[linux-lvm] IBM to release LVM Technology to the Linux Community

[linux-lvm] IBM to release LVM Technology to the Linux Community

[benr]

Hello!

Since IBM has begun to publicly support Linux, many of our customers have
started showing an interest in Linux.  We have received many requests from
our customers asking us to enhance certain areas of Linux (logical volume
management in particular) in order to make Linux a more acceptable platform
for their IT operations.  Furthermore, we have been asked to provide a
migration path from existing platforms (both IBM and non-IBM) to Linux.
IBM has been moving to satisfy these requests by contributing developers
and technology to the Linux Community.  This is what drove IBM's decision
to release JFS to the Linux Community, and it  is driving the decision to
release logical volume management technology to the Linux Community.

IBM is releasing one of its most advanced architectures for a Logical
Volume Management System.  This architecture is quite interesting as it
completely integrates all disk and volume management into a single, highly
extensible, easy to use entity.  We hope that the release of this
technology will lead to a world class logical volume management system for
Linux, one which satisfies the requirements of our customers as well as
those of the Linux Community.

The first of several white papers describing the LVMS architecture can be
found at the IBM Linux Technology Center website:

http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/

Since we would like to have an honest, open discussion about this, I would
suggest that all interested parties post their comments to the LVM mailing
list (unless someone has a better suggestion!).  All comments are welcome!

Thanks!

Ben Rafanello
IBM Linux Technology Center


PS - Information about the LVM mailing list can be found at:
http://linux.msede.com/lvm/mlist/

IBM to release LVM Technology to the Linux Community

[benr]

Hello!

Since IBM has begun to publicly support Linux, many of our customers have
started showing an interest in Linux.  We have received many requests from
our customers asking us to enhance certain areas of Linux (logical volume
management in particular) in order to make Linux a more acceptable platform
for their IT operations.  Furthermore, we have been asked to provide a
migration path from existing platforms (both IBM and non-IBM) to Linux.
IBM has been moving to satisfy these requests by contributing developers
and technology to the Linux Community.  This is what drove IBM's decision
to release JFS to the Linux Community, and it  is driving the decision to
release logical volume management technology to the Linux Community.

IBM is releasing one of its most advanced architectures for a Logical
Volume Management System.  This architecture is quite interesting as it
completely integrates all disk and volume management into a single, highly
extensible, easy to use entity.  We hope that the release of this
technology will lead to a world class logical volume management system for
Linux, one which satisfies the requirements of our customers as well as
those of the Linux Community.

The first of several white papers describing the LVMS architecture can be
found at the IBM Linux Technology Center website:

http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/

Since we would like to have an honest, open discussion about this, I would
suggest that all interested parties post their comments to the LVM mailing
list (unless someone has a better suggestion!).  All comments are welcome!

Thanks!

Ben Rafanello
IBM Linux Technology Center


PS - Information about the LVM mailing list can be found at:
http://linux.msede.com/lvm/mlist/



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Re: IBM to release LVM Technology to the Linux Community

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Ben,

You may want to contact Jeff Magdahl in NY regarding what we are doing
to allow IBM to migrate NetWare volumes and NDS data to the S/390 to
support server consolidation of NetWare servers onto S/390 host systems,
and let us know if we should be using your LVM code.  We are porting
intially to 3000-P30 S/390 systems all of our NetWare to Linux migration
tools to support large scale Migrations of NetWare servers onto IBM
based hosts that run Linux and VM, MVS, etc..  

The LVM approach will be useful, but at present won't support NDS to
S/390 migration without some mechanism to grant access to the NDS data
sets (which we provide).  It appears, however, that IBM's contracts with
Novell are loose enough to allow IBM to use the NDS for S/390 code base
it got fom Novell to create some custom tools to import NDS data sets
into VM and MVS (at present, NDS is only available on MVS for migration,
and it's not implemented to exploit this currently).  

At any rate, we will look at the LVM stuff to see if it will help with
NetWare to Linux migrations on S/390.  Thanks for helping Linux.  Let us
know if there's anything we can do to assist IBM in migrating Novell's
installed base to Linux on S/390.  We are happy to help those who help
Linux.

Very Truly Yours,

Jeff Merkey
CEO, TRG


benr@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> Hello!
> 
> Since IBM has begun to publicly support Linux, many of our customers have
> started showing an interest in Linux.  We have received many requests from
> our customers asking us to enhance certain areas of Linux (logical volume
> management in particular) in order to make Linux a more acceptable platform
> for their IT operations.  Furthermore, we have been asked to provide a
> migration path from existing platforms (both IBM and non-IBM) to Linux.
> IBM has been moving to satisfy these requests by contributing developers
> and technology to the Linux Community.  This is what drove IBM's decision
> to release JFS to the Linux Community, and it  is driving the decision to
> release logical volume management technology to the Linux Community.
> 
> IBM is releasing one of its most advanced architectures for a Logical
> Volume Management System.  This architecture is quite interesting as it
> completely integrates all disk and volume management into a single, highly
> extensible, easy to use entity.  We hope that the release of this
> technology will lead to a world class logical volume management system for
> Linux, one which satisfies the requirements of our customers as well as
> those of the Linux Community.
> 
> The first of several white papers describing the LVMS architecture can be
> found at the IBM Linux Technology Center website:
> 
> http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/
> 
> Since we would like to have an honest, open discussion about this, I would
> suggest that all interested parties post their comments to the LVM mailing
> list (unless someone has a better suggestion!).  All comments are welcome!
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ben Rafanello
> IBM Linux Technology Center
> 
> PS - Information about the LVM mailing list can be found at:
> http://linux.msede.com/lvm/mlist/
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
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Re: [linux-lvm] IBM to release LVM Technology to the Linux Community

[Andi Kleen]

On Wed, Jun 14, 2000 at 05:18:26PM -0400, benr@us.ibm.com wrote:
> The first of several white papers describing the LVMS architecture can be
> found at the IBM Linux Technology Center website:
> 
> http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/
> 
> Since we would like to have an honest, open discussion about this, I would
> suggest that all interested parties post their comments to the LVM mailing
> list (unless someone has a better suggestion!).  All comments are welcome!

The stacking of multiple block translation modules seems to be already 
implemented in 2.4-latest, although it is a bit of a hack and SMP 
unfriendly.

The white paper talks about software RAID. Do you plan to release an
own software RAID implementation or just a port of the existing MD  ?


-Andi

[linux-lvm] Re: IBM to release LVM Technology to the Linux Community

[Andreas Dilger]

Ben Rafanello writes:
> IBM is releasing one of its most advanced architectures for a Logical
> Volume Management System.  This architecture is quite interesting as it
> completely integrates all disk and volume management into a single, highly
> extensible, easy to use entity.  We hope that the release of this
> technology will lead to a world class logical volume management system for
> Linux, one which satisfies the requirements of our customers as well as
> those of the Linux Community.

It isn't clear from the white paper how the LVMS you describe relates
to the existing Linux LVM and/or IBM's AIX/OS2 LVM developments.
Is the LVMS described going to allow breaking up of "logical partitions"
(which appear to be the same as DOS or BSD partitions) into "logical
extents (LE)" of a fixed size (e.g. 4MB)?  Having smaller fixed-size LEs
are very important in terms of being able to manage the space properly.
Unfortunately, in IBM's LVM there is already something called a "logical
partition" which doesn't appear to be the same thing you refer to in
the white paper, so this is a bit confusing.

From looking at the separate LVMS components, it appears that the Linux
kernel already has a majority of the functionality for this (e.g. RAID 0,
RAID 1 (mirroring, drive linking), RAID 5, partition managers, many device
managers).  Having it implemented in the LVMS framework would still be
(IMHO) a very good thing, as it makes things considerably more modular.

One thing that I'm not too sure about is why the filesystem interface
modules (FIMs) need to be able to do things like fsck and mkfs?  I
can understand that resizing the filesystem needs co-operation between
the LVM and the filesystem.  However, it also sounds like you would
incorporate fsck and mkfs to be functions that the kernel could call -
why is this?

One thing that is not very clear is if IBM will be leveraging its AIX/OS2
code for the LVM, or will this essentially be a new implementation?
It would be good to hear that IBM is making its LVM available, as it is a
very stable, mature code base.  It does sound like the LVMS described
has more functionality than the existing AIX LVM, because it has to deal
with the morass of partition formats and filesystems that exist under
Linux.  Also, the plug-in support sounds like a good improvement over
the existing LVM implementations, since it brings the various disk
"drivers" like LVM/RAID/encryption/partition into a cohesive framework.

Cheers, Andreas