Why OCUM does not use preferred IP address of vFilers hosts ?

[alain_boyer]

Hello,

I used end to end process to create a dataset with a Storage Service and I've been surprised to see that QSM uses the preferred IP addresses of storage systems rather than those of source and destination vFiler Units

Preferred IP addresses are set for each host (Storage systems and vFiler Units).

Each host uses its dedicated preferred IP address.

Storage Service uses a provisioning policy and a protection policy.

Provisioning service :

• no quota
• no guarantee space
• Reserve space for snapshot

Protection policy :

• base policy = Backup
• Local backup schedule set on primary data
• Backup retention duration set on primary data
• Mirror schedule : once a day
• Backup retention duration set on secondary data

vFiler Units are attached to Primary data and Backup.

During dataset creation OCUM assigns created volumes to corresponding vFilers

... and all storage objects are created.

However, in snapmirror.conf the IP addresses are those of hosting storage systems

Here under the Storage Service settings

Did I missed something ?

Thanks a lot for your help

[kryan]

Greetings Alain,

The described behavior is expected when managing vFiler relationships using OnCommand Unified Manager.

You can read more about this behavior in this KB:

How does OnCommand discover and display SnapVault and SnapMirror relationships with a vFiler as one or both the endpoints of a relationship?

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=3013156

Thanks,

Kevin

[alain_boyer]

Many thanks Kevin, I forgot something important in the description.

All preferred IP addresses belong to hosting system storages. They do not belong to the vFiler units.

However, as we are building a secure multi-tenancy environment, each individual tenant and its dedicated vFilers use dedicated and separated backup networks.

For each tenant the backup dedicated vlan interface and its associated IP address belong to the vFiler0.

Each vFiler unit preferred IP address is a dedicated one but is not attached to the vFiler.

Using the preferred IP address for each host should enforce the data traffic to use the tenant dedicated backup network.

This works perfectly when importing external relationships. I do not understand why it does not work when creating new volumes on same vFilers from storage service and dataset.

[alain_boyer]

Hi,

We really need help from any Guru on this topic.

According to our understanding of the KB on ocum management of relationships between vFilers (thanks to Kevin https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=3013156), we were supposing that ocum uses IP addresses available on physical storage systems and that it uses prefered IP addresses assigned to vFilers Units hosts in the same way it uses the physical storage systems ones.

We imported several external relationships without any problem (thanks to Adaikkappan https://communities.netapp.com/message/102548#102548)

Imports created and modified several entries in snapmirror.conf file on destination storage system.

OCUM created connections lines using the name and the preferred IP address of the vFilers: this is what we were expecting

A few examples from several storage systems:

1. E2NAS001_E2NAS003=multi(10.203.xx.xx,10.203.xx.xx)
2. FROFF001_FRFIL005_1363198327=multi(10.1.xx.xx,10.31.xx.xx)
3. FRNAS004_FRFIL005_1363195793=multi(10.17.xx.xx,10.31.xx.xx)
4. FRFIL005_FRNAS008_1363198591=multi(10.31.xx.xx,10.202.xx.xx)

Related relationships:

1. E2NAS001_E2NAS003:xxx E2NAS003:xxx restart=always,connection_mode=inet 30 23 * *
2. FROFF001_FRFIL005_1363198327:xxx E2NAS003:xxx restart=always,connection_mode=inet - - - -
3. FRNAS004_FRFIL005_1363195793:xxx E2NAS003:xxx kbs=1000,restart=always,connection_mode=inet - - - -
4. FRFIL005_FRNAS008_1363198591:xxx FRNAS008:xxx restart=always,connection_mode=inet - - - -

The first one is physical to physical

The second one is vFiler to vFiler

The third one is physical to vFiler

The fourth one is vFiler to physical

These results show that ocum is able to use prefered IP addresses defined for vFiler Units hosts and creates lines in snapmirror.conf accordingly.

Now, when we provision a new storage from scratch for a dataset with storage service attached and using the same storage systems and/or vFilers, the result is different.

In all cases ocum creates relationships using preferred IP addresses of hosting storage systems...

We do not understand why such differences exists. We think that something is missing in the configuration of dataset / storage service / policies ...

We will appreciate any help to make it working or explanation of this strange behaviour.

Many thanks