Storage
Storage overview
This section provides information about configuring stations that will host NSP software.
Specific partition sizes and configuration procedures are available in the NSP Installation and Upgrade Guide.
When using the RHEL server OS, ext4 is the required file system for all application specific mount points. No other file systems are supported with NSP. OS specific mount points can be either xfs or ext4 as the file system. Windows based clients must use a local file system for client files. Network based files systems, including Samba are not supported.
While Nokia identifies areas of the storage that are not specifically required for NSP and are partitionable for customer use, station resources are expected to be dedicated for NSP. As such, these “Remainder” portions of the storage should only be used for static storage purposes. Consideration should also be made to the expected growth of the network. If the “Remainder” is not to be used, then it should not be created.
For all network sizes, Nokia requires the use of at least four disks on stations running the NFM-P database in a bare metal configuration. This disk configuration allows for better performance by distributing the database across multiple disks. Customized disk configurations may be required for larger network deployments or where large scale statistics collection is required. Request a formal platform sizing for further details. NAS disk configurations are not supported.
Disk configurations for stations running the NFM-P database with less than four physical disks greatly limits the NFM-P system performance, managed-network size, and data storage capacity, and is therefore only supported for lab trials.
In NSP upgrade scenarios, previous disk configurations may still be valid.
Using RAID technologies
In bare metal deployments, Nokia requires the use of RAID 0 (striping), unless otherwise specified, provided by a hardware based RAID controller. Software based RAID 0 is not supported. Nokia will provide disk layout and configuration details for customers requiring a Storage Array or layouts not specified in the NSP Installation and Upgrade Guide. The increased disk I/O performance offered by RAID 0 is required for all NSP deployments. The NSP Installation and Upgrade Guide provides details of these configurations. A RAID 0 stripe size of 512 Kbytes is required for optimal NSP disk performance. If a platform does not support a stripe size of 512 Kbytes, choose the next largest stripe size, for example, 256 Kbytes. Specifying a smaller or larger stripe size may result in degraded performance that compromises NFM-P network management.
Nokia supports the use of RAID 1 (Mirroring). Deployments requiring increased resiliency are encouraged to use platform redundancy. If RAID 1 is required, a platform providing hardware RAID 1 and that has sufficient number of disk to meet the increased disk requirements must be selected.
To reduce the chance of data loss or application down time, Nokia recommends using RAID 1, in a RAID 1+0 configuration.
For specific applications, Nokia supports the use of RAID 5 to increase storage resiliency and maximize available space. The NSP auxiliary database backup partition is supported with RAID 5.
Note: Nokia is not responsible for installation, administration or recovery of RAID on an NFM-P platform.
Using SAN storage
Nokia supports the use of SAN storage. SAN connectivity must consist of 4Gb or faster optical connections or 10Gb iSCSI connections. It is recommended that these connections are dedicated connections between the hosts and storage arrays. The SAN must be available to NSP without interruption in a low latency environment.
NSP platform sizing responses will provide the required performance targets when using NSP with a SAN. Note that certain mount points may not be required due to deployment options. See the NSP Installation and Upgrade Guide for required mount points based upon the type of NSP components deployed.
Note: Nokia is not responsible for installation, administration or recovery of SANs on an NSP platform.
Virtualization I/O requirements
When using NSP on a guest operating system of a hosted virtualized installation, specific storage requirements must be met. For optimal performance, storage should be either internal disks (10K or 15K RPM SAS, SAS or NVMe based SSDs), Fiber Channel attached storage (array or SAN) with dedicated fiber channel connections between hosts and Storage Arrays, or 10Gb iSCSI using non-shared infrastructure. All storage must meet the performance metrics provided with NSP Platform sizing responses. In VMware environments, storage I/O shares must be set to “High” and IOPs set to “Unlimited” for best performance and low latency.
See Table 2-27, Minimum collocated configuration throughput and latency for the minimum required throughput and latency for a collocated NFM-P configuration. Higher scale networks and distributed configurations may require alternate throughput and latency targets that will be provided with the NSP platform sizing response that is required for every NSP deployment.
Specific NSP components includes a benchmarking utility to be used for determining the throughput and latency of the storage device to be used with the virtual server hosting NSP. The utility is installed with an NFM-P server in the /opt/nsp/nfmp/server/nms/bin/unsupported/IOTest directory and is called NSP_IOTest.pl. If NFM-P has not yet been installed, the utility can be obtained from Nokia or from the NFM-P software package.
Executing the utility with the -h flag will present the user with a help menu, explaining different options and presenting execution examples. Each mount point must be tested and must meet the throughput and latency requirements for the specific deployment. These throughput and latency requirements must be obtained from Nokia as they are specific to each deployment. The throughput and latency targets must be met, irrespective of any other activity on the underlying storage device and the targets must be achievable concurrently. For this reason, it is important to understand the underlying storage configuration to ensure that the output of the benchmarking utility is interpreted correctly. For example, each of the listed targets may be achievable using a single 10K RPM SAS disk but concurrently, the listed targets would not be achievable using the same single 10K RPM SAS disk. The performance of NFM-P would be degraded using this configuration.
Table 2-27: Minimum collocated configuration throughput and latency
|
Mount point |
Read (MB/s) |
Write (MB/s) |
Latency (ms) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
/opt/nsp |
37 |
15 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/os |
15 |
15 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/nfmp/server/xml_output |
37 |
15 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/nfmp/dbbackup |
14 |
21 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/nfmp/db/tablespace |
158 |
8 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/nfmp/server/nms/log |
1 |
1 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/nfmp/db/archivelog |
14 |
38 |
< 1.0 | ||
|
/opt/nsp/nfmp/nebackup |
6 |
6 |
< 1.0 | ||
See the NSP Installation and Upgrade Guide for the recommended partition sizes.