Create a NetApp Volumes volume

Use the netapp-volume module to create a Google Cloud NetApp Volumes volume.

NetApp Volumes is a managed Google Cloud service that provides Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) shared file systems to virtual machine (VM) instances. It offers advanced data management capabilities and highly scalable capacity and performance. For more information, see NetApp Volumes overview.

To support NetApp Volumes, Cluster Toolkit uses two modules:

• netapp-storage-pool: Provisions a storage pool. Storage pools are pre-provisioned storage capacity containers that host volumes. A pool also defines fundamental properties for all its volumes, such as the region, attached network, service level, Customer-Managed Encryption Key (CMEK) encryption, and Active Directory or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) settings.
• netapp-volume: Provisions a volume inside an existing storage pool. A volume is a file-system container that you share by using NFS or SMB.

For the complete list of inputs and outputs for this module, see the netapp-volume module page in the Cluster Toolkit GitHub repository.

Before you begin

Before you begin, verify that you meet the following requirements:

• You have installed and configured Cluster Toolkit. For installation instructions, see Set up Cluster Toolkit.
• You have an existing cluster blueprint. You can use and modify an existing blueprint or create one from scratch.
• You have created a NetApp Volumes storage pool by using the netapp-storage-pool module. You must create volumes inside a storage pool and consume capacity from that pool.
• For a detailed example of this module, see examples/netapp-volumes.yaml.

Warning: The netapp-volume module does not implement volume deletion protection. Volumes created with this module are not persistent. If you run gcluster destroy, then Cluster Toolkit permanently deletes the volume and all its data. If you want to retain the volume, then we recommend that you create the volume manually and use the pre-existing-network-storage module instead.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create and mount NetApp Volumes volumes, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on your project:

• NetApp Volumes Admin (roles/netapp.admin)
• Compute Network Admin (roles/compute.networkAdmin)
• Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1)
• Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Create a volume

The following examples show how to configure the netapp-volume module. Both examples require an existing storage pool.

Minimal configuration

The following example provisions a 1,024 GiB volume by using a minimal set of parameters. By default, the module exports to the 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16 IP address ranges with the no_root_squash option.

  - id: home_volume
    source: modules/file-system/netapp-volume
    use: [netapp_pool]
    settings:
      volume_name: "eda-home"
      capacity_gib: 1024
      local_mount: "/eda-home"
      protocols: ["NFSV3"]
      region: REGION

Replace REGION with the Google Cloud region where your storage pool is located.

Advanced configuration

The following example defines all available parameters, including custom mount options, export policies, and auto-tiering.

  - id: shared_volume
    source: modules/file-system/netapp-volume
    use: [netapp_pool]
    settings:
      volume_name: "eda-shared"
      capacity_gib: 25000
      large_capacity: true
      local_mount: "/shared"
      mount_options: "rw"
      protocols: ["NFSV3","NFSV4"]
      region: REGION
      unix_permissions: "0777"
      export_policy:
      - allowed_clients: "10.10.20.8,10.10.20.9"
        has_root_access: true
        access_type: "READ_WRITE"
        nfsv3: false
        nfsv4: true
      - allowed_clients: "10.0.0.0/8"
        has_root_access: false
        access_type: "READ_WRITE"
        nfsv3: true
        nfsv4: false
      tiering_policy:
        tier_action: "ENABLED"
        cooling_threshold_days: 31
      description: "Shared volume for EDA job"
      labels:
        owner: bob

Protocol support

Because Cluster Toolkit provisions Linux-based compute clusters, the netapp-volume module supports only NFSv3 and NFSv4.1. Server Message Block (SMB) is not supported.

Large volumes

You can create volumes larger than 15 TiB as Large Volumes. Large volumes can grow up to 3 PiB and scale read performance up to 29 GiBps.

Large volumes provide six IP addresses, which the module exports using the server_ips output. When you connect to a large volume to a client by using the use keyword, Cluster Toolkit uses only the first IP address to mount the volume on clients.

Note: This feature is in allow-listed General Availability (GA). To request access, see Large capacity volumes.

Auto-tiering support

If your storage pool has auto-tiering enabled, then you can enable auto-tiering on the individual volume by configuring the tiering_policy.

tiering_policy:
  tier_action: "ENABLED"
  cooling_threshold_days: 31

For more information, see Manage auto-tiering.

Use existing volumes

NetApp Volumes volumes are standard NFS exports. If you want to use an existing volume that you did not create with Cluster Toolkit, then use the pre-existing-network-storage module.

- id: homefs
  source: modules/file-system/pre-existing-network-storage
  settings:
    server_ip: SERVER_IP
    remote_mount: nfsshare
    local_mount: /home
    fs_type: nfs

Replace SERVER_IP with the IP address of your NFS server.

Note: You must know the server_ip before deployment. The pre-existing-network-storage module doesn't support specifying a list of multiple IP addresses for large volumes.

FlexCache support

FlexCache technology accelerates data access, reduces WAN latency, and lowers WAN bandwidth costs for read-intensive workloads. When you create a FlexCache volume, you create a remote cache of an existing origin volume that contains only the actively accessed data. For more information, see About FlexCache.

Deploying FlexCache volumes requires manual steps on the ONTAP origin side, which Cluster Toolkit does not automate. Therefore, the netapp-volume module does not support deploying FlexCache volumes directly. To use FlexCache, deploy the volumes manually and then integrate them by using the pre-existing-network-storage module.

What's next

• For the complete list of inputs and outputs for this module, see the netapp-volume module page in the Cluster Toolkit GitHub repository.