Author: Vincent Shen

I’ve attached some python sample codes (notebook) in this post to help better understanding how to leverage our Isilon PAPI or SDK for day to day jobs on PowerScale or even some customization. To use these sample, you may want to install the Jupyter notebook first (https://jupyter.org/install ) and then you can do the live debug to see the real time output.

The samples including:

1. 01 Getting Started with Python Requests Module
2. Cluster Config
3. Getting Started with Isilon Python SDK
4. NFS Exports
5. SMB Shares SDK
6. SMB Shares
7. User Accounts
8. Quotas
9. Snapshots
10. File System Access API RAN

…will continue to add more

(Great thanks to Jim Sims for the contribution.)

Snapdiff with changelist has been introduced in OneFS 8.2.2.0. It can return what regions of a file have been changed. However this functionality is hidden from WebUI and CLI and I see many customers are very interested in this new feature. This article will walk you through an example.

To create a snapdiff changelist, you have to add the option “–create-diffs” which is disabled by default.

# isi job start changelistcreate --newer-snapid=24 --older-snapid=22 --create-diffs

Note, you will not see this option in the help or description page of the CLI command.

After that you can either use isi_changelist_mod command to view the outcome. To include snapdiff deltas in the output, you have to add the option “–x”

# isi_changelist_mod -a 22_24 --x
st_ino=4306829722 st_mode=0100700 st_size=2837 st_atime=1614240223 st_mtime=1614240223 st_ctime=1614240223 st_flags=285212896 cl_flags=ENTRY_MODIFIED path=/ifs/test/test.txt
offset:0 size:2837 type: data

You can also leverage PAPI for the same purpose. The corresponding PAPI endpoint is:

platform/10/snapshot/changelists/<CHANGELIST>/diff-regions/<LIN>

Note, it’s only available starting from platform/10. To get a very detailed description of the PAPI you can use the following URL:

platform/10/snapshot/changelists/<CHANGELIST>/diff-regions/<LIN>/?describe

Resource URL: /platform/10/snapshot/changelists/<CHANGELIST>/diff-regions/<LIN>

    Overview: This resource represents the collection of snap diff regions.

     Methods: GET

********************************************************************************

Method GET: Get snap diff regions of a file.

URL: GET /platform/10/snapshot/changelists/<CHANGELIST>/diff-regions/<LIN>

Query arguments:
 resume=<string> Continue returning results from previous call using this token
                 (token should come from the previous call, resume cannot be
                 used with other options).
 limit=<integer> Return no more than this many results at once (see resume).
offset=<integer> 

GET response body schema:
{
  "type": [
    {
      "additionalProperties": false, 
      "type": "object", 
      "description": "A list of errors that may be returned.", 
      "properties": {
        "errors": {
          "minItems": 1, 
          "items": {
            "additionalProperties": false, 
            "type": "object", 
            "description": "An object describing a single error.", 
            "properties": {
              "field": {
                "minLength": 1, 
                "type": "string", 
                "description": "The field with the error if applicable.", 
                "maxLength": 8192
              }, 
              "message": {
                "minLength": 1, 
                "type": "string", 
                "description": "The error message.", 
                "maxLength": 8192
              }, 
              "code": {
                "minLength": 1, 
                "type": "string", 
                "description": "The error code.", 
                "maxLength": 8192
              }
            }
          }, 
          "type": "array", 
          "maxItems": 65535
        }
      }
    }, 
    {
      "additionalProperties": false, 
      "type": "object", 
      "properties": {
        "diff_regions": {
          "minItems": 0, 
          "items": {
            "type": "object", 
            "properties": {
              "byte_count": {
                "required": true, 
                "minimum": 0, 
                "type": "integer", 
                "description": "Byte count of change region.", 
                "maximum": 18446744073709551615
              }, 
              "region_type": {
                "required": true, 
                "description": "Type of change region.", 
                "minLength": 4, 
                "enum": [
                  "sparse", 
                  "data", 
                  "unchanged"
                ], 
                "maxLength": 9, 
                "type": "string"
              }, 
              "start_offset": {
                "required": true, 
                "minimum": 0, 
                "type": "integer", 
                "description": "Starting byte offset of change region.", 
                "maximum": 18446744073709551615
              }
            }
          }, 
          "type": "array", 
          "maxItems": 18446744073709551615
        }, 
        "resume": {
          "minLength": 0, 
          "type": [
            "string", 
            "null"
          ], 
          "description": "Provide this token as the 'resume' query argument to continue listing results.", 
          "maxLength": 8192
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Here is the output for the same example:

URL:

https://192.168.116.188:8080/platform/10/snapshot/changelists/22_24/diff-regions/4306829722

Outcome:

{
"diff_regions" : 
[

{
"byte_count" : 2837,
"region_type" : "data",
"start_offset" : 0
}
],
"resume" : null
}