Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server with SwiftStack Software Defined Object Storage

Design and Deployment Guide

Last Updated: November 28, 2017

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Table of Contents

About Cisco Validated Designs

Executive Summary

Solution Overview

Introduction

Audience

Purpose of this Document

Solution Summary

Technology Overview

Cisco Unified Computing System

Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server

Cisco UCS C220 M4 Rack Server

Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1387

Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnect

Cisco UCS Manager

Cisco Nexus C9332PQ Switch

SwiftStack Object Storage 5.x

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x

Solution Design

SwiftStack Core Storage Architecture

SwiftStack Architecture

Logical Diagram

Physical Topology

System Hardware and Software Specifications

Bill of Materials

Cabling Diagram

Network Design and Architecture

Cisco UCS Hardware Configuration

Configure Nexus 9332PQ Switch A and B

Enable Features on Nexus 9332PQ Switch A and B

Configuring VLANs on Nexus 9332PQ Switch A and B

Configure vPC and Port Channels on Nexus C9332PQ Switch A and B

Health Checks of Nexus C9332PQ Configuration for Switch A and B

Configure Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects

Log into Cisco UCS Manager

Configure NTP Server

Initial Setup of the Environment

Configure the Cisco UCS Global Policies

Configure Server Ports for Discovery

Power on the Servers

Label Servers

Creating Port Channel for FI Uplinks

Configure UCS Servers

Configure Pools and Policies

Create KVM Pools

Create MAC Pools

Create UUID Pools

Create VLANs

Enable CDP

QOS System Class

vNIC Template Setup

Ethernet Adapter Policy Setup

Boot Policy Setup

Create Maintenance Policy Setup

Create Power Control Policy Setup

Creating Chassis Profile

Create Chassis Maintenance Policy

Create Disk Zoning Policy

Create Chassis Profile Template

Create Chassis Profile from Template

Associate Chassis Profile

Convert the Disks to Unconfigured Good

Create Storage Profiles

Storage Profile for Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server

Create Service Profile Templates

Creating Service Profile Templates for Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Servers

Create Service Profile Template for Cisco UCS C220 M4S

Summary

Create Service Profiles from Templates

Create Service Profiles for S3260 Storage Servers

Create Service Profiles for Cisco UCS C220 M4 Swift Controllers

Associate Service Profiles to the Servers

Post Cisco UCS Configuration Health Checks

Install the Operating System on the Swift Nodes

Install Operating System

Post Operating System Installation on the Nodes

Install SwiftStack Software

Pre-installation Checks

Install On-Premise Controller Software

Install Software

Post Software Install Configuration

Install SwiftStack Software on Storage Nodes

Configure SwiftStack Controller for Nodes

Configure Standby Controller for Nodes

Installation

SwiftStack Health Checks

SwiftStack Controller Monitoring and Metrics

SwiftStack Controller Alerts

Load Testing and Performance Evaluation

3 Chassis - 3Nodes

3 Chassis - 6Nodes

6 Chassis - 6Nodes

6 Chassis - 12Nodes

Sizing Guidelines and Scalability of the Cluster

Sizing Guidelines

Usable Space

HTTP Requests

Case Study

Summary

Scalability

High Availability and Business Continuity

SwiftStack Node Failures

SwiftStack Controller Failures

Activate Standby Controller to Primary

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect Failures

Cisco Nexus 9332 Failures

Scaling up the Cluster

Adding Nodes to Cisco UCS

Adding Nodes to SwiftStack Cluster

Migrating to Dual Node Configuration

Delete the chassis with single node

Add the Second Node to Chassis

Reconfigure Chassis in Cisco UCS

Associate Chassis Profile

Associate Service Profile

Install Operating System and SwiftStack Software

Final Steps

Frequently Asked Questions

Cisco UCS

SwiftStack

Troubleshooting

Appendix

Cluster.conf

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

Executive Summary

Cisco Validated Design program consist of systems and solutions that are designed, tested, and documented to facilitate and improve customer deployments. These designs incorporate a wide range of technologies and products into a portfolio of solutions that have been developed to address the business needs of our customers.

Most of the modern data centers are moving away from traditional file system type storage, to object storages. Object storage offers simple management, unlimited scalability and custom metadata for objects. With its low cost per gigabyte of storage, Object storage systems are suited for archive, backup, Life sciences, video surveillance, healthcare, multimedia, message and machine data, etc.

SwiftStack object storage is a massively scalable software defined storage system that can achieve enterprise class reliability, scale-out capacity and lower costs with industry standard server solution.

The Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server, originally designed for the data center, makes it an excellent fit for unstructured data workloads such as backup, archive, and cloud data. The S3260 delivers a complete infrastructure with exceptional scalability for computing and storage resources together with 40 Gigabit Ethernet networking.

Cisco and SwiftStack are collaborating to offer Customers, object storage solutions. The power of Cisco UCS management framework for S3260 nodes complements, simple but reliable framework from SwiftStack for object storage,

The reference architecture described in this document is a realistic use case for deploying SwiftStack object storage on Cisco UCS storage server S3260 and rack mounted server C220. The document covers step by step instructions for setting UCS hardware for SwiftStack Object and Controller nodes, installing Red Hat Linux Operating system, Installing SwiftStack Software along with Performance data collected to provide scale up and scale down guidelines, issues and workarounds evolved during installation, what needs to be done to leverage High Availability from both hardware and software for Business continuity, lessons learnt, best practices evolved while validating the solution, etc.

Solution Overview

Introduction

Object storage is a highly scalable system for organizing and storing data objects. Object storage does not use a file system structure, instead it ingests data as objects with unique keys into a flat directory structure and the metadata is stored with the objects instead of hierarchical journal or tree. Search and retrieval is performed via these unique keys for searching. Most of the newly generated data is unstructured today. With about 80 percent of data being unstructured, new approaches using x86 servers are proving to be more cost effective, providing storage that can be expanded as easily as your data grows. Object storage is the newest approach for handling massive amounts of data.

SwiftStack based on open source Swift, enables applications to store data that is usable by object applications and cloud-native applications alike.

Together with Cisco UCS, SwiftStack Storage can deliver a fully enterprise-ready solution that can manage different workloads and still remain flexible. The Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server is an excellent platform to use with the main types of Swift workloads, such as capacity-optimized and performance-optimized workloads. It is also excellent for workloads with a large number of I/O operations per second and scales well for varying work load and block sizes.

This document describes the architecture, design and deployment procedures of SwiftStack object storage on Cisco UCS S3260 servers with 2 x C220M4 rack servers.

Audience

The audience for this document includes, but is not limited to, sales engineers, field consultants, professional services, IT managers, partner engineers, IT architects, and customers who want to take advantage of an infrastructure that is built to deliver IT efficiency and enable IT innovation. The reader of this document is expected to have the necessary training and background to install and configure Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and Cisco Nexus Switches as well as a high-level understanding of Object storage, Swift and SwiftStack. External references are provided where applicable and it is recommended that the reader be familiar with these documents.

Readers are also expected to be familiar with the infrastructure, network and security policies of the customer installation.

Purpose of this Document

This document describes the step by step installation of SwiftStack on Cisco UCS platform. It also covers High Availability use cases, Performance and Scalability tests, workarounds, if any evolved while validating the design along with Operational best practices.

Solution Summary

This solution is focused on SwiftStack storage on Red Hat Linux 7 on Cisco Unified Computing System. The advantages of Cisco UCS and SwiftStack combine to deliver an object storage solution that is simple to install, scalable and performant. The configuration uses the following components for the deployment:

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

-        Cisco UCS 6332 Series Fabric Interconnects

-        Cisco UCS S3260 storage servers.

-        Cisco S3260 system IO controller with VIC 1380

-        Cisco C220M4 servers with VIC 1387

Cisco Nexus C9332PQ Series Switches

SwiftStack storage 5.x.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x

The solution includes the following features:

Infrastructure for large scale object storage

Design and Implementation of a Swift Object Storage solution on Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server

Simplified infrastructure management with Cisco UCS Manager

Architectural scalability – linear scaling based on network, storage, and compute requirements

The scope is limited to the infrastructure pieces of the solution. However, an attempt has been made to add any discoveries made as part of the validation.

Technology Overview

Cisco Unified Computing System

The Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) is a state-of-the-art data center platform that unites computing, network, storage access, and virtualization into a single cohesive system.

The main components of Cisco Unified Computing System are:

Computing - The system is based on an entirely new class of computing system that incorporates rack-mount and blade servers based on Intel Xeon Processor E5 and E7. The Cisco UCS servers offer the patented Cisco Extended Memory Technology to support applications with large datasets and allow more virtual machines (VM) per server.

Network - The system is integrated onto a low-latency, lossless, 40-Gbps unified network fabric.  This network foundation consolidates LANs, SANs, and high-performance computing networks which are separate networks today.  The unified fabric lowers costs by reducing the number of network adapters, switches, and cables, and by decreasing the power and cooling requirements.

Virtualization - The system unleashes the full potential of virtualization by enhancing the scalability, performance, and operational control of virtual environments.  Cisco security, policy enforcement, and diagnostic features are now extended into virtualized environments to better support changing business and IT requirements.

Storage access - The system provides consolidated access to both SAN storage and Network Attached Storage (NAS) over the unified fabric. By unifying the storage access, the Cisco Unified Computing System can access storage over Ethernet (NFS or iSCSI), Fibre Channel, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). This provides customers with choice for storage access and investment protection. In addition, the server administrators can pre-assign storage-access policies for system connectivity to storage resources, simplifying storage connectivity, and management for increased productivity.

The Cisco Unified Computing System is designed to deliver:

A reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increased business agility.

Increased IT staff productivity through just-in-time provisioning and mobility support.

A cohesive, integrated system which unifies the technology in the data center.

Industry standards supported by a partner ecosystem of industry leaders.

Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server

The Cisco UCS® S3260 Storage Server (Figure 1) is a modular, high-density,  highly-available dual node rack server well suited for service providers, enterprises, and industry-specific environments. It addresses the need for dense cost effective storage for the ever-growing data needs. Designed for a new class of cloud-scale applications, it is simple to deploy and excellent for big data applications, software-defined storage environments and other unstructured data repositories, media streaming, and content distribution.

Figure 1       Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server

Extending the capability of the Cisco UCS C3000 portfolio, the Cisco UCS S3260 helps you achieve the highest levels of data availability. With dual-node capability that is based on the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v4 series, it features up to 600 TB of local storage in a compact 4-rack-unit (4RU) form factor. All hard-disk drives can be asymmetrically split between the dual-nodes and are individually hot-swappable. The drives can be built-in in an enterprise-class Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) redundancy or be in a pass-through mode.

This high-density rack server comfortably fits in a standard 32-inch depth rack, such as the Cisco® R42610 Rack.

The Cisco UCS S3260 Server can be deployed as standalone server or as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS) in both bare metal or virtualized environments. Its modular architecture reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by allowing you to upgrade individual components over time and as use cases evolve, without having to replace the entire system.

The Cisco UCS S3260 uses a modular server architecture that, using Cisco’s blade technology expertise, allows you to upgrade the computing or network nodes in the system without the need to migrate data migration from one system to another. It delivers:

Dual server nodes

Up to 36 computing cores per server node

Up to 60 drives mixing a large form factor (LFF) with up to 28 solid-state disk (SSD) drives plus 2 SSD SATA boot drives per server node

Up to 1 TB of memory per server node (2 terabyte [TB] total)

Support for 12-Gbps serial-attached SCSI (SAS) drives

A system I/O Controller with Cisco VIC 1300 Series Embedded Chip supporting Dual-port 40Gbps

High reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features with tool-free server nodes, system I/O controller, easy-to-use latching lid, and hot-swappable and hot-pluggable components

Cisco UCS C220 M4 Rack Server

The Cisco UCS® C220 M4 Rack Server (Figure 2) is the most versatile, general-purpose enterprise infrastructure and application server in the industry. It is a high-density two-socket enterprise-class rack server that delivers industry-leading performance and efficiency for a wide range of enterprise workloads, including virtualization, collaboration, and bare-metal applications. The Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers can be deployed as standalone servers or as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS) to take advantage of Cisco’s standards-based unified computing innovations that help reduce customers’ total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase their business agility.

Figure 2       Cisco UCS C220 M4 Rack Server

The enterprise-class Cisco UCS C220 M4 server extends the capabilities of the Cisco UCS portfolio in a 1RU form factor. It incorporates the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v4 and v3 product family, next-generation DDR4 memory, and 12-Gbps SAS throughput, delivering significant performance and efficiency gains. The Cisco UCS C220 M4 rack server delivers outstanding levels of expandability and performance in a compact 1RU package:

Up to 24 DDR4 DIMMs for improved performance and lower power consumption

Up to 8 Small Form-Factor (SFF) drives or up to 4 Large Form-Factor (LFF) drives

Support for 12-Gbps SAS Module RAID controller in a dedicated slot, leaving the remaining two PCIe Gen 3.0 slots available for other expansion cards

A modular LAN-on-motherboard (mLOM) slot that can be used to install a Cisco UCS virtual interface card (VIC) or third-party network interface card (NIC) without consuming a PCIe slot

Two embedded 1Gigabit Ethernet LAN-on-motherboard (LOM) ports

Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1387

The Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1387 (Figure 3) is a Cisco® innovation. It provides a policy-based, stateless, agile server infrastructure for your data center. This dual-port Enhanced Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP) half-height PCI Express (PCIe) modular LAN-on-motherboard (mLOM) adapter is designed exclusively for Cisco UCS C-Series and 3260 Rack Servers. The card supports 40 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). It incorporates Cisco’s next-generation converged network adapter (CNA) technology and offers a comprehensive feature set, providing investment protection for future feature software releases. The card can present more than 256 PCIe standards-compliant interfaces to the host, and these can be dynamically configured as either network interface cards (NICs) or host bus adapters (HBAs). In addition, the VIC supports Cisco Data Center Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) technology. This technology extends the Cisco UCS fabric interconnect ports to virtual machines, simplifying server virtualization deployment.

Figure 3       Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1387

The Cisco UCS VIC 1387 provides the following features and benefits:

Stateless and agile platform: The personality of the card is determined dynamically at boot time using the service profile associated with the server. The number, type (NIC or HBA), identity (MAC address and World Wide Name [WWN]), failover policy, bandwidth, and quality-of-service (QoS) policies of the PCIe interfaces are all determined using the service profile. The capability to define, create, and use interfaces on demand provides a stateless and agile server infrastructure

Network interface virtualization: Each PCIe interface created on the VIC is associated with an interface on the Cisco UCS fabric interconnect, providing complete network separation for each virtual cable between a PCIe device on the VIC and the interface on the fabric interconnect

Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnect

The Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects are a core part of Cisco UCS, providing both network connectivity and management capabilities for the system (Figure 4). The Cisco UCS 6300 Series offers line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and Fibre Channel functions.

Figure 4       Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnect

The Cisco UCS 6300 Series provides the management and communication backbone for the Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers, 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis, and C-Series Rack Servers managed by Cisco UCS. All servers attached to the fabric interconnects become part of a single, highly available management domain. In addition, by supporting unified fabric, the Cisco UCS 6300 Series provides both LAN and SAN connectivity for all servers within its domain.

From a networking perspective, the Cisco UCS 6300 Series uses a cut-through architecture, supporting deterministic, low-latency, line-rate 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports, switching capacity of 2.56 terabits per second (Tbps), and 320 Gbps of bandwidth per chassis, independent of packet size and enabled services. The product family supports Cisco® low-latency, lossless 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric capabilities, which increase the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of Ethernet networks. The fabric interconnect supports multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric from the server through the fabric interconnect. Significant TCO savings can be achieved with an FCoE optimized server design in which network interface cards (NICs), host bus adapters (HBAs), cables, and switches can be consolidated.

The Cisco UCS 6332 32-Port Fabric Interconnect is a 1-rack-unit (1RU) Gigabit Ethernet, and FCoE switch offering up to 2.56 Tbps throughput and up to 32 ports. The switch has 32 fixed 40-Gbps Ethernet and FCoE ports.

Both the Cisco UCS 6332UP 32-Port Fabric Interconnect and the Cisco UCS 6332 16-UP 40-Port Fabric Interconnect have ports that can be configured for the breakout feature that supports connectivity between 40 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. This feature provides backward compatibility to existing hardware that supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet. A 40 Gigabit Ethernet port can be used as four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Using a 40 Gigabit Ethernet SFP, these ports on a Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnect can connect to another fabric interconnect that has four 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFPs. The breakout feature can be configured on ports 1 to 12 and ports 15 to 26 on the Cisco UCS 6332UP fabric interconnect. Ports 17 to 34 on the Cisco UCS 6332 16-UP fabric interconnect support the breakout feature.

Cisco UCS Manager

Cisco UCS® Manager (Figure 5) provides unified, embedded management of all software and hardware components of the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS) across multiple chassis, rack servers and thousands of virtual machines. It supports all Cisco UCS product models, including Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers, C-Series Rack Servers, and M-Series composable infrastructure and Cisco UCS Mini, as well as the associated storage resources and networks. Cisco UCS Manager is embedded on a pair of Cisco UCS 6300 or 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects using a clustered, active-standby configuration for high availability. The manager participates in server provisioning, device discovery, inventory, configuration, diagnostics, monitoring, fault detection, auditing, and statistics collection.

Figure 5       Cisco UCS Manager

An instance of Cisco UCS Manager with all Cisco UCS components managed by it forms a Cisco UCS domain, which can include up to 160 servers. In addition to provisioning Cisco UCS resources, this infrastructure management software provides a model-based foundation for streamlining the day-to-day processes of updating, monitoring, and managing computing resources, local storage, storage connections, and network connections. By enabling better automation of processes, Cisco UCS Manager allows IT organizations to achieve greater agility and scale in their infrastructure operations while reducing complexity and risk. The manager provides flexible role- and policy-based management using service profiles and templates.

Cisco UCS Manager manages Cisco UCS systems through an intuitive HTML 5 or Java user interface and a command-line interface (CLI). It can register with Cisco UCS Central Software in a multi-domain Cisco UCS environment, enabling centralized management of distributed systems scaling to thousands of servers. UCS Manager can be integrated with Cisco UCS Director to facilitate orchestration and to provide support for converged infrastructure and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

The Cisco UCS XML API provides comprehensive access to all Cisco UCS Manager Functions. The API provides Cisco UCS system visibility to higher-level systems management tools from independent software vendors (ISVs) such as VMware, Microsoft, and Splunk as well as tools from BMC, CA, HP, IBM, and others. ISVs and in-house developers can use the XML API to enhance the value of the Cisco UCS platform according to their unique requirements. Cisco UCS PowerTool for UCS Manager and the Python Software Development Kit (SDK) help automate and manage configurations within UCS Manager.

Cisco Nexus C9332PQ Switch

The Cisco Nexus® 9000 Series Switches include both modular and fixed-port switches that are designed to overcome these challenges with a flexible, agile, low-cost, application-centric infrastructure.

Figure 6       Cisco 9332PQ

The Cisco Nexus 9300 platform consists of fixed-port switches designed for top-of-rack (ToR) and middle-of-row (MoR) deployment in data centers that support enterprise applications, service provider hosting, and cloud computing environments. They are Layer 2 and 3 nonblocking 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches with up to 2.56 terabits per second (Tbps) of internal bandwidth.

The Cisco Nexus 9332PQ Switch (Figure 6) is a 1-rack-unit (1RU) switch that supports 2.56 Tbps of bandwidth and over 720 million packets per second (mpps) across thirty-two 40-Gbps Enhanced QSFP+ ports

All the Cisco Nexus 9300 platform switches use dual- core 2.5-GHz x86 CPUs with 64-GB solid-state disk (SSD) drives and 16 GB of memory for enhanced network performance.

With the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series, organizations can quickly and easily upgrade existing data centers to carry 40 Gigabit Ethernet to the aggregation layer or to the spine (in a leaf-and-spine configuration) through advanced and cost-effective optics that enable the use of existing 10 Gigabit Ethernet fiber (a pair of multimode fiber strands).

Cisco provides two modes of operation for the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series. Organizations can use Cisco® NX-OS Software to deploy the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series in standard Cisco Nexus switch environments. Organizations also can use a hardware infrastructure that is ready to support Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI™) to take full advantage of an automated, policy-based, systems management approach.

SwiftStack Object Storage 5.x

With SwiftStack software running on Cisco UCS S-Series servers, you get hybrid cloud storage enabling freedom to move workloads between clouds with universal access to data across on-premises and public infrastructure. SwiftStack was built from day one to have the fundamental attributes of the cloud—like a single namespace across multiple geographic locations, policy-driven placement of data, and consumption-based pricing.

SwiftStack storage is optimized for unstructured data, which is growing at an ever-increasing rate inside most thriving enterprises. When media assets, scientific research data, and even backup archives live in a multi-tenant storage cloud, utilization of this valuable data increases while driving out unnecessary costs.

SwiftStack is a fully-distributed storage system that horizontally scales to hold your data today and tomorrow. It scales linearly, allowing you to add additional capacity and performance independently...whatever your applications need.

While scaling storage is typically complex, it’s not with SwiftStack. No advanced configuration is required. It takes only a few simple commands to install software on a new UCS S3260 server and deploy it in the cluster. Load balancing capabilities are fully integrated, allowing applications to automatically take advantage of the distributed cluster.

Powered by OpenStack Swift at the core, with SwiftStack, you get to utilize what drives some of the largest storage clouds and leverage the power of a vibrant community. SwiftStack is the lead contributor to the Swift project that has over 220 additional contributors worldwide. Having an engine backed by this community and deployed in demanding customer environments makes SwiftStack the most proven, enterprise-grade object storage software available.

Key SwiftStack features for an active archive:

Starts as small as 120TB, and scales to 100s of PB

Spans multiple data centers while still presenting a single namespace

Handles data according to defined policies that align to the needs of different applications

Uses erasure coding and replicas in the same cluster to protect data

Offers multi-tenant support with authentication via Active Directory, LDAP, and Keystone

Supports file protocols (SMB, NFS) and object APIs (S3, Swift) simultaneously

Automatically synchronizes to Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 with the Cloud Sync feature

Encrypts data and metadata at rest

Manages highly scalable storage infrastructure via centralized out-of-band controller

Ensures all functionality touching data is open by leveraging an open-source core

Optimizes TCO with pay-as-you-grow licensing with support and maintenance included

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® is a high-performing operating system that has delivered outstanding value to IT environments for more than a decade. More than 90% of Fortune Global 500 companies use Red Hat products and solutions including Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As the world’s most trusted IT platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been deployed in mission-critical applications at global stock exchanges, financial institutions, leading telcos, and animation studios. It also powers the websites of some of the most recognizable global retail brands.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

Delivers high performance, reliability, and security

Is certified by the leading hardware and software vendors

Scales from workstations, to servers, to mainframes

Provides a consistent application environment across physical, virtual, and cloud deployments

Designed to help organizations make a seamless transition to emerging datacenter models that include virtualization and cloud computing, Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes support for major hardware architectures, hypervisors, and cloud providers, making deployments across physical and different virtual environments predictable and secure. Enhanced tools and new capabilities in this release enable administrators to tailor the application environment to efficiently monitor and manage compute resources and security.

Solution Design

SwiftStack Core Storage Architecture

SwiftStack provides native Object API (S3 and Swift) to access the data stored in the SwiftStack Cluster. The design provides linear scalability, extreme durability with no single-point of Failure. It has no limitation on the hardware and uses any standard server and Linux system. SwiftStack clusters also supports multi-region data center architecture.

SwiftStack Nodes includes 4 different roles to handle different services in SwiftStack Cluster (Group of Swift Nodes) called as PACO – P: Proxy, A: Account, C: Container and O: Object. In most deployments, all four services are deployd and run on a single physical node.

SwiftStack Architecture

SwiftStack solution is enterprise-grade object storage, with OpenStack Swift at the core. It has been deployed at 100s of companies with massive amounts of data stored. It includes two major components, SwiftStack Storage Nodes and the SwiftStack Controller which is an out-of-band management system that manages one of more SwiftStack storage clusters.

The SwiftStack Cluster Abstract Concept is illustrated below:

Logical Diagram

Physical Topology

Based on the logical flows, the following physical topology was built to validate the design.

Figure 7 illustrates the physical topology of this solution.

Figure 7       Physical Topology

Figure 8       Cisco UCS S3260 Connectivity

Figure 9       Cisco UCS C220 Connectivity

The configuration consists of 6 x S3260 chassis as PACO (Proxy, Account and Container and object services) nodes along with 2 x C220M4S as Active/Standby Controller nodes. The PACO and Controller nodes were connected to a pair of Fabric Interconnects and Cisco Nexus switches as shown in Figure 9.

The configuration, validation, testing and performance criteria were done on the following:

·         3 Full Chassis with 56 drives (54 HDD’s and 2 SSD’s) with Single Node on each Chassis.

·         3 Full Chassis with 56 drives (27 HDD’s and 1 SSD’s per node) with Dual Nodes on each Chassis.

·         6 Full Chassis with 56 drives (54 HDD’s and 2 SSD’s) with Single Node on each Chassis.

·         6 Full Chassis with 56 drives (27 HDD’s and 1 SSD’s per node) with Dual Nodes on each Chassis.

The system can be scaled up or down with the above configuration as long as the minimumrequirements of the software are met.

System Hardware and Software Specifications

Table 1 lists the Hardware and Software releases used for solution verification.

Table 1    Required Hardware Components

Hardware

Quantity

Firmware Details

PACO Nodes

Storage (Chassis) UCS S3260

6

C3X60M4 3.0.3

Controllers

Cisco UCS C220M4S Rack Servers

2

C220M4 3.0.3

Fabric Interconnects

FI-6332

2

3.1(3)

Nexus Switches

Nexus – C9332PQ

2

7.0(3)I1(3)

Table 2    Software Specifications

Software

Version

Operating System

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

7.3

Object Storage Software

SwiftStack

5.2.0.2

Bill of Materials

This section contains the Bill of Materials used in the configuration.

Component

Model

Quantity

Comments

SwiftStack PACO nodes

Cisco UCS S3260M4 Chassis

6

CPU – 2  x E5-2650 V4 per Node

Memory – 16 x 8GB 2400 MHz DDR4 DIMM – total of 128G per Node

S3260 SIOC with dual port 40G adapter and VIC 1380  per Node

Raid Controller – Cisco MRAID 12 G SAS Controller

Local Disks –

54x10TB HDD’s and 2x400GB SSD’s per Chassis. HDD’s and SSD’s distributed equally per node in Dual node configuration.

SwiftStack Controller Nodes

Cisco UCS C220M4 servers

2

CPU – 2 x E5-2680 V4 with 128GB Memory.

Fabric Interconnects

Cisco UCS 6332 UP Fabric Interconnects

2

Switches

Cisco Nexus 9372PX Switches

2

Performance tests have been evaluated on both single and dual node configurations.

Cabling Diagram

The cabling diagram is shown in Figure 10. The cables can be dropped between the identical numbers/letters as shown.

Figure 10     Cabling Diagram

The exact cabling for Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server, C220 M4S and the Cisco UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect is illustrated in Table below.

Table 3    Cabling details

Local Device

Local Port

Connection

Remote Device

Remote Port

Cable

Cisco Nexus 9332 Switch A

Eth1/21

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect A

Eth1/23

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/22

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect B

Eth1/23

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/23

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect A

Eth 1/25

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/24

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect B

Eth 1/25

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/30

40GbE

Nexus Peer Link

Eth1/30

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/32

40GbE

Nexus Peer Link

Eth1/32

40G Twin-Ax

MGMT0

1GbE

Top of Rack (Management)

Any

1G RJ 45

Cisco Nexus 9332 Switch B

Eth1/21

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect A

Eth1/24

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/22

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect B

Eth1/24

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/23

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect A

Eth 1/26

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/24

40GbE

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect B

Eth 1/26

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/30

40GbE

Nexus Peer Link

Eth1/30

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/32

40GbE

Nexus Peer Link

Eth1/32

40G Twin-Ax

MGMT0

1GbE

Top of Rack (Management)

Any

1G RJ 45

Cisco UCS 6332                           Fabric Interconnect A

Eth1/1

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 1 – Node1

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/2

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 1 – Node2

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/3

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 2 – Node1

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/4

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 2 – Node2

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/5

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 3 – Node1

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/6

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 3 – Node2

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/7

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 4 – Node1

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/8

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 4 – Node2

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/9

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 5 – Node1

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/10

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 5 – Node2

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/11

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 6 – Node1

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/12

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 6 – Node2

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/13

40GbE

C220M4S –Active Controller

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/14

40GbE

C220M4S –Standby Controller

Port 1

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/15-22 used for Clients

Eth1/23

40GbE

Nexus 9332A

Eth 1/21

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/24

40GbE

Nexus 9332B

Eth 1/21

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/25

40GbE

Nexus 9332 A

Eth 1/23

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/26

40GbE

Nexus 9332 A

Eth 1/23

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/27 and above either used as Clients or left as spares

MGMT0

1GbE

Top of RACK ( Management )

Any

1G RJ 45

L1

1GbE

UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect B

L1

1G RJ 45

L2

1GbE

UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect B

L2

1G RJ 45

Cisco UCS 6332                           Fabric Interconnect B

Eth1/1

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 1 – Node1

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/2

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 1 – Node2

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/3

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 2 – Node1

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/4

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 2 – Node2

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/5

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 3 – Node1

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/6

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 3 – Node2

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/7

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 4 – Node1

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/8

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 4 – Node2

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/9

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 5 – Node1

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/10

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 5 – Node2

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/11

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 6 – Node1

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/12

40GbE

S3260 Chassis 6 – Node2

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/13

40GbE

C220M4S –Active Controller

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/14

40GbE

C220M4S –Standby Controller

Port 2

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/15-22 used for Clients

Eth1/23

40GbE

Nexus 9332A

Eth 1/22

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/24

40GbE

Nexus 9332B

Eth 1/22

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/25

40GbE

Nexus 9332 A

Eth 1/24

40G Twin-Ax

Eth1/26

40GbE

Nexus 9332 A

Eth 1/24

40G Twin-Ax

Eth 1/27 and above either used as Clients or left as spares

MGMT0

1GbE

Top of RACK ( Management )

Any

1G RJ 45

L1

1GbE

UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect B

L1

1G RJ 45

L2

1GbE

UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect B

L2

1G RJ 45

Network Design and Architecture

The following network architecture has been evaluated on the test bed. Each server node has 2x40Gbps ports. Taking the advantage of Cisco’s VIC architecture multiple network interfaces are detailed below.

Table 4    Interface Configuration on each Server Node

Interface

Purpose

Physical Port on Adapter

Network Capacity

Network

eth0

PXE Interface for boot (optional)

Port 1

40Gbps

192.168.xxx.xxx

eth1

External/OS interface

Port 1

172.xxx.xxx.xxx

eth2

Client/Outward facing interface

Port 1

192.168.120.xxx

eth3

Cluster network interface

Port 2

40Gbps

192.168.130.xxx

eth4

Replication network interface

Port 2

192.168.150.xxx

Figure 11     Logical Network Flow Diagram

SwiftStack controllers are not in the data path. Configuration of External/Outward facing interface on Controller is optional.

Cisco UCS Hardware Configuration

This section details the deployment of hardware used in this solution. Please refer to the cabling diagram as depicted above and power on the hardware before proceeding further.

Configure Nexus 9332PQ Switch A and B

Both Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect A and B are connected to two Cisco Nexus 9332PQ switches for connectivity to Upstream Network. The following sections describe the setup of both Cisco Nexus 9332PQ switches.

1.    Connect the console port to the Nexus 9332 PQ switch designated for Fabric A:

---- Basic System Configuration Dialog VDC: 1 ----

This setup utility will guide you through the basic configuration of the system. Setup configures only enough connectivity for management of the system.

*Note: setup is mainly used for configuring the system initially, when no configuration is present. So setup always assumes system defaults and not the current system configuration values.

Press Enter at anytime to skip a dialog. Use ctrl-c at anytime to skip the remaining dialogs.

Would you like to enter the basic configuration dialog (yes/no): yes

Do you want to enforce secure password standard (yes/no) [y]:

Create another login account (yes/no) [n]:

Configure read-only SNMP community string (yes/no) [n]:

Configure read-write SNMP community string (yes/no) [n]:

Enter the switch name :N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A

Continue with Out-of-band (mgmt0) management configuration? (yes/no) [y]:

Mgmt0 IPv4 address : 192.168.10.8

Mgmt0 IPv4 netmask : 255.255.255.0

Configure the default gateway? (yes/no) [y]:

IPv4 address of the default gateway : 192.168.10.1

Configure advanced IP options? (yes/no) [n]:

Enable the telnet service? (yes/no) [n]:

Enable the ssh service? (yes/no) [y]:

Type of ssh key you would like to generate (dsa/rsa) [rsa]:

Number of rsa key bits <1024-2048> [2048]:

Configure the ntp server? (yes/no) [n]: y

NTP server IPv4 address : <<ntp_server_ip>>

Configure CoPP system profile (strict/moderate/lenient/dense/skip) [strict]:

The following configuration will be applied:

password strength-check

switchname N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A

vrf context management

ip route 0.0.0.0/0 192.168.10.8

exit

no feature telnet

ssh key rsa 2048 force

feature ssh

ntp server <<var_global_ntp_server_ip>>

copp profile strict

interface mgmt0

ip address 192.168.10.8 255.255.255.0

no shutdown

Would you like to edit the configuration? (yes/no) [n]: Enter

Use this configuration and save it? (yes/no) [y]: Enter

[########################################] 100%

Copy complete.

Login into the switch and verify credentials.

Repeat the this  procedure for the Nexus Switch B.

Enable Features on Nexus 9332PQ Switch A and B

To enable the features UDLD, VLAN, HSRP, LACP, VPC, and Jumbo Frames, connect to the management interface via ssh on both switches and complete the following steps on both Switch A and B:

Switch A

N9k-Fab-A# configure terminal

Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.

N9k-Fab-A(config)# feature udld

N9k-Fab-A(config)# feature interface-vlan

N9k-Fab-A(config)# feature hsrp

N9k-Fab-A(config)# feature lacp

N9k-Fab-A(config)# feature vpc

N9k-Fab-A(config)# system jumbomtu 9216

N9k-Fab-A(config)# exit

N9k-Fab-A(config)# copy running-config startup-config

Switch B

N9k-Fab-B# configure terminal

Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.

N9k-Fab-B(config)# feature udld

N9k-Fab-B(config)# feature interface-vlan

N9k-Fab-B(config)# feature hsrp

N9k-Fab-B(config)# feature lacp

N9k-Fab-B(config)# feature vpc

N9k-Fab-B(config)# system jumbomtu 9216

N9k-Fab-B(config)# exit

N9k-Fab-B(config)# copy running-config startup-config

Configuring VLANs on Nexus 9332PQ Switch A and B

To configure the VLANs like External, Outward Facing, Cluster and Replication Networks, follow the steps below.

Switch A

From the command line, enter the following and change the VLAN and Ethernet ports per your setup.

vlan 10

name UCSM-VLAN

no shut

exit

vlan 120

name Swift-Client-Network

no shut

exit

vlan 130

name Swift-Cluster-Network

no shut

exit

vlan 150

name Swift-Replication-Network

no shut

exit

vlan 166

name External-Network

no shut

exit

interface vlan 1

exit

interface Vlan10

description UCSM VLAN

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.10.253/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 100

preempt

priority 110

ip 192.168.10.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan120

description swift-client

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.120.253/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 120

preempt

priority 120

ip 192.168.120.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan130

description swift-cluster

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.130.253/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 130

preempt

priority 130

ip 192.168.130.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan150

description swift-replication

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.150.253/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 150

preempt

priority 10

ip 192.168.150.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan166

description External_Network

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 172.22.166.249/24

no ipv6 redirects

exit

interface Ethernet1/1

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 10,100,166

no shutdown

exit

copy running-config startup-config

Switch B

vlan 10

name UCSM-VLAN

no shut

exit

vlan 120

name Swift-Client-Network

no shut

exit

vlan 130

name Swift-Cluster-Network

no shut

exit

vlan 150

name Swift-Replication-Network

no shut

exit

vlan 166

name External-Network

no shut

exit

interface Vlan1

no shut

exit

interface Vlan10

description UCSM vlan

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.10.254/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 100

preempt

priority 110

ip 192.168.10.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan120

description swift-client

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.120.254/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 120

preempt

priority 120

ip 192.168.120.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan130

description swift-cluster

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.130.254/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 130

preempt

priority 130

ip 192.168.130.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan150

description swift-replication

no shutdown

no ip redirects

ip address 192.168.150.254/24

no ipv6 redirects

hsrp version 2

hsrp 150

preempt

priority 10

ip 192.168.150.1

exit

exit

interface Vlan166

description External_Network

no shutdown

no ip redirects

no ipv6 redirects

exit

Configure vPC and Port Channels on Nexus C9332PQ Switch A and B

To enable the vPC and Port Channels on both Switch A and B, complete the following steps:

VPC and Port Channel for Peer Link

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B# conf terminal

Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config)# vpc domain 101

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-vpc-domain)#peer-keepalive destination 192.168.10.8

Note:

--------:: Management VRF will be used as the default VRF ::--------

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-vpc-domain)# peer-gateway

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-vpc-domain)# exit

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config)# interface port-channel 1

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# switchport mode trunk

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# spanning-tree port type network

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# vpc peer-link

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# exit

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config)# interface ethernet 1/31-32

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# switchport mode trunk

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# switchport trunk allowed vlan 10,100,166

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# speed 40000

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# channel-group 1 mode active

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B(config-if)# exit

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B# copy running-config startup-config

[########################################] 100%

Copy complete.

Repeat these steps on the second switch.

VPC and Port Channel for Fabric Interconnects

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A# conf terminal

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config)# interface port-channel 20

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)#  switchport mode trunk

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# spanning-tree port type edge trunk

Warning: Edge port type (portfast) should only be enabled on ports connected to a single host. Connecting hubs, concentrators, switches, bridges, etc... to this

interface  when edge port type (portfast) is enabled, can cause temporary bridging loops.

Use with CAUTION

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# mtu 9216

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# vpc 20

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# no shutdown

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# exit

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config)# interface port-channel 21

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)#  switchport mode trunk

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# spanning-tree port type edge trunk

Warning: Edge port type (portfast) should only be enabled on ports connected to a single host. Connecting hubs, concentrators, switches, bridges, etc... to this

interface  when edge port type (portfast) is enabled, can cause temporary bridging loops.

Use with CAUTION

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# mtu 9216

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# vpc 21

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# no shutdown

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A(config-if)# exit

On Switch A configure the ethernet interfaces for VPC:

interface Ethernet1/21

description UCS Fabric A port 23

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 20 mode active

interface Ethernet1/22

description UCS Fabric B port 23

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 21 mode active

interface Ethernet1/23

description UCS Fabric A port 25

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 20 mode active

interface Ethernet1/24

description UCS Fabric B port 25

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 21 mode active

On Switch B configure the ethernet interfaces for VPC:

interface Ethernet1/21

description UCS Fabric A port 24

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 20 mode active

interface Ethernet1/22

description UCS Fabric B port 24

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 21 mode active

interface Ethernet1/23

description UCS Fabric A port 26

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 20 mode active

interface Ethernet1/24

description UCS Fabric B port 26

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,120,130,150,166

mtu 9216

channel-group 21 mode active

Health Checks of Nexus C9332PQ Configuration for Switch A and B

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B# show vpc br

Legend:

(*) - local vPC is down, forwarding via vPC peer-link

vPC domain id                     : 101

Peer status                       : peer adjacency formed ok

vPC keep-alive status             : peer is alive

Configuration consistency status  : success

Per-vlan consistency status       : success

Type-2 consistency status         : success

vPC role                          : primary, operational secondary

Number of vPCs configured         : 2

Peer Gateway                      : Enabled

Dual-active excluded VLANs        : -

Graceful Consistency Check        : Enabled

Auto-recovery status              : Disabled

Delay-restore status              : Timer is off.(timeout = 30s)

Delay-restore SVI status          : Timer is off.(timeout = 10s)

vPC Peer-link status

---------------------------------------------------------------------

id   Port   Status Active vlans

--   ----   ------ --------------------------------------------------

1    Po1    up     1,10,120,130,150,166

vPC status

----------------------------------------------------------------------

id   Port   Status Consistency Reason                     Active vlans

--   ----   ------ ----------- ------                     ------------

20   Po20   up     success     success                    1,10,120,13

0,150,166

21   Po21   up     success     success                    1,10,100,12

0,130,150,1

66

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B#

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A# show vpc br

Legend:

(*) - local vPC is down, forwarding via vPC peer-link

vPC domain id                     : 101

Peer status                       : peer adjacency formed ok

vPC keep-alive status             : peer is alive

Configuration consistency status  : success

Per-vlan consistency status       : success

Type-2 consistency status         : success

vPC role                          : secondary, operational primary

Number of vPCs configured         : 2

Peer Gateway                      : Enabled

Dual-active excluded VLANs        : -

Graceful Consistency Check        : Enabled

Auto-recovery status              : Disabled

Delay-restore status              : Timer is off.(timeout = 30s)

Delay-restore SVI status          : Timer is off.(timeout = 10s)

vPC Peer-link status

---------------------------------------------------------------------

id   Port   Status Active vlans

--   ----   ------ --------------------------------------------------

1    Po1    up     1,10,120,130,150,166

vPC status

----------------------------------------------------------------------

id   Port   Status Consistency Reason                     Active vlans

--   ----   ------ ----------- ------                     ------------

20   Po20   up     success     success                    1,10,120,13

0,150,166

21   Po21   up     success     success                    1,10,100,12

0,130,150,1

66

Ping Default Gateway and any IP’s to make sure that Fabric Interconnects and servers can connect later.

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A# ping 172.22.166.1

PING 172.22.166.1 (172.22.166.1): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 172.22.166.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=254 time=0.78 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=0.638 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=0.553 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=254 time=0.782 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=254 time=0.687 ms

--- 172.22.166.1 ping statistics ---

5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.00% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max = 0.553/0.687/0.782 ms

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-A# ping 172.22.166.204

PING 172.22.166.204 (172.22.166.204): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 172.22.166.204: icmp_seq=0 ttl=63 time=0.624 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.204: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=0.425 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.204: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=0.409 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.204: icmp_seq=3 ttl=63 time=0.366 ms

64 bytes from 172.22.166.204: icmp_seq=4 ttl=63 time=0.478 ms

--- 172.22.166.204 ping statistics ---

5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.00% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max = 0.366/0.46/0.624 ms

Configure Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects

Configure the Fabric Interconnects after the cabling is complete. Hook up the console port on the Fabrics, and complete the following steps:

Please replace the appropriate addresses for your setup.

Cisco UCS 6332FI Switch A

Connect the console port to the UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect switch designated for Fabric A:

Enter the configuration method: console

Enter the setup mode; setup newly or restore from backup.(setup/restore)? setup

You have chosen to setup a new fabric interconnect? Continue? (y/n): y

Enforce strong passwords? (y/n) [y]: y

Enter the password for "admin": <password>

Enter the same password for "admin": <password>

Is this fabric interconnect part of a cluster (select 'no' for standalone)?

(yes/no) [n]:y

Which switch fabric (A|B): A

Enter the system name: UCS-SwiftStack-Fabric

Physical switch Mgmt0 IPv4 address: 192.168.10.21

Physical switch Mgmt0 IPv4 netmask: 255.255.255.0

IPv4 address of the default gateway: 192.168.10.1

Cluster IPv4 address: 10.22.100.20

Configure DNS Server IPv4 address? (yes/no) [no]: y

DNS IPv4 address: <<var_nameserver_ip>>

Configure the default domain name? y

Default domain name: <<var_dns_domain_name>>

Join centralized management environment (UCS Central)? (yes/no) [n]: Press Enter

You will be prompted to review the settings.

If they are correct, answer yes to apply and save the configuration. Wait for the login prompt to make sure that the configuration has been saved.

Cisco UCS 6332FI  Switch B

Connect the console port to Peer UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect switch designated for Fabric B.

Make sure that L1/L2 ports are connected before proceeding.

Enter the configuration method: console

Installer has detected the presence of a peer Fabric interconnect. This Fabric

interconnect will be added to the cluster. Do you want to continue {y|n}? y

Enter the admin password for the peer fabric interconnect: <password>

Physical switch Mgmt0 IPv4 address: 192.168.10.22

Apply and save the configuration (select “no” if you want to re-enter)? (yes/no): yes

Verify the connectivity. After completing the FI configuration, verify the connectivity as below by logging to one of the Fabrics or the VIP address and checking the cluster state or extended state as shown below:

Log into Cisco UCS Manager

To login to Cisco UCS Manager, complete the following steps:

1.    Open a Web browser and navigate to the Cisco UCS 6332 Fabric Interconnect cluster address.

2.    Click the Launch link to download the Cisco UCS Manager software.

3.    If prompted to accept security certificates, accept as necessary.

4.    Click Launch UCS Manager HTML.

5.    When prompted, enter admin for the username and enter the administrative password.

6.    Click Login to log in to the Cisco UCS Manager.

Configure NTP Server

To configure the NTP server for the Cisco UCS environment, complete the following steps:

1.    Select Admin tab on the left site.

2.    Select Time Zone Management.

3.    Select Time Zone.

4.    Under Properties select your time zone.

5.    Select Add NTP Server.

6.    Enter the IP address of the NTP server.

7.    Select OK.

Initial Setup of the Environment

Configure the Cisco UCS Global Policies

To configure the Global policies, log into UCS Manager GUI, and complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Equipment tab on the left site of the window.

2.    Select Policies on the right site.

3.    Select Global Policies.

4.    Under Chassis/FEX Discovery Policy select Platform Max under Action.

5.    Select 40G under Backplane Speed Preference.

6.    Under Rack Server Discovery Policy select Immediate under Action.

7.    Under Rack Management Connection Policy select Auto Acknowledged under Action.

8.    Under Power Policy select Redundancy N+1.

9.    Under Global Power Allocation Policy select Policy Driven.

10.  Select Save Changes.

Configure Server Ports for Discovery

Navigate to each Fabric Interconnect and configure the server ports on Fabric Interconnects. Complete the following steps:

1.    Under Equipment > Fabric Interconnects > Fabric Interconnect A > Fixed Module > Ethernet Ports;

a.     Select the ports (Port 1 to 14 per your requirement), right-click and select Configure as Server Port. In case you have clients like Cisco UCS blade or RACK servers connected to FI, you may have to configure additional ports on FI as server ports.

b.    Select the ports (23-26) right click and configure them as Network Ports.

c.     Click Save Changes to save the configuration.

d.    Repeat the above steps on Fabric Interconnect B too and save the configuration.

Power on the Servers

Power on the Cisco UCS S3260 and Cisco UCS C220 servers along with any other client servers connected to Fabric Interconnects and the let the discovery complete.

Label Servers

To label each server (for better identification) with the following steps:

1.    Select the Equipment tab on the left site.

2.    Select Chassis > Chassis 1 > Server 1.

3.    In the Properties section on the right go to User Label and add Ch1-PACO-Node1 to the field. In case of server 2 (dual node config) you may make it as Ch1-PACO-Node2 and so on.

4.    Similarly the RACK servers can be named for a better identification.

Creating Port Channel for FI Uplinks

To create Port Channels to the connected Nexus 9332PQ switches, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the LAN tab in the left pane of the UCSM GUI on Fabric Interconnect A

2.    Go to LAN > LAN Cloud > Fabric A > Port Channels and right-click Create Port Channel.

3.    Type in ID 20 and Click Next.

4.    Select the available ports on the left 23-26 (Network Ports configured in the FI) and assign them with >> to Ports in the Port Channel.

5.    Create Port Channel.

6.    Click Finish and then OK.

7.    Repeat the procedure for Fabric Interconnect B.

Configure UCS Servers

Configure Pools and Policies

Create KVM Pools

To create a KVM IP Pool, complete the following:

1.    Select the LAN tab on the left site.

2.    Go to LAN > Pools > root > IP Pools > IP Pool ext-mgmt.

3.    Right-click Create Block of IPv4 Addresses.

4.    Enter an IP Address in the From field.

5.    Enter Size 50

6.    Enter your Subnet Mask.

7.    Fill in your Default Gateway.

8.    Enter your Primary DNS and Secondary DNS if needed.

9.    Click OK.

The size of the pool depends on the total number of servers, clients, and controllers.

Create MAC Pools

To create a MAC Pool, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the LAN tab on the left site.

2.    Go to LAN > Pools > root > Mac Pools and right-click Create MAC Pool.

3.    Type in MAC-Swift for Name.

4.    (Optional) Enter a Description of the MAC Pool.

5.    Click Next.

6.    Click Add.

7.    Specify a starting MAC address.

8.    Specify the size of the MAC address pool, which is sufficient to support the available resources say 256.

Create UUID Pools

To create a UUID Pool, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Servers tab on the left site.

2.    Go to Servers > Pools > root > UUID Suffix Pools and right-click Create UUID Suffix Pool.

3.    Type in UUID-Pool-Swift for Name.

4.    (Optional) Enter a Description of the UUID Pool.

5.    Click Next.

6.    Click Add.

7.    Specify a starting UUID Suffix.

8.    Specify a size of the UUID suffix pool, which is sufficient to support the available server resources, i.e. 256.

9.    Click OK.

10.  Click Finish and then OK.

Create VLANs

As mentioned earlier, it is important to separate the network traffic with VLANs for outward facing, Cluster and Replication traffics. The following table shows the configured VLANs.

Table 5    Configured VLANs

VLAN

Name

Function

10

UCSM-VLAN

Optional if UCSM is not in private VLAN.

120

Swift-Client

Outward Client Facing Network.

130

Swift-Cluster

Cluster Network

150

Swift-Replication

Replication Network

166

External

External Network for OS to download and yum updates

To Configure VLAN’s in Cisco UCS Manager GUI, complete the following steps:

1.    Select LAN in the left pane in the UCSM GUI.

2.    Select LAN > LAN Cloud > VLANs and right-click Create VLANs.

3.    Enter Swift-Cluster for the VLAN Name.

4.    Keep Multicast Policy Name as <not set>.

5.    Select Common/Global for Public.

6.    Enter 120 in the VLAN IDs field.

7.    Click OK and then Finish.

Repeat these steps for the rest of the VLAN’s.

Enable CDP

To enable Network Control Policies, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the LAN tab in the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to LAN > Policies > root > Network Control Policies and right-click Create Network-Control Policy.

3.    Type in Enable-CDP in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Click Enabled under CDP.

6.    Click All Hosts VLANs under MAC Register Mode.

7.    Leave everything else untouched and click OK.

8.    Click OK.

QOS System Class

Make sure to have 9216 as MTU for Best Effort classes in QOS System Class.

1.    Select the LAN tab in the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to LAN > LAN Cloud > QoS System Class.

3.    Set Best Effort MTU as 9216.

4.    Set Fibre Channel Weight to None.

5.    Click Save Changes and then OK.

vNIC Template Setup

Based on the previous section to create VLANs, the next step is to create the appropriate vNIC templates. For SwiftStack Storage we need to create four different vNICs, depending on the role of the server. Table 6   provides an overview of the configuration.

Table 6    Configuration Overview

Name

vNIC Name

Fabric Interconnect

Failover

VLAN

MTU Size

Outward Facing

Swift-Client

A

Yes

Swift-Client

9000

Cluster Network

Swift-Cluster

B

Yes

Swift-Cluster

9000

Replication Network

Swift-Repl

B

Yes

Swift-Repl

9000

External Network

External

A

Yes

External

1500

To create the appropriate vNICs, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the LAN tab in the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to LAN > Policies > root > vNIC Templates and right-click Create vNIC Template.

3.    Type in Swift-Cluster in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Click Fabric B as Fabric ID and enable failover.

6.    Select Swift-Cluster as VLANs and click Native VLAN.

7.    Select MAC-Swift as MAC Pool.

8.    Select Swift-Cluster as QoS Policy.

9.    Select Enable-CDP as Network Control Policy.

10.  Click OK and then OK.

Repeat these steps for the remaining vNIC’s, taking care of MTU size and the vLAN names.

Ethernet Adapter Policy Setup

By default, Cisco UCS provides a set of Ethernet adapter policies. These policies include the recommended settings for each supported server operating system. Operating systems are sensitive to the settings in these policies.

Cisco UCS best practice is to enable Jumbo Frames MTU 9000 for any Storage facing Networks (Outward facing Network, Cluster Network and Replication Network). For Jumbo Frames MTU9000, you can use default Ethernet Adapter Policy predefined as Linux. Once the jumbo frame setting are made in the vNIC template as above the ether interface created on the Operating System will get its MTU as 9000.

You can also create a specific adapter policy and it is beneficial in particular if you are using MTU 1500 say for outward facing network.

To create a specific adapter policy for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Server tab in the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Servers > Policies > root > Adapter Policies and right-click Create Ethernet Adapter Policy.

3.    Type in RHEL in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Under Resources type in the following values:

Transmit Queues: 8

Ring Size: 4096

Receive Queues: 8

Ring Size: 4096

Completion Queues: 16

Interrupts: 32

6.    Under Options enable Receive Side Scaling (RSS).

7.    Click OK and then OK.

Boot Policy Setup

To create a Boot Policy, complete the following steps :

1.    Select the Servers tab in the left pane.

2.    Go to Servers > Policies > root > Boot Policies and right-click Create Boot Policy.

3.    Type in a Swift-Boot in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Click Local Devices > Add Local CD/DVD and Click OK.

6.    Click Local Devices > Add Local LUN and Set Type as “Any” and Click OK.

7.    Click OK.

Create Maintenance Policy Setup

To setup a Maintenance Policy, complete the following steps :

1.    Select the Servers tab in the left pane.

2.    Go to Servers > Policies > root > Maintenance Policies and right-click Create Maintenance Policy.

3.    Type in a Server-Maint in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Click User Ack under Reboot Policy.

6.    Click OK and then OK.

Create Power Control Policy Setup

To create a Power Control Policy, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Servers tab in the left pane.

2.    Go to Servers > Policies > root > Power Control Policies and right-click Create Power Control Policy.

3.    Type in No-Power-Cap in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Click No Cap and Click OK.

Creating Chassis Profile

The Chassis Profile is required to assign specific disks to a particular server node in a Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server as well as upgrading to a specific chassis firmware package. The disks can be asymmetrically assigned to both the nodes as desired. However the disks were equally distributed amongst the two nodes in dual node configuration.

This section covers the Disk zoning policy that is attached to the chassis profile. Whether to allocate all the 56 disks to a single node or 28 disks per node in a dual configuration is defined by the Disk Zoning Policy.

Create Chassis Maintenance Policy

To create a Chassis Maintenance Policy, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Chassis tab in the left pane of the Cisco UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Chassis > Policies > root > Chassis Maintenance Policies and right-click Create Chassis Maintenance Policy.

3.    Type in Swift in the Name field.

4.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    Click OK and then OK.

Create Disk Zoning Policy

To create the disk zoning policy, complete the following steps:

1.    Two polices one with Single Node and one with Dual Node are shown below. You may be needing only one out of the two depending on the installation.

2.    Single Node Disk Zoning Policy:

a.     Select the Chassis tab in the left pane of the Cisco UCSM GUI.

b.    Go to Chassis > Policies > root > Disk Zoning Policies and right-click Create Disk Zoning Policy.

c.     Enter Swift-SingleNode in the Name field

d.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

3.    In the Disk Zoning Information above, Click Add and add all the 56 disks as dedicated to Node 1 and Controller 1.

4.    Dual Node Disk Zoning Policy:

a.     Select the Chassis tab in the left pane of the Cisco UCSM GUI.

b.    Go to Chassis > Policies > root > Disk Zoning Policies and right-click Create Disk Zoning Policy.

c.     Enter Swift-DualNode in the Name field

d.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

5.    In the Disk Zoning Information above, Click Add and add 28 disks to Node 1 and Controller 1 and the rest 28 disks to Node2 and Controller 1.

Create Chassis Profile Template

To create a Chassis Profile Template, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Chassis tab in the left pane of the Cisco UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Chassis > Chassis Profile Templates and right-click Create Chassis Profile Template.

3.    Type in S3260-Chassis in the Name field.

4.    Under Type, select Updating Template.

5.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

6.    Select Chassis Maintenance Policy as ‘Swift’ created earlier.

7.    Under Disk Zoning Policy, Select the zoning policy created earlier: SingleNode or DualNode.

8.    Click Finish to complete the Chassis Profile Template creation.

Create Chassis Profile from Template

To create the Chassis Profiles from the previous created Chassis Profile Template, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Chassis tab in the left pane of the Cisco UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Chassis > Chassis Profiles and right-click Create Chassis Profiles from Template.

3.    Type in Swift-Chassis- in the Name field.

4.    Leave the Name Suffix Starting Number untouched.

5.    Enter 6 for the Number of Instances for all connected Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server.

6.    Choose your previously created Chassis Profile Template.

7.    Click OK.

This will create 6 chassis profiles that can be associated later.

Associate Chassis Profile

To associate all previous created Chassis Profile, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the Chassis tab in the left pane of the Cisco UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Chassis > Chassis Profiles and select Swift-Chassis-1.

3.    Right-click Change Chassis Profile Association.

4.    Under Chassis Assignment, select existing Chassis.

5.    Under Available Chassis, select the first chassis.

6.    Click OK and then OK.

7.    Repeat these steps for the other four Chassis Profiles by selecting the IDs 2 – 6.

8.    Associate Chassis Profiles

After the association of the Chassis profile along with Disk zoning policy, the disks distribution between the nodes may get corrected in few minutes.

Convert the Disks to Unconfigured Good

The boot disks on both Cisco UCS C220 and Cisco UCS S3260 should be Unconfigured Good before installing the operating system. If not, complete the following steps to make them Unconfigured Good.

1.    For S3260 Server:

a.     Select Chassis -> Servers -> Server1.

b.    In the right pane, select Inventory-> Storage-> Disks.

c.     Select the Bootable SSD disks, right click and make them as Unconfigured Good.

2.    Repeat these steps for Server2 and all other Cisco UCS S3260 servers in the cluster.

3.    Repeat the same for all Cisco UCS C220 servers.

In case of using any automation like PXE boot etc. for S3260, you may have to convert all other disks into unconfigured good too. The Boot LUN created (after applying service profiles) for OS will be the only LUN visible to PXE server where OS will be installed. The non-boot disks can be turned back to JBOD after OS installation either through UCSM GUI or utilities like storcli.

Create Storage Profiles

Storage Profile for Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server

1.    Identify the boot disk numbers for the servers by navigating to the server inventory. Navigate to Server1 and/or Server2 under Chassis, Inventory tab, Storage Tab and then expand the disks under SAS Storage Controller.

2.    Similarly, obtain the disk ID numbers for the boot disks for Server 2 (203 and 204) before proceeding to the following steps.

3.    Storage Profile for the first Server:

a.     Select Storage in the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

b.    Go to Storage > Storage Profiles and right-click Create Storage Profile.

c.     Type in Server1 in the Name field.

d.    (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

e.    Click Add.

f.      Create Local LUN.

g.    Type in Swift-Server1 in the Name field.

h.     Size (GB) = 1

i.      Fractional Size (MB) = 0

j.      Auto Deploy.

k.     Select Expand To Available.

l.      Click Create Disk Group Policy

m.   Type in Server1 in the Name field.

n.     (Optional) Enter a description in the Description field.

o.    RAID Level = RAID 1 Mirrored.

p.    Select Disk Group Configuration (Manual).

q.    Click Add.

r.     Type in 201 for Slot Number.

s.     Click OK and then again Add.

t.      Type in 202 for Slot Number.

u.     Leave everything else untouched.

v.     Click OK and then OK.

w.   Select your previously created Disk Group Policy for the Boot SSDs with the radio button under Select Disk Group Configuration.

x.     Select Disk Group Configuration

y.     Click OK and then OK and again OK.

4.    Storage Profile for the second Server:

Follow the exact steps as above for creating a storage profile for the second server in the chassis. Add slot numbers as 203 and 204 while creating the Disk Group Policy say Server2. The Storage Profile Server1 is for the top Server and Server 2 for the bottom Server of S3260.

Storage Profile for Cisco UCS C220M4S Rack Server

1.    Create another Storage profile for Swift Controller Boot Disks. Identify the disk numbers from Server Inventory and Create another Storage profile say Control following the similar steps as above.

Create Service Profile Templates

Creating Service Profile Templates for Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Servers

Depending on whether you will be deploying a single or a dual node configuration you may need one or two Service profile templates for S3260 server.

A single service profile template with all the 56 disks should suffice in case of single node configuration. On the other hand you may need to two templates, one for the top and other for the bottom server in case of dual node configuration.

To create a Service Profile Template, complete the following steps:

Identify Service Profile Template

1.    Select Servers in the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Servers > Service Profile Templates > root and right-click Create Service Profile Template.

3.    Enter the Name of the template say S3260-Server1.

4.    Check as Updating Template.

5.    The UUID pool created earlier for Swift and click Next.

Storage Provisioning

1.    Go to Storage Profile Policy Tab and select the Storage profile created. For this particular Storage Template for the Top Servers select server1 created earlier and then click Next.

Networking

In the Networking tab, complete the following steps:

1.    Select the expert Mode and Click Add for Creating vNIC’s.

2.    Enter, External in the name field and check the vnic template flag.

3.    Select name of the vNIC Template as ‘External’ created earlier.

4.    Select the adapter policy ‘RHEL’ created earlier for adapter policies.

5.    Click OK.

6.    Add other Ethernet Interfaces, the Outward facing, Cluster and Replication to the list as below before clicking Next.

Ignore SAN Connectivity and Zoning by clicking Next.

SAN Connectivity

1.    Select No vHBA’s in SAN Connectivity tab.

Zoning

1.    Click Next and ignore Zoning.

vNIC/vHBA Placement

1.    In the Select Placement Drop Down, Specify Manually.

2.    Highlight vCon1 and then assign the interfaces in the following order – External, Swift-Client, Swift-Cluster, Swift-Repl and then click Next.

Server Boot Order

Select the Boot Policy Swift-Boot Created earlier and click Next.

Maintenance Policy

Select maintenance Policy Server_ACK in the drop down, that was created earlier. Click Next.

Server Assignment

Leave everything as default and click Next.

Operational Policies

Select Power Control Policy NO-POWER-CAP create earlier and finish the configuration.

In case of Dual Node Configuration you may have to create one more template S3260-Server2 that attaches Server2 Storage Policy ( with lun id’s 203 and 204 ).

Create Service Profile Template for Cisco UCS C220 M4S

The Service Profile for the Rack-Mount Servers for Swift Controllers (Active and Standby) is very similar to the above created for the S3260. The only differences are with the Storage Profiles, Networking and vNIC/vHBA Placement. The changes are listed here:

1.    In the Storage Provisioning tab choose the appropriate Storage Profile for the Cisco UCS C220 M4S you created earlier.

The Networking tab will have only two Interfaces one for the nodes External communication and the other for outward facing network. In the setup used for the CVD, the outward facing network made available to the controller though this is not necessary.

The vNIC/vHBA Placement tab will list the first interface as external and the second interface as the outward facing network.

2.    Walk through the remaining tabs similar to S3260 by adding Maintenance Policies and complete the creation of Service Profile Template C220.

Summary

There will be three service profile templates, one for each server of S3260 and another for SwiftStack Controllers. In case of a single node configuration, you should have only two Service Profile templates; one for S3260 and the other for Controller. If there are other blade or Rack mounted servers that you would like to connect to these SwiftStack servers acting as clients, create the necessary Service Profile templates and profiles.

Create Service Profiles from Templates

Create Service Profiles for S3260 Storage Servers

1.    Select Servers from the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Servers > Service Profiles > root and right-click Create Service Profiles from Template.

3.    Similar to the above create one Service Profile for Active Controller and the other for Standby Controller.

4.    Add the name, starting prefix and Number of instances and select the Service Profile Template S3260-Server1 created above.

8.    Repeat these steps for the second server for the dual node configuration.

Create Service Profiles for Cisco UCS C220 M4 Swift Controllers

1.    Select Servers from the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Servers > Service Profiles and right-click Create Service Profiles from Template.

3.    Add the name, starting prefix and Number of Instances as 1.

Summary

You will have 6 Service Profiles one for each Chassis in a Single Node Configuration.

You will have 12 Service Profiles two for each Chassis in a dual Node Configuration.

You will have 2 Service Profiles for the SwiftStack controllers, one for Active and the other for Standby.

Associate Service Profiles to the Servers

1.    Select Servers from the left pane of the UCSM GUI.

2.    Go to Servers > Service Profiles and right click on the service profile that you would like to associate with.

3.    Click Change Service Profile Association and the next page select existing server and choose the appropriate server in the chassis.

4.    Repeat these steps for all the SwiftStack Storage Servers and the Swift Controllers.

Post Cisco UCS Configuration Health Checks

The following is a list of health checks to be carried out before Installing Operating System and SwiftStack software.

1.    Go to Equipment Tab, Fabric Interconnects, Ethernet ports and check the status of Server and Network Ports. Alternatively open a putty session to Fabric Interconnect, connect nxos a (or b) and check the status of ports with show interface brief.

2.    Repeat this step by logging into Nexus Switches and check the status of ports and port-channels if any.

3.    For each server node, the S3260 Storage Server Node(s) or the Swift Controller check the Inventory tab for CPU and Memory details and Critical Faults.

4.    Under the same Inventory tab for the server under storage tab and then in Luns check the status of the boot lun. After successful application of the service profile, this should show as RAID1 Mirrored and in applied status as below.

5.    Under the same Inventory tab and in Disks, make sure that other SSD and HDD disks are available. If installing OS manually through Red Hat UI, you will select the Virtual Drive as shown in step 4 above and the rest if any jbods can be left as is. If automated through pxe install the other HDD and SSD’s should be made as unconfigured too.

6.    Under the same inventory tab check the number of NIC’s are same as desired for that server. There should be a minimum of 4 NIC’s for Storage Nodes.

Install the Operating System on the Swift Nodes

Install Operating System

This section describes the Installation of the Operating System on the nodes. The installation procedure is the same for both the Controller and Server Nodes. The operating system can be installed either manually through the Red Hat Installer or through the kick-start installer. Make sure to have the appropriate MAC address for the interfaces and have the MAC addresses from Cisco UCS.

1.    From Cisco UCS Manager, navigate to Server > Inventory and NICS to get the MAC address details for the servers.

2.    Login to UCS Manager GUI.

3.    Click the specific Server.

4.    Launch the Java KVM Console.

5.    Activate the Virtual Devices.

6.    Map the ISO file.

7.    Reboot the server.

8.    Press F6 to select the boot option from CVD and launch the installer.

Red Hat Operating System 7.3 was installed on the test bed.

9.    When the Installer opens, install the Red Hat Operating system 7.3. You may select the minimal install from the drop-down menu.

10.  Create /home file system and reserve around 100GB for root file system to take care for /var/logs etc.

Post Operating System Installation on the Nodes

1.    Check and ping the default gateway for North bound connection. This is needed to register the servers.

2.    Register the server and attach subscriptions

sudo subscription-manager --release=7.3 register

(enter username/password when prompted)

sudo subscription-manager attach --pool=<pool name>

sudo subscription-manager repos --disable=*

sudo subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

yum clean all

3.    Update hostname, proxies if any and resolv.conf

hostnamectl set-hostname swiftstack-server1.cisco.com

/etc/resolv.conf

domain cisco.com

nameserver <name server1>

nameserver <name server2>

nameserver <name server3>

options timeout:1 attempts:1

4.    Update dns server and /etc/hosts as needed in your setup for name resolution.

127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4

192.168.120.201 swiftstack-server1 swiftstack-server1.cisco.com

192.168.120.202 swiftstack-server2 swiftstack-server2.cisco.com

192.168.120.203 swiftstack-server3 swiftstack-server3.cisco.com

………………………

5.    Update /etc/rhsm/rhsm.conf with proxy entries in case you are behind the proxy server.

6.    Yum update the server.

yum update –y

7.    Install additional packages. Not all packages were needed but they were installed for operational activities.

yum install dstat net-tools sysstat wget ntp rng-tools bind bind-utils –y

8.    Configure named.conf.

9.    Bind-utils is installed for SwiftStack Load Balancer and  it is not needed if not using  SwiftStack load balancer.

10.  Add an entry in /etc/named.conf as shown below:

zone "cisco.com" {

type master;

notify no;

file "cisco.com";

};

11.  Create a file with the zone name, in this case as cisco.com and make entries as shown below:

;

; BIND data file for cisco.com

;

$TTL    604800

@       IN      SOA     swiftstack-cluster.cisco.com. swiftstack1-cluster.cisco.com. (

1            ; Serial

1D         ; Refresh

1S          ; Retry

4W      ; Expire

1D       ; Default TTL

)

@ IN      NS      swiftstack-cluster.cisco.com.

;

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.220

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.221

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.222

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.223

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.224

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.225

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.226

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.227

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.228

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.229

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.230

swiftstack-cluster IN      A       192.168.120.231

;

Here swiftstack-cluster is the name of Load balancer to which the clients will connect and they will be round robin amongst the SwiftStack PACO nodes on Outward facing network.

12.  Restart the named daemon:

systemctl restart named.service

systemctl enable named.service

13.  Configure rngd.

Rngd is used to speed up the build and config as it builds the entropy on the Controller. rng-tools not needed in case you select ‘fake entropy’ with the controller install.

Update /etc/sysconfig/rngd as

EXTRAOPTIONS="-i -o /dev/random -r /dev/urandom -t 10 -W 2048"

14.  Restart rngd service.

systemctl restart rngd.service

systemctl enable rngd.service

15.  Configure ntp.

16.  Update ntp server address in /etc/ntp.conf and enable ntp service.

systemctl restart ntpd.service

systemctl enable ntpd.service

17.  Update enic drivers.

It is recommended to update the enic drivers on the host certified for the UCSM version.

18.  Login to http://software.cisco.com.

19.  Click Software Download.

20.  In the products page select Unified Computing.

21.  Select UCS ‘C’ series RACK-Mount UCS Managed Server Software.

22.  Download the linux drivers for your UCSM version.

23.  Mount the iso file and extract the enic drivers.

mount ucs-cxxx-drivers-linux.<version>.iso /mnt

cd /mnt/Network/Cisco/VIC/RHEL/RHEL7.3/

24.  Copy the enic driver to say /tmp and install the enic driver as rpm –ivh <rpm name>

25.  Run modinfo to check that the drivers are in place.

[root@swiftstack-server2 ~]# modinfo enic

filename:       /lib/modules/3.10.0-514.21.1.el7.x86_64/weak-updates/enic/enic.ko

version:        2.3.0.31

license:        GPL v2

author:         Scott Feldman <scofeldm@cisco.com>

description:    Cisco VIC Ethernet NIC Driver

rhelversion:    7.3

Health Checks

After completing the steps detailed in the previous section on all the servers, make sure that the connectivity works amongst the servers and if using jumbo frames do a ping test with a jumbo packet size.

Also make sure by logging to each server and checking through /proc/partitions that both HDD ad SSD disks are visible to the operating system.  If any of these are left out in ‘unconfigured’ state, turn to JBOD mode either through Cisco UCS Manager or through storcli.

Install SwiftStack Software

Pre-installation Checks

Make sure that SSH Trust is enabled amongst all the controller and storage nodes.

Below is an example of setting up the ssh-trust:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Generating public/private rsa key pair.

Enter file in which to save the key (/root/.ssh/id_rsa):

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

Enter same passphrase again:

Your identification has been saved in /root/.ssh/id_rsa.

…..

Use ssh-copy-id to copy the files.

ssh-copy-id root@swiftstack-server2

Establish trust between all the nodes before proceeding with the installation.

Install On-Premise Controller Software

There are two modes of installation for SwiftStack controller. The controller can be hosted on SwiftStack site and can be installed via http://platform.swiftstack.com. You can also install Controller On-Premise and the current scope in this CVD is limited to On-Premise controller only. Please Contact SwiftStack for getting the On-Premise Controller software and verify your hardware requirements.

For detailed information about the software, log in to portal.swifstack.com and check for on-premise controller installation under the Admin section. Only high-level installation steps are presented.

Install Software

Obtain the Installer software and run the script in a linux shell as shown below:

root@swiftcontroller ~]# ./SwiftStack-Controller-5.2.0.2-installer.sh

Extracting SwiftStack Controller 5.2.0.2 ...........................................................................

997580 blocks

…..

…..

....

Installing SwiftStack Controller...

Preparing...                          ########################################

Updating / installing...

swiftstack-controller-5.2.0.2-1.el7   ########################################

**** SwiftStack Controller install details will be logged to /tmp/install-2017-04-06-14:01:57.log

Controller install succeeded!

You must now complete setup by pointing a web browser at this server

using HTTPS and the default port of 443.  E.g.

https://172.22.166.216/

Log in with the username "localadmin" and the default password, "password"

Post Software Install Configuration

1.    Log in to the URL pointed out after the install, with the user as localadmin and default password.

2.    Enter license key obtained from SwiftStack and enter the hostname and new password to proceed. You may leave the other values to default and click Submit.

It may take few minutes for the setup to complete.

3.    After re-logging with the new password, the system will prompt you to add the nodes and create the cluster. It may display as shown below to run the curl command on the storage nodes:

curl https://swiftcontroller.cisco.com:443/install | sudo bash

Install SwiftStack Software on Storage Nodes

Before running the installer software make sure that SSL certificates are installed. They could either be from commercial CA or Self-Signed.

Self-Signed certificate will be generated on the controller node and needs to be copied to all the server nodes.

1.    On Controller Node:

[root@swiftcontroller ~]# cd /opt/ss/etc/

[root@swiftcontroller etc]# ls -l ssman.crt

-rw-r--r-- 1 root 668 Jun  6 11:16 ssman.crt

2.    Copy this certificate to all Server nodes.

scp ssman.crt root@swiftstack-node:/etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/

3.    Once copied, run update-ca-trust extract as root user on storage node.

[root@swiftstack-server28-2 .ssh]# update-ca-trust extract

[root@swiftstack-server28-2 .ssh]#

4.    Run the Curl command on the storage node.

curl https://swiftcontroller.cisco.com:443/install | sudo bash

After completing this command, the system will print the claim URL. This can also be printed by running ssclaimurl command on the server as shown below:

[root@swiftstack-server2 ~]# ssclaimurl

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

|                                                                                  |

| Your claim URL is:                                                               |

| https://swiftcontroller.cisco.com:443/claim/9723dbc2-61e1-11e7-8fcb-0025b500024f |

|                                                                                  |

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

5.    Run the Curl Command on each storage node and get the ssclaimurl’s. The nodes have to be claimed through http request to the controller.

Configure SwiftStack Controller for Nodes

1.    Claim Nodes

2.    Run the ClaimURL in a browser to claim the nodes.

Create and Configure the Cluster

1.    Enter the cluster name and create the cluster.

Configure the Basic Settings

1.    Click the Configure button and configure the basic settings as shown and submit the changes.

In the screenshot above, for Network Configuration, ‘No Load Balancer’ is used. In case you would like to use a SwiftStack load balancer, enter the name of the Load Balancer configured. For details on configuring SwiftStack Load Balancer, please refer to the SwiftStack documentation for details. A snippet is provided below.

1.    Click Home > Clusters > Manage <name of the Cluster>.

2.    Click Load Balancer and Add Group name and the outward facing network.

In this example, the name is same as the cluster name configured in bind in your /var/named/<zone file>.

3.    Click Create New RRDNS Group, and provide a VIP with IP address again per your zone file and click Create new RRDNS Group VIP.

4.    Add another VIP and repeat for all the VIP’s per your named zone file.  This should create multiple entries as shown below.

Repeat this procedure for as many VIP’s as nodes in your cluster and Activate the Group. In the network page make sure to enter the name of this group for the SwiftStack Load balancer.

Once configured and configuration deployed, this Load Balancer should be pingable from all the server nodes.

Manage Interface Configuration Rules

1.    Click Networks and provide the three network configurations and save them as rules. Every node ingested will inherit these rules by default.

Create User and Accounts

1.    Click User and Accounts on the right side of the page to create Swift users. These are Swift Cluster accounts and a minimum of one account is needed for the cluster.

2.    Create new user as needed. Create a backup user say bk.

Ingest the Nodes

1.    Click Nodes on the left pane and ingest the nodes.

2.    Confirm the networks when prompted by the system for outward facing, cluster and replication networks.

Setup the Nodes

1.    Click Setup of each node.

a.     Select all the disks and format the drives.

b.    Select SSD disks ( 2 disks in single node and 1 disk in dual node configurations ), click Add Policies and select Account and Container as shown below.

c.     Select HDD disks (54 disks in Single Node and 27 disks in dual node configurations), Click on Add Policies and select Standard-Replica.

d.    Once Completed validate that the policies are displayed correctly on the respective disks as below.

e.    In the left menu, enable the node now.

f.      This completes the setup of one node. Repeat the procedure for all the storage nodes.

Deploy the Configuration

1.    Go to Home > Clusters > Deploy and click Deploy Config to Swift Nodes.

2.    Click the Admin Tab on the right top corner and update the default values as needed in your setup.

3.    Click backups in Admin page.

4.    Enable Save backups to Swift, enter the backup user and password created earlier and click Validate Swift Credentials and submit the changes and then queue a backup job.

Configure Standby Controller for Nodes

The Standby Controller is always in passive node. The primary and standby are not in Active/Active, but in Active/Passive mode. Hence the standby controller is configured and left as is. Refer to the HA section in this document on how to activate the Standby Controller in case of failure of Primary Controller.

Installation

The software installation on standby is the same as on the primary.

Run ./SwiftStack-Controller-5.2.0.2-installer.sh

The installation should complete with the message as

You must now complete setup by pointing a web browser at this server

using HTTPS and the default port of 443.  E.g.

https://172.22.166.217/

Log in with the username "localadmin" and the default password, "password"

1.    After entering the URL in the browser, make sure to check ‘This is a Standby Controller’ as below. Enter the name same a the primary controller hostname.

SwiftStack Health Checks

SwiftStack Controller Monitoring and Metrics

SwiftStack Controller metrics are collected in 30 second intervals, with time series data base graphs available for up to 3 years’ worth of review. Many basic graphs like CPU, IO and network are available showing overall system health results both at Cluster and Node levels. Swift specific graphs also available showing trends in request handling, error counts that are useful for viewing large changes and troubleshooting.

SwiftStack Controller Alerts

Swift Node’s alerts can be managed via the controller and alerts can be acknowledged and then archived as desired.

When an alert is received, you can review the alert guide in the SwiftStack Controller documentation https://www.swiftstack.com/docs/. Click on Alerts/Events section to get more details on the alerts.

Load Testing and Performance Evaluation

Load Testing was done on the cluster to evaluate the performance under different configurations. SSBENCH tool was used to test the cluster. The following points were considered while doing the performance testing.

1.    All the tests were conducted on default configurations both from Cisco UCS and SwiftStack side to make it as much generic as possible. It is possible that we get better results when Tuning is attempted on both.

2.    The purpose of the tests is to get an idea of the performance of the cluster and should nowhere be considered as benchmark values. Most of the effort was spent to get the values of how the cluster will scale up when more chassis/disks are added and also while adding more cpu/mem/network through a separate server node, nor any attempt was made to tune the configuration to its optimal values.

3.    All of the tests listed below were conducted in Replicated mode.

4.    A sufficient number of Clients were added to saturate the cluster. Each server had 40 Gb of Network configured for client traffic. Hence in a 12 Node configuration, with a max capacity of 480 Gb of Client network configured on servers, equal number of clients were added to the infrastructure that can push the traffic to servers close to 480 Gb. This is in particular useful when your workload is bandwidth intensive like on block size like 1MB and more.

5.    Performance data was gathered on the following configurations:

Disks

(10 TB HDD for objects and 400GB SSD’s for A/C and containers)

Network

3 Chassis  3 Nodes

162 HDD + 6  SSD

120Gb client + 120Gb cluster/Repl

3 Chassis 6 Nodes

162 HDD + 6 SSD

240Gb client + 240Gb cluster/repl

6 Chassis 6 Nodes

324 HDD + 12 SSD

240Gb client + 240Gb cluster/repl

6 chassis 12 Node

324 HDD + 12 SSD

480Gb client + 480Gb cluster/repl

3 Chassis - 3Nodes

The values obtained for PUTS and GETS are plotted below.

The following points can be concluded:

1.    Around 2000 req/sec of PUT requests at 1k and 4k block sizes.

2.    More than 7000 req/sec of GET requests observed as peak. This is slightly more than 3 times the PUTS requests. It has to be noted that PUTS aka writes will have an overhead of 3x because of replication.

3.    Peak bandwidth of 3000 MBPS for PUTS and 6000 MBPS for GETS.

3 Chassis - 6Nodes

The following points can be concluded:

1.    Around 4000 req/sec of PUT requests at 1k and 4k block sizes.

2.    Around 15000 req/sec of GET requests observed as peak.

3.    Bandwidth from client side observed as 5200 MBPS for PUTS while GETS got around 13800 MBPS.

6 Chassis - 6Nodes

The following points can be concluded:

1.    Around 4200 PUTS and 14,500 of GETS.

2.    Bandwidth from client side observed to be around 5300 MBPS for PUTS and 19000 MBPS for GETS.

3.    The graphs collected from the controller show a higher peak values than the average values obtained from ssbench. This shows that for a given period of test from start to end it has averaged.

6 Chassis - 12Nodes

Figure 12     Disk IO for GETS @10MB Block Size

Figure 13     Snapshot from the Controller while Running the Tests

The following points can be concluded:

1.    Around 7000 PUTS and 27000 GETS.

2.    Bandwidth from client side observed to be around 9400 MBPS for PUTS and 35000 MBPS for GETS.

3.    The graphs collected from the controller show a higher peak values than the average values obtained from ssbench. This shows that for a given period of test from start to end it has averaged.

Sizing Guidelines and Scalability of the Cluster

Sizing Guidelines

Choosing the right hardware and number of nodes needed for your application is key. While both Cisco S3260 and SwiftStack give you the option of scaling out the storage as needed, it is best if the requirements are understood correctly and then sized.

The sizing of the cluster depends on several factors, a few are listed below:

The total usable space needed in the cluster.

The type of replication you would like to have for your application – Replicated mode vs Erasure Coded mode.

How many regions you are planning for your cluster.

Network Availability between the cluster nodes and your client nodes to the Cluster.

Number of HTTP requests to or from the cluster to the clients.

For a complete reference of the design and hardware guidelines, it is recommended to go through the SwiftStack documentation: https://www.swiftstack.com/docs/. A few points derived from the test bed based on the performance criteria when using S3260 storage server with 40Gb network is mentioned in this documentation.

Usable Space

The setup used replication. This means every write to the cluster is followed by 2 other writes to two other nodes in the cluster. The effective usable space in the cluster, hence is 1/3rd of the raw space.

Considering 54 x 10TB of disks in a full chassis, the usable space will be around 1PB,  in replicated mode for a 6 Chassis cluster. Size your cluster per your usable space requirements.

It is also recommended to leave some free space in the cluster should there be a failure in any one of the nodes. In case of complete failure of a node, SwiftStack will distribute the used blocks to the remaining nodes. In other words in a 6 node cluster, the blocks will be distributed to 5 nodes now. There should be sufficient space left in the cluster for such healthy operations and for business continuity.

HTTP Requests

As mentioned earlier the number of GET and PUT requests and the block size at which this IO happens also matters. In a replicated configuration, PUTS are close to 1/3rd of GETS provided they are no other disk and/or network bottlenecks in the system.

Performance data gathered on four different configurations was gathered to understand how S3260 and SwiftStack would behave when more number of chassis’ and nodes  were added to the cluster.

Case Study

The performance tests were conducted on 3 chassis and 6 chassis with both single and dual node configurations. Below is a case study of 4 block sizes and the GET and PUT requests obtained from the test bed.

4k

64k

1M

10M

Usable Space in TB***

PUTS

GETS

PUTS

GETS

PUTS

GETS

PUTS

GETS

Usable Space

3 chassis – 3 Nodes

1918

6962

1729

7677

1294

4844

307

1100

486 TB

3 chassis – 6 Nodes

4046

13714

4012

12983

2599

10153

535

1373

486 TB

6 chassis – 6 Nodes

4369

13508

4346

15322

2698

10284

535

1688

972 TB

6 chassis – 12 Nodes

7008

26176

7838

27359

5119

19937

879

3510

972 TB

*** Approximate Calculations on usable space based on base 2 for storage from disk manufacturers and assuming that only 1/3 of space from raw available because of replication.

Plotting a graph for PUTS and GETS to better analyze the data.

Summary

The following conclusions can be made:

1.    Decide the number of chassis’ required based on the raw and usable storage needed.

a.     Usable space is 1/3rd in a fully replicated mode.

b.    Leave one storage node as spare to take care of failures (N +1 architecture).

c.     Leave 20% operating margin.

d.    Add space for future expansion as well as organic growth.

2.    The performance of the cluster increases with number of nodes. More the nodes (the CPU, memory and network) better the performance is.

3.    From 3 chassis to 6 chassis, the output is almost doubled (single node to single node and dual node to dual node comparison)

4.    Higher blocks sizes seem to get a better benefit by adding additional nodes as the network bandwidth is doubled.

The sizing of the cluster depends on the usable space, number of nodes and performance expectations based on the applications requirements.

Scalability

Considering the data of scalability for a given block size, this is how system could scale by adding more chassis and nodes.

Both PUTS and GETS expected to scale linearly by adding more nodes to the system.

High Availability and Business Continuity

The High Availability of the solution was validated by failing out one of the components of the infrastructure. Following points were considered for Business Continuity.

The Cluster will have reasonable amount of load when the fault is injected. The outputs like Total Cluster Disk I/O or Gets/Puts requested to be gathered before and after Fault injection.

Only one fault injected at any point of time. No double failures considered.

Performance degradation is acceptable but there shouldn’t be any business interruption. The underlying infrastructure components should continue to operate with the remaining components.

A few of the HA tests conducted are:

Swift Stack Chassis and Node Failures

Swift Stack Controller Failures

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect Failure

Cisco Nexus Switch Failure

Figure 14 shows the High Availability Tests conducted on the infrastructure

Figure 14     High Availability Tests

SwiftStack Node Failures

Client workload started on the Cluster with SwiftStack Load Balancer.

Sequence of Events

While cluster was running on load, data was gathered on IO, and one chassis was powered off (Nodes pulled out from the chassis), simulating a hardwarefailure. After few minutes of running the cluster in this state, a hard power down of nodes was also issued from Cisco UCS on another chassis. The nodes were powered on and both the chassis’ were brought up again after few minutes.

Dstat output gathered on one of the server nodes:

This server was doing disk reads of 2000M, a total Network output of 3800M when the fault was injected.

The total IO of the cluster was around 25 GB/s before fault injection.

Cisco UCS show Critical Alert that the Chassis cannot be accessed anymore.

Drop in Proxy Throughput observed as below:

The overall activity as recorded by SwiftStack controller is as shown below:

Summary

When the first chassis was brought down a drop in IO observed around 18:30. System continues to operate with 20GB/sec.

At around 18:40 second chassis was brought down and IO dropped almost to 15GB/sec.

System fully recovers when chassis’ were plugged back in.

SwiftStack Controller Failures

SwiftStack controller is not in the data path. No interruption to the client traffic was observed when the Controller node was brought down.

Summary

The clients communicated directly with the PACO nodes and there was no interruption. However, any monitoring, SNMP alerts configured etc. will not work. There is a need to activate the Standby Controller and make it Primary in case it is decided that it’s a total hardware failure and cannot be recovered soon. This is covered in the following section.

Activate Standby Controller to Primary

1.    Update the DNS entry (or /etc/hosts) for the name of the controller to be accessed appropriately.

2.    Login to the controller UI, Click on Admin tab and then Recovery or directly login to https://swiftcontroller.cisco.com/recovery/standbys/.

The following information will be displayed:

First restore the controller before enable. As the backup is taken on swift, it will sync up from the database and once completed could be enabled.

The standby controller becomes primary. You may continue to operate in this mode or revert back to the original primary when the problem was fixed.

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect Failures

Client workload started on the Cluster.

Sequence of events:

While cluster was running on load data gathered on IO. One of the Fabrics was rebooted and any changes to IO pattern was observed. The reboot was done on Secondary first and then the tests were repeated on Primary.

The tests were conducted for both Gets and Puts operations.

Dstat output gathered on one of the server nodes while running PUTS.

This server was doing a disk writes of 2148M and handling 750M of Client Traffic while generating around 2000M of Cluster traffic.

Logged into surviving Fabric Interconnects to check the status of the cluster and it was down.

UCS-40G-Openstack-dom2-Fab-B# show cluster extended-state

Cluster Id: 0x48f6d6ca658111e6-0x924b0078883f3a3b

B: UP, SUBORDINATE

A: UNRESPONSIVE, PRIMARY

B: memb state UP, lead state SUBORDINATE, mgmt services state: UP

A: memb state UNRESPONSIVE, lead state PRIMARY, mgmt services state: INVALID

heartbeat state SECONDARY_REQUESTED

INTERNAL NETWORK INTERFACES:

eth1, DOWN

eth2, DOWN

HA NOT READY

Peer Fabric Interconnect is down

Waiting for device to come online.

Device count, expected: 3, discovered: 2

Detailed state of the device selected for HA storage:

Chassis 1, serial: FOX1948G99W, state: inactive

Chassis 2, serial: FOX1540GN14, state: active

Server 1, serial: FCH1904V31U, state: active

UCS-40G-Openstack-dom2-Fab-B#

Swift Controller does not point out any errors or devices/nodes when FI is getting rebooted.

Summary:

No interruption of traffic was observed. A small drop in output when the entire traffic is handled by single FI.

The drop in performance also depends on distribution of links and head room available on one Single FI to handle all of the load.

It was around 20GB/sec for puts and 35 GB/s for gets. In both the cases FI handled the traffic, vNIC’s failed over to surviving FI, vNIC’s failed back and MAC learning completed fine after FI came back and the business was as usual.

Cisco Nexus 9332 Failures

Client workload started on the Cluster.

Sequence of events:

While cluster was running, load data gathered on IO. One of the Nexus Switches was rebooted and any changes to IO pattern was observed.

Cisco Nexus Switch Details:

BIOS: version 07.41

NXOS: version 7.0(3)I1(3)

BIOS compile time:  10/12/2015

NXOS image file is: bootflash:///n9000-dk9.7.0.3.I1.3.bin

NXOS compile time:  8/21/2015 3:00:00 [08/21/2015 10:27:18]

Hardware

cisco Nexus9000 C9332PQ chassis

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3- CPU @  with 16402540 kB of memory.

Processor Board ID SAL2025S8AC

Device name: N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B

bootflash:   51496280 kB

Kernel uptime is 74 day(s), 16 hour(s), 28 minute(s), 15 second(s)

Last reset

Reason: Unknown

System version: 7.0(3)I1(3)

Service:

plugin

Core Plugin, Ethernet Plugin

Active Packages:

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B#

Make sure that running config is copied as startup configuration and then issue a reboot of the switch.

Before Fault Injection

Switch B was reloaded

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B# show clock

15:06:34.315 UTC Wed Jun 28 2017

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B# reload

This command will reboot the system. (y/n)?  [n] y

Rebooted around 15:06 Nexus switch time.

After reboot switch came up fine and no interruption traffic

Hardware

cisco Nexus9000 C9332PQ chassis

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3- CPU @  with 16402540 kB of memory.

Processor Board ID SAL2025S8AC

Device name: N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B

bootflash:   51496280 kB

Kernel uptime is 0 day(s), 0 hour(s), 5 minute(s), 54 second(s)

Last reset at 518842 usecs after  Wed Jun 28 15:06:58 2017

Reason: Reset Requested by CLI command reload

System version: 7.0(3)I1(3)

Service:

plugin

Core Plugin, Ethernet Plugin

Active Packages:

N9K-40G-OPS-FAB-B#

During the entrie time of reload, no interruption of traffic was observed.

Summary:

Port Channels were configured on the Nexus Switches as mentioned in the configuration section earlier. Observed Business continuity during through out the tests.

Scaling up the Cluster

This section provides a short description about how to scale up the cluster.

Adding Nodes to Cisco UCS

1.    Make sure that the chassis and/or nodes VIC’s are connected to the Fabric Interconnects. Power on the chassis. System should do auto-discovery.

2.    When the Chassis is discovered, make sure that the inventory (CPU, memory, disks) are fine as expected.

3.    Make sure that you have enough room available in UUID, KVM and IP pools. Else create a new pool to add more IP’s or UUID’s.

4.    Create Service Profiles from the Service Profile Templates. Make sure that the disks are in unconfigured state and apply the newly created Service Profiles.

5.    After observing that virtual lun is created in the inventory > storage tab after applying the Service Profile, install the operating system.

6.    As mentioned in the OS post Install section, update linux kernel with yum and complete any other configurations mentioned in the post-install section.

System is ready to be added as a node to the Cluster.

Adding Nodes to SwiftStack Cluster

1.    Copy the ssman.crt file from Controller Node to the new Storage node.

scp ssman.crt root@swiftstack-new-node:/etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/

Run update-ca-trust extract on the new storage node.

2.    Run the Curl Command on the storage node. This will download the necessary packages and installs the software.

curl https://swiftcontroller.cisco.com:443/install | sudo bash

3.    Run the ssclaimurl on a browser and claim the node

4.    In case you are using SwiftStack Load Balancer, reconfigure.

5.    Ingest the nodes

6.    Click on Setup of the nodes – format the disks, add SSD and HDD’s to respective policies. SSD’s go to Account and Container Policy, while HDD’s to Standard-Replica policy.

7.    Do not deploy the configuration yet in case you have more nodes to be added now. Complete all the nodes setup upto step 6 above, enable them and then deploy the configuration.

This completes the addition of new node(s) in the cluster. Please note that this could automatically kick in the rebalance activity. The time it takes to distribute used space to the new nodes depends on the used space in the cluster, prior to the addition. While this is a background job, it does consume some network and disk resources. There will be traffic flow through the replication nic configured on the system. This activity can be speeded up or slowed down by tuning the resources in the tuning section. Please contact swiftstack support team that is optimal for your configuration.

Migrating to Dual Node Configuration

If you have a single node configuration and would like to upgrade to a dual node configuration please follow the steps below.

Delete the chassis with single node

1.    Login to controller, Manager SwiftStack Controller and then click Nodes.

2.    Click Manage and then disable the node and then deploy the configuration. This will let the Cluster know that one of the nodes has been disabled.

3.    Go back to the disabled node in the same manage page (it will be in disabled mode now). Click on setup now, select all drives and then unmount them. You may also monitor the devices by logging into the node and by running df –k.

4.    In the same page with devices unmounted, select all the drives and click ‘Delete’ now, which will make the disks as unmanaged drives now.

5.    Now you can delete this node. This will remove the devices and the node from ring.

6.    If not already done, deploy the config to the cluster. This will make the cluster nodes as ‘N-1’ now. This can be verified from clicking on the nodes again.

7.    This will also trigger rebalance activity in the cluster for both Account and containers (2 SSD’s deleted) and objects or standard replica.

8.    Network activity can be verified by logging into any of the nodes.

This completes the deletion of the node.

Add the Second Node to Chassis

Add the hardware, the second Server, SIOC and connect the 40G Twin-Ax cables to both the Fabric Interconnects. For details of connectivity, refer to Initial setup and then discover the hardware in Cisco UCS. If needed add necessary KVM IP’s, MAC and UUID’s.

Reconfigure Chassis in Cisco UCS

Associate Chassis Profile

Refer to the section above for creating chassis profile template. Create a new Chassis profile template with ‘dual node’ disk zoning policy as mentioned in this section. Create a chassis profile from this template and then associate to this chassis. The Dual Node disk zoning policy will add the first 28 disks to first node and the rest 28 to the second node. Make sure that each server gets 1 SSD in its distribution else move the SSD disks appropriately within the storage slots.

Associate Service Profile

Create a new Service Profile template if needed and then associate them to the 2 new nodes.

Install Operating System and SwiftStack Software

Follow the Operating system installation steps, post-install checks, and then install the SwiftStack Software on the two nodes as mentioned earlier in this document.

Install SwiftStack software, claim the node, format the disks, add policies and then enable the nodes in the controller.

Final Steps

When the node is added back to the cluster, it may trigger to re-balance the disks again. The rebalance activity on SSD’s and HDD’s depend on the used space within the cluster.

Repeat all of the steps in case you need to make the rest of the chassis also as dual node.

Frequently Asked Questions

Cisco UCS

1.    What Cisco UCS Manager version is supported with SwiftStack on Cisco UCS?

SwiftStack has been validated with UCSM version 3.x and with 40Gb Fabric Interconnects and Switches. It is strongly recommended to run the infrastructure on versions higher than the validation done in this CVD.

2.    Can I use 10GB Nexus Switches in the infrastructure?

This hasn’t been validated but might still work. It is strongly recommended again to use 40Gb network between the Storage Nodes. By using 10GB with splitter cables, you might be underutilizing the hardware.

3.    How many minimum nodes are recommended?

This is as per the SDS requirements. The validation was done with minimum of 3 nodes and then scaled up further.

SwiftStack

1.    The CVD talks about performance data collected in Replicated mode. Where can I get information on EC (Erasure Coding)?

Erasure coding and savings in space with a little performance hit are known in SDS world. We will be validating this soon in the infra and will update this CVD.

2.    How many nodes can system scale up?

SwiftStack can scale up to petabytes of usable data. The nodes can be added and/or deleted as mentioned in the scale up section. You may have to check for the availability of the ports on the upstream switches.

Troubleshooting

1.    I am unable to claim the node. System continuously spins but never presents me with a ‘Claim Node’ button. What should I do?

There can be network glitches and it is fine to retry the operation. In case you are not successful, follow these steps:

From the controller page, delete the node. Login to the server node and run /usr/bin/uninstall-swiftstack-node. This will completely remove the software from the system. Restart by running the curl command to add this node to the controller.

2.    What diagnostics can I run in server node to check the status of a storage node?

Running /usr/bin/ssdiag will spill out any errors. A healthy node may report as below

[root@swiftstack-server2 ~]# /usr/bin/ssdiag

SwiftStack Agent Version:        5.2.0.2-1

Swift Package Version:           2.12.0.1-1.el7

…………

Daemons are running: OK

Resolve API hostname: OK:      (no cluster API hostname defined to check)

SwiftStack ProxyFS: OK:      (proxyfs not enabled)

SwiftStack NAS Gateway: OK:      (gateway not enabled)

VPN link is working: OK

IP address(es) consistent: OK

SwiftStack Node Connectivity: OK

SwiftStack agent version: OK

Swift Services: OK

Disk Checks: OK

System time: OK

3.    How do I check the health of a disk in SwiftStack?

Login to SwiftStack Server node and run utility ‘sdt’ utility provided by SwiftStack.

The status of individual disks can be queried as below:

4.    Swiftstack shows me an alert about a bad disk that needs to be replaced. How do I replace the correct disk in Cisco UCS?

a.     Go to the Managed Swift Drives page, and on the node tab in UI and then unmount the disk and then delete the disk. Note the device name as pointed out by Swift – say /dev/sdc.

b.    Check the existence and status in cat /proc/partitions and /dev/disk/by-*

c.     You may also have an alert in Cisco UCS. Check for any missing drives in the inventory tab of the server under disks.

d.    You can also run storcli to confirm the disk number which will report as bad disk.

e.    Check the disk number in storcli or UCS inventory and replace the disk. The disk numbers physically are numbered in 4 rows in S3260 as below. Identify the appropriate disk and replace it.

f.      Format the new drive and add policies as appropriate.

For further details please visit the page https://www.swiftstack.com/docs/cookbooks/ops/detect_and_replace_failed_drives.html.

Please note that a disk LED locator can also be turned on, in Cisco UCS. However for this the power should be on and cables should be long enough when you pull the disk cabinet.

5.    Where to start looking for Swift logs?

On storage node check /var/log/swift/all.log

On Controller node check /opt/ss/var/log/*

6.    How can I use Python Swift Client?

python-swiftclient is handy to run few CLI commands and also for troubleshooting. Once python swiftclient is installed the parameters like authorization and users can be passed to swift and also can be put in bash or .profile. For instructions on how to install python-swiftclient please visit https://www.swiftstack.com/docs/integration/python-swiftclient.html.

Alternatively make changes to your .bashrc file as below:

export ST_AUTH=http://192.168.120.202/auth/v1.0

export ST_USER=ssbench

export ST_KEY=ssbench

Additional debug option can also be provided to the above URL

7.    Where can I download GUI version of SwiftStack Client?

You can download it from SwiftStack web site - https://www.swiftstack.com/downloads

A sample screen shot shown below:

8.    There are several Tuning parameters in Controller node. How and what do I tune?

Most of the times the default settings should suffice. Tuning is a bit iterative and should be done carefully. All the tests done on the test bed were with default parameters. In case you think you could extract better values from the cluster, please contact swiftstack-support team.

Appendix

Cluster.conf

Below is a sample cluster.conf file used on the test bed. The clients may have to be tweaked depending on the number of nodes and chassis’s.

[ssbench@swiftstack-client1 ansible-ops]$ cat cluster.conf

[benchnodes:vars]

result_folder=/home/ssbench/ansible-ops/result

auth="http://swiftstack-cluster/auth/v1.0"

# If you disable auth middleware in proxy, please provide correct storage_url

# noauth="http://192.168.200.21/v1/AUTH_demo"

# ssbench option (--user_count, -u) 6BM nodes

#concurrency=50, 100

#concurrency= 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000

# for 12 clients

#concurrency= 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500

# for 12 clients

concurrency= 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000

# for 24 clients

#concurrency= 13, 25,  50,  75, 100, 125, 150, 175, 200, 225, 250

# for 24 clients

#concurrency= 300, 350, 400, 450, 500

# ssbench option (--worker)

worker=20

# ssbench option (--run_seconds, )

duration=300

# fullness

#concurrency=100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100

#duration=1800

# Running mode

# - fullness: generates different container name for each run.

#              scenario folder: 'scenarios/fullness'

# - normal:   use default scenario files

#             scenario folder: 'scenarios/normal'

#mode=fullness

mode=normal

[swiftnodes:vars]

# User for couting backend errors and clean disks

ansible_ssh_user=root

ansible_ssh_password=root

# Allow clean all swift disk data

#allow_clean_disks=True

allow_clean_disks=False

[benchnodes]

192.168.120.231 user="ssbench1" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.232 user="ssbench2" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.233 user="ssbench3" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.234 user="ssbench4" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.235 user="ssbench5" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.236 user="ssbench6" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.109 user="ssbench7" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.110 user="ssbench8" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.111 user="ssbench9" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.112 user="ssbench10" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.113 user="ssbench11" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.114 user="ssbench12" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.131 user="ssbench13" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.132 user="ssbench14" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.137 user="ssbench15" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.138 user="ssbench16" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.139 user="ssbench17" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.140 user="ssbench18" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.141 user="ssbench19" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.142 user="ssbench20" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.143 user="ssbench21" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.144 user="ssbench22" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.145 user="ssbench23" key="ssbench"

192.168.120.146 user="ssbench24" key="ssbench"

[swiftnodes]

192.168.120.201 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.201

192.168.120.202 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.202

192.168.120.203 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.203

192.168.120.204 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.204

192.168.120.205 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.205

192.168.120.206 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.206

192.168.120.207 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.207

192.168.120.208 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.208

192.168.120.209 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.209

192.168.120.210 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.210

192.168.120.211 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.211

192.168.120.212 type=proxy,object,account,container outward_facing_ip=192.168.120.212

[ssbench@swiftstack-client1 ansible-ops]$

About the Authors

Ramakrishna Nishtala, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Ramakrishna Nishtala is a Technical Leader in Cisco UCS and Data Center solutions group and has over 20 years of experience in IT infrastructure, Automation, Virtualization and Cloud computing. In his current role at Cisco Systems, he works on best practices, optimization and performance tuning on OpenStack and other Open Source solutions like Swift, Ceph, dockers, etc. on Cisco UCS platforms. Prior to this he was involved in data center migration strategies, compute and storage consolidation, end-to-end performance optimization on databases, application and web servers and solutions engineering.

Acknowledgements

·         Jawwad Memon, Cisco Systems, Inc.

·         Erik Pounds, SwiftStack

·         Hiren Chandramani, SwiftStack

·         Johnny Wang, SwiftStack

·         Martin Lanner, SwiftStack