Dell PowerScale driver

The EMC Shared File Systems driver framework (EMCShareDriver) utilizes Dell storage products to provide shared file systems to OpenStack. The EMC driver is a plug-in based driver which is designed to use different plug-ins to manage different Dell storage products.

The PowerScale driver is a plug-in for the EMC framework which allows the Shared File Systems service to interface with an PowerScale back end to provide a shared filesystem. The EMC driver framework with the PowerScale plug-in is referred to as the PowerScale Driver in this document.

This PowerScale Driver interfaces with an PowerScale cluster via the REST PowerScale Platform API (PAPI) and the RESTful Access to Namespace API (RAN).

Requirements

  • PowerScale cluster running OneFS 9.10 or higher

Supported shared filesystems and operations

The drivers supports CIFS and NFS shares.

The following operations are supported:

  • Create a share.

  • Delete a share.

  • Allow share access.

    Note the following limitations:

    • Only IP access type is supported.

    • Only read-write access is supported.

  • Deny share access.

  • Create a snapshot.

  • Delete a snapshot.

  • Create a share from a snapshot.

  • Ensure shares.

Back end configuration

The following parameters need to be configured in the Shared File Systems service configuration file for the PowerScale driver:

share_driver = manila.share.drivers.emc.driver.EMCShareDriver
emc_share_backend = powerscale
emc_nas_server = <IP address of PowerScale cluster>
emc_nas_login = <username>
emc_nas_password = <password>

Thin Provisioning

PowerScale systems have thin provisioning enabled by default. Add the parameter below to set an advisory limit.

powerscale_threshold_limit = <threshold percentage value>

Restrictions

The PowerScale driver has the following restrictions:

  • Only IP access type is supported for NFS and CIFS.

  • Only FLAT network is supported.

  • Quotas are not yet supported.

Driver options

The following table contains the configuration options specific to the share driver.

Description of EMC share driver configuration options

Configuration option = Default value

Description

[DEFAULT]

emc_nas_login = None

(String) User name for the EMC server.

emc_nas_password = None

(String) Password for the EMC server.

emc_nas_root_dir = None

(String) The root directory where shares will be located.

emc_nas_server = None

(String) EMC server hostname or IP address.

emc_nas_server_container = None

(String) DEPRECATED: Storage processor to host the NAS server. Obsolete. Unity driver supports nas server auto load balance.

emc_nas_server_port = 8080

(Port number) Port number for the EMC server.

emc_nas_server_secure = True

(Boolean) Use secure connection to server.

emc_share_backend = None

(String) Share backend.