+ Admin Guide Overview
The Administrator Guide provides documentation on how to configure all aspects of QuantaStor systems and storage grids, with a primary focus on the web user interface (WUI) and a secondary focus on how to automate using the QuantaStor CLI. In contrast the User Guide focuses on using QuantaStor storage and accessing it from various operating systems, and on the client-side configuration steps that involves.
It is written for IT administrators setting up or maintaining a system or grid, and for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of how the platform works. Each section below groups related topics, with a one-line summary of what each page covers so you can find the right one without opening several. If you are new to the interface, start with Using the Web Interface; if you are bringing up a new appliance, start with System & Grid. For the commands referenced throughout, see the CLI Guide and the QuantaStor CLI Command Reference.
Using the Web Interface
The web management interface itself: its screen regions, its nine main tabs, and the navigation conventions this guide uses to describe it.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Using the Web Interface | Logging in, every region of the screen, the nine main tabs, toolbar groups and the overflow chevron, right-click menus, and how to read a Navigation breadcrumb. |
System & Grid
Bringing up an appliance, joining it to a grid, licensing it, and recovering its configuration.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Storage System | A single QuantaStor appliance, physical or virtual, and the settings on its Modify dialog. |
| Storage System Optimization | System tunables controlling cache behavior and Storage Pool I/O, and how the tunables file works. |
| Grid Configuration | Combining multiple systems into one Storage Grid managed as a single unit. |
| License Management | Applying and managing the license every system requires before the software can be used. |
| Recovery Manager | Restoring the internal configuration database from one of its automatic backups. |
Hardware Configuration
Network interfaces, disks, controllers and third-party enclosures -- the physical layer beneath a Storage Pool.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Network Ports | The Ethernet interfaces used for management and storage access, plus bonding, VLANs, virtual ports and static routes. |
| Physical Disks/Devices | Identifying, scanning, formatting and importing the physical disks a system can see. |
| Hardware Controllers & Enclosures | QuantaStor's integration modules for the major HBA and RAID controller models. |
| Multipath Configuration | Redundant SAS paths to dual-ported media, which QuantaStor configures automatically where it can. |
| External Systems Configuration | Disk enclosures and arrays from other vendors, used as the media behind a Storage Pool. |
| Western Digital (WD) Data24 | An NVMe-oF JBOF attached over RDMA (RoCE), including driver and lossless-network setup. |
| Seagate Corvault | A SAS-attached array that does its own RAID and presents large logical volumes. |
Storage Provisioning
Turning physical media into pools, then into the block, file and object storage that clients consume.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Storage Pools | Aggregating one or more disks into a pool of fault-tolerant storage. |
| Provisioning Tiers | Grouping pools together so automated frameworks such as OpenStack Cinder can provision from a tier. |
| Storage Volumes | Block devices (LUNs) accessed over iSCSI, Fibre Channel or Infiniband/SRP. |
| Fibre Channel Target Port Management | Exposing volumes as LUNs to Fibre Channel initiator hosts alongside iSCSI. |
| Network Shares | NAS access to a pool over NFSv3, NFSv4, SMB2 and SMB3. |
| NFS Configuration | The two NFS server implementations, and which one applies to a given storage architecture. |
| Cloud Containers / NAS Gateway | Mapping an object-storage bucket to a Network Share so it can be accessed as files. |
Security, Alerting & Upgrades
Controlling who can do what, learning when a system needs attention, and keeping it patched.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Security Configuration | Users, roles and RBAC, multi-factor authentication, certificates, the firewall and audit logging. |
| Call-home / Alerting | How a grid notifies you when systems need attention, including the ITSM integrations. |
| Upgrade Manager | Kernel, driver, security and core QuantaStor package updates. |
| Send System Log Report | Collecting the configuration and log bundle OSNEXUS support asks for on a new ticket. |
| FIPS Mode | Running the appliance with the FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic module, and verifying it is active. |
| Encryption Bypass | Why QuantaStor does not encrypt devices that arrays such as Seagate Corvault, Seagate Exos E/EP and Dell PowerVault already encrypt in hardware, and how to add new vendor and model combinations as they are released. Applies to scale-up Storage Pools and scale-out OSDs alike. |
High-availability VIF Management
The cluster heartbeat layer and the floating service addresses it manages, for both scale-out (Ceph) and scale-up (ZFS) storage clusters within a grid. Named for the main tab these are managed from.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| High-availability VIF Management | How cluster VIFs work: the grid, site cluster, heartbeat ring, HA group and VIF hierarchy, what triggers a failover and how long one takes, what blocks one, moving a VIF deliberately, and location constraints. |
| Site Cluster Setup | Creating a site cluster and its heartbeat rings, adding and removing members, and the corosync and pacemaker configuration it puts in place. |
| Cluster VIFs | Adding a cluster virtual interface and choosing its use case -- grid primary, scale-up storage pool, scale-out storage pool -- and what each type follows. |
| Configure Member Standby | Setting a node into standby moves all VIF resources and pools off it, so maintenance can be done without risk of a pool or resource moving onto it while the work is in progress. |
Snapshots & Replication
Point-in-time copies, scheduled backups, and getting data to a second site.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Snapshot Schedules | Automating space-efficient point-in-time snapshots of volumes and shares. |
| Backup Policies | Backing up any NFS or CIFS share on your network onto a QuantaStor system. |
| Remote-replication (DR) | Replicating both Storage Volumes (SAN) and Network Shares (NAS) to a remote system. |
| Bucket Synchronization Policies | Keeping object storage buckets in step across sites. |
Scale-out Cluster Configuration
Scale-out Ceph cluster setup and configuration.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Scale-out Block Setup (ceph) | Scale-out SAN built on Ceph. |
| Scale-out File Setup (ceph) | Scale-out NAS with access over native CephFS, SMB and NFS. |
| Scale-out Object Setup (ceph) | Scale-out object storage over the S3-compatible REST protocols. |
Scale-up Cluster Configuration
Highly available scale-up pool cluster configuration.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| HA Cluster Setup (JBODs) | Clustered pools on shared SAS JBODs, so a node or path outage does not take storage offline. |
| HA Cluster Setup (external SAN) | The same clustered pool configuration where the media comes from an external SAN. |
Optimization
Matching pool behavior to your workload, and watching how the grid performs.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Performance Tuning | Pool I/O profiles, which set read-ahead, request queue depth and the I/O scheduler. |
| Performance Monitoring | The Grid Dashboard and the health and performance views built on it. |
System Internals
How the platform is put together, for deeper troubleshooting and for extending it.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| QuantaStor systemd Services | The internal services and the systemd units under /lib/systemd/system that manage them.
|
| QuantaStor Configuration Files | The configuration files that let engineering and support customize platform behavior. |
| QuantaStor Shell Utilities | The qs CLI plus the qs-* helpers such as qs-iostat, qs-sendlogs and qs-upgrade.
|
| QuantaStor Custom Scripting / Application Extensions | Script call-outs for integrating QuantaStor with custom applications. |
Verified against QuantaStor 6.9.0.