NetApp StorageGRID Webscale Brief Notes

I was originally planning to write a ‘StorageGRID Webscale Primer’ blog post, but in doing my research I found there is an official and very good ~70 page “Grid Primer” (see StorageGRID Webscale 10.3 documentation) which you should read; hence this post became brief notes and links instead. Current (as at 2017.01.31) latest version of StorageGRID Webscale is 10.3.0.

0) Contents

1) Interoperability Matrix Tool Results
2) Software and Documentation Links
3) Brief Notes on SGW

1) Interoperability Matrix Tool Results

http://mysupport.netapp.com/matrix/#welcome > Component Search > StorageGRID
StorageGRID Webscale 10.3 supported on/with:
Hypervisor (OS):
VMware ESXi 6.0u1 / 6.0 / 5.5u2 / 5.5u1 / 5.5 / 5.1u3 / 5.1u2 / 5.1u1 / 5.1 / 5.0u3 / 5.0u2 / 5.0u1 / 5.0 & OpenStack Kilo
TSM Client (Backup)
 IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 6.4.1
Protocol:
SMB 2.1, SMB 2.0, NFS v3.0, HTTPS
Appliance (Storage Node):
StorageGRID Appliance 5660/5612
StorageGRID NAS Bridge:
Storage GRID NAS Bridge 2.0.1
API:
Swift 1.0, S3 2006-03-01, CDMI v1.02, CDMI v1.01

2) Software and Documentation Links

StorageGRID Webscale download link:

StorageGRID Webscale 10.3.0 download link:
This link contains links to:
- StorageGRID-Webscale-10.3.0-20160818.2333.94beb49.tgz
- SGW 10.3 Appliance Installation and Maintenance Guide
- SGW 10.3 Software Installation Guide for OpenStack Deployments
- SGW 10.3 Software Installation Guide for VMware Deployments
Note: The download is 3.4GB

StorageGRID Webscale documentation link:

StorageGRID Webscale 10.3 documentation link:
This link contains includes links to:
- Release Notes for StorageGRID Webscale 10.3.0
- Release Notes for StorageGRID Webscale NAS Bridge 2.0.1
- Administrator Guide
- Appliance Installation and Maintenance Guide
- Audit Message Reference
- Cloud Data Management Interface Implementation Guide
- Expansion Guide for OpenStack Deployments
- Expansion Guide for VMware Deployments
- Grid Primer
- Maintenance Guide for OpenStack Deployments
- Maintenance Guide for VMware Deployments
- NAS Bridge 2.0 Administration Guide
- NAS Bridge 2.0 Installation and Setup Guide
- NAS Bridge 2.0 Management API Guide
- Simple Storage Service Implementation Guide
- Software Installation Guide for OpenStack Deployments
- Software Installation Guide for VMware Deployments
- Software Upgrade Guide
- Swift Implementation Guide
- Troubleshooting Guide

StorageGRID Webscale:

Field Portal:

Also, don’t forget to check out NetApp University (learningcenter.netapp.com) and Lab on Demand (labondemand.netapp.com) if you have access.

3) Brief Notes on SGW

Introduction to the StorageGRID Webscale System
- SGW is a massively scalable, software-defined object-based storage solution for media-intensive workloads in the form of video, images, and PDF documents
- SGW has 10+ years of production object-storage deployments
- SGW has the industry’s most advanced policy framework for data lifecycle management
- SGW has a distributed storage architecture
- SGW has true geographically distributed and geographically selective object placement
- SGW offers the flexibility for customers to choose their storage hardware
- SGW also allows tape or public cloud as an active tier (object-granularity retrieval from tape and cloud)
- An object-based storage system does not organize objects in a hierarchal structure.
- What is object-based storage? Think of the Valet Parking Analogy...
- Typical use cases:
-- Web Data Repositories
-- Data Archives
-- Media Repositories

Deployment Topologies, Grid Nodes, and Services
- Single Data Center Site (Grid Nodes and Primary Admin Node in one Data Center Site)
- Multiple Data Center Sites (Multiple Datacenters, each with Grid Nodes and Primary Admin Node)
- Grid Nodes:
-- Admin Node
-- API Gateway Node (Optional)
-- Storage Node
-- Archive Node (Optional)
- Admin Node services:
-- NMS: Network Management System
-- CMN: Configuration Management Node
-- AMS: Audit Management System
-- SSM: Server Status Monitor
- Storage Node services:
-- LDR: Local Distribution Router
-- DDS: Distributed Data Store
-- ADC: Administrative Domain Controller
-- CMS: Content Management System
-- SSM: Server Status Monitor
Note: Each Data Center Site should have - at a minimum - 3 Storage Nodes.
- API Gateway Node services:
-- CLB: Connection Load Balancer
-- SSM: Server Status Monitor
- Archive Node services:
-- ARC: The Archive service
-- SSM: Server Status Monitor
- For storage and retrieval operations, Archive Nodes can be configured to interface with either Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)

Data Management
- A ‘Storage Pool’ is a logical grouping of storage media
- Metadata is the data that describes the object data that is stored in a StorageGRID Webscale system
- Metadata is used to create the matching criteria for ILM rule filters
- An ILM rule is not evaluated until it is activated in the ILM policy configuration
- An Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) rule is a description of when and where to store objects, how many copies are stored, and for how long
- ‘Storage Grade’ is the type of storage media
- Erasure coding is a data protection method that is best applied to objects larger than 1MB
- An erasure-coded copy contains portions of object data (data fragments) and information for reconstructing object data (parity fragments)

Data Flow
- SGW supports the APIs Swift, S3 and CDMI
- SGW supports standard RESTful HTTP protocols and interfaces
- SGW delivers NFS and SMB
- When a client application sends a delete request to the StorageGRID Webscale system, a content handle is released. However, if no ILM rule exists that requests the purge of the object, the object is not deleted permanently.

Information Lifecycle Management: Key Concepts
Storage Pool = A storage pool is a logical grouping of Storage Nodes or Archive Nodes. These logical groupings can be located at a single data center site or spread across multiple sites.
Link Cost Group = Link cost refers to the relative cost of communication between data center sites within the StorageGRID Webscale system. Link cost is used to determine which grid nodes should provide a requested service.
Replication = A data protection method that duplicates complete instances of object data and stores the data on distributed storage pools. Replication is best suited for small or frequently accessed objects.
Erasure Coding = A data protection method that protects object data from loss by splitting an object into data fragments. Erasure coding is best suited for objects that average more than 1 MB in size.
ILM Rule = A set of instructions for placing objects in the StorageGRID Webscale system over time. The rules defines when, where, and how to store objects, how many copies to store, and for how long by evaluating object metadata.
ILM Policy = A set of prioritized ILM rules. Multiple ILM rules can be configured to manage content placements for various types of objects. The logical order of ILM rules is defined by an ILM policy.

Network Management System
- CLB HTTP Port 8080
- CLB S3 Port 8082
- LDR HTTP Port 18080
- LDR S3 Port 18082
- On a grid node, the ‘Resources’ component under the SSM service provides the IP address of the grid node
- Under Grid Configuration, select the ‘Storage’ component to view the port numbers
- With S3 API, certificates and security partitions is the mechanism for controlling access to objects
- With CDMI, certificates and security partitions, is the mechanism for controlling access to objects
- Object metadata is always mapped to object store 0
- The key function of the SSM service is monitoring the condition of a server and related hardware
- The SSM service is present on every Storage Node
- In the NMS MI, if a service icon is blue, it indicates that the service is in an unknown state
- In the NMS MI, the Unknown service state overrides the Administratively Down service state
- A global custom alarm against an attribute does not override a custom alarm or a default alarm that was configured against this attribute
- The Audit Management System service on the Admin node manages audit logs
- If an object does not match the filter criteria of any ILM rule in the active ILM policy, the content placement instructions defined by the default ILM rule are applied to the object
- After a new ILM policy is activated, this new active ILM policy is not applied to all previously ingested objects.
- The function of the ‘Re-evaluate Content’ button that is located on the Proposed Policy page in the Configuration tab of the ILM Management branch, is to trigger the SGW system to apply the active ILM policy to all objects ingested before this ILM policy was activated.

Server Manager Command Shell (CLI) Notes
- Noteable key presses: Ctrl+Alt+F1 and [Space], Alt+F7


/etc/init.d/servermanager status
/usr/local/servermanager/reader.rb
/etc/init.d/cms stop
/etc/init.d/cms status
/etc/init.d/cms start
/etc/init.d/ldr restart
/etc/init.d/ldr status
storagegrid-status # Dynamic Status Update (Ctrl+C to escape)
/etc/init.d/servermanager stop # stop all services (graceful)
shutdown -h now # shutdown the node (after stopping services)
/etc/init.d/servermanager start
/etc/init.d/servermanager restart


Miscellaneous
- If you enable security partitions you cannot disable them
- As of 10.x, StorageGRID is StorageGRID Webscale. Earlier versions were just StorageGRID.

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