Configuration Guide Building a Converged Infrastructure Solution Using The Sanbolic Platform (Supplemental guide to the Sanbolic Platform User s Manual)
About this guide This guide, which serves as a supplement to the Sanbolic Platform User s Manual, provides information specific to building a converged infrastructure solution comprised of industrystandard components housed within common enclosures using the Sanbolic Platform. By placing compute and storage components within the same enclosure, the need for costly components typically found in traditional storage area networks (SAN), including host bus adapters (HBAs), fiber cables, switch fabrics and storage controllers, can be eliminated from a customer s storage environment. The resulting benefits include reduced infrastructure management cost and complexity as well as improved application performance (reduced latency as I/O passes through fewer devices). Converged solutions powered by the Sanbolic Platform offer comprehensive data and storage services often associated with high-end expensive storage systems at a fraction of the cost. Services such as quality of service, data tiering, automated data administration, data protection via snapshots, flash optimizations and more can be applied on-demand and without disruption to existing workloads. The platform s advanced cluster volume manager aggregates and virtualizes storage devices (Flash, SSD, HDD) into one or more common pools of storage that can operate at various RAID levels to meet application performance and/or availability requirements. Storage pools can then be formatted with the platform s integrated cluster file system to create logical drives accessible (read-and-write) at block level by each node participating in the solution to support the intense I/O demands of business-critical workloads. With its shared (block storage) architecture, the converged solution allows data to be accessed by multiple servers simultaneously, thereby removing the constraints associated with traditional storage architectures that entail data being locked in individual partitions designated to particular servers. Benefits include application availability, scalability, and load-balancing as well as the ability to create and manage scale-out architectures using industry-standard components appearing as a single system.
Prerequisites Note: Although the following instructions pertain to a two-node converged solution, the same steps should be followed when building converged solutions comprised of more than two nodes with the exception being the RAID level configured for the disks making up the shared volume. Operating Systems Windows Server 2012 R2 Enterprise or Datacenter edition Roles and Features File and Storage Services role (with iscsi Target) Software Sanbolic Platform Hardware A minimum of two machines (i.e., same CPU type and number; same amount of RAM; same number of network adapters, locally-installed storage) Networking A minimum of two network adapters with TCP/IP connectivity to the LAN. Sanbolic recommends an additional (third) network adapter connected to a stand-alone (private) network for Sanbolic cluster administration (i.e., exchanging heartbeat and locking information between/amongst all nodes)
Steps to Building a Converged Solution with the Sanbolic Platform Illustration of a two-node converged solution 1. Install the Sanbolic SDS Scale-out Platform on each server in the converged solution 2. Install the File and Storage Services role (make sure to include the iscsi Target) 3. Format one or more locally-installed disks (flash, SSD, HDD) in each server with its local file system (i.e., NTFS) 4. Create a virtual disk (VHD or VHDX) on the formatted drive 5. Use the iscsi Target on each server to present (expose) the VHD created in step #4 to the local iscsi Initiator as well as the iscsi Initiators on all opposing servers in the solution 6. Use the iscsi Initiator on each server to log into the local iscsi Target as well as the iscsi Targets on all opposing servers and connect to the VHDs 7. Once each server has mounted its local VHD and the VHDs on the opposing servers, launch the Sanbolic Platform management dashboard on one of the servers in the solution
Note: For information regarding use of the Sanbolic Platform management dashboard, please refer to page 24 of the Sanbolic Platform User s Manual. 8. In the dashboard, open the Storage branch to see all the disks (VHDs)
9. Right-click on the Volumes branch and select Add volume
10. On the right-hand side of the dashboard, assign the volume a drive letter and label
11. Right-click on the volume and select the desired RAID level (RAID 1, 5 or 6) for the disks that will be added to the volume
12. Drag-and-drop the disks under the Storage branch to the RAID sub-tree under the volume Note: If you wish to create a RAID 10, 50 or 60 for the volume, refer to the Disk Groups section of the Sanbolic Platform User s Manual (page 30)
13. Right-click on the Volumes branch and select Save changes
The logical drive will appear under the Volumes branch
14. Once the logical drive is created, open My Computer to see the new drive
15. Right-click on the new drive, select Properties and open the Melio Activation tab
16. Click Activate to open the Volume Activation window 17. Enter your 13 digit (ex. xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx) license key in the License key field and click OK to activate the new drive
18. Once the logical drive has been activated, the remaining servers in the converged solution will mount the drive for shared access Note: With the Sanbolic Platform serving as a distributed RAID controller, the failure of one or more servers (depending on the configured RAID level) will not impact access to the logical drive by any of the remaining active servers Congratulations! You ve just created a converged solution using the Sanbolic Platform.
Offering an extensive list of features and enhancements, including the ability to scale to 2,000 nodes per cluster and 65,000 storage devices per volume, the Sanbolic Platform enables administrators to create converged infrastructure of compute and storage using off the-shelf server and storage hardware to reduce management cost and complexity, improve application performance, and achieve unified management and scale-out of enterprise workloads across heterogeneous storage environments. With its shared block storage architecture and enterprise-class storage management capabilities delivered through a comprehensive software stack, the converged solution simplifies data management and protection and enables centralized provisioning and management of storage resources at the host level for administrative ease and improved operational efficiency.