Right now we don't plan to create templates from this functionality mainly because you can achieve the same effect using the standard Volume Snapshots API. Since the template would always reside on the secondary storage, it doesn't really make sense to use the backed cloning if a copy to secondary storage is required anyways.
To give a little more background, we have a Xenserver + SolidFire installation and snapshots that happen on Xenserver are very expensive partly because they consume dom0 resources and partly because a VDI snapshot on Xen can cause a significant drop in your I/O throughput during the snapshot process (we've seen about 30-50% drop in the number of IOPS on our instances). We've also seen cases where the snapshots don't get deleted for a long time on Xenserver and we have to deal with a degraded I/O performance for a long time (about an hour in our case). We've opened a bug with Xenserver for the same but haven't had much response on it [1]. So we really want to use the SolidFire's native snapshot capability and I believe it would be beneficial to others as well. [1]: https://bugs.xenserver.org/browse/XSO-434 Thanks, -Syed On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Will Stevens <wstev...@cloudops.com> wrote: > Will you be able to create a Template from a StorageSnapshot? If yes, > will the template be stored in the secondary storage like normal templates > or will that be handled somehow on the vendor side? > > *Will STEVENS* > Lead Developer > > *CloudOps* *| *Cloud Solutions Experts > 420 rue Guy *|* Montreal *|* Quebec *|* H3J 1S6 > w cloudops.com *|* tw @CloudOps_ > > On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 1:22 PM, Syed Mushtaq <syed1.mush...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Thanks Will!!! >> >> On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 1:19 PM, Will Stevens <wstev...@cloudops.com> >> wrote: >> >>> I explicitly linked the Design Spec in the Jira ticket because it was >>> not clear in the 'mention' section because it shows as a page 'you do not >>> have permission to'. >>> >>> *Will STEVENS* >>> Lead Developer >>> >>> *CloudOps* *| *Cloud Solutions Experts >>> 420 rue Guy *|* Montreal *|* Quebec *|* H3J 1S6 >>> w cloudops.com *|* tw @CloudOps_ >>> >>> On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Syed Ahmed <sah...@cloudops.com> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Design Spec: >>>> >>>> >>>> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/StorageSnapshot++API >>>> >>>> Jira Ticket >>>> >>>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CLOUDSTACK-9278 >>>> >>>> >>>> Hi All, >>>> >>>> We plan to propose a new set of APIs to do snapshots on managed storage >>>> backends like SolidFire. Snapshots on current managed storage stay on the >>>> device which is contrary to what CloudStack calls snpshots. But taking >>>> snapshots >>>> on storage and keeping it there has its own advantages and we would >>>> ideally like >>>> to have both ways of doing snapshots. This proposal adds 4 new APIs to >>>> create snapshots on backend storage. >>>> >>>> What do you guys think of this feature? I would love to have some >>>> feedback. I am working on making the design spec more concrete but wanted >>>> to have >>>> a high level feedback first before starting to work on it. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> -Syed >>>> >>>> >>> >> >
