NetApp Basic iSCSI Configuration Walkthrough

The following commands were used when configuring a very basic iSCSI setup on the NetApp 8.1 Simulator after re-running the wipe procedure as detailed in:

http://cosonok.blogspot.com/2011/12/netapp-simulator-81-walkthrough-setup.html

Here I’m configuring iSCSI for a VMware lab. The following could have been done instead by using the NetApp OnCommand System Manager and/or the NetApp VSC for VMware. These commands were run on the NetApp Release 8.1X45 7-Mode Simulator (use the version command to check release.) We already have an IP address configured from the initial setup.

Preliminary Information

If you have already run the following command, the wipe procedure will not un-assign disks, they will remain assigned:

NetApp01> disk assign all

To find out the current RAID group configuration, available spares and their size:

NetApp01> sysconfig –r

After a wipe of the Simulator 8.1, we should see aggregate aggr0, with a plex plex0, and the plex with a raid group rg0 of 3 x 1027MB (1GB) disks in a RAID-DP (data, parity, dparity) and 25 spare disks.

To find out the total size, used space and available capacity of all volumes:

NetApp01> df -h

Here, I have a root volume - /vol/vol0 – of size 808MB with only 93MB used!

Resizing the Root Volume

To reallocate file in vol0:

NetApp01> reallocate start –f –p /vol/vol0

To check reallocate status:

NetApp01> reallocate status

To resize the volume:

NetApp01> vol status

NetApp01> vol size vol0 250m

Note: This step is not part of the iSCSI setup, just a refresher on resizing root volumes, and 250mb is very tiny. In the real world there are minimum sizes set for the root volume which you cannot go below – for example: min root volume size for a FAS2040 running DOT 8.1.1 7-mode is 132GB (source NetApp Hardware Universe)!

Adding Disks to Aggregate aggr0

Add the 25 spares to aggr0:

NetApp01> aggr add aggr0 25@1G

Below is the output from running the command above; notice that DOT warns about a low spares disk condition, and even though this is a lab and it doesn’t really matter, I pretend it does and reduce the number of spares to add down to 24 leaving 1 hot spare!

Note: preparing to add 23 data disks and 2 parity disks.

Continue? ([y]es, [n]o, or [p]review RAID layout) p

The RAID group configuration will change as follows:

RAID Group: Current, NEW

/aggr0/plex0/rg0: 3 disks, 16 disks

/aggr0/plex0/rg1: 0 disks, 12 disks

Continue? ([y]es, [n]o, or [p]review RAID layout) y

WARNING! Continuing with aggr add will result in a low spares disk condition for one or more RAID groups. Are you sure you want to continue with aggr add? n

NetApp01> aggr add aggr0 24@1G

Licensing iSCSI and Starting the iSCSI Service

NetApp01> license add BSLRLTG #iscsi

NetApp01> iscsi start

Creating a Volume for the iSCSI LUN

To find out the available total space:

NetApp01> aggr show_space

Creating a thin-provisioned volume of size 20G:

NetApp01> vol create vol1 –s none aggr0 20G

Note: the options for the –s switch are:

volume = thick provisioned

file = space will be pre-allocated for all the space-reserved files and LUNs within the volume

none = thin provisioned

Setting up the iSCSI LUN, igroup, and LUN Mapping

Here I could be lazy and just run the lun setup command as below:

NetApp01> lun setup

Below is the output (reduced.) The lun setup command essentially does for you a – lun create, igroup create, and lun map!

NetApp01> lun setup

Do you want to create a LUN? [y]: y

Multiprotocol type of LUN: vmware

Enter LUN path: /vol/vol1/lun0

Do you want the LUN to be space reserved? [y]: n

Enter LUN size: 20g

Enter comment string:

Name of initiator group []: vmhosts

Type of initiator group vmhosts (FCP/iSCSI) [iSCSI]: iSCSI

Enter comma separated nodenames: iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:teslonesx01,…

Enter comma separated nodenames:

OS type of initiator group "vmhosts" [vmware]: vmware

LUN ID at which initiator group "vmhosts" sees "/vol/vol1/lun0" [0]: 10

Do you want to accept this configuration? [y]: y

Do you want to create another LUN? [n]: n

Or – the above using pure command line is:

NetApp01> lun create -s 20g -t vmware -o noreserve /vol/vol1/lun0

NetApp01> igroup create -i -t vmware vmhosts iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:tesglaesx01 iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:tesglaesx02

NetApp01> lun map /vol/vol1/lun0 vmhosts 10

Tip: use rdfile /etc/log/auditlog to see a history of all commands that have been run!