Storage System

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A Storage System is a single QuantaStor appliance -- physical or virtual. One or more Storage Systems form a Storage Grid, which is managed as a federated unit. This page covers configuring an individual Storage System: its identity, network settings, firewall, and proxy configuration, all of which live in the Storage System Modify dialog.

Navigation: Storage Management → Storage Systems

This page covers:

Related pages with their own coverage: Storage System Optimization, License Management, Upgrade Manager and Recovery Manager.

Storage System operations

Right-clicking a Storage System exposes every system-level operation, including several that are not on the toolbar.

The operations available for a Storage System are on the Storage System group of the Storage Management toolbar, and on the right-click context menu for a system in the tree. The context menu is the more complete of the two:

Operation Purpose
Modify Storage System Identity, DNS, NTP, network, firewall and proxy settings. Covered in detail below.
Storage System Optimization Cache and Storage Pool I/O tunables. Right-click only -- it is not on the toolbar.
License Manager Add and remove QuantaStor license keys.
Upgrade Manager Upgrade the QuantaStor software.
Recovery Manager Restore the internal configuration database from a backup.
Alert Manager Email, ITSM, SNMP and capacity alerting.
Certificate Template Manager TLS certificate templates. See Certificate Management.
Install EDR Security Agent Deploy an endpoint detection and response agent. See EDR.
Shutdown / Restart Storage System Power operations. See the note on HA pools below.
View Client Connections Lists the clients currently connected to the system.
Network Connectivity/Ping Checker Tests reachability from this system, useful when diagnosing grid or replication problems.
Audit Log Analyzer Browse and search the management audit log. See Audit Logging.
Send Log Report Send support logs to OSNEXUS.
Join AD Domain Join the system to an Active Directory domain for SMB access.
Remove System from Grid Detach this system from the Storage Grid.
Getting Started / Configuration Guide The step-by-step setup workflow, described below.

Restarting a system that holds an active HA pool will fail the pool over to its cluster pair. This happens automatically, but a manual failover before the reboot completes a few seconds faster, so plan maintenance that way where the difference matters.

Storage System Modify

The Storage System Modify dialog holds the system's identity and its network configuration, across six tabs.

Navigation: Storage Management → Storage Systems → select a Storage System → Modify (toolbar)

It is also on the right-click context menu as Modify Storage System.... The Storage System selector at the top of the dialog switches which system you are editing without closing it, and Apply commits changes without closing the dialog.

General Settings

Storage System Modify, General Settings tab.
  • System Name -- this is also the network hostname. It may contain letters, numbers and the hyphen (-); no other special characters are permitted.
  • Description -- free text for your own use.
  • Location/Region -- free text describing where the system is, which is useful across a geographically distributed grid.
  • External Hostname (FQDN) -- the fully qualified name by which the system is reachable from outside its own network. Set this where the system sits behind NAT or where clients resolve it by a different name than its own hostname. It can also be selected as the grid communication endpoint on the Network Settings tab.
  • Multipath Config Mode -- controls whether QuantaStor manages the multipath configuration for attached storage. Leave it Enabled unless you are deliberately hand-managing multipath.conf.
  • I/O Fencing -- controls I/O fencing for high-availability configurations, which prevents a failed node from writing to shared storage after a failover. Leave this Enabled on any HA deployment.
  • Telemetry -- controls whether the system sends anonymous telemetry to OSNEXUS.
  • Zero-touch Maintenance -- allows routine maintenance actions (selecting unused media to be used as hot-spares) to proceed without an administrator confirming each one.
  • Log Collection Mode -- how often logs are gathered for support purposes. Never disables automatic collection; logs can still be sent on demand with Send Log Report.
  • Vendor and Server Layouts -- identify the underlying hardware so QuantaStor can apply the correct enclosure layout and disk slot mapping. These are detected automatically; change them only when the detection is wrong for your chassis. The recognised chassis front bezel or hypervisor vendor logo is shown beneath, which is a quick confirmation the system identified the platform correctly.

DNS Servers

Storage System Modify, DNS Servers tab.

DNS is configured automatically where DHCP provides it, but most appliances run with static addresses, so the servers usually have to be entered here.

  • Search Suffix -- the DNS domain the appliance is a member of. Used to resolve short names.
  • IP Address with Add and Remove -- the DNS servers themselves. Add your local DNS servers, or a public resolver such as 8.8.8.8 where no local one exists.

Working DNS matters more than it first appears: Active Directory (AD) integration, LDAP single sign-on, ITSM webhook delivery and license activation all depend on name resolution. If you plan to join your QuantaStor systems to your AD domain then it is important to set the DNS server to your AD domain controller IP address.

NTP Servers

Storage System Modify, NTP Servers tab.

Add or remove the addresses of one or more NTP servers reachable from the system.

Accurate time is a prerequisite, not a nicety. Kerberos authentication against Active Directory fails outside a small clock skew, TLS certificate validation depends on the clock, and correlating alerts or audit logs across a grid is impractical when nodes disagree about the time. When joining systems to an AD domain, point NTP at the domain controllers.

Network Settings

Storage System Modify, Network Settings tab.

Grid Communication Settings

Selects the address QuantaStor uses for grid management traffic with this node.

  • Use Preferred Grid Port IP -- pins grid communication to a specific address. Set this in complex networks to keep management traffic on a chosen network rather than whichever interface the system would otherwise pick. Auto lets QuantaStor choose.
  • Use External Hostname -- uses the External Hostname (FQDN) from the General Settings tab instead of an IP address, which is what you want when nodes reach each other through NAT or across sites by name.

ARP Filtering

Address Resolution Protocol filtering controls how the system answers ARP requests when it has several interfaces on the same subnet. It is enabled automatically when network bonding is configured.

Network Bonding Policy

Sets the default mode used when bonded ports are created. QuantaStor supports:

  • Round Robin -- distributes frames across ports in turn. Requires all ports to reach the same switch.
  • LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) -- negotiated aggregation. Can bond ports connected to separate switches, which Round Robin cannot, making it the usual choice for a redundant network. It requires matching configuration on the switch side.
  • Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing
  • Adaptive Load Balancing

For LACP, consult your switch and NIC documentation, and expect to tune the switch's flow control settings to find what performs best for your hardware and workload.

Network Port Naming Convention

Chooses between Predictable interface naming (ensN, enoN, enpN) and legacy Unified naming (ethN).

Changing this renames interfaces, so treat it as a maintenance-window operation.

FC WWN & Device Emulation Mode

Sets the WWN Emulation Mode for Fibre Channel targets, which controls how the system presents World Wide Names and emulates device identity to FC initiators. Some host operating systems and multipath stacks expect a particular vendor's identity; this is where that is selected. None is the default and is correct unless a specific host platform requires otherwise.

Firewall

Storage System Modify, Firewall tab.

Controls which protocols the system accepts, per service, with an Allow checkbox for each. For high-security environments, block every protocol that will not be used.

The services managed here, the equivalent per-port settings, and the interaction with the Security Manager's Web Access Mode are covered under Firewall Configuration.

Proxy Settings

Storage System Modify, Proxy Settings tab.

Lets the system reach OSNEXUS support, licensing, upgrade and alert endpoints through an HTTP proxy, which is required on appliances with no direct outbound internet access.

  • Enable Proxy Settings -- the fields below are inactive until this is ticked.
  • HTTP Proxy URL and HTTPS Proxy URL -- the proxy for each scheme.
  • No Proxy -- addresses and domains to reach directly. Put your own grid nodes, DNS and NTP servers here; routing internal traffic through an external proxy is a common cause of grid communication problems.

The proxy configured here is used by license activation, the Upgrade Manager, support log upload, and outbound alert delivery including ITSM webhooks.

Getting Started

The Getting Started button, also called the Workflow Manager, provides step-by-step instructions for common setup operations: network configuration, Storage Pool and volume provisioning, network share provisioning, object storage setup and more.

Navigation: Storage Management → Getting Started (toolbar)

It appears automatically at login while no license key is detected. Once a license has been added it remains available from the toolbar and from the right-click context menu as Getting Started / Configuration Guide....

Related pages

Verified against QuantaStor 6.9.0.

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