NetApp ONTAP Select on IBM Solution Architecture · 2020-04-07 · NetApp ONTAP Select Cluster VMs...

Copyright IBM Corporation 2017 of 12

NetApp ONTAP Select on IBM Cloud

Solution Architecture

Date: 2017–12–14


Table of Contents

1 Introduction................................................................................................................................ 4

1.1 About NetApp ONTAP Select ............................................................................................. 4

1.2 Key Benefits ........................................................................................................................ 4

2 Design ....................................................................................................................................... 5

2.1 Overview.............................................................................................................................. 5

2.2 Physical Infrastructure ......................................................................................................... 6

Physical Host Design .................................................................................................. 6

Physical Storage Design ............................................................................................ 6

2.3 NetApp ONTAP Select Deployment.................................................................................... 7

ONTAP Select host configuration ............................................................................... 8

ONTAP Select networks ............................................................................................. 8

2.4 Cluster configuration ......................................................................................................... 10

2.5 Scale .................................................................................................................................. 10

2.6 Backup of management components ............................................................................... 10

2.7 Replication ......................................................................................................................... 10

2.8 Software updates .............................................................................................................. 10

Appendix A—License Requirements ............................................................................................. 11

Appendix B—Reference ................................................................................................................. 12

List of Figures

Figure 1 VMware vCenter Server on IBM Cloud .............................................................................................. 4

Figure 2 NetApp ONTAP Select on VMware vCenter Server High Level Components ...................... 5

Figure 3 NetApp ONTAP Select deployment ..................................................................................................... 6

Figure 4 NetApp ONTAP Select network topology .......................................................................................... 9

List of Tables

Table 1 Physical host configurations and options .......................................................................................... 6

Table 2 Physical disk configurations and options .......................................................................................... 7

Table 3 Virtual machine storage placement ..................................................................................................... 7

Table 4 ONTAP Select Deploy virtual machine configuration ................................................................... 8

Table 5 ONTAP Select virtual machine configuration ................................................................................... 8

Table 6 ONTAP virtual machine network configuration ............................................................................. 9

Table 7 ONTAP data port group ............................................................................................................................. 9

Table 8 ONTAP internal port group ..................................................................................................................... 9

Table 9 License requirements ............................................................................................................................. 11


Summary of Changes

This section records the history of significant changes to this document. Only the most significant changes

are described here.

Version Date Author Description of Change

1.0

2017–12–14 Jack Benney

Frank Chodacki

Daniel De Araujo

Bob Kellenberger

Simon Kofkin–Hansen

Scott Moonen

Initial Release


1 Introduction

1.1 About NetApp ONTAP Select

The purpose of this document is to define and describe the NetApp ONTAP Select architecture for the

vCenter Server offering deployed in the IBM Cloud. Specifically, it will detail the components of the

solution and high-level configuration of each component in the design. This solution is considered to be an

additional component and extension of the vCenter Server solution offering on IBM Cloud. As a result, this

document will not cover the existing configuration of the foundation solution on IBM Cloud. Therefore, it

is highly recommended to review and understand the VMware on IBM Cloud solution architecture located

on the IBM Architecture Center before reading this document.

Figure 1 VMware vCenter Server on IBM Cloud

1.2 Key Benefits

NetApp ONTAP Select is a software–only version of NetApp ONTAP, providing software–defined storage

(SDS) capabilities. ONTAP Select virtualizes the local storage on VMware vSphere hosts, providing

enterprise class storage management. While IBM Cloud provides several file, block, and object storage

offerings, many of these are shared infrastructure. NetApp ONTAP Select on IBM Cloud hosts your

storage on dedicated infrastructure and provides familiar NetApp capabilities, including:

• Dedicated highly available clustered NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI storage

• NetApp SnapMirror, SnapVault, FlexClone, and SnapRestore

• Deduplication and compression

Not all NetApp ONTAP features are supported by ONTAP Select.

https://www.ibm.com/devops/method/content/architecture/virtualizationArchitecture


2 Design

2.1 Overview

The NetApp ONTAP Select solution complements the VMware vCenter Server on IBM Cloud offering by

providing storage virtualization services. NetApp ONTAP Select runs within a VMware cluster and

virtualizes the local storage on the vSphere hosts.

NetApp supports a collocated deployment model, where ONTAP Select coexists in the same cluster as

other workloads. However, this design deploys NetApp ONTAP Select using the recommended dedicated

model, where other workloads are not expected to share the same cluster as ONTAP Select. As a result, this

design sizes the hardware configuration only based on the requirements for ONTAP Select.

Figure 2 NetApp ONTAP Select on VMware vCenter Server High Level Components

The storage provided by your NetApp ONTAP Select instance can be used by other VMware vCenter

Server instances, VMware Cloud Foundation instances, or other infrastructure deployed in your IBM Cloud

account such as virtual server instances (VSIs) or bare metal servers running various operating systems or

hypervisors. You can attach the NetApp ONTAP Select storage using NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI protocols.

Figure 3 illustrates the components of the ONTAP Select deployment, including an ONTAP Select

deployment VM that deploys the cluster, and four ONTAP Select cluster VMs, one per host.


Figure 3 NetApp ONTAP Select deployment

2.2 Physical Infrastructure

This design notes the differences between the NetApp ONTAP Select architecture and the VMware

vCenter Server solution architecture on which this architecture depends.

Physical Host Design

This design varies the physical compute configuration. The host CPU and memory requirements are

reduced because the solution is sized only for NetApp use. The host disk requirements are increased

because the solution requires local storage in each host for ONTAP Select’s storage virtualization. This

solution is deployed using exactly four hosts; no additional hosts will be added to the cluster after

deployment.

The physical host hardware comprises a 4U chassis with the following possible configurations:

Option CPU Memory Network ONTAP drives

High performance Dual Intel Xeon E5-2650

v4, 24 cores total

128 GB 4 x 10 Gbps uplinks Up to 22 drives

High capacity Dual Intel Xeon E5-2650

v4, 24 cores total

64 GB 4 x 10 Gbps uplinks Up to 34 drives

Table 1 Physical host configurations and options

NetApp ONTAP Select is available in both Standard and Premium deployments. The Premium deployment

and licensing utilizes virtual machines with 64GB memory, and is required when using SSD storage, but

optional when using SATA drives. The Standard deployment and licensing utilizes virtual machines with

16GB memory, and is the normal choice when using SATA drives. This architecture specifies the use of

the Standard deployment for the high capacity SATA configuration.

Physical Storage Design

This design uses two 1TB SATA disks in a RAID–1 configuration for local hypervisor storage as specified

in the vCenter Server solution architecture. Additional disks are added to the hosts for use by NetApp

ONTAP Select according to the choice of configuration:


Option Disks RAID configuration

High performance Options

• 22 x 1.9 TB SSD

• 22 x 3.8 TB SSD

RAID 5, 1 group with 1 spare, writeback mode,

drive cache disabled

High capacity Options

• 10 x 4 TB SATA

• 34 x 4 TB SATA

Options

• 10 drives: RAID 5, 1 group with 1 spare

• 34 drives: RAID 5, 3 groups (10 disks,

12 disks, 12 disks), each with 1 spare

All cases: RAID controller in writeback mode;

drive cache disabled

Table 2 Physical disk configurations and options

For NetApp to take advantage of flash storage optimizations in the high–performance configuration, you

must first ensure SSD disks are known to ESXi as local SSD disks. You can mark them as such using the

esxcli command, for example:

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add --satp=VMW_SATP_LOCAL \ --option "enable_local enable_ssd" \ --device naa.600605b00aacaad0203fd2f20562bf35

The vCenter Server solution architecture specifies the use of IBM Cloud NFS shared storage or vSAN local

disk storage for hosting the VMware cluster storage. This design modifies that specification by removing

IBM Cloud NFS shared storage and replacing it with NFS storage hosted by the NetApp ONTAP Select

cluster itself. While the virtual machines are initially deployed to local storage on the hosts, they are

ultimately migrated to the following locations:

Virtual machine Storage placement

VMware vCenter Server NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

VMware Platform Services Controller NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

VMware NSX Manager NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

VMware NSX Controllers NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

VMware NSX Edge Services Gateways NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

IBM Cloud Driver NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

NetApp ONTAP Select Deploy VM NetApp ONTAP Select NFS datastore

NetApp ONTAP Select Cluster VMs (one per host) ESXi local datastore

Table 3 Virtual machine storage placement

The hosts are configured to connect to the ONTAP datastore using routes and a subnet in the SDDC-

DPortGroup-NFS port group as specified in the vCenter Server solution architecture.

2.3 NetApp ONTAP Select Deployment

NetApp ONTAP Select deployment begins with the deployment of the ONTAP Select Deploy virtual

machine, which is used to deploy the ONTAP Select cluster virtual machines. This virtual machine has the

following requirements. Its portable IP address is allocated from the same management subnet as the

VMware infrastructure, and it is configured to use the IBM Cloud back–end customer router (BCR) as its

gateway.

Component Configuration

CPU 2 vCPU



RAM 4 GB

Disk requirements 40 GB

Network VLAN Private A, portable IP, using SDDC-DPG-Mgmt port group

Gateway IBM Cloud BCR

Table 4 ONTAP Select Deploy virtual machine configuration

The ONTAP Select Deploy virtual machine deploys four ONTAP Select cluster virtual machines, one to

each host in the cluster. These four virtual machines have the following requirements; their networking is

discussed in the following section:


CPU 4 vCPU

RAM Dependent on the configuration:

• 16GB for high capacity, low performance (Standard)

• 64GB for high performance, low capacity (Premium)

Disk requirements 267 GB total for several disks:

• 10GB system boot disk

• 120GB system core dump disk

• 556MB mailbox disk

• 2×68GB cluster root disks

Table 5 ONTAP Select virtual machine configuration

ONTAP Select host configuration

When configuring the ONTAP Select cluster for the high–performance configuration using SSD disks,

enable flash optimization when configuring each host. For example:

(ONTAPdeploy) host configure --host-id 10.173.111.157 . . . \ --enable-flash-optimization

ONTAP Select networks

The ONTAP Select virtual machines each have six network interfaces. The first two interfaces are used for

management and for client data access, while the last four interfaces are used for intra–cluster

communication. Based on NetApp guidelines, the external and internal communications are segregated on

separate private VLANs in the vCenter Server environment. These interfaces are associated with different

port groups on the SDDC-Dswitch-Private vNetwork distributed switch (vDS) as indicated below.

NIC Purpose VLAN Port Group Subnet

e0a Management Private A SDDC-DPortGroup-Mgmt Existing portable

management subnet, using

NSX ESG as public

gateway for NetApp

license reporting

e0b Data Private A SDDC-DPG-ONTAPData New private portable

subnet ordered for data use

e0c Cluster network Private B SDDC-DPG-ONTAPInternal Link local

e0d Cluster network Private B SDDC-DPG-ONTAPInternal Link local


NIC Purpose VLAN Port Group Subnet

e0e RAID SyncMirror Private B SDDC-DPG-ONTAPInternal Link local

e0f HA interconnect Private B SDDC-DPG-ONTAPInternal Link local

Table 6 ONTAP virtual machine network configuration

The SDDC-DPG-Mgmt port group is specified in the vCenter Server solution architecture. The additional

port groups for ONTAP Select’s use are configured as follows:

Port Group Name SDDC-DPG-ONTAPData

vDS SDDC-Dswitch-Private

Port binding Ephemeral

VLAN type None

Load balancing Route based on originating virtual port

Active uplinks uplink1 and uplink2

Table 7 ONTAP data port group

Port Group Name SDDC-DPG-ONTAPInternal

vDS SDDC-Dswitch-Private

Port binding Static

VLAN type VLAN, Private B

Load balancing Route based on originating virtual port

Active uplinks uplink1 and uplink2

Table 8 ONTAP internal port group

Note that ONTAP Select uses jumbo frames on the internal port group.

Figure 4 illustrates the network topology of the NetApp ONTAP Select cluster, highlighting the separate

external and internal networks on differing VLANs.

Figure 4 NetApp ONTAP Select network topology


2.4 Cluster configuration

NetApp ONTAP Select provides availability by locating cluster VMs on each host in the cluster and by

replicating storage between the hosts. It does not depend on VMware Distributed Research Scheduler

(DRS) for availability, and in fact the ONTAP Select cluster VMs should not be migrated between hosts.

The vSphere cluster is sized optimally for running the ONTAP Select workload and VMware and IBM

management services. Recovery of a failed host involves working closely with NetApp support to

reconstitute the failed host, rather than migrating workload to a new host.

Because of this, the four–node cluster operates at greater than 75% capacity. HA admission control must be

disabled on the cluster to allow for the deployment of the NetApp ONTAP Select cluster VMs.

2.5 Scale

This design does not allow for the scaling of the instance, either by adding hosts to the cluster or by adding

additional clusters. The NetApp ONTAP Select instance is intended only for the purpose of providing

storage services to other environments deployed in the IBM Cloud, including both VMware vCenter Server

and VMware Cloud Foundation instances.

2.6 Backup of management components

Unlike the vCenter Server solution architecture, this architecture does not stipulate the deployment of a

backup service such as Veeam to the environment. Because the cluster is not intended for running

workload, the cluster configuration is not expected to change frequently.

2.7 Replication

After your NetApp ONTAP Select instance is deployed, you can configure replication between it and other

ONTAP clusters. For this purpose, you will create additional replication network interfaces on the ONTAP

Select cluster nodes to conduct replication traffic.

You will need to carefully consider network connectivity and routing for your replication traffic. Note that

the ONTAP replication protocol does not support NAT traversal. Additionally, since the ONTAP

replication does not provide native encryption, you should consider whether to provide external encryption

such as IPsec. These decisions and configuration are beyond the scope of this architecture. Refer to

NetApp’s cluster peering guide in Appendix B for more details.

2.8 Software updates

NetApp ONTAP Select updates can be obtained from the NetApp support site and applied using NetApp’s

ONTAP software upgrade procedure.


Appendix A—License Requirements This architecture requires you to obtain additional licensing for the storage virtualization component

depending on the configuration:

Component Purpose Configuration License

NetApp ONTAP

Select

Software–defined

storage

High capacity NetApp ONTAP Select Standard

High performance NetApp ONTAP Select Premium

Table 9 License requirements


Appendix B—Reference Additional information about IBM Cloud and NetApp ONTAP Select can be found at the following sites:

• IBM Cloud Architecture Center for Virtualization:

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/garage/content/architecture/virtualizationArchitecture/

• NetApp ONTAP Cluster Peering Express Guide: http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-

9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.exp-clus-peer%2Fhome.html

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/garage/content/architecture/virtualizationArchitecture/

http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.exp-clus-peer%2Fhome.html

http://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.netapp.doc.exp-clus-peer%2Fhome.html

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