Storage

Part I of this series covered the deployment, part II is dedicated to the configuration of the StoreVirtual VSA cluster. I assume that the Centralized Management Console (CMC) was installed. Start the CMC. If you see no systems unter “Available Systems”, client “Find” on the menu and then choose “Find Systems…”. A dialog will appear. Click “Add…” and enter the ip address of one of the earlier deployed VSA nodes. Repeat this until all deployed VSA nodes are added. Then click “Close”. Now you should have all available VSA nodes listed under “Available Systems”.

Yesterday I stumbled over a forum post in a german VMware forum. A user noticed after a vSphere 5.5 update, that a newly updated ESXi 5.5 hosts wasn’t able to mount some datastores. The host was updated with a HP customized ESXi 5.5 Image. The other two hosts, ESXi 5.1 installed from a HP customized image, had no problems. A HP P2000 G3 MSA Array with iSCSI was used as shared storage. The datastores with VMFS version 5.54 were mounted. Only datastores with VMFS 5.58 were not mouted. The user evacuated the VMs off one of the datastores, and then deleted and recreated the datastore. The recreated datastore appeared for a short moment and than disappered again.

Today DataCore announced their latest SANsymphony-V release. After the merge of SANmelody & SANsymphony, SANsymphony-V10 is the 10th generation of DataCores flagship product. Interestingly DataCore uses the terms  “software-defined” and “Virtual SAN”. Whether the product of the definition of the terms corresponds everyone should decide for themselves. But this is another story.

What is DataCore SANsymphony-V?

What DataCore definitely does is automating and simplifying storage management and provisioning. I really like it the simplicity. DataCore SANsymphony-V can deliver enterprise-class functionality, like synchronous mirroring, replication, snapshots, clones, thin-provisioning and tiering . It runs on x86 hardware with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or 2012. Multiple servers can grouped together for load balancing and redundancy. A storage pool can created out of the internal or external flash and roting rust. Single or mirrored virtual disks can be carved out of this storage pool. Hosts can access these virtual disks using iSCSI or Fibre-Channel. Because DataCore SANsymphony-V10 can use several different technologies as backend for storage pools, it’s easy to replace backend storage. You can add or remove disks to or from storage pools. If you backend storage is an old EMC CLARiiON and you get a new HP MSA 2040 Storage, you can replance the old storage without disruption.

In 2008 HP acquired LeftHand Networks for “only” $360 million. In relation to the acquiration of 3PAR in 2010 ($2.35 billion) this was a  really cheap buy. LeftHand Networks was a pioneer in regard of IP based storage build on commodity server hardware. Their secret was SAN/iQ, a linux-based operating system, that did the magic. HP StoreVirtual is the TAFKAP (or Prince…? What’s his current name?) in the HP StorageWorks product familiy. ;) HP LeftHand, HP P4000 and now StoreVirtual. But the secret sauce never changed: SAN/iQ or LeftHand OS. Hardware comes and goes, but the secret of StoreVirtual was and is the operating system. And because of this it was easy for HP to bring the OS into a VM. StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) was born. So you can chose between the StoreVirtual Storage nodes (HW appliances) and the StoreVirtual VSA, the virtual storage appliance. This article will focus on the StoreVirtual VSA with LeftHand OS 11.

A side effect of data growth is the growth of the amount of data that must be backed up. The path of least resistance is buying more disks and/ or tapes. Another possible solution is data deplucation. With data deduplication you can’t reduce the amount of data that must be backed up, but you can reduce the amount of data that must be stored. HP StoreOnce Backup is HPs solution to address this problem.

While talking with a colleague, she told me that she would like to know more about NetApp. Unfortunately we don’t have a NetApp system in our lab and playing with customer equipment is… mmh…unfavorable. But there’s a solution for this problem: Simulate ONTAP 8. This software allows you to simulate a 7-Mode or Cluster-Mode (c-Mode) system and to test many of the features. All you need is a VMware Workstation/ Player/ Fusion or an ESXi host.

This is a really short post. A first step can be the configuration of CIFS. This is done using “cifs setup” command. After you’ve setup CIFS, you can create volumes and qtrees, you can share them with you Windows server etc. It’s a good start into your Data ONTAP 8 journey.

The requirements

All you need is a configured ONTAP 8 simulator instance and a Windows Domain Controller with Active Directory.

Nutanix was founded in 2009 and left the stealth mode in 2011. Their Virtual Computing Platform combines storage and computing resources in a building block scheme. Each appliance consists up to four nodes and local storage (SSD and rotating rust). At least three nodes are necessary to form a cluster. If you need more storage or compute resources, you can add more appliances, and thus nodes, to the cluster (scale out). Nutanix scales proportionately with cluster growth. The magic is not the hardware - it’s the software. The local storage resources of each appliance are passed to the Nutanix Controller VM (CVM). The CVM services I/O and storage to the VMs and is running on each node, regardless of the hypervisor. You can run VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM on the nodes. Although the Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) is stretched across all nodes, I/O for a VM is served by the local CVM. The storage can be presented via iSCSI, NFS or SMB3 to the hypervisor.

TL;DR: The HP 4Gb Fibre Channel Pass-Thru Module is (as the name says) 4 Gb Fibre-Channel module. Even if HP delivers the module with 8 Gb SFP+ transceivers, the module can only provide a 4 Gb link. Don't make the same mistake as I did. Just because 8 Gb SFP + are included, it doesn't necessarily mean that the module provides an 8 Gb connection.

The HP 4Gb Fibre Channel Pass-Thru Module for c-Class BladeSystem (PN 403626-B21) is a interconnect module for the HP BladeSystem c-Class. It’s a simple pass-thru module, which provides a 1:1 non-switched, non-blocking paths between the server blade and a Fibre Channel Fabric. There are several Fibre Channel interconnect modules, like the Virtual Connect 8 Gb Fibre Channel modules (20 or 24 ports) or the Brocade and Cisco 8Gb SAN Switches for HP BladeSystem c-Class. The pass-thru modules is a good choice if the customer has a good Fibre Channel infrastructure and the number of servers is manageable. It’s much cheaper than the Virtual Connect Fibre Channel modules (which require a Virtual Connect Ethernet module for management) or the Brocade or Cisco MDS Fibre Channel switches for HP BladeSystem c-Class. But it also has disadvantages. it only provides a 4 Gb Fibre Channel link! Even if HP delivers the modules with 8 Gb SFP+ transceivers, only a maximum of 4 Gb are possible. Neither the Quick Specs, nor the HP support could make a statement which SFP+ transceivers are included. That 8Gb SFP+ transceivers are included, was a chance finding. Unfortunately HP doesn’t provide a 8 Gb pass-thru module and the 4 Gb pass-thru module doesn’t support 8 Gb connections, even with 8 Gb SFP+ transceivers. If you need a 8 Gb connection you have to use Virtual Connect or Brocade or Cisco MDS Fibre Channel switches.

About two weeks after the release of DataCore SANsymphony-V 9.0 PSP4 Update 2, DataCore announces Update 3. This is a really short release cycle… DataCore fixed three issues in Update 3. This is an excerpt from the release notes:

Problem: SANsymphony 9.0 PSP4 Update2 failed to update configurations with shared pools on DataCore Servers running SANsymphony 9.0 PSP3, PSP3 U1 or PSP3 U2. Cause: An upgrade script run during installation expected a cmdlet parameter that wasn‟t supported in these versions. Resolution: Updated the script to no longer rely on this parameter.