Nimble & Alletra 6k Storage volume driver¶
Nimble Storage fully integrates with the OpenStack platform through the Nimble Cinder driver, allowing a host to configure and manage Nimble and Alletra 6k Storage array features through Block Storage interfaces.
Support for iSCSI storage protocol is available with NimbleISCSIDriver Volume Driver class and Fibre Channel with NimbleFCDriver.
Support for the Liberty release and above is available from Nimble OS 2.3.8 or later.
Support for the Ocata release and above is available from Nimble OS 3.6 or later.
For Xena release, Nimble OS 5.3 or later is used and Alletra OS 6.0 or later is used.
Nimble and Alletra 6k Storage Cinder driver does not support port binding with multiple interfaces on the same subnet due to existing limitation in os-brick. This is partially referenced in the bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/os-brick/+bug/1722432 but does not resolve for multiple software iscsi ifaces.
Supported operations¶
Create, delete, clone, attach, and detach volumes
Create and delete volume snapshots
Create a volume from a snapshot
Copy an image to a volume
Copy a volume to an image
Extend a volume
Get volume statistics
Manage and unmanage a volume
Enable encryption and default performance policy for a volume-type extra-specs
Force backup of an in-use volume
Retype a volume
Create a Thinly Provisioned Volume
Attach a volume to multiple servers simultaneously (multiattach)
Volume Revert to Snapshot
Create, list, update, and delete consistency groups
Create, list, and delete consistency group snapshots
Consistency group replication
Nimble and Alletra 6k Storage driver configuration¶
Update the file /etc/cinder/cinder.conf with the given configuration.
Note: These parameters apply to Alletra 6k Storage as well.
In case of a basic (single back-end) configuration, add the parameters
within the [default] section as follows.
[default]
san_ip = NIMBLE_MGMT_IP
san_login = NIMBLE_USER
san_password = NIMBLE_PASSWORD
use_multipath_for_image_xfer = True
volume_driver = NIMBLE_VOLUME_DRIVER
san_thin_provision = True
In case of multiple back-end configuration, for example, configuration which supports multiple Nimble Storage arrays or a single Nimble Storage array with arrays from other vendors, use the following parameters.
[default]
enabled_backends = Nimble-Cinder
[Nimble-Cinder]
san_ip = NIMBLE_MGMT_IP
san_login = NIMBLE_USER
san_password = NIMBLE_PASSWORD
use_multipath_for_image_xfer = True
volume_driver = NIMBLE_VOLUME_DRIVER
volume_backend_name = NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME
In case of multiple back-end configuration, Nimble Storage volume type is created and associated with a back-end name as follows.
Note
Single back-end configuration users do not need to create the volume type.
$ openstack volume type create NIMBLE_VOLUME_TYPE
$ openstack volume type set --property volume_backend_name=NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME NIMBLE_VOLUME_TYPE
This section explains the variables used above:
- NIMBLE_MGMT_IP
Management IP address of Nimble/Alletra 6k Storage array/group.
- NIMBLE_USER
Nimble/Alletra 6k Storage account login with minimum
power user(admin) privilege if RBAC is used.- NIMBLE_PASSWORD
Password of the admin account for Nimble/Alletra 6k array.
- NIMBLE_VOLUME_DRIVER
Use either cinder.volume.drivers.hpe.nimble.NimbleISCSIDriver for iSCSI or cinder.volume.drivers.hpe.nimble.NimbleFCDriver for Fibre Channel.
- NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME
A volume back-end name which is specified in the
cinder.conffile. This is also used while assigning a back-end name to the Nimble volume type.- NIMBLE_VOLUME_TYPE
The Nimble volume-type which is created from the CLI and associated with
NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME.Note
Restart the
cinder-api,cinder-scheduler, andcinder-volumeservices after updating thecinder.conffile.
Nimble driver extra spec options¶
The Nimble volume driver also supports the following extra spec options:
- ‘nimble:encryption’=’yes’
Used to enable encryption for a volume-type.
- ‘nimble:perfpol-name’=PERF_POL_NAME
PERF_POL_NAME is the name of a performance policy which exists on the Nimble/Alletra 6k array and should be enabled for every volume in a volume type.
Note
When upgrading to OpenStack deployment to Victoria or later,
do unset nimble:multi-initiator extra-spec and set multiattach='<is> True'.
- nimble:dedupe’=’true’
Used to enable dedupe support for a volume-type.
- ‘nimble:iops-limit’=IOPS_LIMIT
Used to set the IOPS_LIMIT between 256 and 4294967294 for all volumes created for this volume-type.
- ‘nimble:folder’=FOLDER_NAME
FOLDER_NAME is the name of the folder which exists on the Nimble/Alletra 6k array and should be enabled for every volume in a volume type
These extra-specs can be enabled by using the following command:
$ openstack volume type set --property KEY=VALUE VOLUME_TYPE
VOLUME_TYPE is the Nimble volume type and KEY and VALUE are
the options mentioned above.
Configuration options¶
The Nimble/Alletra 6k storage driver supports these configuration options:
Configuration option = Default value |
Description |
|---|---|
|
(String) Nimble Controller pool name |
|
(String) Nimble Subnet Label |
|
(String) Path to Nimble Array SSL certificate |
|
(Boolean) Whether to verify Nimble SSL Certificate |
Multipathing¶
In OpenStack environments where Cinder block device multipathing is desired there are a few things to consider.
Configuring mulitpathing varies by system depending on the environment. In a
scenario where solely Nimble devices are being created by Cinder, the
following /etc/multipath.conf file may be used:
defaults {
user_friendly_names yes
find_multipaths no
}
blacklist {
devnode "^(ram|raw|loop|fd|md|dm-|sr|scd|st)[0-9]*"
devnode "^hd[a-z]"
device {
vendor ".*"
product ".*"
}
}
blacklist_exceptions {
device {
vendor "Nimble"
product "Server"
}
}
devices {
device {
vendor "Nimble"
product "Server"
path_grouping_policy group_by_prio
prio "alua"
hardware_handler "1 alua"
path_selector "service-time 0"
path_checker tur
features "1 queue_if_no_path"
no_path_retry 30
failback immediate
fast_io_fail_tmo 5
dev_loss_tmo infinity
rr_min_io_rq 1
rr_weight uniform
}
}
After making changes to /etc/multipath.conf, the multipath subsystem needs
to be reconfigured:
# multipathd reconfigure
Tip
The latest best practices for Nimble devices can be found in the HPE Nimble Storage Linux Integration Guide found on https://infosight.hpe.com
Important
OpenStack Cinder is currently not compatible with the HPE Nimble Storage Linux Toolkit (NLT)
Nova needs to be configured to pickup the actual multipath device created on the host.
In /etc/nova/nova.conf, add the following to the [libvirt] section:
[libvirt]
volume_use_multipath = True
Note
In versions prior to Newton, the option was called iscsi_use_multipath
After editing the Nova configuration file, the nova-conductor service
needs to be restarted.
Tip
Depending on which particular OpenStack distribution is being used, Nova may use a different configuration file than the default.
To validate that instances get properly connected to the multipath device, inspect the instance devices:
# virsh dumpxml <Instance ID | Instance Name | Instance UUID>
Consistency group replication¶
To enable consistency group replication, follow below steps:
Add replication_device to storage backend settings in cinder.conf, then restart Cinder Volume service.
Example of cinder.conf for volume replications:
[nimble] san_ip = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ... replication_device = backend_id:nimblevsagroup2, san_ip:10.132.239.66, san_login:admin, san_password:admin, schedule_name:sched-one, downstream_partner:nimblevsagroup2, period:15, period_unit:minutes
Only one replication_device can be configured for each primary backend.
Keys backend_id, san_ip, san_login, san_password, schedule_name and downstream_partner are mandatory.
Other parameters are optional (if not given, then default values will be used): period:1 period_unit:days num_retain:10 num_retain_replica:1 at_time:’00:00’ until_time:’23:59’ days=’all’ replicate_every:1 alert_threshold:’24:00’
Create a volume type with properties replication_enabled=’<is> True’ and consistent_group_snapshot_enabled=’<is> True’
$ cinder type-create nimble $ cinder type-key nimble set volume_backend_name='nimble' $ cinder type-key nimble set replication_enabled='<is> True' $ cinder type-key nimble set consistent_group_snapshot_enabled='<is> True'
Create a consistency group type with properties consistent_group_snapshot_enabled=’<is> True’ and consistent_group_replication_enabled=’<is> True’.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-type-create repl_type $ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-type-key repl_type set consistent_group_snapshot_enabled='<is> True' consistent_group_replication_enabled='<is> True'
Create a group type with volume types support replication.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-create --name grp_1 repl_type nimble
Create volume in the consistency group.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 create --volume-type nimble --group-id {grp_1-id} --name {volume-name} {size}
Enable consistency group replication.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-enable-replication grp_1
Disable consistency group replication.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-disable-replication grp_1
Failover consistency group replication.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-failover-replication --secondary-backend-id nimblevsagroup2 grp_1
Failback consistency group replication.
$ cinder --os-volume-api-version 3.38 group-failover-replication --secondary-backend-id default grp_1
