Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

1. Purpose

The nutanix platform has its own storage space for 48TB, which is composed of 8 HDD hard drives and 4 SSD hard drives, totaling 48TB. These storage spaces, in addition to being used for virtual machines, system itself, virtual machine snapshots and other advanced redundancy functions, can also be used as storage servers to store specific data and materials on the vm.

two。 Concept note 2.1. Storage layer

The storage tier defines the types of physical storage available. You can determine the hierarchical breakdown of disks in the storage pool through the Web console (see Storage Table view). Layers depend on the Nutanix model type and can include the following:

2.2. Storage pool

A storage pool is a physical disk group from one or more tiers (see creating a storage pool). Storage pools provide physical separation between virtual machines because storage devices can only be assigned to one storage pool at a time. Nutanix recommends that you create a storage pool to accommodate all disks in the cluster. This configuration, which supports most use cases, allows the cluster to dynamically optimize resource allocation, such as capacity and IOPS. Isolating disks into separate storage pools allows physical separation between virtual machines, but it can also cause an imbalance in these resources if the disks are not actively used. When you expand the cluster by adding new nodes, new disks can also be added to existing storage pools. This scale-out architecture allows you to build a cluster that grows with your needs.

2.3. Container

A container is a subset of the available storage in a storage pool (see creating containers). The container contains the virtual disk (virtual disk) used by the virtual machine. Selecting a storage pool for the new container defines the physical disk on which the virtual disk is stored. Nodes in a Nutanix cluster can mount containers as NFS data stores (vSphere), SMB shares (Hyper-V), or iSCSI targets (vSphere or AHV) to provide shared storage for VM files. This storage is thinly configured, which means that the storage is allocated to the container only when the data is written, not the total maximum capacity when the container is created. One of the options at the container level is to enable inline (when writing) or compression after writing (see compression).

2.4. Volume group

A volume group is a collection of logically related virtual disks (or volumes). A volume group connects to one or more execution contexts (VM or other iSCSI initiators) of disks in a shared volume group. You can manage volume groups as first-level entities: you can add disks to volume groups, attach them to one or more execution contexts, include them in disaster recovery policies, and perform other administrative tasks. You can also separate the volume group from the current execution context and attach it to another execution context running the same application instance, possibly in the remote location to which the volume is replicated.

You can manage volume groups as a unit. As a whole, you treat a volume group as an iSCSI target and separate the volume group as a whole. However, you can resize the disks in the volume group.

Each volume group is identified by the UUID, name, and iSCSI target name. Each disk in the volume group also has a UUID and a LUN number that specifies the sort in the volume group. Volume groups can be configured for exclusive access or shared access.

You can back up, protect, restore (in-place restore and non-local restore), and migrate volume groups. You can include volume groups in a protection domain configured for asynchronous data replication (asynchronous DR), either exclusively or in conjunction with VM. "however, volume groups cannot be included in a protection domain configured for metro availability, a protected vStore, or a consistency group with application consistent snapshots enabled."

3. Instructions for different levels of storage 3.1. Storage pool

Stores a collection of hard drives for use between nutanix clusters. This time, the nutanix platform has created a storage pool called default storage pool 49834, with a total of 12 hard disks that cannot be modified or added.

3.2. Container (container)

It is mainly used to assign virtual machine hard disk to vm, which is a subset of the storage pool. Previously, with the assistance of the manufacturer's engineer, four containers were divided into 49834, hbgd,NTNX-NFS-DEFAULT,VMare, and the size was 18.1TB.

49834, which is generally used as a virtual hard disk allocated by VM on nutanix. At present, most virtual machines use the space on this container to generate virtual hard disks.

Hbgd, for no specific purpose, is intended to be used as a nutanix rollup group.

NTNX-NFS-DEFAUTL: plan to use shared storage based on NFS protocol. How to use it requires mounting NFS protocol according to linux and windows, but NFS protocol is old and troublesome to operate.

VMware, with the original nutanxi engineer's plan, is used as a nutanix platform to share with the vsphere platform. In addition to the vshpere can be mounted through NFS, the main use is to meet the migration of vmware virtual machines on vsphere to nutanix platforms.

3.3. Volume group

Whether the volume group has been created or not, it is divided by containers. When a virtual hard disk is mounted to vm through ISCSI protocol as an ordinary virtual hard disk, it can be shared and mounted by multiple vm. At the same time, it also supports data protection.

The purpose of this storage research and testing is mainly through the volume group.

4. Test 4.1. Test description

Virtual machine, "marketing FTP server", IP address 172.31.102.200, virtual hard disk 500G, default 49834 container, operating system windows-server2008r2.

4.2. Add volume group

Plan to use hbgd to divide volume groups, and create a volume group named test with a size of 100G, as shown in the following figure:

General configuration.

Add a hard disk and use a hbgd container.

Note that multiple vm shared volume groups are required and must be clicked.

4.3. Additional vm

Add the Marketing FTP Server to the additional vm

4.4. Add a hard drive to VM

Add a hard drive to the vm, as follows:

When you are finished adding, click OK.

4.5. VM uses volume groups

On Vm is a volume group added through iscscis, which is recognized as a hard disk in the VM system. In Windows system, the newly added hard disk needs to be formatted in disk management before it can be used, as shown below:

As you can see, a disk 2 is automatically recognized in vm, which cannot be used because there is no volume label and formatting assigned, and the conversion that needs to be used requires related operations. After the disk is added, it is shown in the following figure:

When you are finished adding the hard drive, you can start saving files and data.

4.6. Backup

The backup program windows server backup that comes with the Windows server system performs full or incremental backups to the mounted iscscis hard disk.

Generally speaking, the backup program that comes with windows is not easy to use, so it is recommended to use a third-party backup program.

4.7. Volume group snapshot

The data of Vm can be saved to the volume group, at the same time, the volume group can also protect the data, customize the snapshot and realize the double insurance protection of the data.

At the same time, create a schedule and take a snapshot of the volume group once a month.

5. Test summary

The windows operating system is used this time, and the same linux system can also save the data to the volume group by adding an iscsi hard disk.

Linux has a complete backup program and program, and windows may need a third-party backup program to back up the data to storage.

In summary, the addition of vm storage and data backup can be completed by the way of volume group, and at the same time, it can be added to the data protection function with the corresponding vm to complete the double insurance for vm data backup protection.

The overall test is successful, but how to scientifically use the program to back up data to storage, we need to study the corresponding data backup solutions on windows and linux.

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