Seagate Corvault Configuration

Seagate Corvault Setup with QuantaStor

This guide describes how to integrate a Seagate Corvault system with QuantaStor in a high-availability (HA) configuration using SAS connectivity.

The Corvault system presents logical volumes to QuantaStor which are then used just like any other JBOD connected HDD except that the virtual devices (LUNs) from the Corvault are typically larger such as 60TB, 80TB or 100TB in size.

Supported Connectivity

Seagate Corvault units are always connected to QuantaStor using SAS ports and cabling. You can use one or two connections per Corvault to each QuantaStor server. If you do two connections you must have at least two SAS HBAs in the QuantaStor with SAS HBA1 connecting to IO Module 1 in the Corvault and SAS HBA2 connecting to IO Module 2 in the Corvault.

Single-Path Connectivity

Multipath-Path Connectivity

Architecture Overview

Corvault operates as a dual-controller active/active array that internally uses Seagate's ADAPT erasure coding to provide fault-tolerance and durability in the event of one or more device failures.

Seagate Corvault Configuration

QuantaStor has integrated support for configuration and monitoring of the Corvault units. To enable this first navigate to the Controllers & Enclosures section of the WUI then click the button to Add External System. In there you'll input the IP address and the username and password to your Corvault system in order for QuantaStor to add it to the Storage Grid.

Seagate Corvault Disk Group (DG) and Pool Creation

The Corvault units have a concept of a DG and a Pool but in practice these are generally one-to-one with each DG being used by a single pool. We recommend dividing the Corvault into two ADAPT Pools with 53x HDDs per pool when using 4U106 Corvaults and with 42x HDDs per pool when using the 5U84 Corvaults. When creating a pool you'll get the opportunity to select a ADAPT layout, we generally use the 16k+2m layout as that provides the most capacity and 88% usable. Note also that you'll need to allocate at least one virtual hot-spare in each Corvault Pool, we generally set this to 2x virtual spares per Pool. Note that this is not a specific drive that's a spare as the data is distributed across all the drives in an ADAPT pool but when a drive fails this virtual spare's worth of space will be used to fully repair the Pool to 100%. In many cases we find that the ADAPT pools are already configured when the system arrives. If you see that there are two ADAPT pools in 16k+2m layout already configured on your system then you can skip this step and move onto logical volume creation.

Logical Volume Creation

Logical Device Sizing

• Note - Use fewer, larger volumes rather than many small volumes for optimal QuantaStor performance and management simplicity.

Disk Discovery

In QuantaStor:

1. Navigate to Storage System → Physical Disks.
2. Click Rescan Disks.
3. Verify Corvault LUNs appear as new block devices.

- Corvault LUNs will appear as external SAN disks, not JBOD devices.

Multipath Verification

Verify that each Corvault LUN has multiple paths:

```bash multipath -ll