Adding Storage to your Source and Target SoftNAS Virtual Machine

You will not be adding storage to the third virtual machine created, as it acts as a 3rd party witness and controller to all SNAP HA™ failover and takeover operations. The following steps will be performed on the two virtual machines designated as source and target for HA and replication.

1. Log into your vSphere client and find the first of the newly created VMs. In this example, the VM is named SofTNAS_Kai_1.  Right-click the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
   

   
   
   Note: Adding hard disks can be done regardless of whether the virtual machine powered up, or offline. If changing the available RAM, the VM must be powered off. 
    

2. In Virtual Machine Properties for your selected machine, click Add. 
   
   

   
   
   

3. Select Hard Disk from the available options, and click Next.
   
   
   

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4. Select Create a New Virtual Disk, and click Next.
   
   

5. Select Disk capacity, and Disk Provisioning.  If space is at a premium in your environment, we recommend thin-provisioning. Thick-provisioning VMware datastores provides increased write performance, and should be preferred over thin-provisioning of VMDKs when optimal performance is required. 

   Here you can also decide where you wish to draw this additional storage capacity from. By default, Store with the virtual machine will be selected, which simply means that the VMDK will be stored in the same datastore used by the virtual machine itself. Alternatively, you can select a different datastore, by clicking the radio button labelled Specify a datastore or datastore cluster. One reason to do this might be that one datastore offers better performance than another – for example, one might be comprised of SSD storage, while the other consists of magnetic drives. For this POC example, we will stick with the default.
   
   

    

6.  Next, you will be provided with advanced options. As it states, these will rarely need to be changed. The effects of each change are explained alongside each option. For this POC, the default settings will be kept.  Click Next.
   
   

7. Next, a summary of your selections will be presented.  Verify the selections and click Finish if all is as expected.
   
   

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8.  The VMDK (hard disk) will be created and added to your virtual machine after a few moments. Wait for the disk to be added.
   
   

   
   
   

9. If using SoftNAS’ Software RAID, you will need to add a number of disks commensurate with the RAID level selected. Repeat the above process as necessary to provide the number of disks required for your desired RAID level (for example, RAID 1 will require two VMDKs of the same size and configuration).

   In order to show a basic software RAID configuration in upcoming steps, two hard disks will be created, and configured with RAID 1 in the upcoming Creating a Pool and Volume section.

Preparing the Target Node

Repeat the process above, and add the same number and configuration of disks to your target virtual machine. Your second virtual machine should mirror the first virtual machine in every aspect, up until this point.

Remember, no additional disks need to be added to the HA controller node.  This will remain a default SoftNAS virtual machine, with no additional configuration changes. 

Creating a CIFS enabled Volume in your Source Virtual Machine

As mentioned at the beginning of this document, we are guiding you towards the creation of a CIFS enabled volume on a highly available pairing of SoftNAS virtual machines. With VMware, the underlying storage available will have a great deal to do with performance – if your underlying disks are SSD, performance will be better than with magnetic drives. This is perhaps self-evident, but must be mentioned as you will want to ensure your POC mirrors your intended use case as closely as possible.

With VMware, the underlying storage is not added via the SoftNAS® StorageCenter™ interface, but from within VMware itself, as described in Adding Storage. However, it is possible to leverage AWS or Azure storage as described in SoftNAS’ product  documentation.

For more information about adding disk devices from cloud services, see the following:

• Adding Amazon EBS Disks

• Adding Cloud Disk Extenders

• Adding Azure Block Storage from the SoftNAS UI

• Adding Object Storage from the SoftNAS UI

However, for the purposes of this document, we will be using the disks created in the previous section. They will, however, need to be partitioned. 

Partitioning Disks

1. Log into your ‘source’ SoftNAS virtual machine via your web browser, and the IP address assigned to your virtual machine.
   
   Note: In order to access your virtual machine, you must be logged into the same network your virtual machines are hosted on.
   
   

2. In the Storage Administration Pane, select the Disk Devices option under the Storage section.
   The Disk Devices panel will be displayed.
   
   

   
   
   

3. Disk devices must be partitioned prior to use. The available devices are listed in the Available Devices grid, as shown below.
   

    

   The Device Usage column indicates the current status of the device, which can be:

   • Device needs partition - the initial state for a new device that has no partition

   • Available to assign - the device is partitioned and ready for use in a storage pool

   • Used in pool <poolname> - the device is in use by the indicated storage pool name

    

4. Use the buttons on the toolbar to partition the devices for initial use.

   1. Use Partition All to partition all disk devices.
      
      

   2. Alternatively, select each disk device, then use Create Partition to partition each device individually. 
      
      

   3. Remove Partition can be used to remove an existing partition that is no longer needed.