Part1 | NetApp – Create new vFiler

Hello fans of virtualization. I have prepared series of documents in which I’m going to show you how to prepare your NetApp storage and create either NFS or iSCSI datastores on the storage side for your vSphere platform. I’m going to cover the following topics – Create vFiler, create volume, create iSCSI LUN and at the end I will show you how to create a snap mirror for your volumes in case you want to have volume replication for your DR solution. In part one we are going to cover how to create new vFiler on you NetApp storage.

Let’s start with the prerequisites for your vFiler. In order to create NetApp vFiler you have to have created VLAN tag and subnet allocation (usually /24) for your igroup. So ask your network team to prepare them for you on the switch.

Then follow the instructions bellow:

1. Connect to the command line interface of the physical filer via SSH
2. Log in as root
3. Create a new root volume, with a size of 1GB for the new vFiler:

vol create VOLNAME AGGRNAME 1g

Where:
VOLNAME is the name of the volume to create (for example CUST_rootvol)
AGGRNAME is the name of the aggregate on which you create the volume (usually aggr0).
1g is the size of the volume.

4. Add the VLAN number (obtained from your network team) to the vif interface with the command:

vlan add vif2 VLANNUMBER

Where:
VLANNUMBER is the VLAN id

5. Create an  IP Address Space to be used for the vFiler:

ipspace create IPSPACE_NAME INTERFACE_NAME

Where:
IPSPACE_NAME is the name given to the ipspace, in the format of CUST_ipspace
INTERFACE_NAME is the interface to assign to the ipspace, in this case it should be the virtual interface created in step 4. The name is in format vif2-VLANNUMBER, for example if a VLAN id of 1234 was created in step 4 the INTERFACE_NAME would be vif2-1234

6. Create the new vfiler:

vfiler create VFILERNAME –s IPSPACE_NAME –i IPADDRES VOLPATH

Where:
VFILER_NAME is the name of the vFiler, using the format CUST_vfiler01
IPSPACE_NAME is the name the ipspace created on step 7
IPADDRESS is the IP Address to assign to the vfiler
VOLPATH is the volume path created in step 3. This is the full volume path /vol/VOLNAME

You will now need to answer the following questions:
Configure vfiler IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX? [y]: Answer yes
Interface to assign this address to {}: Enter the INTERFACE_NAME
Netmask to use: [255.255.255.0]: Enter netmask or accept default
Please enter the name or IP address of the administration host: Leave Blank
Do you want to run DNS resolver? [n]: Depends if you have DNS server or not
Do you want to run NIS client? [n]: Answer N
Default password for root on vfiler “”.
New password: Assign a root password
Retype new password: Assign a root password
Do you want to setup CIFS? [y]: Depends on requirements choose Y or N. Note that if CIFS is required for this vfiler, it can be performed later, thus answer N at this point.

The next step is to ensure the physical filers startup script (/etc/rc) is updated for the new configuration.

1. Edit the /etc/rc file
2. Append the new VLAN number to the line that begins with vlan create vif2
3. Add a new line to create the interface:

ifconfig vif2-VLAN_NUMBER `hostname`-vif2-VLAN_NUMBER netmask 255.255.255.0 mtusize 9000 partner vif2-VLAN

Where VLAN_NUMBER is the new VLAN you have added

4. Add an entry to the /etc/hosts file of the form:
IP_ADDRESS STORAGE_NAME-vif2-VLAN_NUMBER

Where:
IP_ADDRESS is the ip address assigned to the new vlan interface
STORAGE_NAME is the name of your storage processor
VLAN_NUMBER is the new VLAN tag.

The last step is to make sure the same configuration is present on the partner filer (the second node of your storage). Do the following on the other filer:

Append to /etc/rc of the secondary node

vlan create vif2 VLAN_NUMBER
ifconfig vif2-VLAN_NUMBER mtusize 9000 partner vif2-VLAN

Run the following commands on the secondary storage node:

vlan add vif2 VLAN_NUMBER
ipspace create IPSPACE_NAME vif2-VLAN_NUMBER

That`s all, now you have your vFiler ready to operate! 🙂

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Georgi Petrov

VMware Engineer - Projects&Design at NNIT

Georgi is a Virtualization Engineer with more than 13 years experience in the IT field, first Windows administration and since 2009 as a VMware engineer and part of Center of Excellence at IBM. At 2011 he moved to company called Interoute, again, working as a VMware engineer of large virtual platforms. Currently he is working as Projects&Design engineer for VMware in well respected danish, and now international company, called NNIT. His main scope of work in VMware is related to design, implementation and performing large projects on virtualization platforms and cloud solutions. Georgi holds several IT industry leading certifications like VCP, ITIL v3, MCITP, MCTS and others.

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• Part1 | NetApp – Create new vFiler - December 1, 2014