Solved: Cinder for NetAPP FC driver

orangeiv_liu · ‎2014-01-25

Hi, Experts

I was asked by client regard on the Openstack for Power/AIX + NetAPP storage infrastructure architecture.

But you should know Power/AIX with SAN BOOT only support for Fiber Channel Protocol(FC) Storage.

Can you tell me if the NetApp product already provided FC block storage driver in Openstack or the future roadmap for this feature?

Alternatively, Can I have the work-around solution to solve Power/AIX(SAN BOOT) with NetAPP FC Storage.

esker · ‎2014-01-27

Hi Orangeiv,

I'm not entirely clear on the scenario and what role the AIX hosts play (perhaps the compute node?). OpenStack presently does not provide for boot and configuration of the compute node directly (although the Triple-O project intends to do so in the future) so the means by which it boots and roots its OS is externally arranged. I'm aware of a couple production deployments that do SAN boot their compute nodes (employing a Linux flavor in those cases), but that distinction is not terribly important to the operation of OpenStack itself. If, however, you're asking how Cinder volumes (block devices) can be provisioned to Nova instances (guest virtual machines) through an AIX host functioning as a Nova compute node, then the NFS driver that had been mentioned in a previous post is your best bet presently. There is nascent support in Cinder directly (in the most recent OpenStack release) for Fibre Channel as the means of transport, but it is not yet widely adopted or supported. The NetApp Cinder drivers do not presently (as of the Havana release) provide support for Fibre Channel, but we are investigating adding that capability in the future. We'd like to better understand your customers requirements in this respect to make sure we're tailoring our plans to use cases. If you'd be willing to share a bit more about their requirements, it'd be greatly appreciated. My contact info follows:

Thanks!

Rob Esker

Sr. Product Manager - OpenStack

esker@netapp.com

@openstacknetapp

View solution in original post

HENRYPAN2 · ‎2014-01-26

Hi Orangeiv,

You may wish to check NFS export file system for Power/AIX mount.

Good luck

Henry PAN

esker · ‎2014-01-27

Hi Orangeiv,

I'm not entirely clear on the scenario and what role the AIX hosts play (perhaps the compute node?). OpenStack presently does not provide for boot and configuration of the compute node directly (although the Triple-O project intends to do so in the future) so the means by which it boots and roots its OS is externally arranged. I'm aware of a couple production deployments that do SAN boot their compute nodes (employing a Linux flavor in those cases), but that distinction is not terribly important to the operation of OpenStack itself. If, however, you're asking how Cinder volumes (block devices) can be provisioned to Nova instances (guest virtual machines) through an AIX host functioning as a Nova compute node, then the NFS driver that had been mentioned in a previous post is your best bet presently. There is nascent support in Cinder directly (in the most recent OpenStack release) for Fibre Channel as the means of transport, but it is not yet widely adopted or supported. The NetApp Cinder drivers do not presently (as of the Havana release) provide support for Fibre Channel, but we are investigating adding that capability in the future. We'd like to better understand your customers requirements in this respect to make sure we're tailoring our plans to use cases. If you'd be willing to share a bit more about their requirements, it'd be greatly appreciated. My contact info follows:

Thanks!

Rob Esker

Sr. Product Manager - OpenStack

esker@netapp.com

@openstacknetapp