One of the trends and technical challenges in IT architecture is how to run more and more applications on a unified platform that is flexible and scalable, while at the same time improving the efficiency of management and operation. The mode in which multiple applications run in the same resource pool is very different from the mode in which each application has independent physical computing and storage resources. One difference is that in previous IT architectures, storage capacity and performance required by each application are independently configured based on its requirements, and there is little problem of resource preemption. When many applications run on the same platform, different applications may preempt the performance of storage resources. How to control and avoid this risk is the Quality of Service (QoS) control of storage resources.
So what exactly does QoS mean? Why is it important to the business?
QoS is designed to provide a stable performance guarantee
QoS is a critical technology for enterprises or service operators, especially for those scenarios that need to provide continuous and stable storage performance for upper-layer services. When a large number of applications share limited resources, QoS can help the system control how applications use these resources. Most importantly, QoS can limit and avoid high consumption or abnormal running of storage resources. QoS includes service management and control of storage performance, such as IOPS and bandwidth. Without storage QoS, the system administrator cannot manage the storage performance consumption of various applications. High-consumption applications may seize a large amount of storage performance, leaving other applications to starve to death. Traditional IT architectures are less urgent in terms of QoS because most applications have their own set of storage. With the advent of the cloud and container era, QoS has become more important because a large number of VMS and containers need to share the same set of storage resources.
Storage QoS alleviates, controls, and eliminates preemption of storage resource performance, and provides a predictable, controllable, and manageable operating environment for the system.
What about QoS for container platform persistent storage?
Given the importance of QoS and the fact that storage QoS has become a standard feature in SDS and virtual-centric IaaS platforms, what is the status of QoS control on the prevailing container platforms?
Unfortunately, K8S, the hegemon of container orchestration, only supports QoS control for CPU and memory, but does not support QoS Settings for persistent storage.
For such an important demand, Yan Rong cloud will certainly not ignore it. We have carried out in-depth development of QoS functions according to the actual application scenarios and customer demands.
How does K8S integrate the QoS function of Yrong high-performance container storage?
After installing the yan Rong high-performance container storage and plug-in, you only need to create a Persistent Volume with QoS functions (for example, the FlexVolume plug-in). Add the IOPS (or bandwidth BW) Settings for the PV in the YAML file, as shown in the red box below:
Then run the K8S command to create PV, and you can create persistent storage with QoS restrictions. You can query all QoS Settings by using the tool provided by yan Rong high-performance storage, as shown in the following figure:
In the following figure, QoS and bandwidth (BW) are tested respectively. The IOPS and bandwidth of persistent storage in the container are firmly limited to user-defined thresholds:
IOPS
bandwidth
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The ultimate goal of QoS control for container persistent storage is to help the container platform evolve to a more efficient, integrated, and high-performance platform, further reduce the management burden of the platform o&M team, and improve service availability. QoS is just one of The many killer mace in Yan Rong’s high-performance container storage. Yan Rong Cloud never stops innovating. More black tech, we’ll get back to you soon.