One post tagged with "ZFS"

Version v2.2.6 makes local storage a first-class, pluggable layer. Until now a local instance disk meant a qcow2 file. This release adds four block-device backends - LVM thin, LVM thick, ZFS thin, and ZFS thick - that slot in alongside qcow2, Ceph, and NFS with the full lifecycle: deploy, resize, snapshots, incremental backups, restores, image creation, and live migration. Around them sit three operator-facing safety features: a guided storage wizard that probes the hypervisor before anything is saved, a collapse watchdog that suspends only the at-risk instances before a thin pool can corrupt, and a live Storage Health dashboard. The Virtualizor importer now lands migrated VMs straight onto LVM/ZFS with no qcow2 conversion step, and the admin panel picked up a round of polish along the way. This is a beta build - feature-complete for the storage work and safe to stage, but not yet promoted to stable.

• [Feature] LVM and ZFS Storage Backends - Hypervisor storage now supports four new local pool types alongside qcow2 files, Ceph, and NFS: LVM thin, LVM thick, ZFS thin, and ZFS thick. Instances on these pools run on raw block devices for near-native disk performance, with the thin variants providing over-provisioning and the ZFS variants bringing checksumming and inline compression. Plans can target a specific backend, so an operator can sell "NVMe block storage" and "standard storage" tiers from the same hypervisor.
• [Feature] Guided Storage Wizard - Adding a storage pool is now a five-step wizard that probes the hypervisor live before anything is saved: it verifies the tooling is installed, the volume group or pool exists, and reports real capacity, so a mistyped pool name can no longer create a broken storage row. LVM and ZFS appear in the picker with a Beta tag for this release.
• [Feature] Storage Collapse Watchdog - Every hypervisor now watches its pools every 30 seconds. When a thin pool or ZFS pool approaches exhaustion, the platform suspends only the affected instances before their disks corrupt, alerts every administrator by mail, and surfaces the event live in the Storage Health dashboard. Recovery is operator-controlled: fix the pool, then resume the instances from where they stopped.
• [Feature] Storage Health Dashboard - A per-pool health view in the admin panel shows live data and metadata usage, ZFS pool state and fragmentation, and warn/critical thresholds, fed by the same probes the watchdog uses, surfaced inline on the storage list.
• [Feature] Native LVM/ZFS Virtualizor Import - The Virtualizor importer no longer forces every disk through a qcow2 conversion. When the source VM lives on LVM or ZFS, the slave probes the pool and the importer lands the instance natively on the matching backend, preserving the storage tuple and skipping the conversion pass entirely.
• [Improvement] Incremental Backups Everywhere - The QEMU dirty-bitmap incremental backup pipeline now covers all seven backends, including raw block devices, writing the same qcow2 backup chains to your existing backup storage. Existing qcow2 and Ceph backup behavior is unchanged.
• [Improvement] Live Migration for Block Pools - Live migration works between LVM/ZFS pools across hypervisors, pre-creating the destination volume and block-copying storage as part of the move.
• [Improvement] Admin Panel Polish - The VPN Gateway, Managed Database, and Load Balancer plan create/edit pages were rebuilt on the shared sectioned-card layout used by Instance Plans (and a latent dropdown bug on those pages was fixed), more list pages gained the standard collapsible filter panel, the in-browser SSH terminal now stays connected for as long as the tab is open, and the frontend now builds through Vite.

LVM and ZFS Storage Backends​

Until now local instance disks meant qcow2 files. v2.2.6 adds four block-device backends - LVM thin, LVM thick, ZFS thin, and ZFS thick - that slot in alongside the existing qcow2, Ceph, and NFS options with the full feature set: deploy, resize, snapshots (thin pools and ZFS), incremental backups, restores, image creation, and live migration. Because plans can target a specific backend, an operator can offer differentiated storage tiers from a single hypervisor.

Pools are added through the new guided wizard, which talks to the hypervisor before saving: it checks that lvm2 or zfsutils are installed (both are installed when you update the hypervisor from the admin panel), that the volume group, thin pool, or zpool actually exists, and shows live capacity. Existing storage rows, plans, and instances are untouched - qcow2, Ceph, and NFS behave exactly as on 2.2.5, and nothing is migrated or rewritten on upgrade.

The Collapse Watchdog​

Thin provisioning's dark side is pool exhaustion: when an over-provisioned pool fills up, every VM on it can corrupt at once. v2.2.6 ships a two-layer defense. First, LVM thin pools are configured to auto-extend at 80% via dmeventd. If that cannot help - the volume group is out of space, or a ZFS pool faults - a watchdog on each hypervisor catches the threshold crossing within 30 seconds, pauses only the instances on the affected pool, mails every administrator, and raises a live alert in the Storage Health dashboard. Paused instances keep their RAM and disk state; once the operator extends the pool or replaces the failed device, the instances resume from where they stopped. Degraded ZFS mirrors raise an early warning while the instances keep running.

Storage Health Dashboard​

The Storage Health view in the admin panel shows per-pool data and metadata usage, ZFS pool state and fragmentation, and warn/critical thresholds - fed by the same probes the watchdog uses and broadcast live over WebSocket. In this release the health values are surfaced inline on the storage list, so pool state lives in one place.

Native LVM/ZFS Virtualizor Import​

Migrating off Virtualizor no longer means rewriting every disk to qcow2. When a source VM lives on LVM or ZFS, the slave probes the pool and the importer lands the instance natively on the matching backend, preserving the storage tuple and skipping the conversion pass entirely. qcow2 sources continue to import as qcow2.

Upgrade Notes​

This is a beta build. Stage it first - take a fresh master backup and snapshot a test hypervisor before upgrading.

1. Run database migrations. They add the storage-backend columns, plan subtype, and health-tracking fields; NFS pools are marked as shared storage automatically.
2. Update each hypervisor from the admin panel. The hypervisor update installs lvm2, thin-provisioning-tools, and zfsutils-linux, enables LVM thin auto-extension, and starts the storage watchdog.
3. Rebuild the admin frontend bundle for the storage wizard and Storage Health dashboard, and restart the WebSocket broadcaster so storage-health events are registered.

Nothing in this release rewrites existing qcow2, Ceph, or NFS storage - those pools, their plans, and their instances are untouched.

Known Beta Notes​

• LVM and ZFS appear with a Beta tag in the storage wizard; exercise them on a test hypervisor before offering them to customers.
• Pool auto-extend depends on free space in the underlying volume group or zpool - the watchdog is the safety net, not a substitute for capacity planning.
• Found a problem? Report it referencing v2.2.6-beta along with the hypervisor's storage type and the relevant Storage Health alert.