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ONTAP NAS configuration options and examples

Contributors juliantap
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Learn how to create and use ONTAP NAS drivers with your Astra Trident installation. This section provides backend configuration examples and details about how to map backends to StorageClasses.

Backend configuration options

See the following table for the backend configuration options:

Parameter Description Default

version

Always 1

storageDriverName

Name of the storage driver

“ontap-nas”, “ontap-nas-economy”, “ontap-nas-flexgroup”, “ontap-san”, “ontap-san-economy”

backendName

Custom name or the storage backend

Driver name + “_” + dataLIF

managementLIF

IP address of a cluster or SVM management LIF

For seamless MetroCluster switchover, you must specify an SVM management LIF.

A fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) can be specified.

Can be set to use IPv6 addresses if Astra Trident was installed using the --use-ipv6 flag. IPv6 addresses must be defined in square brackets, such as [28e8:d9fb:a825:b7bf:69a8:d02f:9e7b:3555].

“10.0.0.1”, “[2001:1234:abcd::fefe]”

dataLIF

IP address of protocol LIF.

We recommend specifying dataLIF. If not provided, Astra Trident fetches data LIFs from the SVM. You can specify a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) to be used for the NFS mount operations, allowing you to create a round-robin DNS to load-balance across multiple data LIFs.

Can be changed after initial setting. Refer to Update dataLIF after initial configuration.

Can be set to use IPv6 addresses if Astra Trident was installed using the --use-ipv6 flag. IPv6 addresses must be defined in square brackets, such as [28e8:d9fb:a825:b7bf:69a8:d02f:9e7b:3555].

Specified address or derived from SVM, if not specified (not recommended)

autoExportPolicy

Enable automatic export policy creation and updating [Boolean].

Using the autoExportPolicy and autoExportCIDRs options, Astra Trident can manage export policies automatically.

false

autoExportCIDRs

List of CIDRs to filter Kubernetes’ node IPs against when autoExportPolicy is enabled.

Using the autoExportPolicy and autoExportCIDRs options, Astra Trident can manage export policies automatically.

[“0.0.0.0/0”, “::/0”]`

labels

Set of arbitrary JSON-formatted labels to apply on volumes

“”

clientCertificate

Base64-encoded value of client certificate. Used for certificate-based auth

“”

clientPrivateKey

Base64-encoded value of client private key. Used for certificate-based auth

“”

trustedCACertificate

Base64-encoded value of trusted CA certificate. Optional. Used for certificate-based auth

“”

username

Username to connect to the cluster/SVM. Used for credential-based auth

password

Password to connect to the cluster/SVM. Used for credential-based auth

svm

Storage virtual machine to use

Derived if an SVM managementLIF is specified

storagePrefix

Prefix used when provisioning new volumes in the SVM. Cannot be updated after you set it

“trident”

limitAggregateUsage

Fail provisioning if usage is above this percentage.

Does not apply to Amazon FSx for ONTAP

“” (not enforced by default)

limitVolumeSize

Fail provisioning if requested volume size is above this value.

“” (not enforced by default)

limitVolumeSize

Fail provisioning if requested volume size is above this value.

Also restricts the maximum size of the volumes it manages for qtrees and LUNs, and the qtreesPerFlexvol option allows customizing the maximum number of qtrees per FlexVol.

“” (not enforced by default)

lunsPerFlexvol

Maximum LUNs per Flexvol, must be in range [50, 200]

“100”

debugTraceFlags

Debug flags to use when troubleshooting. Example, {“api”:false, “method”:true}

Do not use debugTraceFlags unless you are troubleshooting and require a detailed log dump.

null

nasType

Configure NFS or SMB volumes creation.

Options are nfs, smb or null. Setting to null defaults to NFS volumes.

nfs

nfsMountOptions

Comma-separated list of NFS mount options.

The mount options for Kubernetes-persistent volumes are normally specified in storage classes, but if no mount options are specified in a storage class, Astra Trident will fall back to using the mount options specified in the storage backend's configuration file.

If no mount options are specified in the storage class or the configuration file, Astra Trident will not set any mount options on an associated persistent volume.

“”

qtreesPerFlexvol

Maximum Qtrees per FlexVol, must be in range [50, 300]

“200”

smbShare

You can specify one of the following: the name of an SMB share created using the Microsoft Management Console or ONTAP CLI; a name to allow Astra Trident to create the SMB share; or you can leave the parameter blank to prevent common share access to volumes.

This parameter is optional for on-premises ONTAP.

This parameter is required for Amazon FSx for ONTAP backends and cannot be blank.

smb-share

useREST

Boolean parameter to use ONTAP REST APIs. Tech preview

useREST is provided as a tech preview that is recommended for test environments and not for production workloads. When set to true, Astra Trident will use ONTAP REST APIs to communicate with the backend. This feature requires ONTAP 9.11.1 and later. In addition, the ONTAP login role used must have access to the ontap application. This is satisfied by the pre-defined vsadmin and cluster-admin roles.

useREST is not supported with MetroCluster.

false

Backend configuration options for provisioning volumes

You can control default provisioning using these options in the defaults section of the configuration. For an example, see the configuration examples below.

Parameter Description Default

spaceAllocation

Space-allocation for LUNs

“true”

spaceReserve

Space reservation mode; “none” (thin) or “volume” (thick)

“none”

snapshotPolicy

Snapshot policy to use

“none”

qosPolicy

QoS policy group to assign for volumes created. Choose one of qosPolicy or adaptiveQosPolicy per storage pool/backend

“”

adaptiveQosPolicy

Adaptive QoS policy group to assign for volumes created. Choose one of qosPolicy or adaptiveQosPolicy per storage pool/backend.

Not supported by ontap-nas-economy.

“”

snapshotReserve

Percentage of volume reserved for snapshots “0”

If snapshotPolicy is “none”, else “”

splitOnClone

Split a clone from its parent upon creation

“false”

encryption

Enable NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE) on the new volume; defaults to false. NVE must be licensed and enabled on the cluster to use this option.

If NAE is enabled on the backend, any volume provisioned in Astra Trident will be NAE enabled.

For more information, refer to: How Astra Trident works with NVE and NAE.

“false”

tieringPolicy

Tiering policy to use “none”

“snapshot-only” for pre-ONTAP 9.5 SVM-DR configuration

unixPermissions

Mode for new volumes

“777” for NFS volumes; empty (not applicable) for SMB volumes

snapshotDir

Controls visibility of the .snapshot directory

“false”

exportPolicy

Export policy to use

“default”

securityStyle

Security style for new volumes.

NFS supports mixed and unix security styles.

SMB supports mixed and ntfs security styles.

NFS default is unix.

SMB default is ntfs.
Note Using QoS policy groups with Astra Trident requires ONTAP 9.8 or later. It is recommended to use a non-shared QoS policy group and ensure the policy group is applied to each constituent individually. A shared QoS policy group will enforce the ceiling for the total throughput of all workloads.

Volume provisioning examples

Here's an example with defaults defined:

---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
backendName: customBackendName
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
dataLIF: 10.0.0.2
labels:
  k8scluster: dev1
  backend: dev1-nasbackend
svm: trident_svm
username: cluster-admin
password: <password>
limitAggregateUsage: 80%
limitVolumeSize: 50Gi
nfsMountOptions: nfsvers=4
debugTraceFlags:
  api: false
  method: true
defaults:
  spaceReserve: volume
  qosPolicy: premium
  exportPolicy: myk8scluster
  snapshotPolicy: default
  snapshotReserve: '10'

For ontap-nas and ontap-nas-flexgroups, Astra Trident now uses a new calculation to ensure that the FlexVol is sized correctly with the snapshotReserve percentage and PVC. When the user requests a PVC, Astra Trident creates the original FlexVol with more space by using the new calculation. This calculation ensures that the user receives the writable space they requested for in the PVC, and not lesser space than what they requested. Before v21.07, when the user requests a PVC (for example, 5GiB), with the snapshotReserve to 50 percent, they get only 2.5GiB of writeable space. This is because what the user requested for is the whole volume and snapshotReserve is a percentage of that. With Trident 21.07, what the user requests for is the writeable space and Astra Trident defines the snapshotReserve number as the percentage of the whole volume. This does not apply to ontap-nas-economy. See the following example to see how this works:

The calculation is as follows:

Total volume size = (PVC requested size) / (1 - (snapshotReserve percentage) / 100)

For snapshotReserve = 50%, and PVC request = 5GiB, the total volume size is 2/.5 = 10GiB and the available size is 5GiB, which is what the user requested in the PVC request. The volume show command should show results similar to this example:

Shows the output of the volume show command.

Existing backends from previous installs will provision volumes as explained above when upgrading Astra Trident. For volumes that you created before upgrading, you should resize their volumes for the change to be observed. For example, a 2GiB PVC with snapshotReserve=50 earlier resulted in a volume that provides 1GiB of writable space. Resizing the volume to 3GiB, for example, provides the application with 3GiB of writable space on a 6 GiB volume.

Minimal configuration examples

The following examples show basic configurations that leave most parameters to default. This is the easiest way to define a backend.

Note If you are using Amazon FSx on NetApp ONTAP with Trident, the recommendation is to specify DNS names for LIFs instead of IP addresses.
Minimal configuration for ontap-nas-economy 
---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas-economy
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
dataLIF: 10.0.0.2
svm: svm_nfs
username: vsadmin
password: password
Minimal configuration for ontap-nas-flexgroup 
---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas-flexgroup
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
dataLIF: 10.0.0.2
svm: svm_nfs
username: vsadmin
password: password
Minimal configuration for SMB volumes 
---
version: 1
backendName: ExampleBackend
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
nasType: smb
securityStyle: ntfs
unixPermissions: ""
dataLIF: 10.0.0.2
svm: svm_nfs
username: vsadmin
password: password
Certificate-based authentication

This is a minimal backend configuration example. clientCertificate, clientPrivateKey, and trustedCACertificate (optional, if using trusted CA) are populated in backend.json and take the base64-encoded values of the client certificate, private key, and trusted CA certificate, respectively.

---
version: 1
backendName: DefaultNASBackend
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
dataLIF: 10.0.0.15
svm: nfs_svm
clientCertificate: ZXR0ZXJwYXB...ICMgJ3BhcGVyc2
clientPrivateKey: vciwKIyAgZG...0cnksIGRlc2NyaX
trustedCACertificate: zcyBbaG...b3Igb3duIGNsYXNz
storagePrefix: myPrefix_
Auto export policy

This example shows you how you can instruct Astra Trident to use dynamic export policies to create and manage the export policy automatically. This works the same for the ontap-nas-economy and ontap-nas-flexgroup drivers.

---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
dataLIF: 10.0.0.2
svm: svm_nfs
labels:
  k8scluster: test-cluster-east-1a
  backend: test1-nasbackend
autoExportPolicy: true
autoExportCIDRs:
- 10.0.0.0/24
username: admin
password: password
nfsMountOptions: nfsvers=4
Using IPv6 addresses

This example shows managementLIF using an IPv6 address.

---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
backendName: nas_ipv6_backend
managementLIF: "[5c5d:5edf:8f:7657:bef8:109b:1b41:d491]"
labels:
  k8scluster: test-cluster-east-1a
  backend: test1-ontap-ipv6
svm: nas_ipv6_svm
username: vsadmin
password: password
Amazon FSx for ONTAP using SMB volumes

The smbShare parameter is required for FSx for ONTAP using SMB volumes.

---
version: 1
backendName: SMBBackend
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
managementLIF: example.mgmt.fqdn.aws.com
nasType: smb
dataLIF: 10.0.0.15
svm: nfs_svm
smbShare: smb-share
clientCertificate: ZXR0ZXJwYXB...ICMgJ3BhcGVyc2
clientPrivateKey: vciwKIyAgZG...0cnksIGRlc2NyaX
trustedCACertificate: zcyBbaG...b3Igb3duIGNsYXNz
storagePrefix: myPrefix_

Examples of backends with virtual pools

In the sample backend definition files shown below, specific defaults are set for all storage pools, such as spaceReserve at none, spaceAllocation at false, and encryption at false. The virtual pools are defined in the storage section.

Astra Trident sets provisioning labels in the “Comments” field. Comments are set on FlexVol for ontap-nas or FlexGroup for ontap-nas-flexgroup. Astra Trident copies all labels present on a virtual pool to the storage volume at provisioning. For convenience, storage administrators can define labels per virtual pool and group volumes by label.

In these examples, some of the storage pools set their own spaceReserve, spaceAllocation, and encryption values, and some pools override the default values.

ONTAP NAS example 
---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
svm: svm_nfs
username: admin
password: <password>
nfsMountOptions: nfsvers=4
defaults:
  spaceReserve: none
  encryption: 'false'
  qosPolicy: standard
labels:
  store: nas_store
  k8scluster: prod-cluster-1
region: us_east_1
storage:
- labels:
    app: msoffice
    cost: '100'
  zone: us_east_1a
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: volume
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
    adaptiveQosPolicy: adaptive-premium
- labels:
    app: slack
    cost: '75'
  zone: us_east_1b
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
- labels:
    department: legal
    creditpoints: '5000'
  zone: us_east_1b
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
- labels:
    app: wordpress
    cost: '50'
  zone: us_east_1c
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0775'
- labels:
    app: mysqldb
    cost: '25'
  zone: us_east_1d
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: volume
    encryption: 'false'
    unixPermissions: '0775'
ONTAP NAS FlexGroup example 
---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas-flexgroup
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
svm: svm_nfs
username: vsadmin
password: <password>
defaults:
  spaceReserve: none
  encryption: 'false'
labels:
  store: flexgroup_store
  k8scluster: prod-cluster-1
region: us_east_1
storage:
- labels:
    protection: gold
    creditpoints: '50000'
  zone: us_east_1a
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: volume
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
- labels:
    protection: gold
    creditpoints: '30000'
  zone: us_east_1b
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
- labels:
    protection: silver
    creditpoints: '20000'
  zone: us_east_1c
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0775'
- labels:
    protection: bronze
    creditpoints: '10000'
  zone: us_east_1d
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: volume
    encryption: 'false'
    unixPermissions: '0775'
ONTAP NAS economy example 
---
version: 1
storageDriverName: ontap-nas-economy
managementLIF: 10.0.0.1
svm: svm_nfs
username: vsadmin
password: <password>
defaults:
  spaceReserve: none
  encryption: 'false'
labels:
  store: nas_economy_store
region: us_east_1
storage:
- labels:
    department: finance
    creditpoints: '6000'
  zone: us_east_1a
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: volume
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
- labels:
    protection: bronze
    creditpoints: '5000'
  zone: us_east_1b
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0755'
- labels:
    department: engineering
    creditpoints: '3000'
  zone: us_east_1c
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: none
    encryption: 'true'
    unixPermissions: '0775'
- labels:
    department: humanresource
    creditpoints: '2000'
  zone: us_east_1d
  defaults:
    spaceReserve: volume
    encryption: 'false'
    unixPermissions: '0775'

Map backends to StorageClasses

The following StorageClass definitions refer to Examples of backends with virtual pools. Using the parameters.selector field, each StorageClass calls out which virtual pools can be used to host a volume. The volume will have the aspects defined in the chosen virtual pool.

  • The protection-gold StorageClass will map to the first and second virtual pool in the ontap-nas-flexgroup backend. These are the only pools offering gold level protection.

    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: protection-gold
provisioner: netapp.io/trident
parameters:
  selector: "protection=gold"
  fsType: "ext4"

  • The protection-not-gold StorageClass will map to the third and fourth virtual pool in the ontap-nas-flexgroup backend. These are the only pools offering protection level other than gold.

    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: protection-not-gold
provisioner: netapp.io/trident
parameters:
  selector: "protection!=gold"
  fsType: "ext4"

  • The app-mysqldb StorageClass will map to the fourth virtual pool in the ontap-nas backend. This is the only pool offering storage pool configuration for mysqldb type app.

    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: app-mysqldb
provisioner: netapp.io/trident
parameters:
  selector: "app=mysqldb"
  fsType: "ext4"

  • TThe protection-silver-creditpoints-20k StorageClass will map to the third virtual pool in the ontap-nas-flexgroup backend. This is the only pool offering silver-level protection and 20000 creditpoints.

    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: protection-silver-creditpoints-20k
provisioner: netapp.io/trident
parameters:
  selector: "protection=silver; creditpoints=20000"
  fsType: "ext4"

  • The creditpoints-5k StorageClass will map to the third virtual pool in the ontap-nas backend and the second virtual pool in the ontap-nas-economy backend. These are the only pool offerings with 5000 creditpoints.

    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: creditpoints-5k
provisioner: netapp.io/trident
parameters:
  selector: "creditpoints=5000"
  fsType: "ext4"

Astra Trident will decide which virtual pool is selected and will ensure the storage requirement is met.

Update dataLIF after initial configuration

You can change the data LIF after initial configuration by running the following command to provide the new backend JSON file with updated data LIF.

tridentctl update backend <backend-name> -f <path-to-backend-json-file-with-updated-dataLIF>
Note If PVCs are attached to one or multiple pods, you must bring down all corresponding pods and then bring them back up in order to for the new data LIF to take effect.