SLTV — Shared Logical Thin Volume
Subtitle: A portable volume approach on shared storage for KVM/QEMU.
Problem
In the VMware world, VMFS delivers a strong operational experience on shared storage. On the open-source side, KVM/QEMU, libvirt, LVM, GFS2, OCFS2, Ceph, and other stacks are powerful—but a VMFS-like, simple, enterprise-familiar shared-storage experience remains an open problem space.
Goal
SLTV does not aim to clone VMFS pixel-for-pixel.
The goal is a portable, auditable, automation-friendly volume lifecycle on shared storage for KVM/QEMU while preserving existing SAN investment.
Highlights
- Virtual disk lifecycle on a shared LUN
- Thin provisioning behavior
- QEMU-aware usage tracking
- Live migration scenarios
- Failure-scenario testing
- Future CSI driver integration (Phase 4)
Architecture approach
SLTV builds on a QEMU-aware LVM model. On a shared LUN:
- Logical volume — cluster-aware LVM segment.
- Thin pool — allocate space on demand.
- Volume metadata — QEMU usage and lifecycle data.
- Lifecycle hooks — attach, detach, extend, snapshot.
- Migration coordination — volume ownership during live migration.
Roadmap
SLTV is centered on Phase 1:
- Phase 1: Logical volume model, thin provisioning, attach/detach flows, lab environment, basic CLI.
- Phase 3: dc(e)OS host integration.
- Phase 4: SLTV CSI driver, Kubernetes and OpenShift integration.