Step by Step: Adding storage on a NetApp Filer

In this article, we will go into Adding storage on a NetApp Filer

Added by: Boaz Minitzer
Edited on 4/9/2012

Step 1: Creating the storage space:

Open up Filerview: 

Go to your filer's IP address or host name, and put afterwards /na_admin/  you should get the screen below (Providing your system is a trusted host)

 After you have this screen up, click on the first link: FilerView:

We wont go into creating an aggregate now, but if you dont have one you will need to create an aggregate.  Aggregates are collections of raid groups. They consist of one or more Raid Groups.

I like to think of aggregates as a big hard drive.  There are a lot of similarities there.  When you buy a hard drive you need partition it and format it before it can be used.  until then its basically raw space.  Well, thats an aggregate.  its just raw space.

To create an aggregate, you will bring up the menu such as below, and go through the steps to create an aggregate, choosing if it's double parity, number of physical hard drives, etc.

A volume is very similar to a partition.  That's where you the data goes.  In terms of the previous analogy;  an aggregate is the raw space (hard drive), the volume is the partition, its where you put the file system and data.  some other similarities include the ability to have multiple volumes per aggregate, just like you can have multiple partitions per hard drive.  and you can grow and shrink volumes, just like you can grow and shrink partitions.

A qtree is basically like a sub-directory.  Continuing the analogy,  aggregate is the hard drive, volume is the partition, and qtree is a sub-directory.

( Another item we wont go into here is created qtrees, There are 5 things you can do with a qtree you can't do with a directory and that's why they aren't just called directories.  Oplocks, security style, Quotas, Snapvault, Qtree SnapMirror. )

So we will start by adding a volume: Click on Add under the volume treem and this little window should pop up:

Next you will get this question, if to make the volume Flexible, Traditional or Cache.  Since we are using ONTAP 7.0+  and we dont need a FlexCache volume, we will use a Flexible volume.

Traditional volumes behave identically to volumes in Data ONTAP releases prior to version 7.0. They combine the physical layer of storage (the disk and RAID properties) with the logical layer of the file system (the volumes and any other containers that are used to store files and directories).

Flexible volumes allow you to manage the logical layer of the file system independently of the physical layer of storage. Multiple flexible volumes can exist within a single separate, physically defined aggregate structure of disks and RAID groups. Flexible volumes contained by the same aggregate share the physical storage resources, RAID configuration, and plex structure of that aggregate.

Flexible volumes represent a significant administrative improvement over traditional volumes. Using multiple flexible volumes enables you to do the following:

• Perform administrative and maintenance tasks (for example, backup and restore) on individual flexible volumes rather than on a single, large file system.
• Set services (for example, snapshot schedules) differently for individual flexible volumes.
• Minimize interruptions in data availability by taking individual flexible volumes offline to perform administrative tasks on them while the other flexible volumes remain online.
• Save time by backing up and restoring individual flexible volumes instead of all the file systems an aggregate contains.
   

Next we will choose a name for this Volume, as you can see I called it vol777 :

 

Next we will have a few choices:

Choose the aggregate that you want this volume to be on, in this case I chose a test shelf called "shelf3"

Space Guarantee

Each flexible volume has a space guarantee attribute that controls how its storage is managed in relation to its containing aggregate. There are three possible settings for this attribute:

• volume—Data ONTAP pre-allocates space in the aggregate for the volume. The pre-allocated space cannot be allocated to any other volume in that aggregate.
  Space management for a flexible volume with space guarantee of volume is equivalent to a traditional volume or to all volumes in versions of Data ONTAP earlier than 7.0.
  
• file—Data ONTAP pre-allocates space in the volume so that any file in the volume with space reservation enabled can be completely rewritten, even if its blocks are pinned for a snapshot.
• none—Data ONTAP reserves no extra space for the volume. Writes to LUNs or files contained by that volume could fail if the containing aggregate does not have enough available space to accommodate the write.
Note: Because out-of-space errors are unexpected in a CIFS environment, do not set the space guarantee to none for volumes accessed using CIFS.




We will choose Volume for this demo.

Next, we will get this screen:

Volume Size Type

Indicate whether the value you specify in the Volume Size field is the total volume size, which includes space reserved for storing Snapshot copies, or only the space usable by the active file system, which does not include the Snapshot reserve.
By default, the Snapshot reserve is 20% of the volume, but you can change the percentage of space reserved for Snapshot copies in the Snapshot Reserve field. (depending on the application, you may not even need any snapshots, however they are recommended most of the time!)
Select the button that corresponds to the volume size type you want to us, in this case we will choose 55Gb as the size, and leave 5% for snapshots.

Finally, we will get this screen, which is a summary of the wizard, and you will commit the changes to the filer:

And you will get this screen if all is successful:

As you can see by going to "Manage" Volumes, our volume is ready for use:

Presenting the storage space to VMware

In order for this storage to be "seen" by VMware, we need to create a LUN:

Click on "Add" under the LUNs menu as seen in picture above

The volume path is /vol/<name of vol>/<name of vol> as you can see in the picture below:

For the LUN Type, choose the one that fits best for your scenario, note that you cannot change this after the LUN is created.

LUN Type	Description
Solaris	The LUN will be used to store a Solaris raw disk in a single-slice partition
Windows	The LUN will be used to store a raw disk device in a single-partition Windows disk
HP-UX	The LUN will be used to store HP-UX data
AIX	The LUN will be used to store AIX data
Linux	The LUN will be used to store a Linux raw disk with no partition table
NetWare	The LUN will be used to store NetWare data
VMware	The LUN will be used to store VMware data

And as you can see, we got the message "LUN Create: lun create: created a LUN of size: 52.0g (55839817728) Success"

Now we have the Lun created, however it's not mapped to an initiator group, so we will next go into "Manage Luns" Page:

 As you can see above, all the LUNs (that are being exported to a VMware system) have a mapping to an initiator group, our new LUN does not however.

We will click on the "no maps" link and get the following screen:

We will then click on [Add Groups to Map] and be taken to the following screen:

Note: (we have already created an iscsi initiator, if you dont have one, you will need to create one)

In this case, we will choose "vmware" on the right, and click on "Add"

We will then either put in a number that is unused, which will be the LUN id, or just click on Apply, as the system will assign one automatically.

Step 2: Adding the storage to VMware vCenter

Please click here to go to part 2 of this series.