Description

As a user of Zoned Block Devices, including qcow2 support for those devices, there may come a time when exposing those zones over NBD will offer performance benefits to a client that can take advantage of ZBD.  This will require designing an extension to the protocol, then implementing it in qemu, nbdkit, and libnbd for cross-compatibility checking that the design is sane.  Qemu already supports ZBD for qcow2 images, which may serve as a starting point for what all will be required.

This is not currently a high priority item - there is not yet customer demand for ZBD in an OpenShift cluster. But since ZBD makes for more efficient use of SSD disks, it may become important in the next few year.  However, having the Jira ticket open now means we will remember to think about it in future planning sessions.

What SSTs and Layered Product teams should review this?

Virtualization Storage covers the components that would have to implement this.  Other SSTs may be involved for coordinating how to test and consume a new feature.