novikrom

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novikrom

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January 1st, 2021 14:00

VMware ScaleIO Gateway to a shared datastore

Say please! Is it possible to migrate VMware ScaleIO Gateway to a shared datastore?

In case of host esxi failure when vSphere ON is enabled. As I understand it, only this SVM is not tied to RDM disks. Now it is stored on the local datastore and I think that if the host fails, it will not be able to start. Please tell me I understand the situation correctly or am I wrong?

  • matt_hobbs

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    Posted January 4th, 2021 16:00

    As a high level process it would be something like the following:

    1. Reinstall ESXi on failed host with new SSD.
    2. Add ESXi host back into vCenter
    3. Re-run Add-node / Deploy SVM from PowerFlex vCenter plugin. (Assumes an SVM template is on one of the older hosts, you can have multiple copies of the SVM template on different nodes).

  • matt_hobbs

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    Posted January 2nd, 2021 05:00

    You can move it to shared storage if you’d like. Typically it doesn’t require HA though unless in an openstack environment where you can also use ha-proxy to make the gateway service redundant. 

  • novikrom

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    Posted January 2nd, 2021 12:00

    Thank you!!! You can answer one question that I can't figure out. I have three hosts with 4 devices each - a total of 13.1 GB. The system shows me the available volume for creating volumes of 4.2 TB - If I create two thick volumes, then I have to reduce them by 20 percent to get into the system policy of 80 percent and 100 percent. And it allows you to create two thin disks of 2.1TB and more. What happens if I create two thin disks on 2.1 and let's say I make two datastores in vSphere with the same volume and fill them completely. What happens if one host fails? Will the system have enough resources for stock? Here I am completely confused! Tell me please!

  • novikrom

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    Posted January 2nd, 2021 14:00

    Fixed

    Thank you!!! You can answer one question that I can't figure out. I have three hosts with 4 devices each - a total of 13.1 TB. The system shows me the available volume for creating volumes of 4.2 TB - If I create two thick volumes, then I have to reduce them by 20 percent to get into the system policy of 80 percent and 100 percent. And it allows you to create two thin disks of 2.1TB and more. What happens if I create two thin disks on 2.1 and let's say I make two datastores in vSphere with the same volume and fill them completely. What happens if one host fails? Will the system have enough resources for stock? Here I am completely confused! Tell me please!

  • matt_hobbs

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    Posted January 2nd, 2021 21:00

    With 13.1TB raw capacity over 4 nodes, this should give you 4.9TB usable after deducting 25% as spare capacity for a single node failure. As long as your thick and thin Volumes do not exceed 4.9TB in allocated space, you will be guaranteed to be safe even if a node failure occurs. 

    Also in regards to Thin Volumes, it is only on the first write that they are slower - after that they are equal in performance to Thick Volumes, so you may wish to consider using Thin Volumes for everything that you have.

  • novikrom

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    Posted January 4th, 2021 09:00

    Thank you for your professional answers and advice! Let me ask you an important question for me! I currently have three hosts. On each host SVMs are located on SSD disks. SSD disks work as usual - they do not have RAID, although of course it would be good to initially place them in RAID-1. But the budget was not allowed. I have a question for you - if the SSD disk with the SVM located on it fails, what should I do? Of course I am doing a disk replacement. and here's how to create an SVM on it again. That is, I do not know how to proceed in this case? Please tell me how to act in case of that failure?

  • novikrom

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    Posted January 4th, 2021 19:00

    thank you for your answer! Let me ask you one more question regarding volume allocation.
    Let me describe the system. There are three Dell R 440 servers.
    Each has four 1TB SAS disks and one 480GB SSD.
    My task is to make two thick volumes of the maximum safe size and create two datastores,
    this is required for high availability for VMware vSphere,
    I am using version 6.5 U3. Here is the current physical capacity.




    vx1.png

    The system shows what is available for allocation 1.6 TB

    Also in the volume section

    vx3.png

    But there is politics

    vx2.png

    Which will not allow me, for example, to create another volume of 1.6 TB, I must reduce it by 20 percent so as not to exceed the policy limit. Let's say I create a third volume with a 25 percent reduction. Then there is still unused space. Does the system need it? is it done for this? Why can't all free space be used? What is the reason?

    But the task is as I wrote at the beginning. Two thick volumes are needed. Please tell me what size they should be given my situation. And all the same it is not clear why the unused space remains. And why is it limited to 80 percent? After all, the system already has spare space in case of a failure. For thin drives, the logic is clear, they can grow and exceed the limit, but for fat drives, why can't you use all the available space? Thank you!

  • matt_hobbs

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    Posted January 4th, 2021 21:00

    It is safe to exceed the pre-defined policy limits as long as you have already allocated enough spare capacity to handle a node failure (in your case, 25% is the minimum capacity spare you should set ---- it appears though that you currently have it 35%). 

    You can therefore ignore the capacity warning alerts, or simply set them much higher (98% and 99%). 

    With the 13.1TB raw capacity you have (900GB / 838.19GiB SAS * 4 drives * 4 nodes), after deducting the 25% spare (3.275 TiB) you have 9.825 TiB raw remaining, which means you can allocate up to 4.9125 TiB of Volumes safely. This means you can have 3x 1.6375 TiB of Thick Volumes if you wish. 

    The only thing I would also mention is that if a node fails you will be safe, however you will want to get it repaired ASAP as if another drive on another node fails, you will be in trouble. To prevent against this, you may wish to slightly increase your spare capacity to factor in one more drive worth of spare capacity (which would make your new spare % setting of 31-32%). 

    With 32% spare capacity, you would therefore have 9 TiB raw / 4.5TiB usable = 1.5TiB * 3 Volumes. 

    Hope this helps. 

     

  • novikrom

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    Posted January 4th, 2021 23:00

    Thank you very much! Sorry, I did not provide you with the exact data in the picture, I added a fourth disk for each host before that - there were three before that and there is a rebalance-now the picture is a little different already. The question-what you answered me remains relevant and after rebalancing you were misled by the parameter of available capacity possible-here is the full picture now. Please excuse me!

    vx4.png

    Please comment. The percentage of the space policy was originally 35 I didn't change it

    vx55.png

  • matt_hobbs

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    Posted January 5th, 2021 01:00

    From here you can reduce your spare capacity down from 35% to 32% which is quite safe and will allow you to have one node failure, and then one disk failure, and still have your data fully protected. 

    If you wish to increase the warning and critical levels up higher this is also up to you and of no real concern from a PowerFlex / ScaleIO perspective. The only thing that can occur when there is no free space left is that rebalancing may not occur if you exceed your Critical capacity threshold that you have set - https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000167034/scaleio-doesn-t-rebalance-at-critical-capacity-threshold