Using Sun™ Storage 7000 Unified Storage System With VMware ESX Server Ryan Arneson June 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. This article was published by BigAdmin at: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/storage_vmware.jsp To keep track of the latest content published by BigAdmin, subscribe to the BigAdmin newsletter: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/newsletter/.
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Table of Contents 1.0 Objective..............................................................................................................................................4 1.1 NFS (NAS) Access..........................................................................................................................4 1.2 iSCSI Access...................................................................................................................................5 2.
1.0 Objective This Quick Start Guide is intended to give an administrator a quick overview on how to quickly set up a Sun™ Storage 7000 Unified Storage System to use with a VMware ESX Server. Both NFS (NAS) and iSCSI protocols are addressed. This document assumes the administrator is familiar with both Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System concepts as well as VMware ESX concepts. 1.
1.2 iSCSI Access The diagram below gives an overview of accessing the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System using the iSCSI protocol to host Virtual Machine Virtual Disks (vmdk). An iSCSI LUN is exported from the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System and attached using the vmkernel in the VMware ESX host. A VMFS3 file system can be created on the iSCSI LUN to host vmdks, or the iSCSI LUN can be attached directly to a virtual machine using Raw Device Mapping (RDM).
2.0 Configuring Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System for VMware ESX 2.1 Security It is recommended that you create a local user on the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System that is associated with a role that allows limited configuration and control for shares within a specific project dedicated to VMware ESX use. That project is first created by the super-user role. For that purpose, a role called VMUser_Role is created in Configuration -> Users -> Roles.
allow administration rights on the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System; it is not for file system ownership or file creation privileges. The user should also be associated with the built-in "basic" role as well as the VMUser_Role configured above. Figure 4: Adding Local User The final (optional) step is to upload an SSH Public Key for the user to allow administration and scripting without having to enter a password for every login. 1.
6. Copy the contents of the .pub file. (Copy only the key itself, not the type field or the comment field.) Paste it in the entry box. Next copy and paste (or type) an optional comment to clearly indicate who the key is for. Figure 5: SSH Public Keys 7. Click Apply from the main screen to complete the procedure. 8. Test by running a simple command to check that you are not prompted for a password.
Datalink Configuration Example Figure 6: Datalink Example 9 Using Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System With VMware ESX Server
Interface Configuration Example Figure 7: Interface Example 2.3 Pool Configuring the pool storage RAID layout is a balance between availability, capacity and performance. As can be seen during pool configuration, the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System BUI gives a description plus the relative tradeoffs around availability, capacity and performance. The administrator must weigh all three factors when deciding on a data profile.
project level. If you have differing replication schedules for different types of virtual machines (or even subsets of virtual disk types, OS/boot versus production data) you should configure multiple projects, each to replicate on their own schedule. For VMware ESX, it is recommended that you turn off Update access time on read for NFS filesystems. For the rest of the options, the defaults are sufficient for most general deployments.
6. Click the Edit icon next to Share to change any of the defaults. By default, all Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System filesystems are created under /export/sharename mount points. This can be overridden at the project or share level if needed. 2.4.3 Creating a New LUN (iSCSI) Before creating a new iSCSI LUN, initiator entries should be configured to allow fine-grained access control. To add an Initiator: 1. Select Configuration -> Services -> iSCSI -> Initiators. 2. Click (+) to add a new initiator.
The initiator access can also be configured at the project level if all LUNs in a project are going to have the same initiator access. 2.5 Analytics The following analytics are useful to observe the workloads on the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System: ● NFSv3 operations broken down by file name (NFS only) ○ ● NFSv3 operations broken down by client (NFS only) ○ ● Allow the administrator to view network performance.
3.0 Configuring VMware ESX With Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System 3.1 Changing NFS Settings in VMware ESX By default, VMware ESX has an NFS datastore limit of eight file systems. To change that limit, use the following steps: 1. Log in to Virtual Center. 2. Choose an ESX host. 3. Select Configuration -> Advanced Settings -> NFS. 4. Change NFS.MaxVolumes to 32. 5. Repeat for each ESX Server. 3.
Figure 10: VMware ESX Network Configuration 3.3 iSCSI Access To enable the built-in VMware ESX iSCSI software initiator: 1. Log in to Virtual Center. 2. Select Configuration -> Storage Adapters. 3. Select the iSCSI Software Adapter. Click Properties. 4. Click Configure. Check the Enabled box. Click OK.
Figure 11: iSCSI Initiator 5. Select the Dynamic Discovery tab. 6. Click Add. Enter the IP address of the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System. Click OK. 7. Click Close. 8. Click the Rescan link to have VMware ESX discover the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System iSCSI LUNs. 9. It is recommended that you enable any CHAP configuration after all iSCSI LUNs have been discovered. 10.
3.4 Enabling NFSv3 Access 1. Log in to Virtual Center. 2. Select Configuration -> Storage - > Add Storage. 3. Choose Network File System. 4. Enter the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System name or IP, file system mount point, and a Datastore label. Figure 12: Add NFS Datastore 5. Click Next. Click Finish.
4.0 Advanced Data Services The following section gives a high-level overview on how to enable snapshots and replication on the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System to use with VMware ESX. It is outside the scope of this document to delve into the lower-level implementation details for snapshot and replication. You can refer to the online Sun Storage 7000 Help Wiki for details on using both features (or Sun Storage Unified Storage System Administration Guide at http://docs.sun.com/source/820-4167-10/).
4.3 Replication Replication is configured at the project level only. All file systems or iSCSI LUNs contained within a project will be asynchronously replicated on the same schedule to the target system. As the replication is at the project level, this allows the administrator to intelligently group virtual machines or virtual disk layouts based on replication needs. All objects within a specific project will be replicated with the same policy.
5.0 Appendix This appendix contains a sample workflow script to build an Analytics worksheet for monitoring NFSv3 and iSCSI operations. This workflow should be copied to a text file and then uploaded to the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System by taking the following steps: 1. Select Maintenance -> Workflows. 2. Click (+) to Add a Workflow. 3. Browse to the text file location. 4. Activate Workflow by double-clicking on the name of the workflow. 5.
* from the created worksheet if they so desire. (It would * be straightforward to add a boolean parameter to this * workflow that allows that last behavior to be optionally * changed.) */ run('analytics worksheets'); run('create "' + params.worksheet + '"'); run('select name="' + params.worksheet + '"'); if (params.proto == 'iscsi') { ds = [ 'iscsi.ops[client]', 'net.kilobytes', 'io.bytes[disk]', 'arc.accesses[hit/miss]']; } else if (params.proto == 'nfs') { ds = ['nfs3.ops[file]','nfs3.ops[client]','net.
6.0 Glossary The following table contains common abbreviations and acronyms that are used in this document.
7.0 For More Information VMware resources: ● VMware web site: http://www.vmware.com/ ● VMware on Sun page: http://www.sun.com/software/vmware/index.jsp ● VMware ESX Server Documentation: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ ● VMware Communities: http://communities.vmware.com/home.jspa Sun Storage resources: ● Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System web site: ● Sun download site: http://www.sun.com/download/ ● Fishworks Blogs: http://blogs.sun.
Other Sun information: ● ● Support: ● Sun resources: ● Register your Sun gear: https://inventory.sun.com/inventory/ ● Services: http://www.sun.com/service/index.jsp ● SunSolveSM: http://sunsolve.sun.com ● Community system administration experts: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/communityexperts/ Events of interest to users of Sun products: ● Worldwide developer events and Sun Tech Days: ● Current events: http://www.sun.com/events/index.jsp http://developers.sun.com/events/ 8.
