Lab Series 02: Part 3 - How to setup NFS in Clustered Data ONTAP

Carrying on from Part 2, the following post will run through setting up NFS on Clustered Data ONTAP and testing using a FreeBSD Linux system and also mounting as an NFS datastore to a VMware ESXi 5.1 host.

Preparations

First we need to create an aggregate (at this stage we only have the 3 disk root volume container aggregate - best practice with CDOT is to have a dedicated aggregate for the root volume.) The below creates the aggregate aggr2_A01 on node CLUSA-01 with 11 x 1 GB disks (9 data, 1 parity, 1 dparity):

storage aggregate create aggr2_A01 -nodes CLUSA-01 -diskcount 11 -disksize 1

Second, I’m going to create a Multimode Interface Group (not LACP here because running in VMware workstation) called a0a, and add e0d and e0e to it:

network port ifgrp create -node CLUSA-01 -ifgrp a0a -distr-func ip -mode multimode

network port ifgrp add-port -node CLUSA-01 -ifgrp a0a -port e0d

network port ifgrp add-port -node CLUSA-01 -ifgrp a0a -port e0e

Creating the  vServer and Configuring NFS File Sharing

The lines below will:

i. Create a vServer

ii. Create an NFS configuration for the vServer

iii. Create a logical interface (lif) for the vServer

iv. Create a route to the vServer’s NFS IP

v. Create an “all open” export policy for the vServer

vi. Allow the NFS protocol for the vServer

vii. Create a volume attached to the vServer

viii. Mount the volume to a junction path

xi. Assign the export policy to the vServer root volume

vserver create -vserver vs_nfs -rootvolume vs_nfs -aggregate aggr2_A01 -rootvolume-security-style unix -ns-switch file -nm-switch file

vserver nfs create -vserver vs_nfs

network interface create -vserver vs_nfs -lif vs_nfs_data -role data -data-protocol nfs -home-node CLUSA-01 -home-port a0a -address 10.1.3.100 -netmask 255.255.255.0

network routing-groups route create -server vs_nfs -routing-group d10.1.3.0/24 -gateway 10.1.3.5

vserver export-policy rule create -vserver vs_nfs -policyname default -clientmatch 0.0.0.0/0 -rorule any -rwrule any -anon 0 -superuser any -ruleindex 1

vserver modify -vserver vs_nfs -allowed-protocols nfs

vol create -vserver vs_nfs -volume nfsvol1 -aggregate aggr2_A01 -size 500MB -policy default -unix-permissions 777

volume mount -volume nfsvol1 -vserver vs_nfs -junction-path /nfsvol1

volume modify -vserver vs_nfs -policy default -volume vs_nfs

Testing on a VMware ESXi Host

With IP connectivity from the ESXi host:

Select the host > Configuration tab > Hardware panel: Storage > Add Storage…

And follow through the wizard to add ‘Network File System’ type storage with -

Server IP = 10.1.3.100

Folder = /nfsvol1

Datastore Name = NFSVOL1

Image: Properties for adding the CDOT NFS volume via VMware vSphere

And - if all’s well on the networking side - that’s it, we have our NFSVOL1 mounted in VMware!

Image: Mounted CDOT NFS volume in VMware vSphere

Note: This could also be done using the NetApp VSC (Virtual Storage Console) and will test this with CDOT at a later date.

Testing via a FreeBSD Linux Host

Run the commands:

mkdir /mnt/nfsvol1

mount 10.1.3.100:/nfsvol1 /mnt/nfsvol1

cd /mnt/nfsvol1

ls

And you should see the .snapshot folder (there’ll be nothing else in there to see.)

Roll Back

To get good at the CLI, the best way to learn is practice - create and recreate, again and again until you can do it in your sleep. The following commands will undo everything we’ve done in this post, and enable doing it all over again.

volume offline -volume nfsvol1

volume delete -volume nfsvol1

volume offline -volume vs_nfs

volume delete -volume vs_nfs

vserver delete -vserver vs_nfs

The next two lines are only necessary to delete the ifgrp and aggregate created in preparation for the NFS bit. I’ll leave these in place for future posts in this series, so the following lines are just down here for completeness.

network port ifgrp delete -node CLUSA-01 -ifgrp a0a

storage aggregate delete -aggregate aggr2_A01