Dell Storage Center Fibre Channel and iSCSI drivers¶

Supported operations¶

The Dell Storage Center volume driver provides the following Cinder volume operations:

• Create, delete, attach (map), and detach (unmap) volumes.
• Create, list, and delete volume snapshots.
• Create a volume from a snapshot.
• Copy an image to a volume.
• Copy a volume to an image.
• Clone a volume.
• Extend a volume.
• Create, delete, list and update a consistency group.
• Create, delete, and list consistency group snapshots.
• Manage an existing volume.
• Failover-host for replicated back ends.

Extra spec options¶

Volume type extra specs can be used to enable a variety of Dell Storage Center options. Selecting Storage Profiles, Replay Profiles, enabling replication and enabling replication of the Active Replay.

Storage Profiles control how Storage Center manages volume data. For a given volume, the selected Storage Profile dictates which disk tier accepts initial writes, as well as how data progression moves data between tiers to balance performance and cost. Predefined Storage Profiles are the most effective way to manage data in Storage Center.

By default, if no Storage Profile is specified in the volume extra specs, the default Storage Profile for the user account configured for the Block Storage driver is used. The extra spec key storagetype:storageprofile with the value of the name of the Storage Profile on the Storage Center can be set to allow to use Storage Profiles other than the default.

For ease of use from the command line, spaces in Storage Profile names are ignored. As an example, here is how to define two volume types using the High Priority and Low Priority Storage Profiles:

$ cinder type-create "GoldVolumeType"
$ cinder type-key "GoldVolumeType" set storagetype:storageprofile=highpriority
$ cinder type-create "BronzeVolumeType"
$ cinder type-key "BronzeVolumeType" set storagetype:storageprofile=lowpriority

Replay Profiles control how often the Storage Center takes a replay of a given volume and how long those replays are kept. The default profile is the daily profile that sets the replay to occur once a day and to persist for one week.

The extra spec key storagetype:replayprofiles with the value of the name of the Replay Profile or profiles on the Storage Center can be set to allow to use Replay Profiles other than the default daily profile.

As an example, here is how to define a volume type using the hourly Replay Profile and another specifying both hourly and the default daily profile:

$ cinder type-create "HourlyType"
$ cinder type-key "HourlyType" set storagetype:replayprofile=hourly
$ cinder type-create "HourlyAndDailyType"
$ cinder type-key "HourlyAndDailyType" set storagetype:replayprofiles=hourly,daily

Note the comma separated string for the HourlyAndDailyType.

Replication for a given volume type is enabled via the extra spec replication_enabled.

To create a volume type that specifies only replication enabled back ends:

$ cinder type-create "ReplicationType"
$ cinder type-key "ReplicationType" set replication_enabled='<is> True'

Extra specs can be used to configure replication. In addition to the Replay Profiles above, replication:activereplay can be set to enable replication of the volume’s active replay. And the replication type can be changed to synchronous via the replication_type extra spec can be set.

To create a volume type that enables replication of the active replay:

$ cinder type-create "ReplicationType"
$ cinder type-key "ReplicationType" set replication_enabled='<is> True'
$ cinder type-key "ReplicationType" set replication:activereplay='<is> True'

To create a volume type that enables synchronous replication :

$ cinder type-create "ReplicationType"
$ cinder type-key "ReplicationType" set replication_enabled='<is> True'
$ cinder type-key "ReplicationType" set replication_type='<in> sync'

iSCSI configuration¶

Use the following instructions to update the configuration file for iSCSI:

default_volume_type = delliscsi
enabled_backends = delliscsi

[delliscsi]
# Name to give this storage back-end
volume_backend_name = delliscsi
# The iSCSI driver to load
volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.dell.dell_storagecenter_iscsi.DellStorageCenterISCSIDriver
# IP address of Enterprise Manager
san_ip = 172.23.8.101
# Enterprise Manager user name
san_login = Admin
# Enterprise Manager password
san_password = secret
# The Storage Center iSCSI IP address
iscsi_ip_address = 192.168.0.20
# The Storage Center serial number to use
dell_sc_ssn = 64702

# ==Optional settings==

# The Enterprise Manager API port
dell_sc_api_port = 3033
# Server folder to place new server definitions
dell_sc_server_folder = devstacksrv
# Volume folder to place created volumes
dell_sc_volume_folder = devstackvol/Cinder
# The iSCSI IP port
iscsi_port = 3260

Fibre Channel configuration¶

Use the following instructions to update the configuration file for fibre channel:

default_volume_type = dellfc
enabled_backends = dellfc

[dellfc]
# Name to give this storage back-end
volume_backend_name = dellfc
# The FC driver to load
volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.dell.dell_storagecenter_fc.DellStorageCenterFCDriver
# IP address of Enterprise Manager
san_ip = 172.23.8.101
# Enterprise Manager user name
san_login = Admin
# Enterprise Manager password
san_password = secret
# The Storage Center serial number to use
dell_sc_ssn = 64702

# ==Optional settings==

# The Enterprise Manager API port
dell_sc_api_port = 3033
# Server folder to place new server definitions
dell_sc_server_folder = devstacksrv
# Volume folder to place created volumes
dell_sc_volume_folder = devstackvol/Cinder

Replication configuration¶

Add the following to the back-end specification to specify another Storage Center to replicate to.

[dell]
replication_device = target_device_id: 65495, qosnode: cinderqos

The target_device_id is the SSN of the remote Storage Center and the qosnode is the QoS Node setup between the two Storage Centers.

Note that more than one replication_device line can be added. This will slow things down, however.

A volume is only replicated if the volume is of a volume-type that has the extra spec replication_enabled set to <is> True.

Driver options¶

The following table contains the configuration options specific to the Dell Storage Center volume driver.