Nimble Storage volume driver¶

Nimble Storage fully integrates with the OpenStack platform through the Nimble Cinder driver, allowing a host to configure and manage Nimble Storage array features through Block Storage interfaces.

Support for the Liberty release is available from Nimble OS 2.3.8 or later.

Supported operations¶

Create, delete, clone, attach, and detach volumes
Create and delete volume snapshots
Create a volume from a snapshot
Copy an image to a volume
Copy a volume to an image
Extend a volume
Get volume statistics
Manage and unmanage a volume
Enable encryption and default performance policy for a volume-type extra-specs
Force backup of an in-use volume.

Note

The Nimble Storage implementation uses iSCSI only. Fibre Channel is not supported.

Nimble Storage driver configuration¶

Update the file /etc/cinder/cinder.conf with the given configuration.

In case of a basic (single back-end) configuration, add the parameters within the [default] section as follows.

[default]
san_ip = NIMBLE_MGMT_IP
san_login = NIMBLE_USER
san_password = NIMBLE_PASSWORD
volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.nimble.NimbleISCSIDriver

In case of multiple back-end configuration, for example, configuration which supports multiple Nimble Storage arrays or a single Nimble Storage array with arrays from other vendors, use the following parameters.

[default]
enabled_backends = Nimble-Cinder

[Nimble-Cinder]
san_ip = NIMBLE_MGMT_IP
san_login = NIMBLE_USER
san_password = NIMBLE_PASSWORD
volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.nimble.NimbleISCSIDriver
volume_backend_name = NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME

In case of multiple back-end configuration, Nimble Storage volume type is created and associated with a back-end name as follows.

Note

Single back-end configuration users do not need to create the volume type.

$ cinder type-create NIMBLE_VOLUME_TYPE
$ cinder type-key NIMBLE_VOLUME_TYPE set volume_backend_name=NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME

This section explains the variables used above:

NIMBLE_MGMT_IP: Management IP address of Nimble Storage array/group.
NIMBLE_USER: Nimble Storage account login with minimum power user (admin) privilege if RBAC is used.
NIMBLE_PASSWORD: Password of the admin account for nimble array.
NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME: A volume back-end name which is specified in the cinder.conf file. This is also used while assigning a back-end name to the Nimble volume type.
NIMBLE_VOLUME_TYPE: The Nimble volume-type which is created from the CLI and associated with NIMBLE_BACKEND_NAME.

Note

Restart the cinder-api, cinder-scheduler, and cinder-volume services after updating the cinder.conf file.

Nimble driver extra spec options¶

The Nimble volume driver also supports the following extra spec options:

‘nimble:encryption’=’yes’: Used to enable encryption for a volume-type.
‘nimble:perfpol-name’=PERF_POL_NAME: PERF_POL_NAME is the name of a performance policy which exists on the Nimble array and should be enabled for every volume in a volume type.
‘nimble:multi-initiator’=’true’: Used to enable multi-initiator access for a volume-type.

These extra-specs can be enabled by using the following command:

$ cinder type-key VOLUME_TYPE set KEY=VALUE

VOLUME_TYPE is the Nimble volume type and KEY and VALUE are the options mentioned above.

Configuration options¶

The Nimble storage driver supports these configuration options:

Description of Nimble driver configuration options
Configuration option = Default value	Description
[DEFAULT]
`nimble_pool_name` = `default`	(String) Nimble Controller pool name
`nimble_subnet_label` = `*`	(String) Nimble Subnet Label