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NFS DataStore on VMware Cloud on AWS using Amazon FSx for NetApp

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Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP integration with VMware Cloud on AWS is an AWS-managed external NFS datastore built on NetApp’s ONTAP file system that can be attached to a cluster in your SDDC. It provides customers with flexible, high-performance virtualized storage infrastructure that scales independently of compute resources.

PROCESS

  • Make sure SDDC has been deployed on VMware Cloud on AWS with version 1.20
  • The SDDC is added to an SDDC Group. While creating the SDDC Group, a VMware Managed Transit Gateway (vTGW) is automatically deployed and configured
  • A Multi-AZ file system powered by Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is deployed across two AWS Availability Zones (AZs). (You can also deploy in single AZ but not recommended for production)

DEPLOY VMWARE MANAGED TRANSIT GATEWAY

To use FSx for ONTAP as an external datastore, an SDDC must be a member of an SDDC group so that it can use the group’s vTGW and to configure you must be logged into the VMC console as a user with a VMC service role of Administrator and follow below steps:

  • Log in to the VMC Console and go on the Inventory page, click SDDC Groups
  • On the SDDC Groups tab, click ACTIONS and select Create SDDC Group
  • Give the group a Name and optional Description, then click NEXT
  • On the Membership grid, select the SDDCs to include as group members.The grid displays a list of all SDDCs in your organization. To qualify for membership in the group, an SDDC must meet several criteria:
    • It must be at SDDC version 1.11 or later. Members of a multi-region group must be at SDDC version 1.15 or later.
    • Its management network CIDR block cannot overlap the management CIDR block of any other group member.
    • It cannot be a member of another SDDC Group.
    When you have finished selecting members, click NEXT. You can edit the group later to add or remove members.
  • Acknowledge that you understand and take responsibility for the costs you incur when you create an SDDC group, then click CREATE GROUP to create the SDDC Group and its VMware Transit Connect network.

ATTACH VPC TO VMWARE MANAGED TRANSIT GATEWAY

After the SDDC Group is created, it shows up in your list of SDDC Groups. Select the SDDC Group, and then go to the External VPC tab and click on ADD ACCOUNT button, then provide the AWS account that will be used to provision the FSx file system, and then click Add.

Now it’s time for you to go back to the AWS console and sign in to the same AWS account where you will create Amazon FSx file system. Here navigate to the Resource Access Manager service page and

click on the Accept resource share button.

Next, we need to attach VMC Transit Gateway to the FSX VPC, for that you need to go to:

ATTACH VMWARE MANAGED TRANSIT GATEWAY TO VPC

  • Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Transit Gateway Attachments.
  • Choose Create transit gateway attachment
  • For Name tag, optionally enter a name for the transit gateway attachment.
  • For Transit gateway ID, choose the transit gateway for the attachment, make sure you choose a transit gateway that was shared with you.
  • For Attachment type, choose VPC.
  • For VPC ID, choose the VPC to attach to the transit gateway.This VPC must have at least one subnet associated with it.
  • For Subnet IDs, select one subnet for each Availability Zone to be used by the transit gateway to route traffic. You must select at least one subnet. You can select only one subnet per Availability Zone.
  • Choose Create transit gateway attachment.

Accept the Transit Gateway attachment as follows:

  • Navigating back to the SDDC Group, External VPC tab, select the AWS account ID used for creating your FSx NetApp ONTAP, and click Accept. This process takes some time..
  • Next, you need to add the routes so that the SDDC can see the FSx file system. This is done on the same External VPC tab, where you will find a table with the VPC. In that table, there is a button called Add Routes. In the Add Route section, add the CIDR of your VPC where the FSX will be deployed.

In the AWS console, create the route back to the SDDC by locating VPC on the VPC service page and navigating to the Route Table as seen below.

also ensure that you have the correct inbound rules for the SDDC Group CIDR to allow the inbound rules for SDDC Group CIDR. it this case i am using entire SDDC CIDR, Further to this Security Group, the ENI Security Group also needs the NFS port ranges adding as inbound and outbound rules to allow communication between VMware Cloud on AWS and the FSx service.

Deploy FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system in your AWS account

Next step is to create an FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system in your AWS account. To connect FSx to VMware cloud on AWS SDDC, we have two options:

  • Either create a new Amazon VPC under the same connected AWS account and connect it using VMware Transit Connect.
  • or Create a new AWS account in the same region as well as VPC, connect it using VMware Transit Connect.

In this blog, i am deploying in the same connected VPC and for it to deploy, Go to Amazon FSx service page, click on Create File System and on the Select file system type page, select Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP,

On Next page, select the Standard create method and enter require details like:

  • Select Deployment type (Multi-AZ) and Storage capacity
  • Select correct VPC, Security group and Subnet

After the file system is created, check the NFS IP address under the Storage virtual machines tab. The NFS IP address is the floating IP that is used to manage access between file system nodes, and this IP we will use to configuring in VMware Transit Connect to allow access volume from SDDC.

we are done with creating the FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system.

MOUNT NFS EXTERNAL STORAGE TO SDDC Cluster

Now it’s time for you to go back to the VMware Cloud on AWS console and open the Storage tab of your SDDC. Click ATTACH DATASTORE and fill in the required values.

  • Select a cluster. Cluster-1 is preselected if there are no other clusters.
  • Choose Attach a new datastore
  • The NFS IP address shown in the Endpoints section of the FSx Storage Virtual Machine tab. Click VALIDATE to validate the address and retrieve the list of mount points (NFS exports) from the server.

  • Pick one from the list of mount points exported by the server at the NFS server address. Each mount point must be added as a separate datastore
  • AWS FSx ONTAP
  • Give the datastore a name. Datastore names must be unique within an SDDC.
    • Click on ATTACH DATASTORE

VMware Cloud on AWS supports external storage starting with SDDC version 1.20. To request an upgrade to an existing SDDC, please contact VMware support or notify your Customer Success Manager.

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Persistent Volumes for Tanzu on VMware Cloud on AWS using Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

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Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides fully managed shared storage in the AWS Cloud with the popular data access and management capabilities of ONTAP and this blog post we are going to use these volumes mount as Persistent Volumes on Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters running on VMware Cloud on AWS

With Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, you pay only for the resources you use. There are no minimum fees or set-up charges. There are five Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP components to consider when storing and managing your data: SSD storage, SSD IOPS, capacity pool usage, throughput capacity, and backups.

The Amazon FSx console has two options for creating a file system – Quick create option and Standard create option. To rapidly and easily create an Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system with the service recommended configuration, I use the Quick create option.

The Quick create option creates a file system with a single storage virtual machine (SVM) and one volume. The Quick create option configures this file system to allow data access from Linux instances over the Network File System (NFS) protocol.

In the Quick configuration section, for File system name – optional, enter a name for your file system.

For Deployment type choose Multi-AZ or Single-AZ.

  • Multi-AZ file systems replicate your data and support failover across multiple Availablity Zones in the same AWS Region.
  • Single-AZ file systems replicate your data and offer automatic failover within a single Availability Zone, for this post i am creating in Single AZ
  • SSD storage capacity, specify the storage capacity of your file system, in gibibytes (GiBs). Enter any whole number in the range of 1,024–196,608.
  • For Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), choose the Amazon VPC that is associate with your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.

Review the file system configuration shown on the Create ONTAP file system page. For your reference, note which file system settings you can modify after the file system is created.

Choose Create file system.

Quick create creates a file system with one SVM (named fsx) and one volume (named vol1). The volume has a junction path of /vol1 and a capacity pool tiering policy of Auto.

For us to use this SVM, we need to get the IP address of SVM for NFS , Click on SVM ID and take a note of this IP, we will use this IP in our NFS configurations for Tanzu.

Kubernetes NFS-Client Provisioner

NFS subdir external provisioner is an automatic provisioner that use your existing and already configured NFS server to support dynamic provisioning of Kubernetes Persistent Volumes via Persistent Volume Claims. Persistent volumes are provisioned as ${namespace}-${pvcName}-${pvName}.

More Details – Explained here in detail https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner 

I am deploying this on my Tanzu Kubernetes cluster which is deployed on VMware Cloud on AWS.

  • Add the helm repo – 
#helm repo add nfs-subdir-external-provisioner https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/
  • Install using as below:
#helm install nfs-subdir-external-provisioner nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner \
    --set nfs.server=<IP address of Service> \
    --set nfs.path=/<Volume Name>
#My command will be like this#
#helm install nfs-subdir-external-provisioner nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner \
    --set nfs.server=172.31.1.234 \
    --set nfs.path=/vol1

Post installation of chart, you can check the status of Pod, it is not in running state then describe and see where it stuck

Finally, Test Your Environment!

Now we’ll test your NFS subdir external provisioner by creating a persistent volume claim and a pod that writes a test file to the volume. This will make sure that the provisioner is provisioning and that the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP service is reachable and writable.

As you can see deployed application created an PV and PVC successfully on Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Describe the Persistent Volume to see the source of it, as you can see below it is created on NFS running on SVM having IP – 172.31.1.234

This is the power of VMware Cloud on AWS and AWS native services, customers can use any AWS native service without worrying about egress charges as well as security as everything is being configured and accessed over the private connections.