Deploying Pure Storage FlashArray Cinder driver in a Red Hat OpenStack Platform 17.1

Overview

This guide shows how to configure and deploy the Pure Storage FlashArray Cinder driver in a Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) 17.1 Overcloud, using RHOSP Director. After reading this, you’ll be able to define the proper environment files and deploy single or multiple FlashArray Cinder back ends in RHOSP Overcloud Controller nodes.

Note

For more information about RHOSP, please refer to its documentation pages.

Warning

RHOSP17.1 is based on OpenStack Wallaby release with upstream backports. Features included after Wallaby release may not be available in RHOSP17.1.

Requirements

In order to deploy Pure Storage FlashArray Cinder back ends, you should have the following requirements satisfied:

Pure Storage FlashArrays deployed and ready to be used as Cinder back ends. See FlashArray Prerequisites for more details.
RHOSP Director user credentials to deploy Overcloud.
RHOSP Overcloud Controller nodes where Cinder services will be installed.

Deployment Steps

Prepare the environment files

RHOSP makes use of TripleO Heat Templates (THT), which allows you to define the Overcloud resources by creating environment files.

To ensure that your RHOSP environment is correctly configured for using Pure Storage FlashArrays obtain a copy of pure-temp.yaml and cinder-pure-config.yaml from the Pure Storage TripleO Deployment Config repo and save these in the /home/stack/templates directory. These will be required when deploying the Overcloud.

Multiple back end configuration

Define Pure Storage Cinder back ends using Custom THT Configuration syntax. It’s possible to define all the back ends in a single environment file by modifying the cinder-pure-config.yaml file as follows:

parameter_defaults:
  CinderPureBackendName:
    - tripleo_pure_1
    - tripleo_pure_2
  CinderPureSanIp: '' # Placeholder
  CinderPureAPIToken: '' # Placeholder
  CinderPureStorageProtocol: 'iSCSI' # Default value for all Pure backends
  CinderPureUseChap: false # Default value for the Pure backends
  CinderPureMultiConfig:
    tripleo_pure_1:
      CinderPureSanIp: '10.0.0.1'
      CinderPureAPIToken: 'secret'
    tripleo_pure_2:
      CinderPureSanIp: '10.0.0.2'
      CinderPureAPIToken: 'anothersecret'
      CinderPureUseChap: true # Specific value for this backend

Modify the parameter values according to your Pure Storage back end configuration.

Note

You can define arbitrary Custom THT Configurations using the following syntax:

parameter_defaults:
  ControllerExtraConfig:
    cinder::config::cinder_config:
      <backend_name>/<configuration_name>:
        value: <value>

Each configuration will be rendered in cinder.conf file as:

[backend_name]
configuration_name=value

See Optional Cinder Configuration Attributes (RHOSP17) for a complete list of the available Cinder Configuration Options.

Using the NVMe-TCP protocol (RHOSP 17.1.4 only)

From RHOSP 17.1.4 you can now use the Pure NVMe-TCP driver for FlashArray, but you must use very specific TripleO configuration files, as this driver is not supported by the standard Pure Storage TripleO system.

Create a new environment file pure-nvmet-config.yaml in your templates directory as follows

resource_registry:
  OS::TripleO::Services::CinderBackendNVMeOF: /usr/share/openstack-tripleo-heat-templates/deployment/cinder/cinder-backend-nvmeof-puppet.yaml

parameter_defaults:
  CinderEnableIscsiBackend: false
  CinderEnableNVMeOFBackend: true
  StandaloneExtraConfig:
    cinder_user_enabled_backends: ['pure1']
    cinder::config::cinder_config:
      pure1/volume_backend_name:
        value: pure1
      pure1/volume_driver:
        value: cinder.volume.drivers.pure.PureNVMEDriver
      pure1/san_ip:
        value: <SAN IP>
      pure1/pure_api_token:
        value: <Pure API token>
      pure1/pure_nvme_transport:
        value: tcp
      pure1/pure_eradicate_on_delete:
        value: true
    tripleo::profile::base::cinder::volume::cinder_enable_nvmeof_backend: false
  ControllerParameters:
    ExtraKernelPackages:
      nvme-cli: {}
    ExtraKernelModules:
      nvme-fabrics: {}
  ComputeParameters:
    ExtraKernelPackages:
      nvme-cli: {}
    ExtraKernelModules:
      nvme-fabrics: {}

Add this file to your openstack overcloud deploy command (-e pure-nvmet-config.yaml)

Use Certified Pure Storage Cinder Volume Container

Red Hat requires that you utilize the Certified Pure Storage Cinder Volume Container when deploying RHOSP17.1 with a Pure Storage FlashArray backend.

This container can be found in the Red Hat Container Catalog and should be stored in a local registry.

Create a Custom Environment File

Create a new environment file custom_container_pure.yaml in the directory /home/stack/templates with only the custom container parameter.

parameter_defaults:
  ContainerCinderVolumeImage: <registry:port>/<directory>/openstack-cinder-volume-pure:<version>

Alternatively, you may edit the container images environment file (usually overcloud_images.yaml, created when the openstack overcloud container image prepare command was executed) and change the appropriate parameter to use the custom container image.

Deploy Overcloud

Now that you have the Cinder back end environment files defined, you can run the command to deploy the RHOSP Overcloud. Run the following command as the stack user in the RHOSP Director command line, specifying the YAML file(s) you defined:

 (undercloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ openstack overcloud deploy \
 --templates \
 -e /usr/share/openstack-tripleo-heat-templates/environments/multipathd.yaml \
 -e /home/stack/cinder-pure-config.yaml \
 -e /home/stack/containers-prepare-parameter.yaml \
 -e /home/stack/templates/custom_container_pure.yaml \
 --stack overcloud

If you modified the container images environment file the custom_container_pure.yaml option is not required in the above command.

Note

Alternatively, you can use --environment-directory parameter and specify the whole directory to the deployment command. It will consider all the YAML files within this directory:

 (undercloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ openstack overcloud deploy \
 --templates \
 -e /usr/share/openstack-tripleo-heat-templates/environments/multipathd.yaml \
 -e /home/stack/containers-prepare-parameter.yaml \
 --environment-directory /home/stack/templates \
 --stack overcloud

Test the Deployed Back Ends

After RHOSP Overcloud is deployed, run the following command to check if the Cinder services are up:

[stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ source ~/overcloudrc
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder service-list

Run the following commands as stack user in the RHOSP Director command line to create the volume types mapped to the deployed back ends:

[stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ source ~/overcloudrc
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder type-create pure1
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder type-key pure1 set volume_backend_name=tripleo_pure_1
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder type-create pure2
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder type-key pure2 set volume_backend_name=tripleo_pure_2

Make sure that you’re able to create Cinder volumes with the configured volume types:

[stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ source ~/overcloudrc
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder create --volume-type pure1 --name v1 1
(overcloud) [stack@rhosp-undercloud ~]$ cinder create --volume-type pure2 --name v2 1