Storage cluster setup

When the infrastructure is ready for nodes to interact with each other and Virtuozzo services, it’s time to set up the storage cluster.

Creating the storage cluster

1. Go to Infrastructure > Nodes and click Create storage cluster.

2. Specify the cluster’s name preferably using only letters without symbols.

3. Disks are not usually encrypted, you can leave these checkboxes empty.

4. Select one node to create the storage cluster from, click the gear icon and select Disks. Note the following:

NVMEs and SSDs can both be used to store cache for other tiers or as high-speed storage.
If the server has a limited number of disks or only one SSD available, it may be necessary to use the system drive for storing metadata as well. However, this can significantly reduce the lifespan of such a disk.
The type of drives being used determines the number of tiers. For example, if you are using a combination of HDDs, SATA SSDs, and NVMe SSDs, you can have up to three tiers. However, if you only have SSDs or HDDs, it is best to use just one tier.

The configuration depends entirely on your infrastructure and the number of nodes, but in this example, we will configure the disks as follows:

One disk for system+metadata on five nodes (this is required for a production cluster)
Other NVMEs or SATA SSDs for storage with a single tier (Tier 0)

5. Once you finish configuring the disks, click Create. The cluster creation may take some time, depending on the number of disks to be configured. Once the configuration is complete, the cluster is created.

Note: During the configuration, some nodes can be shown as Failed, or the drives can have the Inactive status. After a few minutes, they’ll change to Healthy.

6. Add other unassigned nodes to the storage cluster by clicking Join to cluster on their right pane.

Configuring multiple chunk services per disk

If you use high-speed NVMe drives for raw storage, consider configuring multiple chunk services (CS) per disk.

1. Go to Settings > System settings > Storage performance.

2. Select the desired number of chunk services per physical device for the required storage tier. For example, if you have very fast NVMe drives for storage, you can change the number of CSs per device for that tier to four. The actual number of CSs per physical drive depends on your NVMe drive capabilities and your performance requirements. For more details, refer to Configuring NVMe performance in the Administrator Guide.

Once the operation is finished, you need to return to your storage cluster and, node by node, release and reassign each storage drive with the same features described previously (for all of the storage nodes).

Now, you have the storage cluster ready, and it’s time to configure the compute cluster.