Transcript
In this screencast, we will walk through the process of adding a NetApp-backed system and image data stores using the native driver that is available in the Enterprise Edition. The native NetApp integration driver is available as a part of the Enterprise Edition offering. This integration enables the full lifecycle of volumes, loans, and snapshots, including FlexClone-based cloning and SendSnapshot incremental backups with the secure HTTPS control and robust iSCSI multipath host orchestration. Before integrating NetApp with OpenAbula, make sure to prepare your frontend and a hypervisor to leverage the persistent iSCSI connection and perform the multipath configuration. Please refer to the NetApp official documentation to get a more detailed guide and make sure to select the correct operating system. The integration focuses strictly on primary datastore management using the iSCSI block devices. Some advanced ONTAP-specific or VMware-exclusive capabilities are intentionally not part of this driver. We must gather the required information from NetApp before proceeding with the datastore configuration. You can either gather them yourself or ask the team that is managing the NetApp appliance. To begin with, let's gather the Initiator Group Unique Identifier. This can be collected by opening Host, Set Initiator Groups, and copying the ID from the address bar. Next we must navigate to Storage, Storage VMs, and select the storage VM configured for this environment. Switch to the Settings tab and locate the iSCSI widget. Copy the target node name value, then open the address bar and copy the Unique Identifier. The last piece of information that needs to be gathered is the Aggregator Unique Identifier. Navigate to Storage, Tiers, and select the Aggregator. Copy the identifier from the same address bar. We are going to use these values in the future steps, so it's a good idea to keep them in some form of a text file for an easier reach. Now we are going to switch to the Openable Sunstone interface. Navigate to Storage, Data Stores, and press the Create button. Let's add the system datastore first by setting the type to System. Let's name it NetApp System and select NetApp from the Storage backend selector. Add it to the default cluster. Place the FQDN or IP of the NetApp's appliance into the NetApp Host field. Then we must supply API credentials in the NetApp User and NetApp Password fields. Then the extracted identifier of the Storage VM goes into the NetApp SVM field. The extracted identifier of the Aggregate Tier goes into the NetApp Aggregates field. The extracted ID of SAN Initiator Group goes into the NetApp IGroup field. The NetApp target must be populated with a value that has been extracted from the iSCSI widget under the specific Storage VM settings. To distinguish LUNs from each other and have a unique name, add a random string into the NetApp suffix field. There are other possibilities for fine-tuning, however, we'll keep them on their respective defaults. Press Next and on the Custom Variables page, add a custom variable with the key disk underscore type and the value block. Let's make sure that there are no errors and the datastore can be monitored correctly. Now let's press the Create button one more time, but this time to add the datastore with the type image. Set the datastore type to image, name it NetApp Images and from the Storage Backend drop-down list select NetApp. Select the cluster and proceed to the configuration attributes. Configure it with the same values as the system datastore. Select NetApp System Datastore from the Compatible System Datastore list. Make the changes and wait until it will be monitored as well. Now let's perform the verification tests. Firstly, navigate to Storage, Apps to import the image and the virtual machine template from the marketplace. Use the search and look for Alpine Linux. Press the Import button and go through the wizard. Make sure to place the images of the correct image datastore. Now go to Storage, Images and wait until the Alpine Linux image is ready to use. Once an image is ready, let's instantiate the Alpine Linux virtual machine template to make sure that the system datastore is working as expected. Go to Instances, VMs and press the Create button. Select the Alpine Linux from the template list. Name it alpine-vm-01, leave the rest on their respective defaults and proceed with the instantiation. Wait until the virtual machine is running. Once the VM is running, press the VNC icon and reach the terminal of the virtual machine. With this we can confirm that the virtual machine has been deployed without any issues and that the system datastore is working as expected. Let's return to the NetApp interface, expand Storage and go to the Launch tab. Place the NetApp suffix into the search field and locate the LUNs for this setup. You can find the datastore ID and the image ID in the name of a LUN. Then you are going to find another LUN, you can locate the virtual machine ID along with the disk ID in the name of that LUN. Now let's terminate the virtual machine. From the SoundStorm graphical UI, locate the virtual machine and select Terminate Hard from the drop-down list. Wait until the virtual machine is in the Done state, identifying that the removal of a virtual machine has been finalized. Let's go back to the NetApp interface. As seen on the screen, the virtual machine's LUN has been removed from the list. And this concludes this screencast where we have shown how to add NetApp-backed system and image datastores using the native NetApp driver, and then verify the integration by deploying a virtual machine running Alpine Linux. Thank you for watching and see you in the next screencast.
