+ Getting Started Overview
QuantaStor ships with a built-in setup launcher, the Getting Started / Configuration Guide, that presents twelve configuration workflows and, within each one, the ordered steps that build a working configuration. This page explains what each workflow achieves and in what order, and links every step to the Administrator Guide page that documents the dialog behind it. It does not repeat those procedures.
| Section | Covers |
|---|---|
| First-time login | The default account and password, and what to change first |
| Opening the guide | The three ways to reach the dialog, and when it opens on its own |
| How the guide works | The layout, the Previous/Next buttons, what it does and does not track |
| Which workflows appear | Why a workflow you expect may not be listed |
| Initial Setup | System Setup, Storage Grid Setup, Security Setup |
| Pool Setup | Scale-up pools, and scale-out object, file and block pools |
| Provisioning Setup | Provisioning file, block and object storage from a pool |
| Misc Setup | Remote-replication and cloud integration |
First-time login
Browse to https://<system-ip-or-name>/. The built-in management account is admin and it is pre-filled in the Username field; on a newly installed system its password is password.
Change it immediately. Step 3 of the System Setup workflow opens the Set Password dialog for exactly this reason. The Old Password field is disabled while the session is logged in as admin, so only the new password and its confirmation are required; for every other account the current password must be supplied as well. The new password has to satisfy the grid password policy, which also sets the permitted length range -- see Security Configuration.
The console account is separate. qadmin is the SSH and console login, it defaults to a password of qadmin, and it is local to each system rather than grid-wide, so it has to be changed on every appliance. See Security Configuration.
For the login panel itself and the rest of the interface, see Using the Web Interface.
Opening the guide
There are three ways to open it, and all three open the same dialog:
The third is the checklist button at the right-hand end of the banner, which is on every main tab. The banner and toolbar buttons always open on System Setup; the right-click item opens on the workflow that matches the object you right-clicked, so right-clicking a Storage Pool or a Storage Volume opens Provision Block Storage, a Network Share opens Provision File Storage, and a scale-out cluster object opens Setup Scale-out Object Pool.
The dialog also opens by itself at login while no license key has been applied anywhere in the grid. That is its only automatic trigger: once a key exists it stops appearing on its own and stays available from the three controls above. Licensing is therefore the first thing it puts in front of a new appliance -- see License Management.
The ? button in the dialog header opens this page on the OSNEXUS wiki.
How the guide works
The left column, headed Configuration Workflows, lists the workflows as toggle buttons in four groups: Initial Setup, Pool Setup, Provisioning Setup and Misc Setup. Selecting one fills the right pane with that workflow's description and its numbered steps. Each step is a button that opens the dialog which performs it, with a paragraph beside it explaining why the step exists.
Three behaviours are worth knowing before you use it:
- Selecting a workflow navigates the interface behind the dialog. Picking Setup Scale-up Storage Pool moves the main window to the Storage Pools section, Provision File Storage moves it to Network Shares, and so on, so the objects you are about to create are already in view when you close the guide. Selecting System Setup additionally brings up the Licenses tab.
- A step's dialog opens on top, and the guide stays open behind it. Complete the dialog, and you are back on the same workflow card ready for the next step. There is no need to reopen the guide between steps.
- Previous and Next walk the whole workflow list in order rather than only within a group, so Next from Security Setup lands on Setup Scale-up Storage Pool. Previous is disabled on the first workflow and Next on the last. OK and Cancel both close the guide.
The guide does not track completion. Nothing is ticked off, no step is greyed out once it has been done, and the step numbering is the recommended order rather than a record of where you are. The cards do refresh when a license, target port, Storage Pool, Host, Storage Volume or volume assignment changes, but that is a redraw, not progress. Treat the numbering as a checklist you keep yourself.
Which workflows appear
The list is not fixed. Two things remove entries from it:
- The license edition. The Express edition hides cluster management and scale-out object management, which removes the three scale-out pool workflows and Provision Object Storage, and reduces Setup Scale-up Storage Pool to a single Create Storage Pool step. The Object edition hides remote-replication together with the volumes, shares and hosts sections, which leaves System Setup, Storage Grid Setup, Security Setup, Setup Scale-out Object Pool, Provision Object Storage and Setup Cloud Integration.
- Per-account interface visibility. A management user can have main tabs and tree sections hidden on the Web Interface Customization settings of their account, and the guide honours those settings too -- a user who cannot see the Storage Volumes section does not get the Provision Block Storage workflow. See Security Configuration.
So a workflow that is missing is a licensing or account-visibility result, not a fault. The tables below describe the full set.
Initial Setup
Everything a new appliance or a new grid needs before storage is provisioned on it.
System Setup
Setting up a new Storage System should always start with adding a license key in order to unlock all the core management features. Licensing is first because the rest of the management operations are gated on it; the password change is next because the appliance is reachable on the network with a known default until it is done.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Add License | License Management -- also covers distributing a key file across a whole grid in one operation |
| 2 | Activate License | License Management -- online activation, and the offline path for systems with no Internet access |
| 3 | Set Password | Security Configuration |
| 4 (optional) | Certificate Template Manager | Security Configuration |
The workflow description also asks you to give every network port a static address. That is not one of its steps; do it from Network Ports, which explains why a fresh appliance must be moved off DHCP before anything else is configured.
Storage Grid Setup
Storage Grid technology makes it easy to manage large numbers of Storage Systems as one distributed system. A grid has to exist before remote-replication, site clusters or scale-out clusters can be built, which is why this comes before either pool group.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Storage Grid | Grid Configuration |
| 2 | Add System to Grid | Grid Configuration -- including what merges when a system joins |
| 3 | Update DNS & NTP | Opens Modify Grid Network Settings, which applies one DNS search suffix, DNS server list and NTP server list to every system you tick. The per-system equivalents are the DNS Servers and NTP Servers tabs of Storage System Modify. |
| 4 | Update Time Zone | Opens Modify Grid Time Zone Settings, which sets the time zone on every system you tick. |
| 5 | Configure Alerting | Call-home / Alerting -- email, SNMP and the ITSM integrations |
Both grid-wide dialogs overwrite the selected systems' current settings with what you enter, so tick only the systems you intend to change. Working DNS and accurate time are prerequisites rather than conveniences: Active Directory, LDAP, certificate validation and license activation all depend on them, and a scale-out cluster reports clock skew as a health warning.
Security Setup
Security settings are applied storage grid wide including to any new systems added to the storage grid in the future. That is the reason this workflow sits in Initial Setup rather than being deferred -- a policy set now also governs systems that join later.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Configure Security Policy | Security Configuration -- password policy, lockout and session settings |
| 2 | Join AD Domain... | Active Directory Configuration, and Network Shares for the SMB side |
| 3 | Configure System Firewall | Security Configuration |
Step 3 opens the Storage System Modify dialog already advanced to its Firewall tab rather than a dialog of its own.
Pool Setup
Four workflows, one per pool architecture. Pick the one that matches the storage you intend to serve; they are alternatives, not a sequence. Scale-up pools are ZFS on media attached to one or two systems; the three scale-out workflows all build on a Ceph cluster of three or more systems.
Setup Scale-up Storage Pool
Scale-up Storage Pools may be setup in single-node mode or clustered HA mode. The card shows the clustered sequence, which has a strict order: the site cluster and its heartbeat rings have to exist before an HA group can be attached to a pool, and the HA group has to exist before a virtual interface can move with it.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Site Cluster | Site Cluster Setup |
| 2 | Add Cluster Ring | Site Cluster Setup -- two rings per site cluster is the recommendation |
| 3 | Create Storage Pool | Storage Pools |
| 4 | Create HA Group | HA Cluster Setup (JBODs) |
| 5 | Add Pool HA VIF | Cluster VIFs, with the failover mechanics in High-availability VIF Management |
For a single-node pool only step 3 applies. Under the Express edition, or where cluster management is hidden for the account, the card collapses to that one step.
HA pools have a hardware precondition the guide states in its description: the media must support I/O fencing, which means dual-ported SAS, dual-ported NVMe, Fibre Channel or iSCSI devices. HA Cluster Setup (JBODs) covers the cabling; HA Cluster Setup (external SAN) covers the same configuration on SAN-provided media.
Setup Scale-out Object Pool
A scale-out storage cluster using three (3) or more Storage Systems must be setup first. The order builds the cluster, gives it capacity, then layers object storage on top.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Cluster | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) |
| 2 | Create OSDs & Journals | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph), with the dialog itself covered in detail in Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
| 3 | Create Object Pool Group | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) |
| 4 | Add Object Gateway | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) |
| 5 | Create Object User | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) |
| 6 | Create Object Bucket | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) |
Steps 5 and 6 are the same two steps as the Provision Object Storage workflow, repeated here so that this one workflow takes a set of bare systems all the way to a writable bucket.
Setup Scale-out File Pool
Scale-out file Storage Pools are POSIX-compliant and deliver high performance NFS, SMB, and native CephFS client access. The metadata servers come before the pool because a CephFS file system cannot be created without them.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Cluster | Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
| 2 | Create OSDs & Journals | Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
| 3 | Add MDS | Scale-out File Setup (ceph) |
| 4 | Create File Storage Pool | Scale-out File Setup (ceph) |
| 5 | Create Share | Scale-out File Setup (ceph) |
Setup Scale-out Block Pool
Scale-out block Storage Pools provide highly-available block storage via the iSCSI, Fibre-Channel, and NVMeoF protocols as well as via the native Ceph RBD protocol.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Cluster | Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
| 2 | Create OSDs & Journals | Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
| 3 | Create Pool | Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
| 4 | Create Storage Volume | Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) |
A volume created here still has to be assigned to a Host before any initiator can reach it, which is what the Provision Block Storage workflow does.
Provisioning Setup
Three workflows that turn an existing pool into storage a client can mount. Each of them assumes a pool from the Pool Setup group already exists.
Provision File Storage
A Storage Pool (scale-up or scale-out) must be created before Network Shares may be provisioned.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Share | Network Shares |
| 2 | Add NFS Access | Network Shares |
| 3 | Modify Network Share | Network Shares -- user access, record size and compression |
A new share is created with a default [public] NFS client entry that permits every address, so step 2 is where NFS access is narrowed to the subnets that should have it. SMB access is governed separately, by users and groups rather than by client rules.
Provision Block Storage
Storage Volume(s) must be assigned to one or more Hosts before they may be accessed. That is the whole reason this workflow has three steps rather than one: QuantaStor has no open-access mode, so a volume nobody is assigned to is reachable by nobody.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Storage Volume | Storage Volumes |
| 2 | Add Host | Creates the Host entry that represents a server, VM or cluster node, identified by its iSCSI IQN, NVMe NQN or Fibre Channel WWPNs |
| 3 | Assign Volumes | Storage Volumes |
Where several hosts form a cluster, put them in a Host Group and assign to the group instead -- hosts added later then pick up every volume already assigned to it. See Storage Volumes.
Provision Object Storage
Use the 'Setup Scale-out Object Pool' workflow to first setup an object storage cluster before provisioning Object Users and Buckets. This workflow is the short form for a cluster that already exists.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Object User | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) -- each user carries an access key and a secret key |
| 2 | Create Object Bucket | Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) |
Misc Setup
Setup Remote-Replication
Replication is automated via a Replication Schedules so that it can be used as part of a business continuity and DR site fail-over plan. The link comes first because it establishes the security relationship a schedule needs; a schedule cannot be created between two systems that have no link.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create Replication Link | Remote-replication (DR) -- links are bidirectional |
| 2 | Create Schedule | Remote-replication (DR) |
| 3 | Trigger Replication Schedule | Remote-replication (DR) |
Both endpoints must be members of the same Storage Grid, so Storage Grid Setup is a prerequisite for this workflow.
Setup Cloud Integration
Storage Systems can be connected to one or more major public cloud providers to provide local NAS gateway access to object storage and a means of automated backup and tiering via Backup Policies. Only the first step is required; the rest are marked optional because which of them you need depends on whether the cloud bucket already exists.
| Step | Opens | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Add Cloud Provider Credential | Cloud Containers / NAS Gateway |
| 2 (optional) | Add/Import Cloud Storage Container | Cloud Containers / NAS Gateway -- for a bucket that already exists |
| 3 (optional) | Create Cloud Storage Container | Cloud Containers / NAS Gateway -- creates the bucket as well as the container |
| 4 (optional) | Create Backup Policy | Backup Policies |
A Cloud Storage Container appears as a Network Share on the appliance, so file clients reach cloud object storage over NFS and SMB without changing anything client-side.
Related pages
- Using the Web Interface -- logging in, the screen regions and the nine main tabs
- + Admin Guide Overview -- the whole Administrator Guide, grouped by topic
- License Management -- adding, activating and renewing the key every system needs
- Grid Configuration -- joining systems into one grid managed from any member
- Security Configuration -- passwords, policy, roles, certificates and the firewall
- Storage Pools -- creating the scale-up pool that block and file provisioning draw from
- Network Shares -- NAS access over NFS and SMB
- Storage Volumes -- block devices over iSCSI, Fibre Channel and NVMe-oF
- QuantaStor Installation Guide -- installing QuantaStor before any of the above
Verified against QuantaStor 6.9.0.