Isilon OneFS 7.0 has been out for a couple months. OneFS 7.0 has brought some additional features to Isilon, particularly toward VMware vSphere support.
I blogged about VASA support in another article: Configuring the EMC Isilon VASA Provider.
This article is going to focus on how to configure the NFS VAAI Plugin for Isilon when used with VMware vSphere 5.
Requirements
Here are the basic technical requirements to get the plugin working:
- An Isilon cluster running OneFS 7.0.0.0 or higher
- VMware vSphere 5.0
- I have used vSphere 5.1 without issue
- I have heard of situations where 5.0.0 does not work successfully until upgraded to 5.0 Update 1
- A SmartConnect zone configured for the presented datastores
- NFS mounted datastores being presented from the Isilon cluster using the SmartConnect zone name (can be short or FQDN)
- All IP addresses in the Isilon pool must be “Allowed IP addresses” in the NFS Client settings in ESXi
Installation
The installation process is not 100% straight forward according to the Release Notes, which require a support.emc.com login to get to. I’ll try to provide a little clarification here.
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As one of the more Isilon-centric vSpecialists at EMC, I see a lot of questions about leveraging Isilon NFS in vSphere environments. Most of them are around the confusion of how SmartConnect works and the load balancing/distribution it provides.
Not too long ago, a question arose around mounting NFS exports from an Isilon cluster, and the methods to go about doing that.
Duncan Epping published an article recently titled How does vSphere recognize an NFS datastore?
I am not going to rehash Duncan’s content, but suffice to say, a combination of the target NAS (by IP, FQDN, or short name) and a complete NFS export path are used to create the UUID of an NFS datastore. As Duncan linked in his article, there is another good explanation by the NetApp folks here: NFS Datastore UUIDs: How They Work, and What Changed In vSphere 5
Looking back at my Isilon One Datastore or Many post, there are a couple ways to mount NFS presented datastores from an Isilon cluster if vSphere 5 is used. Previous versions of vSphere are limited to a single datastore per IP address and path.
Using vSphere 5, one of the recommended methods is to use a SmartConnect Zone name in conjunction with a given NFS export path.
In my lab, I have 3 Isilon nodes running OneFS 7.0, along with 3 ESXi hosts running vSphere 5.1. The details of the configuration is:
- Isilon Cluster running OneFS 7.0.1.1
- SmartConnect Zone with the name of mavericks.vlab.jasemccarty.com
- SmartConnect Service IP of 192.168.80.80
- Pool0 with the range of 192.168.80.81-.83 & 1 external interface for each node
- SmartConnect Advanced Connection Policy is Connection Count
- NFS export with the following path
- vCenter Server 5.1 on Windows 2008 R2 with Web Client
- 3 ESXi hosts running vSphere 5.1
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A while back there was a buzz on Twitter about the EMC Elect program. I didn’t know what it was, so I reached out to Matthew Brender to find out more.
If you are familiar with the VMware vExpert program, EMC Elect is a very similar program.
I’m going to keep this post short, as I’m sitting here in the Delta Sky Club in Terminal D, and quite frankly don’t know what to say.
I received an email with some pretty exciting news (to me at least). I have been selected as an EMC Elect Inaugural Member for 2013.
Apparently I made some type of impact with contributions on Twitter, the EMC Community Network, and through my Isilon blog posts.
I’d like to thank all of those that recommended me, and for Matt Brender’s email welcoming me to this group.
“Jase, for your incredible leadership around Isilon evangelism and just pure, humble dedication to the greater community, I’m thrilled to send you this email.” – Matthew Brender
I am truly honored to have been selected as an inaugural member of EMC Elect for 2013.
I guess I need to get back to Twitter/ECN/Blogging, so I can keep it up for next year…
Look for some more Isilon posts in the coming weeks…
Thanks again!
Jase
So OneFS 7.0 has been announced. Some of the new features include some virtualization components, specifically around VMware integration.
One of those integrations, is around VASA.
I’m not going to go deep into VASA, I’ll let the above link do that.
With Isilon OneFS 7.0, it is very easy to implement VASA integration.
To get started, the VASA service needs to be enabled from within OneFS 7.0. The command for this is “isi services isi_vasa_d enable”
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Looking back that the SmartConnect Part I post, remember that SmartConnect is handling DNS delegation of the SmartConnect Zone name (FQDN)… So… What happens if the SmartConnect Zone for an NFS data network is on an isolated network? Keep in mind, that DNS needs to contact the SmartConnect Service IP to request an IP resolution for the FQDN. How can this happen if the SmartConnect Service IP for that zone is on an isolated network?
The first network defined for the “front-end” is typically configured as subnet0. It is a common practice to leverage subnet0 for the management of an Isilon cluster. When using IP based storage in vSphere environments, it is a best practice to have the storage traffic isolated from the regular network. In my previous posts (SmartConnect Part I & SmartConnect Part II) the SmartConnect Zone was on the same subnet/pool. When this is the case, and isolated networks are being used, it is impossible to leverage SmartConnect on the isolated network, unless there is a DNS, and subsequent delegation, in that isolated network.
Read more…
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