Getting started with iSCSI on Google Cloud NetApp Volumes

[sajith]

Exciting news! The Google Cloud NetApp Volumes Flex service level now supports block storage. If you need high-performance, low-latency, reliable iSCSI volumes for your databases or enterprise applications, you’re in the right place. 

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through 

• Setting up NetApp Volumes Flex unified storage
• Attaching the iSCSI volume to Windows
• Creating snapshots, thin clones and configuring cross-region disaster recovery.

More about NetApp Volumes Flex service level

Google Cloud and NetApp^® now provide block storage as part of the NetApp Volumes Flex service level. It’s available through a new storage pool type: Unified. This fully managed service now provides high-performance, reliable, and scalable shared block storage by using the iSCSI protocol. NetApp Volumes Flex makes it easy to provision, to manage, and to connect storage to your applications—whether you’re running databases, enterprise workloads, or any application that needs direct disk access in the cloud.

Let’s get started

Set up your Google Cloud environment

Before we jump into provisioning your storage, you need to set up the following few things in Google Cloud. Don’t worry—these steps are straightforward, and I’ll explain why each one matters:

1. Create a Google Cloud project.
2. Enable billing on the project.
3. Enable the NetApp Volumes API.
4. Configure the network.
5. Set up Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions.

For details on how to configure your project and get started, review the NetApp Volumes access setup guide. 

Now that your Google Cloud environment is ready, let’s create your first Flex block storage pool.

Storage pools

A NetApp Volumes Flex block storage pool can be created with zonal or regional availability, which provides SLAs of 99.9% and 99.99%, respectively. The storage pool supports independent provisioning of capacity, throughput, and IOPS based on the workload demands.

Following are the minimum and maximum values for capacity, throughput, and IOPS.

Attribute	Minimum	Maximum
Capacity	1TiB	425TiB
Throughput	64MiBps	5120MiBps
IOPS	1,024	160,000

Create a Flex unified storage pool

1. Go to the NetApp Volumes page in the Google Cloud console.
2. Click Storage Pools in the left menu.
3. Click Create to start a new pool.
4. Fill in the details:
   • Name: Enter a name for the storage pool.
   • Description (optional): Add a description for the storage pool.
   • Location: Choose your region.
   • Service Level: Select Flex.
   • Type: Choose Unified.
   • Availability: Choose Zonal or Regional (based on your availability needs).
     • Select a Zone and for Regional, select a replica zone as well
   • Capacity, throughput, and IOPS: Set these options based on your needs.

5. Click Create—and just like that, your pool is ready!

Host groups

A host group is a Google Cloud regional resource, a collection of iSCSI initiators (host iSCSI Qualified Names [IQNs]) that can be granted access to specific volumes. Host groups simplify access management by allowing you to control which hosts can connect to and use particular iSCSI volumes. By grouping initiators, you can efficiently manage permissions and streamline storage provisioning for multiple hosts.

It is recommended that you create the host group before you create a volume in the storage pool that you provisioned previously.

 

Obtain iSCSI initiator information

The iSCSI initiator information that you need to create the host group can be obtained from the iSCSI client. To obtain the for a Windows client, follow these steps:

1. Open iSCSI Initiator (iscsicpl.exe) from the Windows Start menu.
2. Go to the Configuration tab.
3. Copy the initiator name (it looks something like iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:your-hostname).

Create a host group

1. In the NetApp Volumes console, click Host Groups.
2. Click Create.
3. Enter a name and (optionally) a description.
4. Under Location, select the region name.
5. Under Configuration, select Windows as the operating system.
6. Click Continue to proceed to adding the IQN information.
7. Paste in your Windows client’s IQN in the Host field.
8. Click Create.

Volumes

By using the Unified storage pool option of NetApp Volumes Flex service level, you can provision iSCSI volumes that can be attached to Linux, Windows, and ESXi systems with a capacity between 1GiB and 128TiB.

Create an iSCSI volume

The following example provisions an iSCSI volume that will be attached to the Windows iSCSI host through a host group that was provisioned in the previous step:

1. Go to Volumes in the NetApp Volumes console.
2. Click Create.
3. Select the unified storage pool that you created previously.
4. Fill in the following information:
   • Volume details: Enter a name and (optionally) a description.
   • Capacity configuration: Enter the size of the volume that you need.
   • Protocol configuration:
     • iSCSI is selected by default.
     • Select Windows from the Operating System menu.
     • Select the checkbox Map Host Groups to the Volume.
   • Host groups: Select the host group name from the menu.
5. Click Create.

 

Host configuration

NetApp Volumes provides two paths to the iSCSI volume. It is recommended that you install the multipath feature on Windows Server. There are also some other settings that help prevent your applications from being affected by any disruptions on the storage side. It is recommended that you download and install the NetApp Windows Host Utilities 8.0 from the NetApp Support Site.

When you install NetApp Windows Host Utilities, select the option to install support for Multipath I/O, as shown in following screenshot. Restart Windows Server after the Host Utilities installation is complete.

 

Discover the iSCSI volume on Windows Server 

iSCSI works with an initiator target model. The Windows iSCSI Initiator software adds the iSCSI initiator functionality to Windows Server.

 

Discover and configure the iSCSI volume

1. Open iSCSI Initiator (iscsicpl.exe) on your Windows client.
2. In the Discovery tab, click Discover Portal and enter the IP address of the NetApp Volumes.

Note: The IP address for the NetApp Volumes can be obtained by using the following Google Cloud (gcloud) CLI command:

gcloud beta netapp volumes describe <volume_name> –location=<location> –format=”value(mountOptions.ipAddress)”

Replace <volume_name> and <location> with the respective values for your environment.

3. In the Targets tab, select the target IQN name and click Connect.
4. A new dialog box appears. Select the option Enable Multipath and click Advanced.
5. A new dialog box appears. Select the target portal IP from the menu and click OK.
6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for the second target portal IP.

 

Initialize and format the new disk

1. Open Disk Management (compmgmt.msc).
2. When prompted, initialize the new disk.
3. Right-click the new disk, select New Simple Volume, and follow the wizard to format and to assign a drive letter.

And that’s it—your NetApp Volumes iSCSI volume is now attached and ready to use!

Data Protection using NetApp snapshots

NetApp Volumes provides instant, space-efficient snapshots of your iSCSI volumes. NetApp snapshots by default creates crash consistent snapshots. With application aware solutions like NetApp Console or SnapCenter, this can be extended to provide application consistent snapshots for databases and other enterprise SAN workloads.

Snapshots provide:

• Point-in-time copies of the volume
• Fast creation with minimal performance impact
• Instant recovery options for databases

Once created, snapshots can be used as the foundation for additional features such as cloning and disaster recovery. 

 

Configure scheduled snapshots

The following example edits a volume for configuring snapshot schedules

1. Go to Volumes in the NetApp Volumes console.
2. Click on the volume name to navigate to the volume details.
3. Click on Edit button in the volume details screen.
4. Scroll down to section Snapshot configuration and expand the section.
5. Tick the Allow scheduled snapshots
6. Navigate to the desired schedule (HOURLY, DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY) and

•   For HOURLY:

-   Enter a numeric value for the Snapshots to Keep

-   Enter the Minute(UTC) with values in range 0-59

•   For DAILY:

-   Enter a numeric value for the Snapshots to Keep

-   Enter the Hour (UTC) with values in range 0-23

-   Enter the Minute(UTC) with values in range 0-59

•   For WEEKLY:

-   Enter a numeric value for the Snapshots to Keep

-   From the drop down for Weekdays, select the days

-   Enter the Hour (UTC) with values in range 0-23

-   Enter the Minute(UTC) with values in range 0-59

•   For MONTHLY:

-   Enter a numeric value for the Snapshots to Keep

-   From the drop down for Days of the month, select the dates

-   Enter the Hour (UTC) with values in range 0-23

-   Enter the Minute(UTC) with values in range 0-59

7. Click Save.

Creating instant snapshots

The following example creates an instant snapshot

1. Go to Volumes in the NetApp Volumes console.
2. Click on the volume name to navigate to the volume details.
3. Click on the Snapshots tab.
4. Click on Create Snapshot button.
5. Under the Snapshot details, fill in  the Snapshot name and Description.
6. Click Create.

Using thin clones for dev/test and validation

NetApp Volumes Flex Unified storage supports thin clones, which are space-efficient, writable copies created from existing snapshots. 

Thin clones:

• Share blocks with the source volume
• Consume storage capacity only for new or changed data
• Can be used for development, testing or validation

When a thin clone is created from a snapshot, it can be mapped to the same server or a different server and used as an independent volume. Changes made to the clone do not impact the source volume. 

This capability enables rapid environment provisioning while minimizing storage consumption.

Creating thin clones

The following example creates a thin clone based on a snapshot (point in time copy)

1. Go to Volumes in the NetApp Volumes console.
2. Click on the volume name to navigate to the volume details.
3. Click on the Snapshots tab.
4. Locate the base snapshot to be used for the clone.
5. Click on Show More for the respective volume.
6. Click on Create new volume from snapshot.
7. This opens a new volume create window.
8. Fill in the details for the new clone volume similar to steps listed in Create an iSCSI volume and create the new volume.

Note: In the Storage pools page, the Allocated to Volumes shows an increase only to the amount of free space in the source volume. The used blocks are shared between the source volume and thin clone.

Cross region replication for disaster recovery

NetApp Volumes provide cross-region replication to protect data against regional failures. Replication can be configured with a replication schedule -  every 10 minutes, hourly or daily - to meet recovery point objectives (RPOs).

Key characteristics of cross-region replication include:

• Automatic creation of baseline snapshot
• Initial baseline data transfer to the destination region
• Incremental updates based on the configured schedule
• Destination volumes accessible to compute endpoints in a read-only state.

In addition to the automatic snapshots created based on the schedule, the manually created snapshots are also copied over to the destination. This helps in replicating manually created application consistent snapshots over to the secondary/DR site.

Once replication is complete, the destination volume is ready for disaster recovery testing or failover. 

 

Creating replication relationship for a volume

The following example creates replication relationship for a volume.

As a pre-requisite create a Flex Unified storage pool provisioned in a different region of choice within the same continent as source storage pool.

1. Go to Volumes in the NetApp Volumes console.
2. Click on the volume name to navigate to the volume details.
3. Click on the Replication tab.
4. Click on Select storage pool.
5. Select the storage pool using the radio button adjacent to the destination storage pool name and click Select.
6. Click Next.
7. Review the source volume details and click Continue button.
8. Under the Configure replication details section:

•   Fill in the Replication name.
•   From the dropdown for Replication schedule, select the desired schedule.

9. Click Continue.
10.   Under the Configure destination volume details, fill in the Volume name.
11.   Click Create.

Disaster recovery testing using clones

Disaster recovery testing can be performed without breaking replication by creating a thin clone of the replicated, read-only destination volume. 

This approach allows:

• Validation of data and application at the DR site
• Continued replication from primary site

Because thin clones are writable and space efficient, DR testing can be performed with minimal storage overhead. 

Disaster recovery failover and restore

In the event of a disaster

• Replication can be stopped.
• The destination volume is promoted to read-write. 
• Applications can then be brought online using the DR volume. 

NetApp Volumes also supports in-place restores by using snapshots. This allows volumes to be reverted to a previous point in time, providing fast recovery from data corruption or user errors. 

What’s next?

With NetApp Volumes unified storage, you can 

• Run mission critical enterprise SAN workloads
• Use snapshots and space efficient thin clones data management capabilities
• Enable cost effective cross region disaster recovery
• Scale performance and capacity independently

Ready to get started? Head to the Google Cloud NetApp Volumes console and experience the power of NetApp Volumes block storage today!