The thin metadata format can only make use of a device that is <=
THIN_METADATA_MAX_SECTORS (currently 15.9375 GB). Therefore, there is no
practical benefit to using a larger device.
However, it may be that other factors impose a certain granularity for
the space that is allocated to a device (E.g. lvm2 can impose a coarse
granularity through the use of large, >= 1 GB, physical extents).
Rather than reject a larger metadata device, during thin-pool device
construction, switch to allowing it but issue a warning if a device
larger than THIN_METADATA_MAX_SECTORS_WARNING (16 GB) is
provided. Any space over 15.9375 GB will not be used.
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
Initial EXPERIMENTAL implementation of device-mapper thin provisioning
with snapshot support. The 'thin' target is used to create instances of
the virtual devices that are hosted in the 'thin-pool' target. The
thin-pool target provides data sharing among devices. This sharing is
made possible using the persistent-data library in the previous patch.
The main highlight of this implementation, compared to the previous
implementation of snapshots, is that it allows many virtual devices to
be stored on the same data volume, simplifying administration and
allowing sharing of data between volumes (thus reducing disk usage).
Another big feature is support for arbitrary depth of recursive
snapshots (snapshots of snapshots of snapshots ...). The previous
implementation of snapshots did this by chaining together lookup tables,
and so performance was O(depth). This new implementation uses a single
data structure so we don't get this degradation with depth.
For further information and examples of how to use this, please read
Documentation/device-mapper/thin-provisioning.txt
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <thornber@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
