Hello- this is part 3 in the series of blogs on ActiveDR + NFS datastores. In part 2, I covered how to connect ActiveDR to an NFS file system that’s backing an NFS datastore. In this blog, I’ll be covering how to connect the target NFS export in vSphere and how to run a test failover. The reason for covering test failovers before production failovers and failbacks is that I strongly recommend performing or scheduling a test failover immediately after configuring any disaster recovery solution. It is possible to not have the necessary requirements for a failover when it is critical that the failover happens quickly; testing failing over your environment before needing it in a production down scenario will reduce or eliminate this possible pain.
For the purposes of this blog, I am using Pure Storage’s remote vSphere plugin. In general, I strongly recommend installing and using this plugin to manage your FlashArray(s) more easily from the vSphere GUI. Additionally, I’ve made a demo video that covers the steps covered here. Here’s a table of articles in this series:
This environment already has a mounted NFS file system from the source FlashArray. The steps to mount the NFS file system from the source array are the same as the steps for the target array except you won’t have to promote the pod on the source array.
When you perform failovers, do test failovers or are cleaning up your objects from these operations you’ll want to ensure that you follow the steps outlined here.
I’m going to be writing a series of blogs on ActiveDR (Active Disaster Recovery) with NFS datastores over the next couple of posts. Some of the other posts I have planned in the near future are:
Failover scenarios where the ESXi hosts are connected to both arrays
Failover scenarios where the ESXi hosts are only connected to one array
In this blog I will do an introduction to the technologies and I will give some high level information on how you might want to use them together.
Replication Options on FlashArray
This post will be covering FlashArray specific replication techniques that you may or may not be familiar with. If it is the latter, my colleague Cody Hosterman has a great primer on our technologies that might be worth a read for you. Here’s a table of articles in this series:
Hello- Nelson Elam here. I wanted to go over the reasons why I think you should enable automatic directory management (autodir) if you are planning to use NFS datastores on FA File. A quick note before we get started- autodir is not restricted to ESXi hosts but ESXi hosts will be the focus of this blog.
What is autodir? Autodir is a way for FlashArray to reflect the current directory structure on an NFS datastore that’s managed by a connected host- a managed directory. What does this mean for ESXi? Whenever a VM gets created on an NFS datastore, a new directory (folder) gets created for the VM on the datastore. When a VM gets deleted from disk, the directory gets destroyed. Note that directories you create or destroy manually on an NFS datastore in vCenter get reflected in FlashArray as well. Simple enough!
If you’ve read the FA File launch blogs or have seen some of the webinars we’ve done about FA File or NFS datastores, you’ve likely seen or heard us talk about VM granular management being part of FA File. Autodir enables VM granular management. Let’s dive into VM granular management in the context of NFS datastores.
With autodir enabled, these changes are reflected on FlashArray and enable FlashArray administrators to be able to see the current state of the NFS file system from a directory perspective.
Want to figure out why the data reduction ratio of a file system dropped so significantly? Now you can see that at a per-VM basis on FlashArray.
Want to see which VMs are spiking in load at inopportune times? You can use the FlashArray GUI to help figure that out. Worth mentioning this info is more easily consumed in Pure1 when using the VM analytics collector.
Want to have a special snapshot schedule for a certain group of VMs on a FlashArray-backed NFS datastore? With autodir, you can create snapshot policies and apply them to specific directories, allowing you to get around having to snapshot an entire NFS datastore like it’s a VMFS datastore. You can still snapshot the entire NFS file system if you want! Autodir enables you to have other options.
Your mission critical VMs likely have more complex snapshot retention and frequency requirements than your test VMs. With autodir, you can also apply multiple snapshot policies to the same directory (VM).
That’s sounds great Nelson, but surely autodir isn’t a good option for every NFS datastore on FlashArray. What are the reasons you wouldn’t want to enable autodir?
The main circumstance where autodir doesn’t make sense is if the scale limits of autodir are less than the directory count in your NFS datastore. Those can be found in this KB under “Managed Directories per array“.
If you want to see a demo of how autodir is configured on FlashArray, this video goes over it.
If you want to get detailed written instructions for how to configure autodir on FlashArray, this KB article is a good resource.
Late last year, I wrote a KB for a solution that I wanted to bring up here- hosting Horizon’s VDI user directories on FlashArray™ File with folder redirection controlled through a group policy object (GPO). I’d like to discuss this for a couple of reasons:
1. Configuring FA File was surprising easy, especially compared to what I remember from setting up a Windows file server was for the same purpose in a previous role. 2. Why I landed on using folder redirection for this KB instead of roaming profiles or another solution for user shares in a VDI environment.
When I have managed or set up VDI environments from scratch in previous jobs, there were always a ton of considerations that went into the VDI environment. From determining the appropriate amount of virtual resources to deploy to each VDI user to determining how much hardware I actually needed to buy to support the full deployment, each step can be more painful than the last. Any opportunity we can take to help ourselves be successful in the project is a good step to invest in. But when that step is easier and I don’t have to invest any resources to get the benefit of improving the success of the project, I have to take a step back and appreciate what just went so well.
It took me roughly 30 minutes to deploy and configure FA File in my existing Active Directory environment in my lab the first time. That included carefully digesting all the applicable new-to-me Pure documentation. From what I can recall with this process from my previous roles, that was at best a 2 hour job with a carefully put together and well documented Active Directory environment with automated Windows server deployments; at worst, that might have taken me a full day or two when I had to build everything from scratch. When any task took a day or more, I always had interrupts that would drag the process out and I ended up taking more time to review what I had done and what I needed to do from a documentation perspective.
On the point of why I used folder redirection instead of roaming profiles with Active Directory, VMware has this very helpful KB that outlines decisions you might make if you are using Dynamic Environment manager (DEM), but I think a lot of the points are applicable even if you aren’t using DEM. I’d like to highlight some disadvantages they list of roaming profiles:
Disadvantages -Large roaming profiles might get corrupted and cause the individual roaming profile to reset completely. As a result, users might spend a lot of time getting all personalized settings back. -Roaming profiles do not roam across different operating systems. This results in multiple roaming profiles per user in a mixed environment, like desktops and Terminal Services. -Potential for unnecessary growth of roaming profile, causing long login times.
When I saw these three specifically, I decided to go with folder redirection instead of roaming profiles. Anytime corruption is mentioned I try to avoid it. With VDI projects (let’s be real, most IT projects), you always want to minimize the impact to the end users partially because it will hurt adoption of it or reduce confidence from different groups in the company.
There is more to come with FA File and data protection, so please keep this blog in mind!
