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Deploying external storage

Note

The steps below expect that a tenancy has been allocated a resource quota for ibm-storage-array.

Please contact the Environments team to request a resource quota.

The IBM FlashSystem 5200 is an NVMe storage option that provides Condenser with terabytes of additional storage.

Confirm that a resource quota is available

On your local computer, install kubectl and obtain a kubeconfig file for a cluster on Condenser.

Export the location of the kubeconfig file and try the following command to see the resource quotas that apply to your namespace:

export KUBECONFIG=/path/to/kubeconfig.yaml
kubectl get resourcequotas -n tenant-ns

The result will be similar to the snippet below. Check that ibm-storage-array-quota is present:

NAME                      REQUEST                                                                  LIMIT                                                      AGE
default-shbj9             requests.storage: 1927Gi/5000Gi                                          limits.cpu: 30195m/64, limits.memory: 131271080585/384Gi   245d
ibm-storage-array-quota   ibm-storage-array.storageclass.storage.k8s.io/requests.storage: 0/50Ti                                                              45h

Create a new volume

A volume must be created on the virtual machine so that the storage can be formatted and consumed. To do this with the Rancher GUI:

  1. Start from the Virtualization Management page
  2. Select the cluster where you want to create a volume
  3. Select Virtual Machines
  4. Select your virtual machine
  5. Select Show Configuration
  6. Select Edit Config
  7. Select Volumes
  8. Select Add Volume
  9. Select Storage Class
  10. Choose ibm-storage-array
  11. Select Save

The virtual machine will reboot and the volume will be made available to the guest operating system.

Format a new disk

To make the storage functional, the new volume must be formatted on the guest operating system:

# Find the new disk
lsblk

# Look for the disk that has no partitions and confirm its empty
sudo blkid /dev/vdb

# Create a filesystem
# XFS: For large files and high throughput
# ext4: For smaller files and general purpose tasks
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/vdb

# Mount it
sudo mkdir -p /data
sudo mount /dev/vdb /data
df -h /data

# Create persistence by copying the UUID and adding it to /etc/fstab
sudo blkid /dev/vdb

# Add the following line to /etc/fstab
UUID=<your-id> /data ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0

# Permissions
# The mount will be owned by root by default. Adjust the permissions as needed
sudo chown youruser:youruser /data