Trying out LXD containers on Ubuntu on DigitalOcean, with block storage

We have seen how to try out LXD containers on Ubuntu on DigitalOcean. In this post, we will see how to use the new DigitalOcean block storage support (just out of beta!).

This new block storage has the benefit of being additional separate disk space that should be faster to access. Then, software such as LXD would benefit from this. Without block storage, the ZFS pool for LXD is stored as a loopback file on the ext4 root filesystem. With block storage, the ZFS pool for LXD is stored on the block device of the block storage.

When you start a new droplet, you get by default the ext4 filesystem and you cannot change it easily. Some people managed to hack around this issue, https://github.com/fxlv/docs/blob/master/freebsd/freebsd-with-zfs-digitalocean.md though there are no instructions on how to do with a Linux distribution. The new block storage allows to get ZFS on additional block devices without hacks.

DO-block-storage-early

Actually, this block storage feature is so new that even the DigitalOcean page still asks you to request early access.

DO-block-storage-ready

When you create a VPS, you have now the option to specify additional block storage. The pricing is quite simple, US$0.10 per GB, and you can specify from 1 GB and upwards.

It is also possible to add block storage to an existing VPS. Finally, as shown in the screenshot, block storage is currently available at the NYC1 and SFO2 datacenters.

For our testing, we created an Ubuntu 16.04 $20/month VPS at the SFO2 datacenter. It is a dual-core VPS with 2GB of RAM.

The standard disk is

Disk /dev/vda: 40 GiB, 42949672960 bytes, 83886080 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 4CF812E3-1423-1923-B28E-FDD6817901CA

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/vda1 2048 83886046 83883999 40G Linux filesystem

While the block device for the block storage is

Disk /dev/sda: 50 GiB, 53687091200 bytes, 104857600 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

 

Here is how to configure LXD to use the new block device,

root@ubuntu-2gb-sfo2-01:~# lxd init
Name of the storage backend to use (dir or zfs): zfs
Create a new ZFS pool (yes/no)? yes
Name of the new ZFS pool: mylxd-pool
Would you like to use an existing block device (yes/no)? yes
Path to the existing block device: /dev/sda
Would you like LXD to be available over the network (yes/no)? no
Do you want to configure the LXD bridge (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Stopping lxd.service, but it can still be activated by:
 lxd.socket

LXD has been successfully configured.

Let’s see some benchmarks! We run bonnie++, first on the standard storage, then on the new block storage,

# bonnie -d /tmp/ -s 4G -n 0 -m STANDARDSTORAGE -f -b -u root

Version 1.97 Sequential Output Sequential Input Random
Seeks
Sequential Create Random Create
Size Per Char Block Rewrite Per Char Block Num Files Create Read Delete Create Read Delete
K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU
STANDARDSTORAGE 4G 749901 92 611116 80 1200389 76 +++++ +++
Latency 50105us 105ms 7687us 11021us Latency

# bonnie -d /media/blockstorage -s 4G -n 0 -m BLOCKSTORAGE -f -b -u root

Version 1.97 Sequential Output Sequential Input Random
Seeks
Sequential Create Random Create
Size Per Char Block Rewrite Per Char Block Num Files Create Read Delete Create Read Delete
K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU K/sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU /sec % CPU
BLOCKSTORAGE 4G 193923 23 96283 14 217073 18 2729 58
Latency 546ms 165ms 8882us 35690us Latency

The immediate benefits are that the latency is much lower with the new block storage, and the CPU usage is also low.

Let’s try with dd,

root@ubuntu-2gb-sfo2-01:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/standardstorage.img bs=4M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB, 4.0 GiB) copied, 4.91043 s, 875 MB/s

root@ubuntu-2gb-sfo2-01:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/blockstorage/blockstorage.img bs=4M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB, 4.0 GiB) copied, 19.8969 s, 216 MB/s

On the other hand, the standard storage appears four times faster than the new block storage.

I am not sure how these should be interpreted. I look forward to reading other reports about this.

 

 

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.simos.info/trying-out-lxd-containers-on-ubuntu-on-digitalocean-with-block-storage/

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