d2

The Mirroring Status section contains information about the commands for checking the directory mapping (to mirror daemons) and for checking the directory distribution.

Bootstrap Peers¶

Adding a peer (via peer_add) requires the peer cluster configuration and user keyring to be available in the primary cluster (manager host and hosts running the mirror daemon). This can be avoided by bootstrapping and importing a peer token. Peer bootstrap involves creating a bootstrap token on the peer cluster via:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_bootstrap create <fs_name> <client_entity> <site-name>

e.g.:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_bootstrap create backup_fs client.mirror_remote site-remote
{"token": "eyJmc2lkIjogIjBkZjE3MjE3LWRmY2QtNDAzMC05MDc5LTM2Nzk4NTVkNDJlZiIsICJmaWxlc3lzdGVtIjogImJhY2t1cF9mcyIsICJ1c2VyIjogImNsaWVudC5taXJyb3JfcGVlcl9ib290c3RyYXAiLCAic2l0ZV9uYW1lIjogInNpdGUtcmVtb3RlIiwgImtleSI6ICJBUUFhcDBCZ0xtRmpOeEFBVnNyZXozai9YYUV0T2UrbUJEZlJDZz09IiwgIm1vbl9ob3N0IjogIlt2MjoxOTIuMTY4LjAuNTo0MDkxOCx2MToxOTIuMTY4LjAuNTo0MDkxOV0ifQ=="}

site-name refers to a user-defined string to identify the remote filesystem. In context of peer_add interface, site-name is the passed in cluster name from remote_cluster_spec.

Import the bootstrap token in the primary cluster via:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_bootstrap import <fs_name> <token>

e.g.:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror peer_bootstrap import cephfs eyJmc2lkIjogIjBkZjE3MjE3LWRmY2QtNDAzMC05MDc5LTM2Nzk4NTVkNDJlZiIsICJmaWxlc3lzdGVtIjogImJhY2t1cF9mcyIsICJ1c2VyIjogImNsaWVudC5taXJyb3JfcGVlcl9ib290c3RyYXAiLCAic2l0ZV9uYW1lIjogInNpdGUtcmVtb3RlIiwgImtleSI6ICJBUUFhcDBCZ0xtRmpOeEFBVnNyZXozai9YYUV0T2UrbUJEZlJDZz09IiwgIm1vbl9ob3N0IjogIlt2MjoxOTIuMTY4LjAuNTo0MDkxOCx2MToxOTIuMTY4LjAuNTo0MDkxOV0ifQ==

Mirroring Status¶

CephFS mirroring module provides mirror daemon status interface to check mirror daemon status:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror daemon status
[
  {
    "daemon_id": 284167,
    "filesystems": [
      {
        "filesystem_id": 1,
        "name": "a",
        "directory_count": 1,
        "peers": [
          {
            "uuid": "02117353-8cd1-44db-976b-eb20609aa160",
            "remote": {
              "client_name": "client.mirror_remote",
              "cluster_name": "ceph",
              "fs_name": "backup_fs"
            },
            "stats": {
              "failure_count": 1,
              "recovery_count": 0
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]

An entry per mirror daemon instance is displayed along with information such as configured peers and basic stats. For more detailed stats, use the admin socket interface as detailed below.

CephFS mirror daemons provide admin socket commands for querying mirror status. To check available commands for mirror status use:

$ ceph --admin-daemon /path/to/mirror/daemon/admin/socket help
{
    ....
    ....
    "fs mirror status cephfs@360": "get filesystem mirror status",
    ....
    ....
}

Commands with fs mirror status prefix provide mirror status for mirror enabled file systems. Note that cephfs@360 is of format filesystem-name@filesystem-id. This format is required since mirror daemons get asynchronously notified regarding file system mirror status (A file system can be deleted and recreated with the same name).

Right now, the command provides minimal information regarding mirror status:

$ ceph --admin-daemon /var/run/ceph/cephfs-mirror.asok fs mirror status cephfs@360
{
  "rados_inst": "192.168.0.5:0/1476644347",
  "peers": {
      "a2dc7784-e7a1-4723-b103-03ee8d8768f8": {
          "remote": {
              "client_name": "client.mirror_remote",
              "cluster_name": "site-a",
              "fs_name": "backup_fs"
          }
      }
  },
  "snap_dirs": {
      "dir_count": 1
  }
}

Peers section in the command output above shows the peer information such as unique peer-id (UUID) and specification. The peer-id is required to remove an existing peer as mentioned in the Mirror Module and Interface section.

Command with fs mirror peer status prefix provide peer synchronization status. This command is of format filesystem-name@filesystem-id peer-uuid:

$ ceph --admin-daemon /var/run/ceph/cephfs-mirror.asok fs mirror peer status cephfs@360 a2dc7784-e7a1-4723-b103-03ee8d8768f8
{
  "/d0": {
      "state": "idle",
      "last_synced_snap": {
          "id": 120,
          "name": "snap1",
          "sync_duration": 0.079997898999999997,
          "sync_time_stamp": "274900.558797s"
      },
      "snaps_synced": 2,
      "snaps_deleted": 0,
      "snaps_renamed": 0
  }
}

Synchronization stats such as snaps_synced, snaps_deleted and snaps_renamed are reset on daemon restart and/or when a directory is reassigned to another mirror daemon (when multiple mirror daemons are deployed).

A directory can be in one of the following states:

- `idle`: The directory is currently not being synchronized
- `syncing`: The directory is currently being synchronized
- `failed`: The directory has hit upper limit of consecutive failures

When a directory hits a configured number of consecutive synchronization failures, the mirror daemon marks it as failed. Synchronization for these directories are retried. By default, the number of consecutive failures before a directory is marked as failed is controlled by cephfs_mirror_max_consecutive_failures_per_directory configuration option (default: 10) and the retry interval for failed directories is controlled via cephfs_mirror_retry_failed_directories_interval configuration option (default: 60s).

E.g., adding a regular file for synchronization would result in failed status:

$ ceph fs snapshot mirror add cephfs /f0
$ ceph --admin-daemon /var/run/ceph/cephfs-mirror.asok fs mirror peer status cephfs@360 a2dc7784-e7a1-4723-b103-03ee8d8768f8
{
  "/d0": {
      "state": "idle",
      "last_synced_snap": {
          "id": 120,
          "name": "snap1",
          "sync_duration": 0.079997898999999997,
          "sync_time_stamp": "274900.558797s"
      },
      "snaps_synced": 2,
      "snaps_deleted": 0,
      "snaps_renamed": 0
  },
  "/f0": {
      "state": "failed",
      "snaps_synced": 0,
      "snaps_deleted": 0,
      "snaps_renamed": 0
  }
}

This allows a user to add a non-existent directory for synchronization. The mirror daemon would mark the directory as failed and retry (less frequently). When the directory comes to existence, the mirror daemons would unmark the failed state upon successfull snapshot synchronization.

When mirroring is disabled, the respective fs mirror status command for the file system will not show up in command help.

Configuration Options¶

cephfs_mirror_max_concurrent_directory_syncs

Description: Maximum number of directory snapshots that can be synchronized concurrently by cephfs-mirror daemon. Controls the number of synchronization threads.
Type: 64-bit Integer Unsigned
Default: 3

cephfs_mirror_action_update_interval

Description: Interval in seconds to process pending mirror update actions.
Type: Float
Default: 2

cephfs_mirror_restart_mirror_on_blocklist_interval

Description: Interval in seconds to restart blocklisted mirror instances. Setting to zero (0) disables restarting blocklisted instances.
Type: Float
Default: 30

cephfs_mirror_max_snapshot_sync_per_cycle

Description: Maximum number of snapshots to mirror when a directory is picked up for mirroring by worker threads.
Type: 64-bit Integer Unsigned
Default: 3

cephfs_mirror_directory_scan_interval

Description: Interval in seconds to scan configured directories for snapshot mirroring.
Type: 64-bit Integer Unsigned
Default: 10

cephfs_mirror_max_consecutive_failures_per_directory

Description: Number of consecutive snapshot synchronization failues to mark a directory as “failed”. Failed directories are retried for synchronization less frequently.
Type: 64-bit Integer Unsigned
Default: 10

cephfs_mirror_retry_failed_directories_interval

Description: Interval in seconds to retry synchronization for failed directories.
Type: 64-bit Integer Unsigned
Default: 60

cephfs_mirror_restart_mirror_on_failure_interval

Description: Interval in seconds to restart failed mirror instances. Setting to zero (0) disables restarting failed mirror instances.
Type: Float
Default: 20

cephfs_mirror_mount_timeout

Description: Timeout in seconds for mounting primary or secondary (remote) ceph file system by the cephfs-mirror daemon. Setting this to a higher value could result in the mirror daemon getting stalled when mounting a file system if the cluster is not reachable. This option is used to override the usual client_mount_timeout.
Type: Float
Default: 10

Re-adding Peers¶

When re-adding (reassigning) a peer to a file system in another cluster, ensure that all mirror daemons have stopped synchronization to the peer. This can be checked via fs mirror status admin socket command (the Peer UUID should not show up in the command output). Also, it is recommended to purge synchronized directories from the peer before re-adding it to another file system (especially those directories which might exist in the new primary file system). This is not required if re-adding a peer to the same primary file system it was earlier synchronized from.