- 2. IBM Cloud Scale-out Block Storage Cluster

KEY FEATURES

QuantaStor’s scale-out block storage configurations provide highly-available iSCSI block storage suitable for a variety of use cases. Each appliance contains SSD to accelerate write performance and each cluster must contain a minimum of 3x appliances. QuantaStor’s web-based management interface, REST APIs and QS CLI make storage provisioning and automation easy.

QuantaStor Scale-out iSCSI Block Storage Features

• S3 & SWIFT Compatible REST API support
• Hybrid HDD + SSD configuration to boost write performance
• Easy web-based management of all appliances with built-in QuantaStor storage grid technology.
• Easy expansion by adding appliances and/or drives.

USE CASES

• Highly-available block storage for virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer)
• Scale-out block storage with Cinder integration for KVM based OpenStack deployments
• Highly-available block storage for databases

EXPANDABLE

Add additional drives and/or additional appliances to expand capacity. Drives can be different sizes, appliances can have different numbers of drives but for optimal performance uniform drive count and capacities per QS server/appliance are recommended.

EXPECTED PERFORMANCE

Adding appliances will boost performance as the configuration scales-out. Small 3x appliance configurations will deliver between 400MB/sec and 1.2GB/sec sequential throughput depending on block size and number of concurrent client connections. Erasure-coding is recommended for best write performance and replica mode is recommended for best read performance.

QUICK CONFIGURATION STEPS

Step One: Storage Management Tab → Create Grid → Click OK
Step Two: Storage Management Tab → Add Grid Node → Enter 2nd Appliance IP → Click OK
Step Three: Storage Management Tab → Add Grid Node → Enter 3nd Appliance IP → Click OK
Step Four: Storage Management Tab → Modify Storage System → Set Domain Suffix → Click OK (do this for each appliance)
Step Five: Storage Management Tab → Controllers & Enclosures → right-click Controller → Configure Pass-thru devices → Select all → Click OK (do this for each appliance)
Step Six: Scale-out Block & Object Storage Tab → Ceph Cluster → Create Ceph Cluster → Select all appliances → Click OK
Step Seven: Scale-out Block & Object Storage Tab → Ceph Cluster → Multi-Create OSDs → Select SSDs as journals, HDDs as OSDs → Click OK
Step Eight: Scale-out Block & Object Storage Tab → Storage Pools (Ceph) → Create Storage Pool → Select Erasure Coding Mode → Click OK
Step Nine: Cluster Resource Management → Create Site Cluster → Select All → Click OK
Step Ten: Cluster Resource Management → Add Site Interface → Enter IP address for iSCSI Access → Click OK
Step Eleven: Storage Management Tab → Hosts → Add Host → Enter host IQN → Click OK (do this for each host)
Step Twelve: Storage Management Tab → Storage Volumes → Create Storage Volume → Enter volume name, select a size, → Click OK
Step Thirteen: Storage Management Tab → Hosts → Right-click Host → Assign Volumes → Select volumes → Click OK

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Hardware	Networking	Licenses and Fees
Small and Medium Tier configurations use 2RU server with 12x drive bays. Large Tier configurations use 4RU server with 24x or 36x drive bays. All configurations include mirrored boot, redundant power. All configurations include 2x 800GB SSD for write acceleration.	2x 10GbE Private Network ports recommended for all configurations. Use LACP bonding for network redundancy and improved throughput.	Select the OSNEXUS operating system QuantaStor license tier based on the amount of raw storage capacity. License, maintenance, upgrades and support included.

CONFIGURATIONS

Scale-out iSCSI Block Storage Configuration Options

Small Tier - Hybrid Block Storage – 16TB	Medium Tier - Hybrid Object Storage – 48TB	Large Tier - Hybrid Block Storage – 128TB
2x E5-2650v4 or 4110, 64GB RAM, 8x 2TB SATA, QS Small Tier License, 1x 800GB SSDs (write log), 2x 1TB SATA (mirrored boot), 2x 10GbE Private Network ports	2x E5-2620v4 or 4110, 128GB RAM, 8x 6TB, QS Medium Tier License, 1x 800GB SSDs (write log), 2x 1TB SATA (mirrored boot), 2x 10GbE Private Network ports	2x E5-2620v4 or 4110, 128GB RAM, 16x 8TB SATA, QS Large Tier License, 2x 800GB SSDs (write log), 2x 1TB SATA (mirrored boot), 2x 10GbE Private Network ports