How to implement GetTargetLUNs in vss Hardware provider?

Question

I am implementing VSS Hardware provider for ZFS based iSCSI Target. We have implemented AreLunSupported, precommitsnapshot and commitsnapshot etc functions and till this point it is working fine. But after this it is failing with "VSS_E_NO_SNAPSHOTS_IMPORTED" error in LocateLun method. and I think we are not filling Target LUN information properly.

My questions are:

1. How to find serial number of target LUN ? Do I need to mount newly created snapshot and then get the serial number ?

2. Do we need to fill interconnect, storage identifier information also or can I just pass NULL for these.

Answer 1

Q: How to find serial number of target LUN ? Do I need to mount newly created snapshot and then get the serial number ?

No, you should not mount the snapshot at this point. You should use an out-of-band mechanism to directly communicate with your storage (I'm assuming your 'ZFS based iSCSI target' is coming from a NAS box), probably a REST API call, to figure out the serial number of the snapshot.

Let me elaborate some more on serial number of the snapshot:

1. VSS expects the 'shadow copy' to be a concrete, real volume, similar to the primary volume (in your case an iSCSI target)

2. Since you are using ZFS snapshots, without dwelling much into your exact implementation, you have 2 options to obtain the serial number for a concrete LUN:

   a. If your storage allows exposing a ZFS snapshot directory as a iSCSI target, the create that iSCSI target and use its Page83 identifier

   b. If not, create a ZFS clone using the ZFS snapshot and expose that as an iSCSI target and use its Page83 identifier

Q: Do we need to fill interconnect, storage identifier information also or can I just pass NULL for these.

3. For all practical purposes, it usually suffices to simply copy the VDS_LUN_INFORMATION for the original source LUN and only edit the m_szSerialNumber field with that of the target LUN (assuming that the product ID, vendor ID etc. all will remain the same)

This link explains in detail what is expected out of a VSS Hardware Provider implementation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384600(v=vs.85).aspx

Unique Page 83 Information

Both the original LUN and the newly created shadow copy LUN must have at least one unique storage identifier in the page 83 data. At least one STORAGE_IDENTIFIER with a type of 1, 2, 3, or 8, and an association of 0 must be unique on the original LUN and the newly created shadow copy LUN.

Bonus chatter (Answer ends at this point):

Now, #2(b) above might raise eyebrows since you are creating a clone ahead-of-time and it is not yet being used. The reason for this is, the above steps need to be performed in IVssHardwareSnapshotProvider::FillInLunInfo and this same VDS_LUN_INFORMATION contents are passed later to IVssHardwareSnapshotProvider::LocateLuns (VSS is trying to tell you to locate the LUNs that you earlier told it were the shadow copy LUNs). Hence, regardless of whether you will be using the clone or not in future, you must have the concrete LUN (iSCSI target) created upfront.

A silver lining to this is: if you are sure that the workflow of the VSS Requestor will never mount the shadow copy, then you can get away with this by faking some (valid) info in VDS_LUN_INFORMATION during IVssHardwareSnapshotProvider::FillInLunInfo. For this to work, you will have to create a 'transportable' shadow copy (the VSS requestor uses the VSS_CTX_FILE_SHARE_BACKUP | VSS_VOLSNAP_ATTR_TRANSPORTABLE flags). The only use-case for such a shadow copy would be to perform a hardware-resync on it, in which the VSS Hardware Provider implements the IVssHardwareSnapshotProvider::ResyncLuns method and performs a ZFS snapshot rollback in it.