Build Your Own Fibre Channel SAN For Less Than $1000 - Part 1

Openfiler Configuration

We are going to share our entire array and make it visible to all machines running Windows on our network.

First let’s get to the Web GUI. If you look at your console, you’ll see just above the User prompt an IP address based https URL. Your browser might complain about certificates, but approve the link and sign in. The default user and password are openfiler and password.

The NAS configuration requires setting up three categories of parameters:

Network: Make the server a member of your windows network

Volumes: Set up the disk you are sharing, in our case half the array

Sharing: Create a network shared directory

Once you’ve logged in, you’ll have the Status screen (Figure 13):

Figure 13: Openfiler status screen

We need to set the network access parameters to that of your Windows network, then set the Windows workgroup, and finally your SMB settings.

Go to the System tab and verify your network configuration is correct. At the bottom are the network access parameters you need to configure (Figure 14). These set the IP range you’ll be sharing your disk with. Enter a name, the network IP range, and a netmask, finally set the type to share. The name is only significant to Openfiler, it isn’t the name of your Windows workgroup or net domain.

Figure 14: Openfiler network access setting

A bit of a warning, in the middle of the page you’ll see your network interfaces. Since our motherboard has dual Gigabit network ports, there is a temptation to set up a bonded interface, not a bad idea. The problem is, if you start the bonding process, you have to finish it properly. Backing out or making a bad guess at settings will kill your network – and you’ll have to resort to the command line to reset your configuration.

We now have to set the Workgroup so our server can join the network neighborhood on each machine. Select the Accounts tab, the second set of options are those for your Windows domain (Figure 15), check the box to use Windows domains, select NT4-style Domain (RPC), set your workgroup name, and select Join domain. Submit at the bottom of the page.

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Figure 15: Openfiler Workgroup setting

The final step in completing the network set up is to configure the SMB service. Select the Services tab and click SMB/CIFS Setup on the right-hand menu. Once there (Figure 16), all you need to do is set your Netbios name and select Use Default Domain as a Winbind policy. Don’t worry about any of the other settings.

Figure 16: Openfiler SMB service setting

Apply and return to the Services tab. Go ahead enable the SMB / CIFS service (Figure 17). You should now be able to see your server on your Windows machines.

Figure 17: Openfiler enable SMB server

Of course there is nothing there to share yet; we have to define some shares first. And to do that, we need to define a volume that we can share.

Volume Setup

Under Openfiler, volume groups are composed of physical volumes and contain user defined logical volumes that can have shared directories on them.

We are interested in setting up a single volume group, called nas, made up of all 14.55 TB of our RAID array, which has a single volume, called NetArray. NetArray will have one shared folder called Shares.

First we create the Volume Group by creating a new physical volume which will house our volume. Go to the Volumes tab.

Figure 18: Openfiler create volume group

Selecting Create new physical volumes leads us to our block devices (Figure 19). We want our RAID array, /dev/sdb.  Telling the difference is pretty easy, look at the sizes.

Figure 19: Two very different size block devices

Clicking our array will bring us to the partition manager (Figure 20), where we can create a single primary partition composed of all available space. This is anachronistically done by cylinders. The defaults are the entire array, just click Create.

Figure 20: Partition creation

This will spin a bit, once done, go back to the Volumes tab so we can give a name to our volume group (Figure 21).

Figure 21: Naming volume group

Here we need  to enter NAS as a name, and select our only partition. Commit by clicking Add volume group. Couldn’t be more straightforward.

Ok, we have a volume group, now we need a volume. On the right side menu select Add Volume. You’ll see an odd abbreviated page which allows you to select your volume group. Just click Change.

You’ll now get the Volume Creation page. To create our NetArray volume, enter the name, and push that slider all the way to right (….way past eleven), leave the filesystem type as XFS. Punch Create and the cursor will spin.

Figure 22: Logical volume creation