General Openfiler Configuration

From CafeWiki

General Openfiler Configuration

The Openfiler interface is not the most intuitive, especially if you are not well versed in storage networking concepts. The key to setting up an Openfiler instance is to come to terms with the hierarchical nature of the interface. The logical structure of an openfiler instance is:

1. Physical view
   • hard drives
   • partitions, called Physical Volumes (PVs) in Openfiler
2. Volume Groups
   • first layer of abstraction; VGs are container for volumes
   • VGs may be set up as RAID arrays (requires creation of the array ,Software RAID screen) or as simple PVs
   • at this level, there is still no concept of file systems - we're still dealing with physical entities
   • the Volume Groups view in Openfiler shows both the PVs and Volumes associated with a VG
3. Volumes
   • Volumes hold file systems and are no longer necessarily strictly associated with the PVs (e.g. RAID volumes)
   • Volumes are created in unallocated storage blocks within a VG, select Add Volume in the Openfiler menu
   • Volumes must have a file system associated with them iSCSI, Ext3 or XFS

RAID Arrays

To create a RAID volume:

1. Create two or more (depending on RAID type desired) PVs from the Block Devices screen, selecting RAID Array Member as the partition type.
2. From the Create a new RAID array section in the Software RAID screen, select the PVs that will make the RAID array, the array size and the chunk size (I leave the default chunk size since I'm not sure what it does)
3. Create the array (if it is large it will take a while to synchronize - progress is visible from the Software RAID screen)

Once the RAID array is created it behaves like any other volume as far as Openfiler is concerned.

Adding a Volume As long as there is free (unallocated) space in a volume group, a new volume can be created and added to the group. I'm pretty sure that you can also add to the size of existing volumes, but I've never tried it. The steps to add a volume are:

1. Select the VG from the Volumes tab
2. Select Add Volume from the menu on the right and specify:
   • the volume name
   • the volume description
   • the desired size of the volume, and
   • the filesystem (XFS or ext3) or volume type (iSCSI).
3. Select Create

Note that the filesystem or volume type selection is based on the desired use for the volume. If the volume is to be shared (e.g. samba share using ext3) or a dedicated iSCSI target.

In the case of a new iSCSI volume, the target needs to be set up from the iSCSI Targets item on the right hand menu:

1. In the Add new iSCSI Target section, edit the Target IQN so that the very last portion of the IQN name (after the last period) is something human readable and relevant to the use of the iSCSI target (e.g. use .ESXi or .iTunes or the like).
2. Select Add and the lower section will update to reflect the newly added target.
3. Leave the defaults as they are and select Update
4. Switch to the LUN Mapping tab and map the new volume to the target IQN, leaving the default values for the R/W and Transfer modes
5. Switch to the Network ACL tab and allow the appropriate access to this new target (the ip addr of a single machine, since an iSCSI target cannot be shared)
6. From the system that will use the iSCSI, set up the iSCSI initiator as described on the iSCSI Initiators page.