Servers

Servers Objects in the VPSA represent Cloud Servers that consume VPSA Volumes. A Server needs to be properly defined and connected in order to access the VPSA Volumes via iSCSI, FC, NFS or SMB protocols.

Filtering the List of Servers

To filter the list of servers displayed in the center pane, you can use a predefined custom tag.

servers-add-filter-tags

  1. Expand the Filter control.

  2. On the right, click the Add Filter dropdown, and select Tag. The tag input fields appear on the left.

  3. The Tag filter requires input of the predefined custom Tag Name, and optionally, a Tag Value to further refine filtering for tags that have specific values for assigned servers. Wildcards are not accepted. See the Tags section for configuring predefined custom tags.

  4. Click Search to apply the filter.

  5. To remove the filter, click Clear, or click the trash icon to the right of the filter. Click Search again to refresh the volumes list.

Adding a Server

Establishing a connection between a Server and the VPSA involves the following steps:

  • Creating a Server Object in the VPSA database.

  • Setting the Server IQN for iSCSI connectivity and/or Servers FC Connectivity and/or the server IP address for NFS/SMB connectivity.

  • Establishing CHAP authentication handshake between the Server and the VPSA for iSCSI.

  • Registering Server OS information (optional).

Important

The VPSA can provide server connectivity monitoring alerting upon connectivity issue with a specific server. Connectivity monitoring can be enabled on demand for any server with IP connectivity, for additional information refer to Connectivity Monitoring in this user guide section.

Adding a Server for NAS access

Adding servers to the VPSA in order to access files over NFS/SMB requires introducing the server’s IP address to the VPSA.

  • Go to Servers > Add and select Manual:

  • On the Create Server dialog give the server a name

Note

Objects names can be up to 128 chars long and can contain letters and digits, dashes “-” and underscores “_”

  • Select the server’s Operating System (optional)

  • Turn on File Access

  • Provide the IP address

Note

You can add a single server object to the VPSA representing an IP Network Range rather than adding each Server in the range separately. This is especially useful when attaching SMB/NFS shares to large number of servers in a subnet. Use the manual procedure shown below to add this type of Server while specifying the IP range in CIDR notation (e.g. 192.168.1.1/24)

image25

  • If you want to secure the IP connectivity with an IPsec tunneling check select the Enable IPsec checkbox. Please note that your Server must be properly configured to utilize IPsec, and that performance is impacted.

  • An alternative to IPSec tunneling is SMB Encrypt that works for Windows servers that support it. SMB Encryption provides end-to-end encryption of SMB data and protects data from eavesdropping occurrences on untrusted networks. It has no requirements for Internet Protocol security (IPsec tunneling) and is much easier to configure. SMB Encryption can be configured on a per share basis. No setting is required on the VPSA. Just enable SMB Encryption on the Windows Server.

Note

iSCSI or Fiber Channel are not required for a NFS/SMB connection so these settings can be left OFF.

Note

The VPSA NAS services will require the following ports and protocols to be accessible from the servers to the VPSA:

  • NFS - 111(UDP/TCP), 2049(UDP/TCP), 3000(UDP/TCP), 4000(UDP/TCP), 4001 (UDP/TCP), 4045(UDP/TCP).

  • SMB - 137(UDP), 138(UDP), 139(TCP), 445(TCP).

To add a server for block storage access follow the procedure shown below:

Adding a Server automatically

The VPSA automates the above steps for you via the “Connect Server” script. Go to Servers > Add and select Automatic:

image26

Adding a Server automatically over iSCSI

To Add a Windows Server:

  • The first time you connect an iSCSI Volume to a Windows Server, you need to start the iSCSI service on the Windows Server before running the VPSA connect script.

    • In Windows Start->Run dialog, type iSCSI and select the “iSCSI Initiator” program. You will be prompted to start the service. Press Yes to confirm:

image27

  • Open the VPSA GUI on the Windows Server

  • On the VPSA GUI > Connect Server dialog, select platform: Windows.

  • Select the iSCSI checkbox if you wish to expose VPSA Block Volumes to this Server via iSCSI.

  • Click the download link to download the connect script from the VPSA to your Server.

  • Depending on your browser, locate the downloaded script, open and run it. The below screenshots are using the Chrome browser.

image28

image29

  • Once the connect script successfully completes, the new connected Server will be listed in the VPSA Servers page with status = “Active” Registered = “Yes” and the correct OS details.

To Add a Linux Server:

  • Verify that open-iscsi is installed on the Server:

    • On RedHat Servers do:

      $ yum install iscsi-initiator-utils
      
    • On Ubuntu Servers do:

      $ sudo apt-get update
      $ sudo apt-get install open-iscsi open-iscsi-utils
      
  • On the VPSA GUI > Connect Server dialog, select platform: Linux.

  • Select the iSCSI checkbox if you wish to expose VPSA Block Volumes to this Server.

  • Run the three steps as detailed in the connect server dialog to execute the vpsa_linux.sh script.

image30

  • Once the connect script completes successfully, the new connected Server will be listed in the VPSA GUI > Servers page with status = “Active” Registered = “Yes” and the correct OS details.

Multiple Virtual Networks:

If the VPSA has more than one Virtual Network assigned, the server can be assigned to it over any of them. Servers can be added using any VNI, automatic server registration in the presence of VNIs shows drop down list of available VNIs for you to select:

imageSelectVNI


Adding a Server automatically over Fibre Channel

Before defining a server using FC connectivity, make sure to install and configure multipathing software on the server. Also make sure to setup the zoning on the FC switch to allow connectivity between the connecting server and the VPSA FC ports.

To Add a Windows Server:

The first step is to configure MPIO. Open the Windows MPIO dialog:

image31

Enter the device HW ID as follows: “Zadara VPSA ” (“Zadara” followed by 2 blank spaces, and then “VPSA” followed by 4 blank spaces. 16 characters total) and press OK.

Inline image 2

Note

Adding MPIO requires Windows server to reboot before you can proceed.

  • Open the VPSA GUI on the Windows Server

  • On the VPSA GUI > Connect Server dialog, select FC access type and download the connection script

image33

To Add a Linux Server:

To add Linux Server over FC you need to set up the multipathing on the server. For detailed instructions follow this KB article:

https://support.zadarastorage.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003851406-How-To-Setup-Fiber-Channel-Multipath-in-Linux

Note

This change requires a restart of the MPIO service

  • On the VPSA GUI goto the Connect Server dialog, select FC access type and download the connection script.

  • Run the three steps as detailed in the Connect Server dialog to execute the vpsa_linux.sh script.

image34

  • Once the connect script completes successfully, the new connected Server will be listed in the VPSA Servers page with status = “Active” Registered = “Yes” and the correct OS details.

Adding a Server manually

Establishing an iSCSI connection

If for some reason adding a server automatically doesn’t work, follow these steps to add the server manually. Go to Servers > Add and select Manual:

image35

  • Enter the Server Name.

Note

Objects names can be up to 128 chars long and can contain letters and digits, dashes “-” and underscores “_”

  • Select the server OS

  • Enter the server iSCSI IQN

  • Check the “Enable IPSec” checkbox if you wish to secure iSCSI traffic between the Server and the VPSA. Please note that your Server must be properly configured to utilize IPsec and that performance is impacted.

  • To enable CHAP, select between global CHAP (for the VPSA) or per host.

  • Provide the CHAP user name and password (secret). Global CHAP parameters can be copied from here Viewing Controller Properties.

After manually adding a Server you need to establish an iSCSI connection between the Server and the VPSA. Please note that you can skip this step if the Server was added automatically or if the Server is only consuming NFS/SMB type Volumes.

On Windows Servers:

  • Open iSCSI Initiator: In Windows Start->Run dialog, type iSCSI and select the “iSCSI Initiator” program. If this is the first time you have run iSCSI initiator on this Server you will be prompted to start the service. Press Yes to confirm.

image36

  • The Windows iSCSI Initiator Properties dialog box will open, and the Targets tab will be displayed.

  • On the Targets tab, type the iSCSI IP address of the VPSA (which is displayed in the VPSA GUI > Controllers page) in the Quick Connect target text box and then click the Quick Connect… button.

  • The Quick Connect dialog box will be displayed, with the VPSA discovered iSCSI target in an “Inactive” status. Press Done.

image37

  • To activate the connection, select the VPSA target and press the Connect button. Please note that if you have multiple targets listed you can identify the VPSA target by its IQN name which is in the form of “iqn.2011-04.com.zadarastorage:vsa-xxxx” and is displayed in the Controller properties page in the VPSA GUI.

  • You may check the Enable multi-path check-box if you wish to use MPIO multi-pathing. Then, click Advanced…

image38

  • Check the Enable CHAP log-on check-box and enter the CHAP Username: and Target Secret. You can retrieve those values from the VPSA GUI, under the Controllers page, in the properties tab. Press OK to confirm the operation.

image39

  • In the Targets tab you’ll see that the VPSA iSCSI target has moved from “Inactive” to “Connected” status. A new Server is created automatically in the VPSA and is displayed in the Servers GUI page. The name of the server is its iSCSI initiator IQN. You may change the Server Display Name.

Note

To achieve best performance it is recommended to use multiple sessions & MPIO. To enable MPIO please follow the instructions at https://support.zadarastorage.com/hc/en-us/articles/360030099351-How-To-enable-iSCSI-MPIO-and-set-up-multiple-iSCSI-sessions-on-Windows-Server-2016.

On Linux Servers:

Locate the VPSA iSCSI IP address and the CHAP Username and Password in the VPSA GUI Controller Properties Page:

Run the following commands to issue an iSCSI login using CHAP credentials:

$ iscsiadm -m node -T <VPSA-Target-IQN> -p <VPSA-Management-IP> --op new
$ iscsiadm -m node -T <VPSA-Target-IQN> -p <VPSA-Management-IP> --op update -n node.session.auth.authmethod -v CHAP
$ iscsiadm -m node -T <VPSA-Target-IQN> -p <VPSA-Management-IP> --op update -n node.session.auth.username -v <CHAP-username>
$ iscsiadm -m node -T <VPSA-Target-IQN> -p <VPSA-Management-IP> --op update -n node.session.auth.password -v <CHAP-secret>
$ iscsiadm -m node -T <VPSA-Target-IQN> -p <VPSA-Management-IP> --login

Where:

  • VPSA-Target-IQN – Target IQN of the VPA. Can be found in the VPSA GUI > Controllers page, Properties South Panel, Target parameter. It is of this format:

    iqn.2011-04.com.zadarastorage:vsa-000009e5:1
    
  • VPSA-Management-IP - The iSCSI IP of your VPSA. Can be found in the VPSA GUI > `Controllers page, under the iSCSI IP column.

To ensure automatic login of your Server to the VPSA after each reboot (or iscsid restart), run the following command on your Linux Server:

$ iscsiadm -m node -T <VPSA-Target-IQN> -p <VPSA-Management-IP> --op update -n node.startup -v automatic

Note

To achieve best performance, it is recommended to use multiple sessions & MPIO. To enable multi-sessions and MPIO, please follow the instructions at: https://support.zadarastorage.com/hc/en-us/articles/213024386-How-To-setup-Multiple-iSCSI-sessions-and-MultiPath-on-your-Linux-Cloud-Server

On VMware ESX Servers:

On VMware ESX use the native multipathing. No special configuration is required.

Establishing FC connection

To add Servers (of any OS) connecting to the VPSA over Fibre Channel: Go to Servers > Add and select Manual:

  • Enter the Server Name.

Note

Objects names can be up to 128 chars long and can contain letters and digits, dashes “-” and underscores “_”

  • Select the server OS

  • Turn on the FC connectivity:

Inline image 3

Click Edit and select the WWPN of your chosen Server

image41

Before defining a Server using FC connectivity, make sure to install and configure multipathing software on the Server.

For Windows, Linux and ESX servers:

follow the instructions listed above Adding a Server automatically over Fibre Channel.

For Solaris server:

While on Solaris x86 multipath is a default, on SPARC servers it must be configured using:

bash-3.2# stmsboot -e

Note

A reboot is needed after issuing the command.

Multipathing parameters should be set in the following configuration file: /kernel/drv/scsi_vhci.con:

#load-balance="round-robin";
load-balance="none";
#
auto-failback="disable";
#
# For enabling MPxIO support for 3rd party symmetric device need an
# entry similar to following in this file. Just replace the "SUN     SENA"
# part with the Vendor ID/Product ID for the device, exactly as reported by
# Inquiry cmd.
#
device-type-scsi-options-list =
"Zadara  VPSA    ", "f_tpgs";
# Tunable for updating path states after a UNIT ATTENTION reset.
# There are arrays which do not queue UAs during resets
# after an implicit failover. For such arrays, we need to
# update the path states after any type of UA resets, since
# UA resets take higher precedence among other UNIT ATTENTION
# conditions. By default, scsi_vhci does not update path states
# on UA resets. To make scsi_vhci do that for such arrays, you need
# to set the tunable scsi-vhci-update-pathstate-on-reset to "yes"
# for the VID/PID combination as described below.
#
#       "012345670123456789012345",     "yes" or "no"
#       "|-VID--||-----PID------|",
#
scsi-vhci-update-pathstate-on-reset =
     "Zadara  VPSA    ",     "yes";

For AIX server:

For AIX server to connect to VPSA volumes using multipathing Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) is required. Install DMP on the AIX server.

ODM Package (Zadara.aix.fcp.nonmpio.rte.1.0.0.0.bff) should be installed (to set the storage prameters to the OS) by running the following command:

# installp -ad <package_folder> -e <log_folder)/Zadara.aix.fcp.nonmpio.rte.

Note

After ODM installation you must reboot the AIX server.

Also make sure to setup the zoning on the FC switch to allow connectivity between the connecting Server and the VPSA FC ports.

Connectivity Monitoring

The VPSA can be configured to allow a server connectivity monitoring for specific attached server(s). Connectivity monitoring will ping a specific server and will notify the VPSA administrators (or any other VPSA user with the “Notify on alerts” permissions), notifications are optional (but enabled by default).

Connectivity monitoring can be enabled for a specific server record during server record creation time or any time later by using the “Config” option in the VPSA Servers view. Toggle the option on for “Connectivity monitoring”

Important

Please note that in order to monitor existing records, ICMP traffic from the VPSA to the selected server should be allowed.

The VPSA will attempt to reach to the remote server and in case of a failure that doesn’t meet the success threshold (Default 60%) an alert will be sent to the VPSA administrator.

Once enabled, the south pane for a server record will have an additional section presenting the connectivity monitoring status (last state, last success rate, reachability status change and latest connectivity test)

The default configuration for the connectivity monitoring is set globally on the VPSA level and applicable for all server records. For additional information on how to customize the alerting/connectivity success threshold, refer to Server Connectivity Monitoring in Settings.

Configure Server Attributes

For iSCSI Servers you can change the following Server Attributes using the Config Server dialog:

  • Server IQN

  • Server IP address

  • Enable/Disable IPSec

  • CHAP settings

image42

Both the server IQN and IP address must be unique. Therefore, the VPSA will block you from changing those attributes to conflicting values used by other Servers.

For FC servers you can change the following Server Attributes using the Config Server dialog:

  • WWPN’s

image43

Viewing Servers Properties

The Servers Page displays a list of the available Server objects. You can view the following detailed information in the Servers details South Panel tabs:

image44

Properties

Each server displays the following properties:

Property

Description

ID

An internally assigned unique ID.

Name

User assigned name. If the Server was created as a result of an iSCSI login, the VPSA will assign it a name similar to its IQN. Name can be modified anytime

Comment

User free text comment. Can be used for labels, reminders or any other purpose

VPSA CHAP User

VPSA CHAP User

VPSA CHAP Secret

VPSA CHAP Secret

Host CHAP User

Host CHAP User

Host CHAP Secret

Host CHAP Secret

IP or CIDR Block

IP Address or CIDR block of the Server(s).

iSCSI IQN

Unique “iSCSI Qualified Name” of the Server.

IPSec ISCSI

Enabled\Disabled

IPSec NFS

Enabled\Disabled

WWPN1

WorldWide Port Name for FC connectivity

WWPN2

WorldWide Port Name for FC connectivity

Registered

Yes – The Connect script was used to create the Server.

No – The Server was created manually or via iSCSI login.

OS

OS version detailed string, such as:

“Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter 6.1.7601”

Available only for registered Servers.

Added

Date & time when the Server object was added.

Modified

Date & time when the Server object was last modified.

Volumes

A list of all the Volumes attached to this Server.

Paths

This tab lists all the paths between this Server and each controller of the VPSA. If multipathing is set it shows all paths, along with the number of active sessions.

For iSCSI connections the initiator and target IQNs are listed.

For Fibre Channel connections initiator and target WWPN are listed.

Metering

The Metering Charts provide live metering of the IO workload associated with the selected Server.

The charts display the usage data as it was captured in the past 20 “intervals”. An interval length can be set to one of the following: 1 Second, 10 Seconds, 1 Minute, 10 Minutes, or 1 Hour. The Auto button lets you see continuously-updating live metering info (refreshed every 3 seconds).

The following charts are displayed:

Chart

Description

IOPs

The Number of read and write SCSI commands issued from this Server to all its attached Volumes.

Bandwidth (MB\s)

Total Throughput (in MB) of read and write SCSI issued from this Server to all its attached Volumes.

IO Time (ms)

Average response time of all read and write SCSI issued from this Server to all its attached Volumes.

Logs

Displays all event logs associated with this Server.

Performance Alerts

A VPSA administrator has the option to set the following Server Performance Alerts:

  • Read IOPS Limit – Creates an alert when, during the past minutes, the average read IOPS for this Server exceeds a user-specified threshold.

  • Read Throughput Limit - Creates an alert when the average read MB/s during the past minute for this server exceeds a user-specified threshold.

  • Read Latency Limit – Creates an alert when, during the past minute, the average read latency for this server exceeds a user-specified threshold.

  • Write IOPS Limit – Creates an alert when, during the past hour, the average write IOPS for this server exceeds a user-specified threshold.

  • Write Throughput Limit - Creates an alert when, during the past minute, the average write MB/s for this server exceeds a user-specified threshold.

  • Write Latency Limit – Creates an alert when, during the past minute, the average write latency for this server exceeds a user-specified threshold.

Tags

Predefined custom tags can be configured in the Tags tab. An example use case for tags is Filtering the List of Servers in the center pane.

A tag is identified by its Tag Name and has a Tag Value associated with it. A tag can be defined only once for a server. However, the same Tag Name can be defined with a different Tag Value for other servers.

  • Create: To create a new tag for a server, in the pool’s Tags tab click Create, and enter the Tag Name and Tag Value. The tag is added to the list of tags in the Tags tab.

  • Edit: To change the Tag Value of an existing tag, click on that tab in the tags list to mark it, and then click Edit. The Edit Tag dialog box opens, allowing overwriting of the Tag Value.

    Note

    Only the Tag Value can be edited. A tag cannot be renamed. It must be deleted, and a tag with the new name configured in its place.

  • Delete: To delete a tag, click on that tag row in the tags list to mark it, and then click Delete. A confirmation dialog box opens.

  • Refresh: Displays the updated tags list.

Deleting a Server

In case a server record is no longer needed, it can be Deleted from the VPSA. The server record marked for deletion must not have any volumes attached to it. Once volumes are detached, the server will lose access to the volumes.

In order to delete a server record select the Delete option from the top actions menu in the Servers section.