• Mike Snitzer's avatar
    dm snapshot: add optional discard support features · 2e602385
    Mike Snitzer authored
    discard_zeroes_cow - a discard issued to the snapshot device that maps
    to entire chunks to will zero the corresponding exception(s) in the
    snapshot's exception store.
    
    discard_passdown_origin - a discard to the snapshot device is passed down
    to the snapshot-origin's underlying device.  This doesn't cause copy-out
    to the snapshot exception store because the snapshot-origin target is
    bypassed.
    
    The discard_passdown_origin feature depends on the discard_zeroes_cow
    feature being enabled.
    
    When these 2 features are enabled they allow a temporarily read-only
    device that has completely exhausted its free space to recover space.
    To do so dm-snapshot provides temporary buffer to accommodate writes
    that the temporarily read-only device cannot handle yet.  Once the upper
    layer frees space (e.g. fstrim to XFS) the discards issued to the
    dm-snapshot target will be issued to underlying read-only device whose
    free space was exhausted.  In addition those discards will also cause
    zeroes to be written to the snapshot exception store if corresponding
    exceptions exist.  If the underlying origin device provides
    deduplication for zero blocks then if/when the snapshot is merged backed
    to the origin those blocks will become unused.  Once the origin has
    gained adequate space, merging the snapshot back to the thinly
    provisioned device will permit continued use of that device without the
    temporary space provided by the snapshot.
    Requested-by: default avatarJohn Dorminy <jdorminy@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
    2e602385
snapshot.txt 7.45 KB