OpenFiler Installation !!!

OpenFiler is a light weight OS which is an Open Source Storage Management Appliance. It provides file-based Network Attached Storage (NAS) and block-based Storage Area Network (SAN).

For this I am creating a VM with minimum resources as follows:
Original minimum requirement for OpenFiler are 256MB RAM and 10GB HD, but in my case I assigned 50GB HD and 1GB RAM.

Power On the VM to begin our Installation...

Click on ENTER to begin installation...

Loading the OS files.... Click on Next....

Select desired Language...

Select the drive on which OpenFiler to be installed..

Networks... Using DHCP to assign IP...

Select the Time Zone..

Enter desired password... I prefer root123...

This may take few minutes.. as you see less than 5minutes....

Time to reboot...

System is booting and getting ready for initial use...

Use our login credentials to login...

Take the login, to create some volume groups so that we can dedicate them to our Open Filer Storage...

login as: root
root@192.168.56.147's password:
[root@openfiler ~]#
[root@openfiler ~]#
[root@openfiler ~]# df -kh
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             7.5G  1.4G  5.8G  20% /
tmpfs                 491M  220K  490M   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             289M   23M  252M   9% /boot
[root@openfiler ~]#

10GB minimum space will be taken by root and swap...

[root@openfiler ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders, total 104857600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e31b7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63      610469      305203+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2          610470    17382329     8385930   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        17382330    19486844     1052257+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
[root@openfiler ~]#

Let us format our disk and create a separate partition with the space (40GB) which is left.

[root@openfiler ~]# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p                                 --- to print partitions

Disk /dev/sda: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders, total 104857600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e31b7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63      610469      305203+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2          610470    17382329     8385930   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        17382330    19486844     1052257+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Command (m for help): n                                  --- to create a new partition
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Selected partition 4
First sector (19486845-104857599, default 19486845):
Using default value 19486845
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (19486845-104857599, default 104857599):
Using default value 104857599

Command (m for help): w                                  --- to write partition table to disk
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at
the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks.
[root@openfiler ~]#

[root@openfiler ~]# partprobe /dev/sda
[root@openfiler ~]#

[root@openfiler ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders, total 104857600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e31b7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63      610469      305203+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2          610470    17382329     8385930   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        17382330    19486844     1052257+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4        19486845   104857599    42685377+  83  Linux
[root@openfiler ~]#

Let us create a physical volume,

[root@openfiler ~]# pvdisplay
[root@openfiler ~]#

[root@openfiler ~]# pvcreate /dev/sda4
  Physical volume "/dev/sda4" successfully created
[root@openfiler ~]#

[root@openfiler ~]# pvdisplay
  "/dev/sda4" is a new physical volume of "40.71 GiB"
  --- NEW Physical volume ---
  PV Name               /dev/sda4
  VG Name
  PV Size               40.71 GiB
  Allocatable           NO
  PE Size               0
  Total PE              0
  Free PE               0
  Allocated PE          0
  PV UUID               WcsV04-74ZM-n89Z-m9EM-ZV1F-r2oc-HgERfj

[root@openfiler ~]#

Now let us create a volume group within our PV....

[root@openfiler ~]# vgdisplay
  No volume groups found
[root@openfiler ~]#
[root@openfiler ~]# vgcreate SAN /dev/sda4
  Volume group "SAN" successfully created
[root@openfiler ~]#
[root@openfiler ~]# vgdisplay
  --- Volume group ---
  VG Name               SAN
  System ID
  Format                lvm2
  Metadata Areas        1
  Metadata Sequence No  1
  VG Access             read/write
  VG Status             resizable
  MAX LV                0
  Cur LV                0
  Open LV               0
  Max PV                0
  Cur PV                1
  Act PV                1
  VG Size               40.70 GiB
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              10420
  Alloc PE / Size       0 / 0
  Free  PE / Size       10420 / 40.70 GiB
  VG UUID               d8bNX8-ElKP-r3Nh-5fbz-cazz-R1pU-vn9wP0
[root@openfiler ~]#

Open the browser, enter the IP and port for web administration...
Enter the username openfiler and password password...

Our OpenFiler Web administration home page looks like....

Let us go through different tabs....
Below is the System tab which contains info regarding Network Interface Configuration....

Services tab allows you to manage all the services (like start/stop and enable/disable)....

Finally our Volumes tab through which we can manage our volumes, we can see our SAN volume which we created by formatting our disk. 

In later posts we will be discussing about how we use OpenFiler for storage management, how we allocate these volumes to any of our hosts....

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