HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera and HPE Alletra 9k Driver¶

System requirements¶

To use the HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera and HPE Alletra 9k drivers, install the following software and components on the HPE 3PAR storage system:

• HPE 3PAR Operating System software version 3.1.3 MU1 or higher.

  • Deduplication provisioning requires SSD disks and HPE 3PAR Operating System software version 3.2.1 MU1 or higher.

  • Enabling Flash Cache Policy requires the following:

    • Array must contain SSD disks.

    • HPE 3PAR Operating System software version 3.2.1 MU2 or higher.

    • python-3parclient version 4.2.0 or newer.

    • Flash Cache must be enabled on the array with the CLI command createflashcache SIZE, where size must be in 16 GB increments. For example, createflashcache 128g will create 128 GB of Flash Cache for each node pair in the array.

  • The Dynamic Optimization is required to support any feature that results in a volume changing provisioning type or CPG. This may apply to the volume migrate, retype and manage commands.

  • The Virtual Copy feature supports any operation that involves volume snapshots. This applies to the volume snapshot-* commands.

  • Enabling Volume Compression requires the following:

    • Array must contain SSD disks.

    • HPE 3PAR Operating System software version 3.3.1 MU1 or higher.

    • HPE 3PAR Storage System with 8k or 20k series

• HPE 3PAR Web Services API Server must be enabled and running.

• One Common Provisioning Group (CPG).

• Additionally, you must install the python-3parclient version 4.2.0 or newer from PyPi on the system with the enabled Block Storage service volume drivers.

To use the HPE Primera and HPE Alletra 9k backends, install the following software and components on the HPE Primera storage system:

• HPE Primera Operating System software version 4.0.0 or higher.

  • On HPE Primera/Alletra 9k storage system, Dedup & Compression is combined as single option ‘deco’. Due to this, only either ‘thin’ volume or ‘deco’ volume can be created.

  • Also, port number 443 is used instead of 8080. This only affects cinder configuration.

• Additionally, you must install the python-3parclient version 4.2.11 or newer from PyPi on the system with the enabled Block Storage service volume drivers.

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.

• Copy a volume to an image.

• Clone a volume.

• Extend a volume.

• Migrate a volume with back-end assistance.

• Retype a volume.

• Manage and unmanage a volume.

• Manage and unmanage a snapshot.

• Replicate host volumes.

• Fail-over host volumes.

• Fail-back host volumes.

• Retype a replicated volume.

• Create, delete, update, snapshot, and clone generic volume groups.

• Create and delete generic volume group snapshots.

• Create a generic volume group from a group snapshot or another group.

• Volume Compression.

• Group Replication with More Granularity (Tiramisu).

• Volume Revert to Snapshot.

• Additional Backend Capabilities.

• Report Backend State in Service List.

• Attach a volume to multiple servers simultaneously (multiattach).

• Peer Persistence.

Volume type support for both HPE 3PAR drivers includes the ability to set the following capabilities in the OpenStack Block Storage API cinder.api.contrib.types_extra_specs volume type extra specs extension module:

• hpe3par:snap_cpg

• hpe3par:provisioning

• hpe3par:persona

• hpe3par:vvs

• hpe3par:flash_cache

• hpe3par:compression

To work with the default filter scheduler, the key values are case sensitive and scoped with hpe3par:. For information about how to set the key-value pairs and associate them with a volume type, run the following command:

$ openstack help volume type

If volume types are not used or a particular key is not set for a volume type, the following defaults are used:

• hpe3par:cpg - Defaults to the hpe3par_cpg setting in the cinder.conf file.

• hpe3par:snap_cpg - Defaults to the hpe3par_snap setting in the cinder.conf file. If hpe3par_snap is not set, it defaults to the hpe3par_cpg setting.

• hpe3par:provisioning - Defaults to thin provisioning, the valid values are thin, full, and dedup.

• hpe3par:persona - Defaults to the 2 - Generic-ALUA persona. The valid values are:

  • 1 - Generic

  • 2 - Generic-ALUA

  • 3 - Generic-legacy

  • 4 - HPUX-legacy

  • 5 - AIX-legacy

  • 6 - EGENERA

  • 7 - ONTAP-legacy

  • 8 - VMware

  • 9 - OpenVMS

  • 10 - HPUX

  • 11 - WindowsServer

• hpe3par:flash_cache - Defaults to false, the valid values are true and false.

QoS support for both HPE 3PAR drivers includes the ability to set the following capabilities in the OpenStack Block Storage API cinder.api.contrib.qos_specs_manage qos specs extension module:

• minBWS

• maxBWS

• minIOPS

• maxIOPS

• latency

• priority

The qos keys above no longer require to be scoped but must be created and associated to a volume type. For information about how to set the key-value pairs and associate them with a volume type, run the following commands:

$ openstack help volume qos

The following keys require that the HPE 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k array has a Priority Optimization enabled.

hpe3par:vvs

The virtual volume set name that has been predefined by the Administrator with quality of service (QoS) rules associated to it. If you specify extra_specs hpe3par:vvs, the qos_specs minIOPS, maxIOPS, minBWS, and maxBWS settings are ignored.

minBWS

The QoS I/O issue bandwidth minimum goal in MBs. If not set, the I/O issue bandwidth rate has no minimum goal.

maxBWS

The QoS I/O issue bandwidth rate limit in MBs. If not set, the I/O issue bandwidth rate has no limit.

minIOPS

The QoS I/O issue count minimum goal. If not set, the I/O issue count has no minimum goal.

maxIOPS

The QoS I/O issue count rate limit. If not set, the I/O issue count rate has no limit.

latency

The latency goal in milliseconds.

priority

The priority of the QoS rule over other rules. If not set, the priority is normal, valid values are low, normal and high.

The following key requires that the HPE 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k array has an Adaptive Flash Cache enabled.

• hpe3par:flash_cache - The flash-cache policy, which can be turned on and off by setting the value to true or false.

• hpe3par:compression - The volume compression, which can be turned on and off by setting the value to true or false.

Other restrictions and considerations for hpe3par:compression:

• For a compressed volume, minimum volume size needed is 16 GB; otherwise resulting volume will be created successfully but will not be a compressed volume.

• A full provisioned volume cannot be compressed, if a compression is enabled and provisioning type requested is full, the resulting volume defaults to thinly provisioned compressed volume.

• While creating volume on HPE Primera / Alletra 9k storage system, only below two combinations are supported. If any other combination is used, then volume is not created.

  • thin volume: provisioning = thin and compression = false

  • deco volume: provisioning = dedup and compression = true

LDAP and AD authentication is now supported in the HPE 3PAR driver.

The 3PAR back end must be properly configured for LDAP and AD authentication prior to configuring the volume driver. For details on setting up LDAP with 3PAR, see the 3PAR user guide.

Once configured, hpe3par_username and hpe3par_password parameters in cinder.conf can be used with LDAP and AD credentials.

Enable the HPE 3PAR Fibre Channel and iSCSI drivers¶

The HPE3PARFCDriver and HPE3PARISCSIDriver are installed with the OpenStack software.

1. Install the python-3parclient Python package on the OpenStack Block Storage system.

   $ pip install 'python-3parclient>=4.0,<5.0'
   

2. Verify that the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server is enabled and running on the HPE 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k storage system.

   1. Log onto the HPE 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k storage system with administrator access.

      $ ssh 3paradm@<HPE storage system IP Address>
      

   2. View the current state of the Web Services API Server.

      $ showwsapi
      -Service- -State- -HTTP_State- HTTP_Port -HTTPS_State- HTTPS_Port -Version-
      Enabled   Active Enabled       8008        Enabled       8080       1.1
      

   3. If the Web Services API Server is disabled, start it.

      $ startwsapi
      

3. If the HTTP or HTTPS state is disabled, enable one of them.

   $ setwsapi -http enable
   

   or

   $ setwsapi -https enable
   

   Note

   To stop the Web Services API Server, use the stopwsapi command. For other options run the setwsapi -h command.

4. If you are not using an existing CPG, create a CPG on the HPE 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k storage system to be used as the default location for creating volumes.

5. Make the following changes in the /etc/cinder/cinder.conf file.

   # WSAPI Server URL.
   # This setting applies to all: 3PAR, Primera and Alletra 9k.
   # Example 1: for 3PAR, URL is:
   https://<3par ip>:8080/api/v1
   
   # Example 2: for Primera/Alletra 9k, URL is:
   https://<primera/alletra_9k ip>:443/api/v1
   
   # 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k username with the 'edit' role
   hpe3par_username=edit3par
   
   # 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k password for the user specified in hpe3par_username
   hpe3par_password=3parpass
   
   # 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k CPG to use for volume creation
   hpe3par_cpg=OpenStackCPG_RAID5_NL
   
   # IP address of SAN controller for SSH access to the array
   san_ip=10.10.22.241
   
   # Username for SAN controller for SSH access to the array
   san_login=3paradm
   
   # Password for SAN controller for SSH access to the array
   san_password=3parpass
   
   # FIBRE CHANNEL DRIVER
   # (uncomment the next line to enable the FC driver)
   #volume_driver=cinder.volume.drivers.hpe.hpe_3par_fc.HPE3PARFCDriver
   
   # iSCSI DRIVER
   # If you enable the iSCSI driver, you must also set values
   # for hpe3par_iscsi_ips or iscsi_ip_address in this file.
   # Note: The iSCSI driver is supported with 3PAR (all versions)
   # and Primera (version 4.2 or higher). If you configure iSCSI
   # with Primera 4.0 or 4.1, the driver will fail to start.
   # (uncomment the next line to enable the iSCSI driver)
   #volume_driver=cinder.volume.drivers.hpe.hpe_3par_iscsi.HPE3PARISCSIDriver
   
   # iSCSI multiple port configuration
   # hpe3par_iscsi_ips=10.10.220.253:3261,10.10.222.234
   
   # Still available for single port iSCSI configuration
   #iscsi_ip_address=10.10.220.253
   
   # Enable HTTP debugging to 3PAR / Primera / Alletra 9k
   hpe3par_debug=False
   
   # Enable CHAP authentication for iSCSI connections.
   hpe3par_iscsi_chap_enabled=false
   
   # The CPG to use for Snapshots for volumes. If empty hpe3par_cpg will be
   # used.
   hpe3par_cpg_snap=OpenStackSNAP_CPG
   
   # Time in hours to retain a snapshot. You can't delete it before this
   # expires.
   hpe3par_snapshot_retention=48
   
   # Time in hours when a snapshot expires and is deleted. This must be
   # larger than retention.
   hpe3par_snapshot_expiration=72
   
   # The ratio of oversubscription when thin provisioned volumes are
   # involved. Default ratio is 20.0, this means that a provisioned
   # capacity can be 20 times of the total physical capacity.
   max_over_subscription_ratio=20.0
   
   # This flag represents the percentage of reserved back-end capacity.
   reserved_percentage=15
   

   Note

   You can enable only one driver on each cinder instance unless you enable multiple back-end support. See the Cinder multiple back-end support instructions to enable this feature.

   Note

   You can configure one or more iSCSI addresses by using the hpe3par_iscsi_ips option. Separate multiple IP addresses with a comma (,). When you configure multiple addresses, the driver selects the iSCSI port with the fewest active volumes at attach time. The 3PAR array does not allow the default port 3260 to be changed, so IP ports need not be specified.

6. Save the changes to the cinder.conf file and restart the cinder-volume service.

The HPE 3PAR Fibre Channel and iSCSI drivers are now enabled on your OpenStack system. If you experience problems, review the Block Storage service log files for errors.

The following table contains all the configuration options supported by the HPE 3PAR Fibre Channel and iSCSI drivers.

Specify NSP for FC Bootable Volume¶

Given a system connected to HPE 3PAR via FC and multipath setting is NOT used in cinder.conf. When the user tries to create a bootable volume, it fails intermittently with the following error: Fibre Channel volume device not found

This happens when a zone is created using second or later target from 3PAR backend. In this case, HPE 3PAR client code picks up first target to form initiator target map. This can be illustrated with below example.

Sample output of showport command:

$ showport -sortcol 6

N:S:P      Mode State ----Node_WWN---- -Port_WWN/HW_Addr-  Type Protocol Partner FailoverState
0:1:1    target ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   20110002AC002DB6  host       FC       -             -
0:1:2    target ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   20120002AC002DB6  host       FC   1:1:2          none
1:1:1 initiator ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   21110002AC002DB6  rcfc       FC       -             -
1:1:2    target ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   21120002AC002DB6  host       FC   0:1:2          none
2:1:1 initiator ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   22110002AC002DB6  rcfc       FC       -             -
2:1:2    target ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   22120002AC002DB6  host       FC   3:1:2          none
3:1:1    target ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   23110002AC002DB6  host       FC       -             -
3:1:2    target ready 2FF70002AC002DB6   23120002AC002DB6  host       FC   2:1:2          none

Suppose zone is created using targets “2:1:2” and “3:1:2” from above output. Then initiator target map is created using target “0:1:1” only. In such a case, the path is not found, and bootable volume creation fails.

To avoid above mentioned failure, the user can specify the target in 3PAR backend section of cinder.conf as follows:

hpe3par_target_nsp = 3:1:2

Using above mentioned nsp, respective wwn information is fetched. Later initiator target map is created using wwn information and bootable volume is created successfully.

Note: If above mentioned option (nsp) is not specified in cinder.conf, then the original flow is executed i.e first target is picked and bootable volume creation may fail.

Peer Persistence support¶

Given 3PAR/Primera backend configured with replication setup, currently only Active/Passive replication is supported by 3PAR/Primera in OpenStack. When failover happens, nova does not support volume force-detach (from dead primary backend) / re-attach to secondary backend. Storage engineer’s manual intervention is required.

To overcome above scenario, support for Peer Persistence is added. Given a system with Peer Persistence configured and replicated volume is created. When this volume is attached to an instance, vlun is created automatically in secondary backend, in addition to primary backend. So that when a failover happens, it is seamless.

For Peer Persistence support, perform following steps: 1] enable multipath 2] set replication mode as “sync” 3] configure a quorum witness server

Specify ip address of quorum witness server in /etc/cinder/cinder.conf [within backend section] as given below:

[3pariscsirep]
hpe3par_api_url = http://10.50.3.7:8008/api/v1
hpe3par_username = <user_name>
hpe3par_password = <password>
...
<other parameters>
...
replication_device = backend_id:CSIM-EOS12_1611702,
                     replication_mode:sync,
                     quorum_witness_ip:10.50.3.192,
                     hpe3par_api_url:http://10.50.3.22:8008/api/v1,
                     ...
                     <other parameters>
                     ...

Support duplicated FQDN in network¶

The 3PAR driver uses the FQDN of the node that is doing the attach as an unique identifier to map the volume.

The problem is that the FQDN is not always unique, there are environments where the same FQDN can be found in different systems, and in those cases if both try to attach volumes the second system will fail.

One example of this happening would be on a QA environment where you are creating VMs and they all have names like controller-0.localdomain and compute-0.localdomain.

To support these kind of environments, the user can specify below flag in backend_defaults section or the specific cinder driver section of cinder.conf as follows:

unique_fqdn_network = False

When this flag is used, then during attach volume to instance, iscsi initiator name is used instead of FQDN.

If above mentioned flag is not specified in cinder.conf, then its value is considered as True (by default) and FQDN is used (existing behavior).