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Cisco UCS Director provides support for orchestration automation, management, monitoring, and reporting for supported EMC Unity storage arrays.
The summary reports for EMC Unity that you can add to your Cisco UCS Director dashboard provide a system overview, free vs used system capacity, and the available capacity of storage pools. In addition, the available reports for an EMC Unity storage array include inventory information and the current status of the following:
Storage processors
Disk groups
Disks
Storage pools
Storage tiers
LUNs
Consistency groups
Hosts
Initiators
iSCSI portals
iSCSI routes
Ethernet ports
FC (Fibre Channel) ports
File systems
SMB shares
NFS shares
NAS servers
Snapshot schedules
System Tasks
Cisco UCS Director tests the connection to the EMC Unity storage array. If that test is successful, it adds the Unity account and discovers all infrastructure elements in the storage array that are associated with that account. This discovery process and inventory collection cycle takes few minutes to complete.
A storage pool includes one or more drives with the same characteristics, such as the disk group, RAID type, or number of disks. An EMC Unity storage array must have at least one storage pool that you can use to create storage resources, such as LUNs and file systems.
After you create a storage pool, you can expand the pool to include additional drives and multiple drive types. However, you cannot remove drives assigned to a pool.
Create at least one disk group on the EMC Unity storage array. All available disk groups are added to Cisco UCS Director during inventory collection.
Make sure the disks that you want to include in the storage pool are free and available in the appropriate storage tier.
Host configurations are logical connections that hosts or applications can use to access storage resources.
Note | Cisco UCS Director supports the Host configuration type only. We do not support the Subnet or Netgroup host configuration types. |
Note | Cisco UCS Director supports the Host configuration type only. We do not support the Subnet or Netgroup host configuration types. |
Initiators are the endpoints where Fibre Channel and iSCSI sessions originate. A Fibre Channel initiator is identified by its World Wide Name (WWN), and an iSCSI initiator by its iSCSI qualified name (IQN).
After you register an initiator and associate it with a host, all paths from the initiator are given access to the storage provisioned for the host. This ensures a high availability connection between the host and storage system.
iSCSI Interfaces
The iSCSI route defines the destination or target node for iSCSI traffic from the iSCSI portal on the EMC Unity storage array.
Create an iSCSI portal.
EMC Unity Block Storage
Note | The following procedure outlines one of the ways in which you can set up EMC Unity block storage. |
Step 1 | Add an account for the EMC Unity storage array. |
Step 2 | Create at least one host.
See Creating a Host. |
Step 3 | Create at least one LUN.
See Creating a LUN. |
Step 4 | Map the LUN to the host that you created. |
Step 5 | (Optional) Add at least one initiator to the host. |
Step 6 | (Optional)
If the host initiator type is iSCSI, do the following: |
Step 7 | (Optional)
Create a consistency group that includes the LUN you created.
Use consistency groups if you want to group a set of LUNs and create snapshots that represent the same point in time for each LUN. See Creating a Consistency Group. |
You can use Cisco UCS Director to create, configure, and map LUNs for an EMC Unity storage array.
In addition to setting a schedule to automate the creation of a snapshot, you can also take a snapshot of a LUN at any time.
Consistency groups organize the storage allocated to a specific host or a set of hosts. Each consistency group can include one or more LUNs.
You can create a snapshot for a consistency group. These snapshots provide an image for each of the LUNs in the group at the same point in time. As a result, a consistency group can help to ensure that the data across all LUNs in the group is consistent.
In addition to setting a schedule to automate the creation of a snapshot, you can also take a snapshot of a consistency group at any time.
EMC Unity File Storage
Note | The following procedure outlines one of the ways in which you can set up EMC Unity file storage. |
Step 1 | Add an account for the EMC Unity storage array. |
Step 2 | Create at least one NAS Server. |
Step 3 | Create a file interface for the NAS server. |
Step 4 | Create one or more servers to support the NAS server.
Make sure that these servers are consistent with the protocol that you plan to use for the file system. If you plan to use the SMB (Windows) file protocol, create an SMB server. If your implementation includes Active Directory, you can also create a DNS server. See Creating an SMB Server and Creating a DNS Server. If you plan to use the NFS (Linux or Unix) file protocol, create an NFS server. See Creating an NFS Server. |
Step 5 | Create at least one file system. |
Step 6 | Create one or more shares for the file system.
The shares must be consistent with the protocol you plan to use for the file system. See Creating an SMB Share and Creating an NFS Share. |
Step 7 | (Optional)
Create at least one host if you want the NFS share to allow access to the host.
See Creating a Host. |
Step 8 | (Optional)
Create one or more file system or directory storage quotas through user quotas or quota trees.
See Creating a User Quota for a File System, Creating a Quota Tree, and Creating a User Quota for a Quota Tree. |
A Network-Attached Storage (NAS) server is a file server that catalogs, organizes, manages, and transfers files within the designated shares in a file storage system. A NAS server requires the following:
Storage pool to store the server's configuration data. You can create the storage pool in Cisco UCS Director.
Storage processor where the server runs. Cisco UCS Director imports the storage processor information from the EMC Unity storage array during inventory collection.
Determine which storage processor you want to use for the NAS server.
Create a storage pool.
Create an SMB server for each NAS server that you plan to use in a Windows file system.
For an SMB server with Active Directory, create a DNS server.
Create an NFS server for a NAS server that you plan to use in a Linux or Unix file system.
Create a DNS server for each NAS server that you plan to use in a Windows file system and join to Active Directory.
A file system represents a set of storage resources for network files. Users or hosts can connect to the file system and use it for file-based storage.
Each file system, or container for file-based storage, has the following properties:
A pre-determined storage capacity
A file access protocol, such as SMB, NFS, or multi-protocol
One or more shares that network hosts or users can use to access shared files or folders
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | On the Storage page, choose the pod. |
Step 3 | On the Storage page, click Storage Accounts. |
Step 4 | Click the row with the EMC Unity account where you want to create a file system and click View Details. |
Step 5 | Click File Systems. |
Step 6 | Click Create. |
Step 7 | On the Create File System screen, complete the following fields: |
Step 8 | Click Submit. |
In addition to setting a schedule to automate the creation of a snapshot, you can also take a snapshot of a file system at any time.
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | On the Storage page, choose the pod. |
Step 3 | On the Storage page, click Storage Accounts. |
Step 4 | Click the row with the EMC Unity account where you want to create a file system snapshot and click View Details. |
Step 5 | Click File Systems. |
Step 6 | Click the row with the file system where you want to create a snapshot. |
Step 7 | Click Start Snapshot Creation. |
Step 8 | On the Start EMC Unity Snapshot Creation screen, click Submit. |
Step 1 | Choose . |
Step 2 | On the Storage page, choose the pod. |
Step 3 | On the Storage page, click Storage Accounts. |
Step 4 | Click the row with the EMC Unity account where you want to pause a file system snapshot and click View Details. |
Step 5 | Click File Systems. |
Step 6 | Click the row with the file system where you want to pause a snapshot. |
Step 7 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Pause Snapshot Creation. |
Step 8 | On the Pause EMC Unity Snapshot Creation screen, click Submit. |
A user quota limits or tracks the amount of storage space that individual users consume on a file system. The user quota sets default hard and soft limits at the file system level.
A quota tree limits the amount of storage that can be consumed on a particular directory. You can use a quota tree to set storage limits for a project where multiple users share the same directory or to track directory usage.
This user quota limits the amount of storage available to an individual user on the directory associated with the quota tree.
Shares
An SMB share controls access to file system resources for Windows users and hosts.
Ensure that the file system or snapshot you choose for the share's souce is associated with a NAS server that supports the SMB profile
An NFS share controls access to file system resources for Linux or Unix users and hosts.
Ensure that the file system or snapshot you choose for the share's souce is associated with a NAS server that supports the NFS profile