Virtual Storage Console (VSC): datastore provisioning creates indirect mounts when storage is added by SVM
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:
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Additionally, when navigating to VSC > Storage Systems > svm1 > Related Objects > NAS, we see that the Data Path Access field is unpopulated:
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