Overview

A volume set is a collection of storage volumes, which may be linked to one or more workloads running on Control Plane. The behavior varies greatly depending on your choice of filesystem.

Traditional File Systems (ext4, xfs)

  • Control Plane provisions a unique volume for each replica in the linked workload.
  • Each volume set can be used by at most one stateful workload.
  • Each volume in the set is bound to a single workload replica
  • Data is not replicated between volumes. If you require data sharing or replication, this must be accomplished at the application level (e.g. by using WAL streaming between two Postgresql instances)

Shared File System

Shared file system support is currently in beta.
  • Control Plane provisions a single volume per location
  • The volume set can be attached to any number of workloads
  • All attached workload replicas in a given location use the same volume

Caveats

The shared filesystem does not support

  • snapshots
  • certain commands:
    • createVolumeSnapshot
    • deleteVolumeSnapshot
    • restoreVolume
    • deleteVolume

Capacity and Billing

  • When a volume is created, it will have an initial capacity defined by the spec of your volume set.
  • Volume capacity can be increased by sending an expandVolume command.
  • Volume capacity cannot be decreased.
  • The bill for a volume set is calculated by summing the reserved GB of all volumes.

Autoscaling

One Volume Per Replica

The only applies to volume sets using traditional file systems (e.g. ext4, xfs)
  • Like workloads, volume sets scale horizontally. Every replica in the linked workload is automatically assigned a volume.
  • When the linked workload scales down, the volumes are preserved. Volumes are only deleted when you send a deleteVolume command, or when the volume set itself is deleted.

Automatic Expansion

The spec.autoscaling object allows you to specify rules for automatically expanding volumes in the set. The available options are:

  • maxCapacity: The largest allowable size for any volume in the set.
  • minFreePercentage: This must be a number between 1 and 100. When the free percentage on any volume drops below this threshold, Control Plane will issue an expandVolume command automatically.
  • scalingFactor: This must be a number 1. When a volume must be expanded, the new capacity will be (the minimum size to ensure minFreePercentage) scalingFactor. E.g. if a volume is using 8/10 GB, and the minFreePercentage is 50, the new capacity will be 16 scalingFactor, assuming that product is maxCapacity.

For example:

Volume Set Autoscaling
{
  ...
  "spec": {
    ...
    "autoscaling": {
       "maxCapacity": 100,
       "minFreePercentage": 70,
       "scalingFactor": 2
    }
  }
}

Snapshots

Snapshots can be taken at any time and (optionally) on a regular schedule. To set up automatic snapshotting, you may use the spec.snapshots object. Options include:

  • retentionDuration: The length of time to retain a newly created snapshot. This should be a floating point number followed by either d, h, or m (for day, hour or minute)
  • schedule: A cron expression describing the snapshot frequency. Snapshots cannot be taken more frequently than once per hour.

File System Type

Currently supported file systems are:

  • ext4
  • xfs
  • shared

Performance Classes

Each volume set has a single, immutable, performance class.

The performance class determines:

  • How many Megabytes per second can be transferred to and from the volume (MB/second)
  • How many I/O operations can be processed per second. (IOPS)
  • Read/write latency
Because these drives are served over the network, IOPS/throughput is limited per VM. The performance of individual drives will vary.

Volume performance varies widely by cloud service provider.

General-Purpose SSD

Name: general-purpose-ssd

Minimum Capacity: 10Gb

Maximum Capacity: 16384Gb

Service ProviderMax ThroughputMax IOPS
AWS125 MB/s3000
GCP1200 MB/s80000
Azure125 MB/s3000

High-Throughput SSD

In general, IOPS/throughput capacity varies linearly with storage capacity. The values shown below are the maximum possible values, and may only be achievable with large volume sizes.
Name: high-throughput-ssd

Minimum Capacity: 200Gb

Maximum Capacity: 16384Gb

Service ProviderMax ThroughputMax IOPS
AWS400 MB/s4600
GCP1200 MB/s100000
Azure1200 MB/s15500

Commands

Volume sets support imperative operations on individual volumes and snapshots. To issue a command, send a POST to the volume set’s -command endpoint. e.g. POST https://api.cpln.io/org/my-org/gvc/my-gvc/volumeset/my-volume-set/-command. These commands can also be created using the Control Plane console at https://console.cpln.io

Volume Expansion

Volumes can be expanded on-demand by issuing an expandVolume command. If the volume set is in-use by a workload, the corresponding workload replica will be restarted.

You can only expand a volume once every six hours. Please plan accordingly.
Volumes cannot be “expanded” to a smaller size.

expandVolume

Spec:

  • location
  • volumeIndex
  • newStorageCapacity

For example:

expandVolume Command
{
  "type": "expandVolume",
  "spec": {
    "location": "aws-sa-east-1",
    "volumeIndex": 0,
    "newStorageCapacity": 11
  }
}

Volume Deletion

To delete a volume, issue a deleteVolume command.

deleteVolume

This command deletes the specified volume’s storage device. Note: the metadata for the volume at the specified index will not be removed from the volume set. Only your data will be deleted.

Deleting an in-use volume

If the volume set is in-use by a workload, a new storage device may be immediately created. e.g. if the volume set is in-use by a workload with one replica, and you delete the volume at index 0, Control Plane will:

  1. Create an empty volume to service the workload
  2. Delete the old volume as requested
  3. Restart the workload replica, binding it to the volume created in step 1.

For example:

deleteVolume Command
{
  "type": "deleteVolume",
  "spec": {
    "location": "aws-sa-east-1",
    "volumeIndex": 0
  }
}

Snapshots

Each volume in a set has its own list of snapshots. You manipulate snapshots by issuing commands to the volume set.

createVolumeSnapshot

Take a snapshot for a given volume (specified by location and volume index). snapshotName must be unique for the target volume.

Spec:

  • location
  • volumeIndex
  • snapshotName
  • snapshotExpirationDate
  • tags
    • Specify any key/value pair here.

For example:

createVolumeSnapshot Command
{
  "type": "createVolumeSnapshot",
  "spec": {
    "location": "aws-sa-east-1",
    "volumeIndex": 0,
    "snapshotName": "snap-0",
    "snapshotExpirationDate": "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "tags": {
      "my-tag-key": "my-tag-value"
    }
  }
}

deleteVolumeSnapshot

Delete the specified snapshot.

Spec:

  • location
  • volumeIndex
  • snapshotName

For example:

deleteVolumeSnapshot Command
{
  "type": "deleteVolumeSnapshot",
  "spec": {
    "location": "aws-sa-east-1",
    "volumeIndex": 0,
    "snapshotName": "snap-0"
  }
}

restoreVolume

Restore the specified volume to one of its snapshots. If this volume set is in-use by a workload, the corresponding workload replica will restart.

This operation creates an entirely new volume using the given snapshot. All unsaved data on the original volume will be lost.

Spec:

  • location
  • volumeIndex
  • snapshotName

For example:

restoreVolume Command
{
  "type": "restoreVolume",
  "spec": {
    "location": "aws-sa-east-1",
    "volumeIndex": 0,
    "snapshotName": "snap-0"
  }
}

BYOK Support

Volume sets are supported in BYOK locations as long as the following prerequisites are met:

  1. The cluster must have a CSI-compatible storage driver installed.

  2. You must create storage classes which use the CSI-compatible provisioner, with the following names:

    • general-purpose-ssd-ext4
    • general-purpose-ssd-xfs
    • premium-low-latency-ssd-ext4
    • premium-low-latency-ssd-xfs
    • general-purpose-ssd-ext4-command
    • general-purpose-ssd-xfs-command
    • premium-low-latency-ssd-ext4-command
    • premium-low-latency-ssd-xfs-command

Planned Features

  • Automatic volume expansion.

Permissions

The permissions below are used to define policies together with one or more of the four principal types:

PermissionDescriptionImplies
createCreate new volumesets
deleteDelete existing identities
editModify existing identitiesview
execExecute commandsexec.restoreVolume, exec.createVolumeSnapshot, exec.expandVolume, exec.deleteVolume, exec.deleteVolumeSnapshot
exec.createVolumeSnapshotCreate a snapshot of a volume
exec.deleteVolumeDelete a volume
exec.deleteVolumeSnapshotDelete a volume snapshot
exec.expandVolumeIncrease the storage capacity of a volume
exec.restoreVolumeRestore a volume to a snapshot
manageFull accesscreate, delete, edit, exec, exec.createVolumeSnapshot, exec.deleteVolume, exec.deleteVolumeSnapshot, exec.expandVolume, exec.restoreVolume, manage, view
viewRead-only access

Access Report

Displays the permissions granted to principals for the volume set.

CLI

To view the CLI documentation for Volume Sets, click here.