Prerequisite

The following requirements must be met before installing the CSI Driver for PowerMax:

A Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster (see supported versions).
If enabling CSM for Authorization, please refer to the Authorization deployment steps first
If enabling CSM Replication, both source and target storage systems must be locally managed by Unisphere.
- Example: When using two Unisphere instances, the first Unisphere instance should be configured with the source storage system as locally managed and target storage system as remotely managed. The second Unisphere configuration should mirror the first — locally managing the target storage system and remotely managing the source storage system.
Refer to the sections below for protocol specific requirements.
For NVMe support the preferred multipath solution is NVMe native multipathing. The Dell Host Connectivity Guide describes the details of each configuration option.
Linux multipathing requirements (described later).
PowerPath for Linux requirements (described later).
Mount propagation is enabled on the container runtime that is being used.
If using Snapshot feature, satisfy all Volume Snapshot requirements.
Insecure registries are defined in Docker or other container runtime for CSI drivers that are hosted in a non-secure location.
Ensure that your nodes support mounting NFS volumes if using NFS.

CSI PowerMax Reverse Proxy

The CSI PowerMax Reverse Proxy is a component that will be installed with the CSI PowerMax driver. For more details on this feature, see the related documentation.

Create a TLS secret that holds an SSL certificate and a private key. This is required by the reverse proxy server. Use a tool such as openssl to generate this secret using the example below:

openssl genrsa -out tls.key 2048
openssl req -new -key tls.key -out tls.csr -config openssl.cnf
openssl x509 -req -in tls.csr -signkey tls.key -out tls.crt -days 3650 -extensions req_ext -extfile openssl.cnf
kubectl create secret -n <namespace> tls csirevproxy-tls-secret --cert=tls.crt --key=tls.key

Fibre Channel Requirements

The following requirements must be fulfilled in order to successfully use the Fiber Channel protocol with the CSI PowerMax driver:

Zoning of the Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to the Fibre Channel port director must be completed.
Ensure that the HBA WWNs (initiators) appear on the list of initiators that are logged into the array.
If the number of volumes that will be published to nodes is high, then configure the maximum number of LUNs for your HBAs on each node. See the appropriate HBA document to configure the maximum number of LUNs.

Complete the zoning of each host with the PowerMax Storage Array. Please refer to Host Connectivity Guide for the guidelines when setting up a Fibre Channel SAN infrastructure.
Verify the initiators of each host are logged in to the PowerMax Storage Array. CSM will perform the Host Registration of each host with the PowerMax Array.

Multipathing software configuration

a. Configure Device Mapper MPIO for PowerMax FC connectivity

Use this command to create the machine configuration to configure the DM-MPIO service on all the worker hosts for FC connectivity.

oc apply -f 99-workers-multipath-conf.yaml

Example:

cat <<EOF> multipath.conf
defaults {
  polling_interval 5
  checker_timeout 15
  disable_changed_wwids yes
  find_multipaths no
}
devices {
  device {
    vendor                   DellEMC
    product                  PowerMax
    detect_prio              "yes"
    path_selector            "queue-length 0"
    path_grouping_policy     "group_by_prio"
    path_checker             tur
    failback                 immediate
    fast_io_fail_tmo         5
    no_path_retry            3
    rr_min_io_rq             1
    max_sectors_kb           1024
    dev_loss_tmo             10
  }
}  
EOF


cat <<EOF> 99-workers-multipath-conf.yaml
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-multipath-conf
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,$(cat multipath.conf | base64 -w0)
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 400
        path: /etc/multipath.conf   
EOF

b. Enable Linux Device Mapper MPIO

Use this command to create the machine configuration to enable the DM-MPIO service on all the worker host

oc apply -f 99-workers-enable-multipathd.yaml

cat << EOF > 99-workers-enable-multipathd.yaml 
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-enable-multipathd.yaml
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0  
    systemd:
      units:
      - name: "multipathd.service"
        enabled: true
EOF

Complete the iSCSI network configuration to connect the hosts with the PowerMax Storage array. Please refer to Host Connectivity Guide for the best practices for attaching the hosts to a PowerMax storage array.
Verify the initiators of each host are logged in to the PowerMax Storage Array. CSM will perform the Host Registration of each host with the PowerMax Array.

Enable iSCSI service

Use this command to create the machine configuration to enable the iscsid service.

oc apply -f 99-workers-enable-iscsid.yaml

Example:

cat <<EOF> 99-workers-enable-iscsid.yaml
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-enable-iscsid
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0  
    systemd:
      units:
      - name: "iscsid.service"
        enabled: true
EOF

Multipathing software configuration

a. Configure Device Mapper MPIO for PowerMax FC connectivity

Use this command to create the machine configuration to configure the DM-MPIO service on all the worker hosts for FC connectivity.

oc apply -f 99-workers-multipath-conf.yaml

cat <<EOF> multipath.conf
defaults {
  polling_interval 5
  checker_timeout 15
  disable_changed_wwids yes
  find_multipaths no
}
devices {
  device {
    vendor                   DellEMC
    product                  PowerMax
    detect_prio              "yes"
    path_selector            "queue-length 0"
    path_grouping_policy     "group_by_prio"
    path_checker             tur
    failback                 immediate
    fast_io_fail_tmo         5
    no_path_retry            3
    rr_min_io_rq             1
    max_sectors_kb           1024
    dev_loss_tmo             10
  }
}  
EOF

cat <<EOF> 99-workers-multipath-conf.yaml
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-multipath-conf
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,$(cat multipath.conf | base64 -w0)
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 400
        path: /etc/multipath.conf   
EOF

b. Enable Linux Device Mapper MPIO

Use this command to create the machine configuration to enable the DM-MPIO service on all the worker host

oc apply -f 99-workers-enable-multipathd.yaml

cat << EOF > 99-workers-enable-multipathd.yaml 
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-enable-multipathd.yaml
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0  
    systemd:
      units:
      - name: "multipathd.service"
        enabled: true
EOF

Complete the zoning of each host with the PowerMax Storage Array. Please refer to Host Connectivity Guide for the guidelines when setting a Fibre Channel SAN infrastructure.

Verify the initiators of each host are logged in to the PowerMax Storage Array. CSM will perform the Host Registration of each host with the PowerMax Array.

Multipathing software configuration

cat <<EOF> 71-nvmf-iopolicy-dell.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="nvme-subsystem", ATTR{model}=="dellemc-powermax",ATTR{iopolicy}="round-robin"
EOF

cat <<EOF> 99-workers-multipath-round-robin.yaml
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-multipath-round-robin
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,$(cat 71-nvmf-iopolicy-dell.rules | base64 -w0)
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 420
        path: /etc/udev/rules.d/71-nvme-io-policy.rules 
EOF

Configure NVMe reconnecting forever

cat <<EOF> 72-nvmf-ctrl_loss_tmo.rules
ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="nvme", KERNEL=="nvme*", ATTR{ctrl_loss_tmo}="-1"
EOF

cat <<EOF> 99-nvmf-ctrl-loss-tmo.yaml
apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-nvmf-ctrl-loss-tmo
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.4.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,(cat 72-nvmf-ctrl_loss_tmo.rules | base64 -w0)
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 420
        path: /etc/udev/rules.d/72-nvmf-ctrl_loss_tmo.rules
 EOF

NFS Requirements

CSI Driver for Dell PowerMax supports NFS communication. Ensure that the following requirements are met before you install CSI Driver:

Configure the NFS network. Please refer here for more details.
PowerMax Embedded Management guest to access Unisphere for PowerMax.
Create the NAS server. Please refer here for more details.

Replication Requirements (Optional)

Applicable only if you decided to enable the Replication feature in my-powermax-settings.yaml

replication:
  enabled: true

Replication CRD’s

The CRDs for replication can be obtained and installed from the csm-replication project on Github. Use csm-replication/deploy/replicationcrds.all.yaml located in the csm-replication git repo for the installation.

CRDs should be configured during replication prepare stage with repctl as described in install-repctl

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