Dell EMC Unity Cinder driver

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Please follow the Driver configuration exactly if you are upgrading Unity Cinder driver from version 0.4.1 (and before), or newly installing Unity Cinder driver.

Version mapping

	Liberty	Mitaka	Newton	Ocata	Pike	Queens	Rocky	Stein	Train
Unity	0.3.x	0.4.x	0.5.x	1.x.x	2.x.x	3.x.x	4.x.x	5.x.x	6.x.x
VNX	6.x.x	7.x.x	8.x.x	9.x.x	10.x.x	11.x.x	12.x.x	13.x.x	14.x.x

License

Apache License, Version 2.0

Overview

Unity driver is built on the top of Block Storage framework and a Dell EMC distributed Python package storops.

Version

0.5.4

Prerequisites

Software	Version
Unity OE	4.1.X or newer
OpenStack	Newton
storops	0.5.12 or newer

Supported operations

• Create, delete, attach, and detach volumes.
• Create, list, and delete volume snapshots.
• Create a volume from a snapshot.
• Copy an image to a volume.
• Clone a volume.
• Extend a volume.
• Migrate a volume.
• Get volume statistics.
• Efficient non-disruptive volume backup.

Driver configuration

NOTE

The following instructions should all be performed on Black Storage nodes.

1. Install Unity Cinder driver

   Unity Cinder driver is provided in the folder: cinder/volume/drivers/dell_emc/unity.

   Merge the folder dell_emc into the cinder/volume/drivers directory of your OpenStack node(s) where cinder-volume is running.

2. Install storops from pypi:

   # pip install storops
   

3. Add the following content into /etc/cinder/cinder.conf:

   [DEFAULT]
   enabled_backends = unity
   
   [unity]
   # Storage protocol
   storage_protocol = iSCSI
   # Unisphere IP
   san_ip = <SAN IP>
   # Unisphere username and password
   san_login = <SAN LOGIN>
   san_password = <SAN PASSWORD>
   # Volume driver name
   volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.dell_emc.unity.Driver
   # backend's name
   volume_backend_name = Storage_ISCSI_01
   

   NOTE

   These are minimal options for Unity driver, for more options, see Driver options.

NOTE

(Optional) If you require multipath based data access, perform below steps on both Block Storage and Compute nodes.

1. Install sysfsutils, sg3-utils and multipath-tools:

   # apt-get install multipath-tools sg3-utils sysfsutils
   

2. (Required for FC driver in case Auto-zoning support is disabled) Zone the FC ports of Compute nodes with Unity FC target ports.

3. Enable Unity storage optimized multipath configuration:

   Add the following content into /etc/multipath.conf

   blacklist {
       # Skip the files uner /dev that are definitely not FC/iSCSI devices
       # Different system may need different customization
       devnode "^(ram|raw|loop|fd|md|dm-|sr|scd|st)[0-9]*"
       devnode "^hd[a-z][0-9]*"
       devnode "^cciss!c[0-9]d[0-9]*[p[0-9]*]"
   
       # Skip LUNZ device from VNX/Unity
       device {
           vendor "DGC"
           product "LUNZ"
       }
   }
   
   defaults {
       user_friendly_names no
       flush_on_last_del yes
   }
   
   devices {
       # Device attributed for EMC CLARiiON and VNX/Unity series ALUA
       device {
           vendor "DGC"
           product ".*"
           product_blacklist "LUNZ"
           path_grouping_policy group_by_prio
           path_selector "round-robin 0"
           path_checker emc_clariion
           features "0"
           no_path_retry 12
           hardware_handler "1 alua"
           prio alua
           failback immediate
       }
   }
   

4. Restart the multipath service:

   # service multipath-tools restart
   

5. Enable multipath for image transfer in /etc/cinder/cinder.conf.

   use_multipath_for_image_xfer = True
   

   Restart the cinder-volume service to load the change.

6. Enable multipath for volume attache/detach in /etc/nova/nova.conf.

   [libvirt]
   ...
   volume_use_multipath = True
   ...
   

7. Restart the nova-compute service.

Driver options

Storage pools option

Specify the name list (comma-seperated) of pools to be managed in the driver.

unity_storage_pool_names = pool_a, pool_b

FC or iSCSI ports option

Specify the list of FC or iSCSI ports to be used to perform the IO. Wild card character is supported. For iSCSI ports, use the following format:

unity_io_ports = spa_eth2, spb_eth2, *_eth3

For FC ports, use the following format:

unity_io_ports = spa_iom_0_fc0, spb_iom_0_fc0, *_iom_0_fc1

List the port ID with the uemcli command:

$ uemcli /net/port/eth show -output csv
...
"spa_eth2","SP A Ethernet Port 2","spa","file, net, iscsi", ...
"spb_eth2","SP B Ethernet Port 2","spb","file, net, iscsi", ...
...

$ uemcli /net/port/fc show -output csv
...
"spa_iom_0_fc0","SP A I/O Module 0 FC Port 0","spa", ...
"spb_iom_0_fc0","SP B I/O Module 0 FC Port 0","spb", ...
...

Force delete attached snapshots option

Set the option to True to force delete the snapshot even if it is attached to hosts. Enable it carefully, force deleting an attached snapshot could cause data unaccessble and/or data loss.

   force_delete_attached_snapshots = True

Live migration integration

It is suggested to have multipath configured on Compute nodes for robust data access in VM instances live migration scenario. Once user_friendly_names no is set in defaults section of /etc/multipath.conf, Compute nodes will use the WWID as the alias for the multipath devices.

To enable multipath in live migration:

NOTE

Make sure Driver configuration steps are performed before following steps.

1. Set multipath in /etc/nova/nova.conf:

   [libvirt]
   ...
   volume_use_multipath = True
   ...
   

   Restart nova-compute service.

2. Set user_friendly_names no in /etc/multipath.conf

   ...
   defaults {
       user_friendly_names no
       find_multipaths no
   }
   ...
   

3. Restart the multipath-tools service.

Thin and thick provisioning

Only thin volume provisioning is supported in Unity volume driver.

QoS support

Unity driver supports maxBWS and maxIOPS specs for the back-end consumer type. maxBWS represents the Maximum IO/S absolute limit, maxIOPS represents the Maximum Bandwidth (KBPS) absolute limit on the Unity respectively.

Auto-zoning support

Unity volume driver supports auto-zoning, and share the same configuration guide for other vendors. Refer to Fibre Channel Zone Manager for detailed configuration steps.

Solution for LUNZ device

The EMC host team also found LUNZ on all of the hosts, EMC best practice is to present a LUN with HLU 0 to clear any LUNZ devices as they can cause issues on the host. See KB LUNZ Device.

To workaround this issue, Unity driver creates a Dummy LUN (if not present), and adds it to each host to occupy the HLU 0 during volume attachment.

NOTE

This Dummy LUN is shared among all hosts connected to the Unity.

Efficient non-disruptive volume backup

The default implementation in Block Storage for non-disruptive volume backup is not efficient since a cloned volume will be created during backup.

An effective approach to backups is to create a snapshot for the volume and connect this snapshot to the Block Storage host for volume backup.

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot a failure in OpenStack deployment, the best way is to enable verbose and debug log, at the same time, leverage the build-in request_id to track specific Block Storage command logs.

1. Enable verbose log, set following in /etc/cinder/cinder.conf and restart all Block Storage services:

   [DEFAULT]
   
   ...
   
   debug = True
   verbose = True
   
   ...
   

   If other projects (usually Compute) are also involved, set debug and verbose to True.

2. Use --debug to trigger any problematic Block Storage operation:

   # cinder --debug create --name unity_vol1 100
   

   You will see the request ID from the console, for example:

   DEBUG:keystoneauth:REQ: curl -g -i -X POST
   http://192.168.1.9:8776/v2/e50d22bdb5a34078a8bfe7be89324078/volumes -H
   "User-Agent: python-cinderclient" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H
   "Accept: application/json" -H "X-Auth-Token:
   {SHA1}bf4a85ad64302b67a39ad7c6f695a9630f39ab0e" -d '{"volume": {"status":
   "creating", "user_id": null, "name": "unity_vol1", "imageRef": null,
   "availability_zone": null, "description": null, "multiattach": false,
   "attach_status": "detached", "volume_type": null, "metadata": {},
   "consistencygroup_id": null, "source_volid": null, "snapshot_id": null,
   "project_id": null, "source_replica": null, "size": 10}}'
   DEBUG:keystoneauth:RESP: [202] X-Compute-Request-Id:
   req-3a459e0e-871a-49f9-9796-b63cc48b5015 Content-Type: application/json
   Content-Length: 804 X-Openstack-Request-Id:
   req-3a459e0e-871a-49f9-9796-b63cc48b5015 Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 09:31:44 GMT
   Connection: keep-alive
   

3. Use commands like grep, awk to find the error related to the Block Storage operations.

   # grep "req-3a459e0e-871a-49f9-9796-b63cc48b5015" cinder-volume.log