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6.7. Add Primary Storage

6.7.1. System Requirements for Primary Storage

Hardware requirements:
  • Any standards-compliant iSCSI or NFS server that is supported by the underlying hypervisor.
  • The storage server should be a machine with a large number of disks. The disks should ideally be managed by a hardware RAID controller.
  • Minimum required capacity depends on your needs.
When setting up primary storage, follow these restrictions:
  • Primary storage cannot be added until a host has been added to the cluster.
  • If you do not provision shared primary storage, you must set the global configuration parameter system.vm.local.storage.required to true, or else you will not be able to start VMs.

6.7.2. Adding Primary Stroage

When you create a new zone, the first primary storage is added as part of that procedure. You can add primary storage servers at any time, such as when adding a new cluster or adding more servers to an existing cluster.

Warning

Be sure there is nothing stored on the server. Adding the server to CloudStack will destroy any existing data.
  1. Log in to the CloudStack UI (see Section 5.1, “Log In to the UI”).
  2. In the left navigation, choose Infrastructure. In Zones, click View More, then click the zone in which you want to add the primary storage.
  3. Click the Compute tab.
  4. In the Primary Storage node of the diagram, click View All.
  5. Click Add Primary Storage.
  6. Provide the following information in the dialog. The information required varies depending on your choice in Protocol.
    • Pod. The pod for the storage device.
    • Cluster. The cluster for the storage device.
    • Name. The name of the storage device.
    • Protocol. For XenServer, choose either NFS, iSCSI, or PreSetup. For KVM, choose NFS or SharedMountPoint. For vSphere choose either VMFS (iSCSI or FiberChannel) or NFS.
    • Server (for NFS, iSCSI, or PreSetup). The IP address or DNS name of the storage device.
    • Server (for VMFS). The IP address or DNS name of the vCenter server.
    • Path (for NFS). In NFS this is the exported path from the server.
    • Path (for VMFS). In vSphere this is a combination of the datacenter name and the datastore name. The format is "/" datacenter name "/" datastore name. For example, "/cloud.dc.VM/cluster1datastore".
    • Path (for SharedMountPoint). With KVM this is the path on each host that is where this primary storage is mounted. For example, "/mnt/primary".
    • SR Name-Label (for PreSetup). Enter the name-label of the SR that has been set up outside CloudStack.
    • Target IQN (for iSCSI). In iSCSI this is the IQN of the target. For example, iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:01ec9bb549-1271378984.
    • Lun # (for iSCSI). In iSCSI this is the LUN number. For example, 3.
    • Tags (optional). The comma-separated list of tags for this storage device. It should be an equivalent set or superset of the tags on your disk offerings..
    The tag sets on primary storage across clusters in a Zone must be identical. For example, if cluster A provides primary storage that has tags T1 and T2, all other clusters in the Zone must also provide primary storage that has tags T1 and T2.
  7. Click OK.