Convoy is a Docker volume plugin for a variety of storage back-ends. It's designed to be a simple Docker volume plug-ins that supports vendor-specific extensions such as snapshots, backups and restore. It's written in Go and can be deployed as a standalone binary.

First let's make sure we have Docker 1.8 or above running.

docker --version

If not, install the latest Docker daemon as follows:

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh

Once we have made sure we have the right Docker daemon running, we can install and configure Convoy volume plugin as follows:

wget https://github.com/rancher/convoy/releases/download/v0.2.1/convoy.tar.gz
tar xvf convoy.tar.gz
sudo cp convoy/convoy convoy/convoy-pdata_tools /usr/local/bin/
sudo mkdir -p /etc/docker/plugins/
sudo bash -c 'echo "unix:///var/run/convoy/convoy.sock" > /etc/docker/plugins/convoy.spec'

We can use file-backed lookback device to test and demo Convoy driver. Loopback device, however, is known to be unstable and should not be used in production.

truncate -s 100G data.vol
truncate -s 1G metadata.vol
sudo losetup /dev/loop5 data.vol
sudo losetup /dev/loop6 metadata.vol

Once we have the data and metadata device setup, we can start the Convoy plugin daemon as follows:

sudo convoy daemon --drivers devicemapper --driver-opts dm.datadev=/dev/loop5 --driver-opts dm.metadatadev=/dev/loop6

We can create a Docker container with a convoy volume. As a test, we create a file called /vol1/foo in the convoy volume:

sudo docker run -v vol1:/vol1 --volume-driver=convoy ubuntu touch /vol1/foo

Next we take a snapshot of the convoy volume. We backup the snapshot to a local directory: (Backup to NFS share or S3 objectore is also supported.)

sudo convoy snapshot create vol1 --name snap1vol1
sudo mkdir -p /opt/convoy/
sudo convoy backup create snap1vol1 --dest vfs:///opt/convoy/

The convoy backup command returns a URL string representing backup dataset. You can use the same URL string to recover the volume to another host:

sudo convoy create res1 --backup <backup_url>

The following command creates a new container and mounts the recovered convoy volume into that container:

sudo docker run -v res1:/res1 --volume-driver=convoy ubuntu ls /res1/foo

You should see the recovered file /res1/foo.

Ensure you have Docker 1.8 or above installed.

Download latest version of convoy and unzip it. Put the binaries in a directory in the execution $PATH of sudo and root users (e.g. /usr/local/bin).

wget https://github.com/rancher/convoy/releases/download/v0.2.1/convoy.tar.gz
tar xvf convoy.tar.gz
sudo cp convoy/convoy convoy/convoy-pdata_tools /usr/local/bin/

Run the following commands to setup the Convoy volume plugin for Docker:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/docker/plugins/
sudo bash -c 'echo "unix:///var/run/convoy/convoy.sock" > /etc/docker/plugins/convoy.spec'

You need to pass different arguments to convoy daemon depending on the choice of backend implementation.

Assuming you have two devices created, one data device called /dev/convoy-vg/data and the other metadata device called /dev/convoy-vg/metadata. You run the following command to start the Convoy daemon:

sudo convoy daemon --drivers devicemapper --driver-opts dm.datadev=/dev/convoy-vg/data --driver-opts dm.metadatadev=/dev/convoy-vg/metadata

• A default Device Mapper volume size is 100G. You can override it with the ---driver-opts dm.defaultvolumesize option.
• You can take a look at here if you want to know how much storage need to be allocated for metadata device.

First, mount the NFS share to the root directory used to store volumes. Substitute <vfs_path> to the appropriate directory of your choice:

sudo mkdir <vfs_path>
sudo mount -t nfs <nfs_server>:/path <vfs_path>

The NFS-based Convoy daemon can be started as follows:

sudo convoy daemon --drivers vfs --driver-opts vfs.path=<vfs_path>

Volumes can be created using the convoy create command:

sudo convoy create volume_name

A default Device Mapper volume size is 100G. We can supply the --size option to specify a custom device mapper volume size.

We can also create a volume using the docker run command. If the volume does not yet exist, a new volume will be greated. Otherwise the existing volume will be used.

sudo docker -it test_volume:/test --volume-driver=convoy ubuntu

sudo convoy delete <volume_name>

or

sudo docker rm -v <container_name>

• For NFS-backed volumes only: The --reference option instructs the convoy delete command to only delete the reference to the NFS-based volume from the current host and leave the underlying files on NFS server unchanged. This is useful where the same NFS-backed volume is mounted into multiple containers.

sudo convoy list
sudo convoy inspect vol1

sudo convoy snapshot create vol1 --name snap1vol1

sudo convoy snapshot delete snap1vol1

• For Device Mapper, please make sure you keep the latest backed-up snapshot for the same volume available to enable incremental backup mechanism, since Convoy need it to calculate the differences between snapshots.

We can backup a snapshot to S3 object store or an NFS mount:

sudo convoy backup create snap1vol1 --dest s3://backup-bucket@us-west-2/

or

sudo convoy backup create snap1vol1 --dest vfs:///opt/backup/

The backup operation returns a URL string that uniquely idenfied the backup dataset.

s3://backup-bucket@us-west-2/?backup=f98f9ea1-dd6e-4490-8212-6d50df1982ea\u0026volume=e0d386c5-6a24-446c-8111-1077d10356b0

• For S3, please make sure you have AWS credential ready either at ~/.aws/credentials or as environment variables, as described here. You may need to put credentials to /root/.aws/credentials or setup sudo environment variables in order to get S3 credential works.

sudo convoy create res1 --backup <url>

We can use the standard docker run command to mount the restored volume into a Docker container:

sudo docker run -it -v res1:/res1 --volume-driver convoy ubuntu

You can mount an NFS-backed volume on multiple servers. You can use the standard docker run command to mount an existing NFS-backed mount into a Docker container. For example, if you have already created an NFS-based volume vol1 on one host, you can run the following command to mount the existing vol1 volume into a new container:

sudo docker run -it -v vol1:/vol1 --volume-driver=convoy ubuntu

1. Environment: Ensure Go environment, mercurial and libdevmapper-dev package are installed.
2. Download convoy-pdata_tools and put it in your $PATH.
3. Build and install:

go get github.com/rancher/convoy
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/rancher/convoy
make
sudo make install

The last line would install convoy to /usr/local/bin/, otherwise executables are in bin/ directory.