Netapp simulator 7.

3
Installing the Netapp Simulator in a Ubuntu
8.10 desktop distribution
This document describes how to install Netapp Simulator 7.3 in a version 8.10
Ubuntu desktop distribution and prepare for connections to ESX 3.5.

Version 1.0

|December2008
| Tomas ten Dam
|www.tendam.info
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Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4
What you need.............................................................................................................................................. 5
The hardware ............................................................................................................................................ 5
The software ............................................................................................................................................. 5
The documents ......................................................................................................................................... 5
ASSUMPTIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 6
A Real World reflection ............................................................................................................................. 6
Network .................................................................................................................................................... 6
Time .......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Me myself and I......................................................................................................................................... 6
VMware tools ............................................................................................................................................ 6
The begin of installation. .............................................................................................................................. 7
Add licenses in Filer View............................................................................................................................ 14
Add disks ..................................................................................................................................................... 16
Enable ISCSI ................................................................................................................................................. 19
Add a Volume for a LUN.............................................................................................................................. 20
Create an iSCSI LUN .................................................................................................................................... 21

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Introduction
When you are new to virtualization and Netapp or you want to test VMware’s enterprise features with
Netapp, it is hard to make hardware available which does not interrupt your production environment if
something goes wrong with your test setup. Since someone has developed a ESX in a Box configuration,
installing ESX in workstation is a great thing to test all kind of features ESX provides. In most cases you
might need shared storage to test things like vmotion, drs, and maybe even dpm.

This is where the Netapp simulator comes in and provides a virtual Netapp environment, providing
approx 25 gb of virtual storage to your esx environment for testing purposes. You can even provide
more Netapp simulators as you want and replicate data between them.

The cool thing of the 7.3 version of the simulator is that it provides us the De-duplication feature. As you
can see you can do all the stuff (except for hardware like FC) a regular Netapp appliance can do. In fact
you can even setup a clustered simulator!

And as I always preach: If you want to know how thinks work, just do it!

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What you need
To run the simulator you need a linux host. You are more flexible to install it in a Virtual Machine.

The hardware
To run the simulator there is no need for a high performance server. In fact the simulator does not
provide the throughput of a real Netapp. A laptop with windows XP, or something like that with at least
2 gb of ram and VMware workstation will do fine. However, if you want to run multiple esx servers along
with the simulator I recommend to use at least 4 gb of free ram. For another configuration with multiple
esx servers and windows 2003 servers, I used a 6 gb ram host.

You can also install the simulator on a low profile desktop with a linux distribution.

The software
As mentioned before, I used VMware Workstation 6.5.1 on my Windows xp laptop with 2048 mb ram.
The simulator will run perfectly on a Ubuntu workstation installation provided with 512mb ram.

You will need a connection from your client or another linux/windows client (or the same client on
which the simulator is installed) to connect with your internet browser and or ssh client (like putty)
Although everything can be achieved with the command line from the console.

The simulator is only available to customers and partners from Netapp! I hope that Netapp will change
this barrier, so everyone can get in touch with Netapp technologies, just like other storage company
provide there virtual appliances.

The documents
Inside the simulator iso, there are enough documents to get you started. This document is a kind of a
quick install guide.

I provide this document as a start for projects that are posted on my site. It is like a base document. And
on the other side, it provides you information about the simulator before you have to download this
from the Netapp site.

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ASSUMPTIONS

A Real World reflection

This simulator will not provide you the same performance as a real production Netapp appliance. For
performance simulations you will need a real Netapp!

Network

The network configuration in this setup is kept simple. I will use a simple subnet like 192.168.3.0 for all
servers.

Time

Ubuntu and the simulator are setup within an hour.

Me myself and I

I am not a frequent English speaker/writer so please do not judge me on my “bad” English. If you see
any mistakes please feel free to contact me: tomas@tendam.info.

VMware tools

You might want to install the vmware tools inside your Ubuntu vm. This will comfort your work with the
Ubuntu installation.

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The begin of installation.

Get a free copy of Ubuntu desktop version 8.10 at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

It is approx 700 mb in size.

Download the simulator 7.3 version iso at http://now.netapp.com

Create a virtual machine with 35 GB hard disk space and 512 mb ram in VMware workstation. Remove
all the unneeded hardware like usb controllers, floppy drive etc.

Connect the Ubuntu iso and boot from the iso.

Choose the English language and next choose to install Ubuntu:

Choose the right thing which suites your needs like time zone and keyboard settings and leave all other
at the default setting. At step 5 be sure to check the following checkbox for your ease of use:

Click next and finish to start the installation.

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When your Ubuntu VM is started you have to create a terminal launcher on your desktop: Click in the
top menu on Applications, choose accessories and right click on “Terminal” and finally choose “Add this
launcher to desktop”

Double click the terminal icon to start the command line:

Type “Sudo passwd”, to create a root password. Type the password twice and press enter.

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Connect the Simulator ISO to your Ubuntu VM in Worksation.

Type “su –“ to change to the root user, followed by the password you just created. Now you are root.
We have to walk to the cdrom by typing: “cd /media/cdrom” . Type “ls” to show the content of the
cdrom. You will see a file named setup.sh. This will install the Simulator. Just type “./setup.sh” to run the
install. The first three answers can be answered by default. The last question will be of course “Yes”

At this time, the simulator will be unpacked and installed at the location you provided. (default= /SIM).
When you want additional simulators you just have to run the installation again and provide another
directory to store the simulator. You will be asked about how many drive you like to add. As you can see
the maximum is 25 disks of 1024 MB size. Type in 25 and choose f to add the disks.

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For you ease of use we create a launcher for the simulator on your desktop. Right click on your desktop
and choose create launcher:

Create a launcher with the same information in this screenshot:

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When you press ok a icon is installed on your desktop. Double click to start the simulator. Enter the root
password when asked:

You can set this up to start automatic when the Ubuntu starts. This is described in the Simulator
documentation.

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When the simulator has started, it wil aske you several questions. Just fill it out like this example.
Choose an IP which suites your environment:

You are not finished right now, several questions will be asked. If you want to test snmp, be sure to
provide at least 9 characters.

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We are almost ready. You can leave everything default and just press enter, but provide a password
when asked for. When asked for a selection 1-4 choose 3 for Workgroup as default and press enter.

Cifs is starting and you must provide a local administrator password twice:

Now you are finished with this first setup.

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Add licenses in Filer View

Now we have installed the simulator we have to add licenses to provide functionality. After this we need
to add the created 25 disks to the aggregate before we can use them.

Start your internet browser on a client which can access your Netapp appliance trough tcp and type in
the ip number you gave to your Netapp simulator.

When you get an error about the http license just click the link.

Now click on the simulator Documentation button:

Now we have to open the license link in a new tab/windows. We do this so we can copy and paste the
license in the license fields of the simulator.

The license keys show up. As we can see the asis and nearstore license are not included. This was a
mistake made by the simulator team from Netapp.

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I sorted this out and in the next table you see the licenses we need to setup the simulator with VMware
ESX. NFS and ISCSI are used for connection to ESX, Cifs is used for a samba share and asis and nearstore
are used to enable de-duplication (discussed in another document later) You can copy and paste them
in the license fields in filerview.

License Key Purpose

asis CABCNWF Use this license to enable De-duplication
cifs DZDACHD Use this license to setup the CIFS protocol
http NAZOMKC Use this License to setup the HTTP protocol (filerview)
iscsi BSLRLTG Use this License to setup iSCSI protocol with ESX
nearstore_option UFGGIDE Netapp forgot to add this license key in the documentation
nfs BQOEAZL Use this License to setup NFS protocol

Now go back to the first page (press back in your browser) and click on the filerview button:

A popup window appears. Click on Filer and next on Manage licenses. Now we can add the licenses we
need. Just copy and paste them in to the correct fields and click apply. Some licenses maybe already
there by default.

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Add disks

Now we need to add the disks to the aggregate before we can use them. We add them to the aggr0.
Click in filerview at “Aggregates” and click manage. Click on aggr0. When you are at the properties page,
click the “Add Disks” button.

The wizards starts, click next on the three first screens.

You reach the Number of Disks page. Select 24 disks. This is the maximum. (You need a spare per
Aggregate.)

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Click the commit button to add them to the aggregate:

You will get a notification: Click close.

Now we need to setup SSH so we can connect with a SSH client like putty portable. Click in Filerview at
Secure Admin and click SSH and next at Configure.

Hit the “Generate Keys button”

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Click ok at the warning message:

A message appears with the following text. Click on enable in the text message:

As you see SSH is enabled by default. Otherwise select it and click apply.

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Enable ISCSI

Before we can use ISCSI with ESX we must enable this in the LUN menu. Click at LUNs and next on
“enable/disable”. Check the Enable box for iSCSI and click apply. A success message appears

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Add a Volume for a LUN

Now we need to add a Volume first before we can create an ISCSI LUN. Click on Volumes in filerview and
click add:

In the next section, choose Flexible (default) and click next.

Give the LUN a name en click next:

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Change theVolume size from 20 MB to 10 GB and set the snapshot reserve to zero. Click next and
commit. You could use any size up to the max size.

Create an iSCSI LUN

In the LUN’s section click add

On the right screen on top click Add New LUN

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Fill out the form as I did below. Uncheck space reservations. We don’t need it right now. Click add.

If you did this the right way, on top off your screen the following message is displayed:

Now we have to add an initiator group. Click on initiator groups and then add.

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Type the name off the group you want. The type should be iscsi. In initiators we need the iscsi name off
the esx server. We will find it first on the next step.

To find this name we have to enable ISCSI on the esx server. Connect to the virtual center server with
the client and click the configuration tap at the host, click storage adapters, click the iSCSI software
adapter and finally click properties.

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Now you have to click Configure and check the Enabled checkbox en click ok.

In the progress pane you see it is doing something:

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Now select the iscsi name en press ctrl+c

Paste the name in the initiators field and click add.

On top of the screen you see the message:

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Now we need to go back and enter the Netapp which we will connect to at the Dynamic Discovery tab:
Click ok.

Now we need to map the LUN to the initiator group. In filer view click on manage LUNS, and click on the
LUN to manage/map.

Now click on [Map LUN]

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Click on:

Choose the right lun and click add to ].

Click apply to map the LUN

In the Virtual center client we have to rescan the iscsi software adapter to connect to the LUN. Select
the adapter and click rescan. Click ok on the Rescan dialog box

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This will take a few seconds to complete:

As a result we now can see the attached LUN:

Now we have to add the storage to the ESX server: Click on the left side on Storage and next on the
upper left: Add Storage. Leave the check box at the default and click next.

You see the LUN you have created just a few minutes ago. Select it and click2 times next:

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Type a data store name and click next:

Again, this will take some time:

If you have enough patience and did not throw stuff to your server you will see the storage attached to
your server.

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Now we have installed a basic setup for the Netapp simulator with an ESX server. This is a base guide
which enables us to build other cool stuff on top of this setup. I will point to this document when
starting or building other objects.

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