Provisioning File Storage for Classic for use as a VMware datastore

NFS Protocol VMware feature support matrix

Source - VMware® - NFS Protocols and ESXi.

Using Snapshots

File Storage for Classic allows administrators to set snapshot schedules that create and delete snapshot copies automatically for each storage volume. They can also create extra snapshot schedules (hourly, daily, weekly) for automatic snapshots and manually create ad hoc snapshots for business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) scenarios. Automatic alerts are delivered through the IBM Cloud® console to the volume owner for the retained snapshots and space used.

Snapshot space is required to use snapshots. Space can be purchased on the initial volume order or after the initial provisioning through the Volume Details page by clicking Actions and selecting Add Snapshot Space.

It's important to note that VMware® environments are not aware of snapshots. The File Storage for Classic snapshot capability must not be confused with VMware® snapshots. Any recovery that uses the File Storage for Classic snapshot feature must be handled from the IBM Cloud® console.

Restoring the File Storage for Classic volume requires powering off all the VMs on the File Storage for Classic. The volume needs to be temporarily unmounted from the ESXi host to avoid any data corruption during the process.

For more information, see the snapshots article.

Using replication

Replication uses one of your snapshot schedules to automatically copy snapshots to a destination volume in a remote data center. The copies can be recovered in the remote site if a catastrophic event or data corruption occurs.

With replicas, you can

• Recover from site failures and other disasters quickly by failing over to the destination volume.
• Fail over to a specific point in time with the DR copy.

Replication keeps your data in sync in two different locations. If you want to clone your volume and use it independently from the original volume, see Creating a duplicate File Volume.

Before you can replicate, you must create a snapshot schedule.

When you fail over, you are “flipping the switch” from your storage volume in your primary data center to the destination volume in your remote data center. For example, your primary data center is in London and your secondary data center is in Amsterdam. If a failure event occurs, you’d fail over to Amsterdam. Failing over means connecting to the now-primary volume from a vSphere Cluster instance in Amsterdam. After your volume in London is repaired, a snapshot is taken of the Amsterdam volume. Then, you can fail back to London and connect to the primary volume from a Compute instance in London.

Before the volume fails back to the primary data center, it needs to stop being used at the remote site. A snapshot of any new or changed information is taken and replicated to the primary data center before it can be mounted again on the production site ESXi hosts.

For more information about configuring replicas, see Replication.

Invalid data, whether corrupted, hacked, or infected replicate according to the snapshot schedule and snapshot retention. Using the smallest replication windows can provide for a better recovery point objective. However, it can also provide less time to react to the replication of invalid data.

Step 1. Configuring the VMware Host.

1. From an internet-connected computer, start an RDP client and establish an RDP session to the IBM Cloud® Virtual Servers that is provisioned in the same data center where vSphere vCenter is installed.
2. From the Virtual Servers, start a web browser and connect to VMware® vCenter through the vSphere Web Client.
3. From the HOME screen, select Hosts and Clusters. Expand the side pane and select the VMware® ESXi server that is to be used for this deployment.
4. Make sure that the firewall port for the NFS client is open on all hosts so that you can configure the NFS client on the vSphere host. (The port is automatically opened in the more recent releases of vSphere.) To check whether the port is open, go to the ESXi host Manage tab in VMware® vCenter™, select Settings, and then select Security Profile. In the Firewall section, click Edit and scroll down to NFS Client.
5. Make sure Allow connection from any IP address or a list of IP addresses is provided.

   

6. Configure Jumbo Frames by going to the ESXi host Manage tab, select Manage and then Networking.
7. Select the VMkernel adapters, highlight the vSwitch and the click Edit (Pencil icon).
8. Select the NIC setting, and ensure that the NIC MTU is set to 9000.
9. Optional. Validate the jumbo frame settings.

   • Windows

     ping -f -l 8972 a.b.c.d
     

   • UNIX

     ping -s 8972 a.b.c.d
     

     The value a.b.c.d is the neighboring Virtual Servers interface.

     Example

     ping a.b.c.d (a.b.c.d) 8972(9000) bytes of data.
     8980 bytes from a.b.c.d: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=3.36 ms
     

For more information about VMware® and Jumbo Frames, see here.

Step 2. Adding an uplink adapter to a virtual switch

1. Configure a new uplink adapter by going to the ESXi host Manage tab, select Manage and then Networking.
2. Select the Physical adapters tab.
3. Click Add host networking (Globe icon with a plus sign).
4. Select the connection type as Physical Network Adapter and click Next.
5. Select the existing vSwitch and click Next.
6. Select Unused adapters and click Add adapters (Plus sign).
7. Click the other "Connected" adapter and click OK.

   

8. Click Next and the Finish.
9. Go back to the Virtual switches tab and select the Edit setting (Pencil icon) under the Virtual Switches heading.
10. Then, select the vSwitch Teaming and failover entry.
11. Verify that the Load-balancing option is set to Route based on the originating virtual port and click OK.

Step 3. Configuring static routing (Optional)

The network configuration for this architecture guide uses a minimal number of port groups. If you have a VMkernel port group for NFS storage, extra steps must be taken. By default, ESXi uses the VMkernel port that is on the same subnet as an NFS volume to mount the NFS volume. Since layer 3 routing is used to mount the NFS volume, ESXi must be forced to use the VMkernel port that was configured to mount the NFS volume. To use the correct port, a static route must be created to the storage array.

1. To configure a static route, SSH to each ESXi host that uses Performance or Endurance storage and run the following commands. Take note of the IP address that is the result of the ping command (first command) and use it with the esxcli network command.

   ping <hostname of the storage array>
   

   The NFS storage DNS hostname is a Forwarding Zone (FZ) that has multiple IP addresses assigned to it. These IP addresses are static and belong to that specific DNS hostname. Any of those IP addresses can be used to access a specific volume.

   esxcli network ip route ipv4 add –gateway GATEWAYIP –network <result of ping command>/32
   

2. Static routes are not persistent across restarts on ESXi 5.0 and earlier. To ensure that any added static routes remain persistent, this command needs to be added to the local.sh file on each host, which is located in the /etc/rc.local.d/ directory. Open the local.sh file by using the visual editor, and add the second command in Step 4.1. in front of the exit 0 line.

Make note of the IP address as it can be used for mounting the volume in the next step. This process needs to be done for each NFS volume you plan to mount to your ESXi host. For more information, see the VMware® KB article, Configuring static routes for VMkernel ports on an ESXi host.

Configuring Storage I/O Control for a VMware datastore

1. Browse to the VMware® datastore in the vSphere Web Client navigator.
2. Click the Manage tab.
3. Click Settings and click General.
4. Click Edit for Datastore Capabilities.
5. Select the Enable Storage I/O Control checkbox.

   

6. Click OK.

This setting is specific to the VMware® datastore and not to the host.

Configuring Storage I/O Control for Virtual Servers

You can also limit individual virtual disks for individual VMs or grant them different shares with SIOC. By limiting the disks and granting different shares, you can match and align the environment to the workload with the acquired File Storage for Classic volume IOPS number. The limit is set by IOPS, and it's possible to set a different weight or "Shares." Virtual disks with shares set to High (2,000 shares) receive twice as much I/O as a disk set to Normal (1,000 shares). They receive four times as much IO as one set to Low (500 shares). Normal is the default value for all the VMs, so you need to adjust the values to High or Low for the VMs that require it.

Use the following steps to change the VDisk shares and limit.

1. Choose a Virtual Servers in the VMs and Templates inventory.
2. Select the Virtual Servers for I/O Control.
3. Click the Manage tab and click Settings. Click Edit.
4. Expand the hard disk arrow. Select Modify the Shares or Limit - IOPS as is appropriate for your environment. Choose a virtual hard disk from the list and modify the Shares selection to choose the relative number of shares to allocate to the Virtual Servers (Low, Normal, or High). You can also click Custom and enter a user-defined share value.
5. Click the Limit - IOPS column and enter the maximum storage resources to allocate to the virtual machine.
6. Click OK.

This process is used to set the resource consumption limits of individual vDisks in a Virtual Servers even when SIOC is not enabled. These settings are specific to the individual guest, and not the host, although they are used by SIOC.

Updating advanced configuration parameters

The following examples use the ESXi CLI to set the advanced configuration parameters, and check them. The esxcfg-advcfg tool that is used in the examples can be found in the /usr/sbin directory on the ESXi hosts.

• Setting the advanced configuration parameters from the ESXi CLI.

#esxcfg-advcfg -s 32 /Net/TcpipHeapSize
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 128 /Net/TcpipHeapMax(For vSphere 5.0/5.1)
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 512 /Net/TcpipHeapMax(For vSphere 5.5 and higher)
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 256 /NFS/MaxVolumes
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 256 /NFS41/MaxVolumes (ESXi 6.0 and higher)
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 10 /NFS/HeartbeatMaxFailures
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 12 /NFS/HeartbeatFrequency
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 5 /NFS/HeartbeatTimeout
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 64 /NFS/MaxQueueDepth
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 32 /Disk/QFullSampleSize
#esxcfg-advcfg -s 8 /Disk/QFullThreshold

• Checking the advanced configuration parameters from the ESXi CLI.

#esxcfg-advcfg -g /Net/TcpipHeapSize
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /Net/TcpipHeapMax
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /NFS/MaxVolumes
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /NFS41/MaxVolumes (ESXi 6.0 and higher)
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /NFS/HeartbeatMaxFailures
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /NFS/HeartbeatFrequency
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /NFS/HeartbeatTimeout
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /NFS/MaxQueueDepth
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /Disk/QFullSampleSize
#esxcfg-advcfg -g /Disk/QFullThreshold

For more information, see Advanced Single-Site VMware® Reference Architecture.