Home > Communication Service Provider Solutions > Telecom Multicloud Foundation > Red Hat > Guides > Red Hat Open Shift Container Platform Guides > Deployment Guide: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Reference Architecture for Telecom > Provisioning PowerMax storage
The Dell EMC PowerMax storage system delivers high levels of performance and efficiency with an integrated machine learning (ML) engine. For more information, see Dell EMC PowerMax.
Ensure that:
To provision Dell EMC PowerMax storage, create the namespace and secret using the sample YAML file available here.
Note: Specify the secret name as powermax-creds and ensure that the username and password are in base64 format, as shown in the sample file.
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc create -f powermax.secrets.yaml
Note: PowerMax supports either the FC or iSCSI protocol using Dell CSI drivers. PowerMax does not support FC and iSCSI storage provisioning simultaneously. If a CSI driver for PowerMax is already installed, delete it from the OpenShift console by selecting Installed Operators > CSI Operator > CSI Driver > PowerMax Instance and then clicking Delete.
Create the iSCSI PowerMax driver file by following the steps in this sample file in GitHub. Then:
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc create -f <YAML file>
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc get pods -n powermax -o wide
Note: There are two powermax-controller pods and one powermax-node pod for every compute node that is running.
[core@csah-pri pmax]$ oc get sc
NAME PROVISIONER AGE
powermax-iscsi csi-powermax.dellemc.com 67s
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc create -f <YAML file>
Note: Ensure that the storage class name designates an FC configuration. This guide uses powermax-iscsi as the iSCSI storage class name.
NAME
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc get pvc -n powermax
STATUS VOLUME CAPACITY ACCESS MODES STORAGECLASS AGE
dynamic-iscsi-powermax-pvc Bound pmax-17517a474c 2Gi RWO powermax-iscsi 64s
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc exec -it powermax-iscsi-pod -n powermax -- cat /mnt/keys
file data
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc exec -it powermax-iscsi-pod -n powermax -- df -h /mnt/keys
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/mpathb 976M 2.6M 907M 1% /mnt
Note: PowerMax supports either the FC or iSCSI protocol using Dell CSI drivers but does not support FC and iSCSI storage provisioning simultaneously.
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc create -f <secret YAML file>
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc get pods -n powermax -o wide
Note: There are two powermax-controller pods and one powermax-node pod for every compute node that is running.
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc get sc
NAME PROVISIONER RECLAIMPOLICY VOLUMEBINDINGMODE ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION AGE
powermax-bronze csi-powermax.dellemc.com Delete Immediate true 3d14h
It is not necessary to create a volume manually when you use a dynamic volume. The PV is created automatically and is attached to the PVC through a YAML file.
[core@csah-pri powermax] $ oc create -f <YAML file>
Note: Ensure that the storage class name designates an FC configuration. This guide uses powermax-bronze as the FC storage class name.
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc get pvc
NAME STATUS VOLUME CAPACITY ACCESS MODES STORAGECLASS AGE
dynamic-fc-powermax-pvc Bound pmax-0ffc23c3a1 7Gi RWO powermax-bronze 10s
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc exec -it powermax-fc-pod -n powermax -- cat /mnt/keys
file data
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc exec -it powermax-fc-pod -n powermax -- df -h /mnt/keys
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/mpathc 976M 2.6M 907M 1% /mnt
PowerMax CSI drivers support snapshots of volumes. Create snapshots to back up either the iSCSI or the FC volume you created, and then use the snapshots to create a volume and attach it to the pod.
Note: The following example uses snapshots that were taken using the PowerMax FC volumes and pod that you created. The name of the volume snapshot class is provided in the FC driver file. For guidance, see this sample FC driver in GitHub.
[core@csah-pri powermax]$ oc get volumesnapshotclass
NAME DRIVER DELETIONPOLICY AGE
powermax-snap csi-powermax.dellemc.com Delete 3d14h
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc create -f <yaml file>
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc get volumesnapshot -n powermax
NAME READYTOUSE SOURCEPVC SOURCESNAPSHOTCONTENT RESTORESIZE SNAPSHOTCLASS SNAPSHOTCONTENT CREATIONTIME AGE
powermax-fc-snapshot true dynamic-fc-powermax-pvc 0 powermax-snap snapcontent-60aed1c1-b438-4457-8a52-36f616bbf27a 12m 12m
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc exec -it powermax-fc-pod -n powermax -- cat /mnt/keys
file data
[core@csah-pri ~]$ oc exec -it powermax-fc-pod -n powermax -- df -h /mnt
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/mpathc 976M 2.6M 907M 1% /mnt
Notes:
If the procedure runs successfully, the newly created pod contains the contents of the source PVC used for the snapshot.
Use the sample file available here to create iSCSI snapshots. Ensure the values referenced match the configuration for the environment. Validate using the preceding steps.