Consolidating Storage with Files¶

The estimated time to complete this lab is 45 minutes.

Traditionally, file storage has been yet another silo within IT, introducing unnecessary complexity and suffering from the same issues of scale and lack of continuous innovation seen in SAN storage. Nutanix believes there is no room for silos in the Enterprise Cloud. By approaching file storage as an app, running in software on top of a proven HCI core, Nutanix Files delivers high performance, scalability, and rapid innovation through One Click management.

In this lab you will work with Files to manage SMB shares and NFS exports and explore the new functionality for Files deployments with File Analytics.

For the purpose of time, and sharing infrastructure resources, a Files cluster has already been provisioned on your cluster. The BootcampFS Files is a single node instance, typical Files deployments would start with 3 File Server VMs, with the ability to scale up and scale out as required for performance.

BootcampFS has been configured to use the Primary network to communicate with the backend storage, iSCSI connections from the CVM to Volume Groups, and the Secondary network for communication with clients, Active Directory, anti-virus services, etc.

Note

It is typically desirable in production environments to deploy Files with dedicated virtual networks for client and storage traffic. When using two networks, Files will, by design, disallow client traffic the storage network, meaning VMs assigned to the primary network will be unable to access shares.

As Files leverages Nutanix Volume Groups for data storage, it can take advantage of the same underlying storage benefits such as compression, erasure coding, snapshots, and replication.

In Prism Element > File Server > File Server, select BootcampFS and click Protect.

Observe the default Self Service Restore schedules, this feature controls the snapshot schedule for Windows’ Previous Versions functionality. Supporting Windows Previous Versions allows end users to roll back changes to files without engaging storage or backup administrators. Note these local snapshots do not protect the file server cluster from local failures and that replication of the entire file server cluster can be performed to remote Nutanix clusters.

Managing SMB Shares¶

In this exercise you will create and test a SMB share, used to support the unstructured file data needs of a cross-departmental team for the Fiesta application.

File Analytics¶

In this exercise you will explore the new, integrated File Analytics capabilities available in Nutanix Files, including scanning existing shares, creating anomaly alerts, and reviewing audit details. File Analytics is deployed in minutes as a standalone VM through an automated, One Click operation in Prism Element. This VM has already been deployed and enabled in your environment.

In Prism Element > File Server > File Server, select BootcampFS and click File Analytics.
Note

File Analytics should already be enabled, but if prompted you will need to provide your Files administrator account, as Analytics will need to be able to scan all shares.
- Username: NTNXLAB\administrator
- Password: nutanix/4u
As this is a shared environment, the dashboard will likely already be populated with data from shares created by other users. To scan your newly created share, click > Scan File System. Select your share and click Scan.

Note

If your share is not shown, please give it some time to get populated…
Close the Scan File System window and refresh your browser.
You should see the Data Age, File Distribution by Size and File Distribution by Type dashboard panels update.
From your Initials-WinTools VM, create some audit trail activity by opening several of the files under Sample Data.

Note

You may need to complete a short wizard for OpenOffice if using that application to open a file.
Refresh the Dashboard page in your browser to see the Top 5 Active Users, Top 5 Accessed Files and File Operations panels update.
To access the audit trail for your user account, click on your user under Top 5 Active Users.
Alternatively, you can select Audit Trails from the toolbar and search for your user or a given file.

Note

You can use wildcards for your search, for example .doc

File Analytics puts simple, yet powerful information in the hands of storage administrators, allowing them to understand and audit both utilization and access within a Nutanix Files environment.

Using NFS Exports¶

In this exercise you will create and test a NFSv4 export, used to support clustered applications, store application data such as logging, or storing other unstructured file data commonly accessed by Linux clients.

Enabling NFS Protocol¶

Note

Enabling NFS protocol only needs to be performed once per Files server, and may have already been completed in your environment. If NFS is already enabled, proceed to Configure User Mappings.

In Prism Element > File Server, select your file server and click Protocol Management > Directory Services.
Select Use NFS Protocol with Unmanaged User Management and Authentication, and click Update.

Creating the Export¶

In Prism > File Server, click + Share/Export.
Fill out the following fields:
- Name - initials-logs
- Description (Optional) - File share for system logs
- File Server - BootcampFS
- Share Path (Optional) - Leave blank
- Max Size (Optional) - Leave blank
- Select Protocol - NFS
Click Next.
Fill out the following fields:
- Select Enable Self Service Restore
  - These snapshots appear as a .snapshot directory for NFS clients.
- Authentication - System
- Default Access (For All Clients) - No Access
- Select + Add exceptions
- Clients with Read-Write Access - The first 3 octets of your cluster network.* (e.g. 10.38.1.*)
By default an NFS export will allow read/write access to any host that mounts the export, but this can be restricted to specific IPs or IP ranges.
Click Next.
Review the Summary and click Create.

Testing the Export¶

You will first provision a CentOS VM to use as a client for your Files export.

Note

If you have already deployed the Linux Tools VM as part of another lab, you may use this VM as your NFS client instead.

In Prism > VM > Table, click + Create VM.
Fill out the following fields:
- Name - Initials-NFS-Client
- Description - CentOS VM for testing Files NFS export
- vCPU(s) - 2
- Number of Cores per vCPU - 1
- Memory - 2 GiB
- Select + Add New Disk
  - Operation - Clone from Image Service
  - Image - CentOS
  - Select Add
- Select Add New NIC
  - VLAN Name - Secondary
  - Select Add
Click Save.
Select the Initials-NFS-Client VM and click Power on.
Note the IP address of the VM in Prism, and connect via SSH using the following credentials:
- Username - root
- Password - nutanix/4u

Execute the following:

[root@CentOS ~]# yum install -y nfs-utils #This installs the NFSv4 client
[root@CentOS ~]# mkdir /filesmnt
[root@CentOS ~]# mount.nfs4 BootcampFS.ntnxlab.local:/ /filesmnt/
[root@CentOS ~]# df -kh
Filesystem                      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/centos_centos-root  8.5G  1.7G  6.8G  20% /
devtmpfs                        1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs                           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                           1.9G   17M  1.9G   1% /run
tmpfs                           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1                       494M  141M  353M  29% /boot
tmpfs                           377M     0  377M   0% /run/user/0
*intials*-Files.ntnxlab.local:/             1.0T  7.0M  1.0T   1% /afsmnt
[root@CentOS ~]# ls -l /filesmnt/
total 1
drwxrwxrwx. 2 root root 2 Mar  9 18:53 xyz-logs

Observe that the logs directory is mounted in /filesmnt/xyz-logs.
Reboot the VM and observe the export is no longer mounted. To persist the mount, add it to /etc/fstab by executing the following:
echo 'BootcampFS.ntnxlab.local:/ /filesmnt nfs4' >> /etc/fstab

The following command will add 100 2MB files filled with random data to /filesmnt/logs:

mkdir /filesmnt/xyz-logs/host1
for i in {1..100}; do dd if=/dev/urandom bs=8k count=256 of=/filesmnt/xyz-logs/host1/file$i; done

Return to Prism > File Server > Share > logs to monitor performance and usage.

Note that the utilization data is updated every 10 minutes.

Multi-Protocol Shares¶

Files provides the ability to provision both SMB shares and NFS exports separately - but also now supports the ability to provide multi-protocol access to the same share. In the exercise below, you will configure your existing Initials-FiestaShare to allow NFS access, allowing developer users to re-direct application logs to this location.

Configure User Mappings¶

A Nutanix Files share has the concept of a native and non-native protocol. All permissions are applied using the native protocol. Any access requests using the non-native protocol requires a user or group mapping to the permission applied from the native side. There are several ways to apply user and group mappings including rule based, explicit and default mappings. You will first configure a default mapping.

In Prism Element > File Server, select your file server and click Protocol Management > User Mapping.
Click Next twice to advance to Default Mapping.
From the Default Mapping page choose both Deny access to NFS export and Deny access to SMB share as the defaults for when no mapping is found.
Click Next > Save to complete the default mapping.
In Prism Element > File Server, select your Initials-FiestaShare and click Update.
Under Basics, select Enable multiprotocol access for NFS and click Next.
Under Settings > Multiprotocol Access select Simultaneous access to the same files from both protocols.
Click Next > Save to complete updating the share settings.

Testing the Export¶

To test the NFS export, connect via SSH to your Initials-LinuxToolsVM VM:
- User Name - root
- Password - nutanix/4u

Execute the following commands:

[root@CentOS ~]# yum install -y nfs-utils #This installs the NFSv4 client
[root@CentOS ~]# mkdir /filesmulti
[root@CentOS ~]# mount.nfs4 bootcampfs.ntnxlab.local:/<Initials>-FiestaShare /filesmulti
[root@CentOS ~]# dir /filesmulti
dir: cannot open directory /filesmulti: Permission denied
[root@CentOS ~]#

Note

The mount operation is case sensitive.

Because the default mapping is to deny access the Permission denied error is expected. You will now add an explicit mapping to allow access to the non-native NFS protocol user. We will need to get the user ID (UID) to create the explicit mapping.

Execute the following command and take note of the UID:

[root@CentOS ~]# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
[root@CentOS ~]#

In Prism Element > File Server, select your file server and click Protocol Management > User Mapping.
Click Next to advance to Explicit Mapping.
Under One-to-onemapping list, click Add manually.
Fill out the following fields:
- SMB Name - NTNXLAB\devuser01
- NFS ID - UID from previous step (0 if root)
- User/Group - User
Under Actions, click Save.
Click Next > Next > Save to complete updating your mappings.

Return to your Initials-LinuxToolsVM SSH session and try to access the share again:

[root@CentOS ~]# dir /filesmulti
Documents\ -\ Copy  Graphics\ -\ Copy  Pictures\ -\ Copy  Presentations\ -\ Copy  Recordings\ -\ Copy  Technical\ PDFs\ -\ Copy  XYZ-MyFolder
[root@CentOS ~]#

From your SSH session, create a text file and then validate you can access the file from your Windows client.

Takeaways¶

What are the key things you should know about Nutanix Files?

Files can be rapidly deployed on top of existing Nutanix clusters, providing SMB and NFS storage for user shares, home directories, departmental shares, applications, and any other general purpose file storage needs.
Files is not a point solution. VM, File, Block, and Object storage can all be delivered by the same platform using the same management tools, reducing complexity and management silos.
Files can scale up and scale out with One Click performance optimization.
File Analytics helps you better understand how data is utilized by your organizations to help you meet your data auditing, data access minimization and compliance requirements.

Consolidating Storage with Files¶

Managing SMB Shares¶

Creating the Share¶

Testing the Share¶

File Analytics¶

Using NFS Exports¶

Enabling NFS Protocol¶

Creating the Export¶

Testing the Export¶

Multi-Protocol Shares¶

Configure User Mappings¶

Testing the Export¶

Takeaways¶