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Virtual Storage Console (VSC): datastore provisioning creates indirect mounts when storage is added by SVM

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Applies to

  • Virtual Storage Console (VSC) 7.x
  • Virtual Storage Console (VSC) 9.x

Issue

When provisioning storage in ONTAP it is considered best practice to:

  • Mount the volume to a LIF that is on the same node as the volume
  • Avoid mounting a volume to a LIF that is on a node that is not local to the volume.  This creates an indirect path to the volume and should be avoided

There is a bug encountered in Virtual Storage Console when the SVM is directly attached (using a SVM management LIF) in Virtual Storage Console > Storage Systems:

  • VSC mounts the volume to any available LIFs randomly, regardless of which aggregate (node) is chosen
  • This is considered unexpected behavior

The following example illustrates this behavior when storage is SVM scoped in VSC:

  1. In our example, two aggregates are assigned to the SVM:

AGGR                                         NODE                      IP ADDRESS

aggr1_8a                                     fas2520-rtp-8a            10.61.75.41, 10.61.75.46

aggr1_8b                                     fas2520-rtp-8b            10.61.75.43, 10.61.75.47

  1. There are also two other aggregates present in the environment (but not assigned to the SVM):

AGGR                                             NODE                      IP ADDRESS

aggr0_fas2520_4n_rtp_1_03_0                      fas2520-rtp-9a            10.61.75.44, 10.61.75.48

aggr0_fas2520_4n_rtp_1_04_0                      fas2520-rtp-9b            10.61.75.45, 10.61.75.49

 

  1. While provisioning a total of six datastores the following behavior is seen:

1. nfs_01 - aggr1_8a selected in VSC, node 8a - volume mounted at 10.61.75.48, node 9a - Indirect

2. nfs_02 - aggr1_8b selected in VSC, node 8b - volume mounted at 10.61.75.49, node 9b - Indirect

3. nfs_03 - aggr1_8a selected in VSC, node 8a - volume mounted at 10.61.75.46, node 8a - Direct

4. nfs_04 - aggr1_8b selected in VSC, node 8b - volume mounted at 10.61.75.47, node 8b - Direct

5. nfs_05 - aggr1_8a selected in VSC, node 8a - volume mounted at 10.61.75.44, node 9a - Indirect

6. nfs_06 - aggr1_8b selected in VSC, node 8b - volume mounted at 10.61.75.48, node 9b - Indirect

 

  1. Additionally, when navigating to VSC > Storage Systems > svm1 > Related Objects > NAS,  we see that the Data Path Access field is unpopulated:

 

clipboard_e277f9a7ea6158f2dcf9f5e3b348c26f4.png

 

This behavior is not seen when storage is added to Virtual Storage Console > Storage Systems at the cluster level:

  • With cluster scoped storage, VSC correctly evaluates which LIFs to mount to based on SVM and aggregate selected
  • With cluster scoped storage, VSC follows the best practice of direct paths

 

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