Before configuring CloudPools on a PowerScale cluster, the ECS environment needs to be configured properly. The ECS S3 interface that CloudPools uses is backwards compatible with previous versions of ECS. Therefore, customers can upgrade their ECS versions and CloudPools will continue to function normally if the OneFS version stays the same.
General considerations and best practices when configuring ECS for CloudPools include:
- Virtual data center (VDC): If the cloud data needs to be protected using ECS Geo-replication, see Protecting cloud data. Multiple VDC should be created and federated together.
- Replication group: The option Replicate to All Sites need to be configured appropriately when creating replication group. This option cannot be changed after the replication has been created.
- Namespace: Namespace creation is exclusively for CloudPools. The following options must be considered.
- Server-side encryption: The encryption needs to be configured appropriately when creating the namespace. This option cannot be changed after the namespace is created.
- Replication group: The Replication Group needs to be configured appropriately when creating the namespace. This option cannot be changed after the namespace is created. The default replication group is selected by default.
- Retention policy: The retention period should not be created on the namespace. The best practice is to set the data retention in the file pool policy on the PowerScale cluster.
- Namespace Quota and Default Bucket Quota: The quota should not be enabled.
- Access during outage (ADO): For Geo-replication, ensure Access During Outage is enabled.
- Bucket: The retention period should not be created on a bucket. The best practice is to set the data retention in the file pool policy on the PowerScale cluster.
- Base URL: CloudPools 2.0 uses virtual host style bucket addressing by default. For virtual host style, see the ECS Administrator's Guide. A base URL needs to be created on ECS for the virtual host style bucket addressing. The base URL should be the FQDN of the CNAME (alias) for the load balancer virtual IP (VIP) and used for CloudPools URI.
- Load balancer: A hardware or software load balancer can evenly distribute the load across all ECS nodes. The Load balancer VIP must have a DNS entry to resolve the virtual host style address. A CNAME and wildcard and an A record need to be created on the DNS servers for the load balancer VIP. The procedure for configuring DNS depends on your DNS server or DNS provider. For example, DNS is set up on a Windows server, Table 4 and Table 5 show the DNS entries created for ECS. Sample screenshots of this configuration are shown in Figure 11 and Figure 12.
Table 4. An A record example
ecs | A | ecs.demo.local | 192.168.1.10 | The FQDN of the load balancer is ecs.demo.local. |
Table 5. A CNAME and wildcard entry
cloudpools_uri | CNAME | cloudpools_uri.demo.local | ecs.demo.local | If you create an SSL certificate for the ECS S3 service, it must have the wildcard entry on the name of the certificate. And the non-wildcard version as a Subject Alternate Name. |
*.cloudpools_uri | CNAME | *.cloudpools_uri.demo.local | ecs.demo.local | This option is used for virtual host addressing for a bucket. For example: mybucket.ecs.demo.local |
Figure 11. An A record
Figure 12. A CNAME and wildcard DNS entry
Note: A load balancer is a must for CloudPools 2.0 and ECS.