Using the Web Interface
The QuantaStor web management interface (WUI) is the primary way to administer a system or a storage grid of systems. This page is an orientation to it: how to log in, what each region of the screen holds, what the nine main tabs cover, and how to read the Navigation breadcrumbs that the rest of this guide uses to point you at a dialog.
Read this once and the rest of the Administrator Guide becomes shorter, because every page that documents a dialog opens with a breadcrumb rather than a paragraph of directions. If you are setting up a new appliance, the Getting Started / Configuration Guide in the banner walks the initial steps in order.
| Section | Covers |
|---|---|
| Logging in | Reaching the interface, and the default view you land on |
| Screen regions | Each region of the screen, what belongs there, and how it behaves |
| The main tabs | The nine tabs across the top and which feature area each one holds |
| Reading a Navigation breadcrumb | How this guide writes a path through the interface, with worked examples |
| Right-click menus | Reaching operations that are not on any toolbar |
| Getting Started guide | The built-in setup workflow launcher |
Logging in
admin account.Browse to https://<system-ip-or-name>/ on any system in the grid. The interface is served over HTTPS on port 443; a fresh appliance uses a self-signed certificate, so a browser warning on first connection is expected until you install your own certificate (see Security Configuration).
On a freshly installed appliance, read the address off the console. The text-mode console login banner carries a Web Management Login section listing every configured IPv4 address as an https:// URL, so the console -- or the same console reached over IPMI -- tells you where to point a browser before you have assigned an address deliberately. QuantaStor regenerates the banner each time it brings a network port up, so the addresses shown track the current configuration. The first port on a new install is configured by DHCP and the rest are disabled; convert them all to static addresses before you provision storage, and see Network Ports for why.
Username is pre-filled with admin, the built-in administrator account and the default password is just password. If you haven't changed the default password from password you can just press Enter to login and it will supply the default. If you have updated the admin password enter it now and click Login. The eye button beside the password field reveals what you typed.
You can log in to any member of a storage grid and administer the whole grid from that one session -- you do not need to connect to each appliance separately, and you do not need to connect to the grid master. See Grid Configuration.
After login the interface opens on the Storage Management main tab with the Storage Systems section selected in the tree, and the Network Ports tab showing every port on every grid member. The status bar at the bottom left reads Connected [<system>] and names the system your browser session is actually talking to.
Screen regions
The screen is divided into a fixed set of regions. The rest of this guide names them as follows.
| Region | Where | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| Banner | Across the top | Session controls: Logout, About, the theme toggle, the Getting Started button |
| Main tab bar | Below the banner | The nine main tabs; the tab you pick decides everything below it |
| Toolbar | Below the tabs | Buttons for the current section, arranged in named groups |
| Tree view | Left | Stack sections and the objects inside them; your selection drives the rest of the screen |
| Content view | Centre, upper | A dashboard for the selected object -- charts, capacity, sensors |
| Detail tabs and detail view | Centre, lower | Tabbed grids listing the selected object and everything related to it |
| Properties panel | Right edge | Every property of the selected object, including fields shown nowhere else |
| Tasks and Alerts panel | Bottom | Progress and outcome of every operation, and the alert history |
| Status bar | Very bottom | Connection state, Clear Tasks, Dismiss Alerts |
Banner
The banner is the same on every tab. On the right it carries:
- Welcome, <user> -- the account this session is authenticated as.
- Logout -- ends the session and returns to the login panel.
- About -- a small dialog with the system name, the software version, and the licence edition and key, plus buttons for the License Manager and the EULA. Reach for it when support asks which build a system is running.
- A sun / moon button -- tooltip "Toggle between dark and light mode themes." It switches the whole interface between the light and dark themes and remembers the choice, so an interface that comes up dark is a theme setting rather than a fault.
- A checklist button -- opens the Getting Started / Configuration Guide.
Main tab bar
Nine main tabs run across the top. The tab you choose determines which sections appear in the tree and which groups appear in the toolbar, so it is the first step of every path through the interface -- which is why every Navigation breadcrumb in this guide starts with a main tab. See The main tabs for what each one covers.
The set of tabs a given account sees can be narrowed: the Web Interface Customization tab on the user and role dialogs hides individual main tabs per user or per role, so an operator account can be given a smaller interface than an administrator. See Security Configuration.
Toolbar
The toolbar holds the buttons that act on whatever is selected in the tree, arranged into groups with a heading above each -- Storage System, Network Port, Storage System Grid, Active Directory in the image. The group heading is what makes a breadcrumb unambiguous, because button labels repeat: Create, Modify and Delete appear in several groups on the same toolbar, and only the group tells you which one is meant.
Select the object first, then click the button. The buttons operate on the current tree selection, and a button that needs a selection it does not have will either be disabled or will act on nothing useful.
The groups change when you change section. Selecting Storage Pools in the tree replaces the four groups above with Storage Pool, Storage Pool HA Resource Group, Storage Pool Encryption and Storage Pool Device. If a button a procedure names is not on the toolbar, the usual cause is that a different section is selected. A few groups are shared and appear on several tabs -- the Storage System group is on Storage Management, Remote Replication and High-availability VIF Management alike.
Some groups hide behind an overflow chevron. When the groups for a section are wider than the window, the ones that do not fit are moved into a » chevron at the right-hand end of the toolbar, and clicking it drops down the hidden groups with their headings intact. This is easy to miss, because nothing else on screen indicates that a group is missing. It happens at any window width on sections with many groups -- Controllers & Enclosures hides External System Management even in a full-width window -- and it happens to sections that normally fit if you narrow the browser window. If a group named in a breadcrumb is nowhere on the toolbar, check the chevron before concluding the breadcrumb is wrong.
Tree view
The tree view down the left side is where you select what you are working on. Its header shows Storage Grid [<grid name>].
Below the header it is a stack (an accordion) of sections -- Storage Systems, Controllers & Enclosures, Physical Disks, Storage Pools and so on. One section is expanded at a time: clicking a collapsed section's header bar, or its + button, opens it and collapses the one that was open. Expanding a section does three things at once:
- it shows that section's objects as a tree you can expand further;
- it replaces the toolbar groups with the ones for that object type;
- it changes which grids the detail view shows in the centre.
Selecting an object drives the centre and the right of the screen. With the grid root selected, the centre lists every member; select a single storage system and the centre gains a Storage System Dashboard and the detail grids narrow to that system, while the Properties panel on the right switches to that system's properties.
Sections that can hold many objects carry a search box above the tree. Type a fragment, click the magnifier, and the tree is reduced to matching objects; the button to the right of the box clears the search and restores the full list. What the box searches depends on the section, and its tooltip tells you which -- in the Storage Systems section the tooltip reads "Network port name search.", so typing a system name there matches nothing and appears to empty the tree, while typing a port name such as ens192 expands every system to show that port. The Storage Systems section also has a Filters menu with Hide Offline Ports and Hide Bond Nested Ports.
The « button in the tree header collapses the whole tree panel to a thin strip, giving the centre panels the full window width; a » button on the strip brings it back.
Content view
The upper centre panel is the content view: a dashboard for the object selected in the tree. It is titled for that object -- Storage System Dashboard (<system>), Pool Dashboard (<pool>), Volume Dashboard (<volume>) -- and the views it offers depend on the object type. A storage system offers Performance, Cache Stats (ARC) and Sensors; a storage pool offers Performance, Capacity and Trends; a storage volume adds Replication. The combo box on the right sets the time range for the charts.
The content view appears only when a single object is selected. Selecting a section header or the grid root leaves the centre showing the detail grids alone. For the health and performance views built on this data, see Performance Monitoring.
Detail tabs and detail view
The lower centre panel is the detail view, and the strip of detail tabs above it selects what the grid lists. The tabs are the ones relevant to the current section, and the active tab is named for the selected object -- Network Ports (qs-node-110). For a storage system the tabs are Network Ports, System Information, Licenses, FC Ports, Infiniband Ports and Network Static Routes.
Some sections stack two detail panels, each with its own tab strip: Controllers & Enclosures puts Hardware Controllers / Software Adapters / External Systems above Hardware Enclosures / Hardware RAID Units / Controller Disks / Controller Events & Alerts.
Grid columns sort by clicking the header. Rows in these grids carry right-click menus of their own, which are not always the same as the tree's -- right-clicking a system's group header row in the Network Ports grid offers Rescan All Network Ports.... Where a grid holds many rows it paginates, with page controls and Set Page Size buttons along the bottom.
Properties panel
The right edge carries a vertical Properties strip. Click it to slide out the Properties panel, which lists every property of the selected object as a Property / Value table, and click the » in its header to close it again.
This panel is worth knowing about because it is the only place some fields appear: FIPS and FIPS State Detail on a storage system, for example, are on no dialog and in no grid column (see FIPS Mode). Copy to Clipboard and Copy All (CSV) at the foot of the panel export the whole list, which is the quickest way to hand a system's full state to support.
An object's right-click menu also has a Properties... item, and it is not the same thing: it opens a modal dialog with the same property table plus Security and Custom Tags tabs. Use the docked panel to read properties while you work, and the dialog when you need those two extra tabs.
Tasks and Alerts panel
The panel across the bottom has two tabs, Tasks and Alerts, each with a count in brackets.
This is where long operations report, and where their errors surface. Most operations that take more than a moment -- creating a pool, joining a grid, replicating a volume, creating a site cluster -- run asynchronously: the dialog closes as soon as the request is accepted, and the work continues in the background. A row appears in Tasks with Start Time, Task, Status, Detail, Storage System, User and Progress, and the progress percentage climbs as the task runs. A task that fails ends as Failed with the reason in Detail.
The consequence for a new administrator is worth stating plainly: a dialog that closes without complaint has not told you the operation succeeded, only that it was accepted. Check the Tasks tab before assuming a long operation worked.
The Alerts tab lists what the grid has raised on its own -- capacity thresholds, hardware faults, cluster problems -- with Time Stamp, Severity, Storage System, SNMP ID, Alert and Description. These are the same alerts that email and the ITSM integrations deliver; see Call-home / Alerting.
The chevron on the divider above the panel collapses the panel -- and the status bar with it -- giving the tree and the centre panels the full window height. That is useful on a small screen, but it hides the one place that reports background failures.
Status bar
The status bar reads Connected [<system>] on the left, naming the grid member your browser is actually talking to -- useful when several systems are open in different browser tabs. It changes to a disconnected state if the session loses contact with the service.
On the right:
- Clear Tasks -- confirms, then clears all cancelled and completed tasks from the system. Running and queued tasks are not cleared.
- Dismiss Alerts -- confirms, then dismisses every alert in the system.
Both are grid-wide and both are confirmed by a dialog first, so neither is an accident waiting to happen -- but both discard history for every administrator, not just your session.
The main tabs
| Main tab | Tree sections | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Grid View | none | A grid-wide dashboard rather than an object browser -- tiles for systems online, systems with alerts, pools online, pools with alerts and total alerts, each with a View Details link; pool capacity and threshold charts; and a card per member with CPU, memory, temperature and power. Grid Details and System Details check boxes choose how much is shown, and Add System / Remove System change grid membership from here. See Performance Monitoring. |
| Storage Management | Storage Systems, Controllers & Enclosures, Physical Disks, Storage Pools, Network Shares, Storage Volumes, Object Buckets, Schedules, Hosts & Portal Groups | The tab most work happens on: appliances and grid membership (Storage System, Grid Configuration), network ports (Network Ports), disks and controllers (Physical Disks/Devices, Hardware Controllers & Enclosures), pools (Storage Pools), and the file, block and object storage provisioned from them (Network Shares, Storage Volumes). |
| Security | Management Users, Management Groups, Management Roles, Object Users & Tenants, Scale-out File & Block Keyrings, Certificates, Key Server Profiles, EDR Agents | Who can do what, and the credentials and certificates behind it. See Security Configuration. |
| Remote Replication | Storage System Replication Links, Volume & Share Replica Associations, Volume & Share Replication Schedules, Bucket Sync Policies | Replicating volumes and shares to another system or site. See Remote-replication (DR) and Bucket Synchronization Policies. |
| Cloud Integration | Cloud Storage Containers, Object Reverse Proxies | Object-storage buckets attached to a system and presented as files. See Cloud Containers / NAS Gateway. |
| High-availability VIF Management | Site Clusters, Site Cluster Virtual Interfaces | Site clusters and the virtual interfaces that fail over between members. See HA Cluster Setup (JBODs). |
| Scale-out Storage Configuration | Scale-out Storage Clusters, Data & Journal Devices, Scale-out Storage Pools | Ceph clusters, their monitors, metadata servers and gateways, and the pools built on them. See Scale-out Block Setup (ceph), Scale-out File Setup (ceph) and Scale-out Object Setup (ceph). |
| Multitenancy | Resource Groups, Services, Provisioning Quotas | Carving a grid into tenants with their own resources and quotas. |
| External Dashboards | External Dashboards | Embedding third-party dashboards, typically Grafana, as a tab inside the interface. |
Every page in this guide that documents a dialog opens with a Navigation block giving the path to it:
Read it left to right as the order you move through the interface:
| In the breadcrumb | What to do |
|---|---|
| Plain text | A literal label. Look for it on screen exactly as written. |
italics |
Something you do or substitute, not something to read -- select a Storage Pool, right-click a Storage System. |
(section) |
The preceding name is a stack section in the tree view. |
(toolbar group), (toolbar) |
The preceding name is a toolbar group, or the item is a toolbar button. |
(tab) |
The preceding name is a tab -- a detail tab, or a tab inside a dialog. |
(select + right-click) |
The item is on the object's right-click menu, not on any toolbar. Select the object, right-click it, and choose the item. |
→ |
The next step. |
A breadcrumb always starts at a main tab, because nothing below the tabs is reachable until a tab is chosen. From there it walks the tree section, then the object if one has to be selected, then the toolbar group, then the button. There are exactly nine main tabs, listed in The main tabs above -- so if the first element of a breadcrumb is not one of those nine, the breadcrumb is wrong. Controllers & Enclosures and Management Users, for instance, look like tabs in a path but are stack sections, under Storage Management and Security respectively.
Worked examples:
Click the Storage Management main tab. Expand the Storage Systems section in the tree. Find the Storage System Grid group on the toolbar -- checking behind the » chevron if it is not visible -- and click Create Grid.
The italics are the instruction: expand Storage Pools, click the pool you want in the tree, then click Grow in the Storage Pool group. Skipping the selection step leaves the button with nothing to act on.
This one has no toolbar button at all. Select the storage system in the tree, right-click it, and choose Storage System Optimization... from the menu. See Storage System Optimization.
One dialog often has two routes. The Alert Manager opens both from Storage System → Alert Manager on the toolbar and from Alert Manager... on a storage system's right-click menu, and both open exactly the same dialog. Where that is true this guide gives one route, usually the toolbar; where an operation exists only on the right-click menu the breadcrumb says so with (select + right-click). If a breadcrumb sends you to a toolbar button you cannot find, the right-click menu on the object is the next place to look.
Right-clicking an object gives a context menu of the operations that apply to it. Right-click it in the tree view for the object's own menu; rows in the centre detail grids have their own menus, which are not always identical.
The right-click menu often carries items with no toolbar equivalent, so it is not merely a shortcut. On a storage system the menu holds eighteen items, and these are reachable no other way:
- Storage System Optimization... -- system tunables (Storage System Optimization)
- Shutdown Storage System... and Restart Storage System...
- View Client Connections...
- Network Connectivity/Ping Checker...
- Audit Log Analyzer...
- Certificate Template Manager...
- Install EDR Security Agent...
- Properties...
The rest -- Modify Storage System..., Upgrade Manager..., Recovery Manager..., License Manager..., Alert Manager..., Remove System from Grid..., Send Log Report..., Join AD Domain..., Getting Started / Configuration Guide... -- duplicate toolbar buttons, sometimes under a slightly different label: the toolbar's Modify is the menu's Modify Storage System..., and the toolbar's Send Support Logs is the menu's Send Log Report..., which opens a dialog titled Send Support Log Files -- three names for one dialog (QSTOR-12502).
Menus differ by section as well as by object. The same storage system right-clicked in the Controllers & Enclosures section offers a hardware menu instead: Rescan Hardware Controllers..., Identify..., Clear Missing Disks..., Clear Missing Enclosures..., Add Software Adapter..., Auto-config Software iSCSI Adapters... and Properties.... Add Software Adapter... is one of the two-route cases -- the same dialog is on the toolbar as Software Adapter → Add Adapter.
Two tabs make the point themselves: with nothing configured, the Multitenancy tree reads "Right-click to create a resource group." and the External Dashboards tree reads "Right-click to add dashboard entry.".
A practical habit: left-click to select, then right-click to see what is possible. If you cannot find an operation on any toolbar, right-click the object it applies to before searching the guide.
Getting Started guide
The checklist button at the right-hand end of the banner opens the Getting Started / Configuration Guide, a launcher for the setup workflows in the order they need doing. It is also on a storage system's right-click menu and on the toolbar as Storage System → Getting Started.
The left column groups the workflows -- Initial Setup (System Setup, Storage Grid Setup, Security Setup), Pool Setup (scale-up, and scale-out object, file and block), Provisioning Setup (file, block and object storage) and Misc Setup (remote replication, cloud integration). Picking one fills the right pane with numbered steps, each with the button that performs it and a paragraph explaining why. System Setup is where a new appliance starts: add a licence key, activate it, change the admin password, and optionally set up certificate templates.
+ Getting Started Overview walks all twelve workflows, says what each one achieves and in what order, and links every step to the guide page that documents the dialog behind it.
Related pages
- + Admin Guide Overview -- the whole Administrator Guide, grouped by topic
- Storage System -- a single appliance and its settings
- Grid Configuration -- joining systems into one grid managed from any member
- Security Configuration -- users, roles, and which main tabs an account can see
- Performance Monitoring -- the Grid View dashboard and the views built on it
- Call-home / Alerting -- what raises the alerts listed in the bottom panel
- QuantaStor CLI Command Reference -- the
qsequivalent of everything in the interface
Verified against QuantaStor 6.9.0.