ION-NAS Network Storage Solutions

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Last Update: January 14, 2015

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ION-NAS Network Storage Solutions

Setup & Configuration Guide

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Overview

This technical guide provides a technical overview of the IONODES ION-NAS network storage appliances as well as setup and configuration steps for using the devices in an iSCSI configuration. ION-NAS devices are high-performance network storage appliances based on the Windows Storage Server 2012 platform from Microsoft.

Getting your CIRRUS NVR ready for iSCSI

Before being able to connect an ION-NAS network storage device to your CIRRUS NVR appliance, you first need to configure a few items on the CIRRUS NVR.

In order to set-up of your CIRRUS NVR appliance for network storage, please follow these steps:

 Power up the CIRRUS NVR appliance and log in using an administrative user account.

 Launch Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / iSCSI Initiator.

 Select Yes to enable and start the Microsoft iSCSI service.

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4  Note the Initiator Name found in the Configuration tab. You will be required to

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Setting up the ION-NAS network storage appliance

In order to be able to connect an ION-NAS network storage device to your CIRRUS NVR appliance, you first need to configure a few items on the ION-NAS.

Note that the following default settings are applied in your ION-NAS appliance at our factory before shipping out to you:

 The Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 product key has been entered. The official product key label has been placed on the bottom panel of the ION-NAS device should you require it later. You are however still required to activate the product key at your earliest convenience in order to avoid the grace period expiration.

 Regional settings have been set to:

o Country/region: United States

o Language: English (United States) o Keyboard Layout: US

* These settings can be changed to fit your requirements by modifying them in the operating system environment directly.

 The password for the Administrator user has been set to Welcome1 with a capital W. ***We HIGHLY recommend that this password be changed within the user accounts manager by your IT staff to a secure password for your organization.

In order to complete the set-up of your ION-NAS appliance, please follow these steps:  Power up the ION-NAS appliance and log in using an administrative user

account.

 Setup the network IP address of the NAS device to match your network.

o We recommend configuring the appropriate Gigabit Ethernet port to a

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6  Click the Add Roles and Features wizard from the Server Manager Dashboard.

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7  Select the current server from the server pool, click Next.

 Under Files and Storage Services, enable the following:

o File and iSCSI Service

 File Server

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o Click Next.

o Click Next to Skip Features Installation.

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Activating the Windows Storage Server Operating System

Before continuing, you should ensure that your storage server license is activated. You need to make sure the server has access to the Internet in order to complete the online activation process. Once completed, you could remove Internet access.

In order to activate the Windows license, follow these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel / System Security and open the Action Center.

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10 3. Open the Security section as shown below.

4. Click the Go to Windows Activation button to complete the online activation process.

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Creating the iSCSI Virtual Disk(s)

At factory, the RAID configuration for each ION-NAS network storage appliance is configured according to customer specifications. The configuration consists of setting the proper RAID level, hot spare functionality and LUN configuration. Each LUN identifies a specific logical storage unit, which may be a part of a hard disk drive, an entire hard disk or several hard disks in a storage device. So a LUN could reference an entire RAID set, a single disk or partition, or multiple hard disks or partitions. In any case, the logical storage unit is treated as if it is a single device and is identified by the LUN. It most cases ION-NAS devices will configured at factory by IONODES with a LUN for each group of 4 to 6 disks in a RAID configuration in order to optimize performance and reliability.

The total storage space made available by the LUN’s configured on your ION-NAS network storage appliance can be divided into one or more iSCSI virtual disks. An iSCSI virtual disk is however limited to a maximum of 8TB. Each iSCSI virtual disk is then assigned to an iSCSI target instance on the ION-NAS appliance. An iSCSI target can be associated to one or more iSCSI virtual disks depending on the total amount of disk space we want to group under and iSCSI target instance. Each iSCSI target is then assigned to a single NVR server (via iSCSI initiator) which will make use of all virtual disks found in the iSCSI target.

For example, let’s assume we have an ION-NAS appliance with total usable storage of 32TB, and let’s assume our deployment requires connecting this network storage device to two equally balanced NVR appliances. Under iSCSI, each NVR server acts as an iSCSI initiator and requires being associated to a single iSCSI target on the ION-NAS appliance. We therefore would create two separate iSCSI targets on the ION-NAS device, one for each NVR, and then create two iSCSI virtual disks of 8TB for each iSCSI target. In this scenario, each NVR would therefore have access to 16TB of storage space for video recording.

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12 Creating an iSCSI target and associated virtual disks is done by following these steps:

 From the Server Manager, click on the File and Storage Services section.  Click iSCSI sub-section.

 Click on the New iSCSI Virtual Disk Wizard.

 Select the drive letter which corresponds to the iSCSI storage drive (LUN) from which you wish to create a virtual disk, click Next. (Do not select volume C: as this is the boot partition.)

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13  Enter any name as the virtual disk name, click Next.

 Enter the desired size (up to allowed max.) for the virtual disk, select Fixed and make sure to uncheck the box titles Clear virtual disk on allocation, Click Next.

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14  Select New iSCSI Target if you wish to associate the virtual disk to a new iSCSI target or select an existing one if you wish to add a virtual disk to an existing iSCSI target, Click Next.

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15  Click Add to add an iSCSI Initiator one does not already exist or select an existing

one if you wish to assign the virtual disk to an existing iSCSI initiator.

 Select Enter a Value for the Selected Type and select IQN as the type.

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16  Click Next to skip authentication.

 Click Create to complete the iSCSI virtual disk creation.  Click Close when completed.

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Connecting the ION-NAS to your CIRRUS NVR

Once the ION-NAS has been configured with appropriate set of iSCSI virtual disks and iSCSI targets, it is time to connect the storage device to your CIRRUS NVR.

Follow these steps:

 Connect the LAN2 network port from CIRRUS NVR to the appropriate Ethernet port on the iSCSI device.

 Configure the CIRRUS NVR’s LAN2 network port to a fixed address (i.e.172.16.0.1)  Connect the CIRRUS NVR iSCSI initiator to the iSCSI target disk on ION-NAS:

 Launch the iSCSI initiator (Control Panel/Administrative Tools/iSCSI Initiator)  Type the IP Address of the ION-NAS device (iSCSI target), and click Quick

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18  Click Done.

 The CIRRUS NVR should now be connected to the ION-NAS device.

 Click on the Start button, then right-click on the Computer menu entry and select Manage.

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19  Select the Disk Management menu item located under the Storage menu group. Locate the newly connected iSCSI virtual disks. They will appear as non-initialize. Right-click on each virtual disk and select Initialize Disk.

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20  The disk is now initialized. Create the desired new volumes for all initialized disks by right clicking in the unallocated disk space and selecting New Simple Volume.

 Size the partition in megabytes using the Simple Volume Size field and then click Next.

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21  On the Assign Drive Letter Or Path page, specify a drive letter and then click

Next.

 Use the Format Partition page to determine whether and how the volume should be formatted. Select NTFS & select Quick Format, give a name to the volume and click Next.

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22  Confirm your options, and then click Finish.

 It may take a few minutes for the volume to complete initialization and before it becomes available for usage.

 Check Windows Explorer for the new drive(s).

 You can now configure your VMS software to use these drive(s) for video storage.

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Frequently asked questions

 How many NVR’s can I connect to a single ION-NAS device?

IONODES’ ION-NAS devices will support iSCSI connections with a large number of NVR’s (or iSCSI initiators). The practical number of iSCSI initiators depends on the amount of disk space available on the ION-NAS device as well as the throughput requirement.

Let’s take for example a system which has four (4) NVR’s, each handling 25 cameras at 2Mbits/sec. The total throughput required to iSCSI storage would be 200 Mbits/sec (25MB/sec). Assuming we have a large ION-NAS with 72TB of storage, we could segment the storage into four (4) equal segments of 18TB (iSCSI virtual disk) and assign a segment to each NVR through a dedicated iSCSI connection. This scenario is well within the specifications of the ION-NAS devices as well as the Windows Storage Server 2012 environment.

 Can an ION-NAS device connect to other iSCSI initiators?

Yes. IONODES’ ION-NAS devices run Windows Storage Server and therefore can be used in conjunction with any iSCSI initiator compatible with that operating system.

 What is the maximum throughput to an ION-NAS device?

The throughput limitation is more a function of the GbE network connection between the NVR’s and the ION-NAS than on the actual ION-NAS device itself. An ION-NAS device can theoretically handle 100MB/s or 800Mb/sec of recording throughput. To be safe, we would recommend limiting throughput on a GbE iSCSI network connection to around 75MB/sec or 600Mbits/sec of throughput – that’s 150 HD cameras at 4Mbits/sec.

 What is the rebuild time of an ION-NAS device in RAID 5 or RAID 6? There is no concrete way to define the rebuild time for an ION-NAS device. Rebuild time is a balancing act affected by so many variables: how much of the rebuilt drive is used? How many cameras, number and size of video files are impacting the ION-NAS in normal conditions? Rebuild time is also under the control of the system administrator.

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24 Hardware RAID controllers, such as the ones found in ION-NAS devices, have the ability to set RAID controller priorities-dedicating a user-controlled percentage of compute cycles to rebuilding failed drives. The default is 30%, but can be reduced or accelerated.

Rebuild time can be mitigated in larger arrays by creating multiple smaller VDEVs (each a small array), then spanning the VDEVs (e.g. RAID 50 or RAID 60). This allows multiple drives to fail in a VDEV without bringing down the entire array and spread out the potential impact of multiple drive failures.

For reference, let’s take a 72 camera system (2-3 Megapixels) which generates 36MB/s of recording throughput to a 36 bay ION-NAS using 3TB drives. Let’s also assume that the rebuild performance setting is set to default (30% utilization-10MB/s read-10MB/s write throughput), and the 36 x HDDs are set up in 3-4 VDEVs. The rebuild time for a single failed 3TB drive will be approx. 4 to 5 days, a little longer for RAID 6, a little less for RAID 5.

 Is maximum throughput of an ION-NAS affected during a rebuild?

No. Throughput of an ION-NAS device would not be affected during a rebuild; it is rather the rebuild time that will be longer depending on CPU cycles available on the ION-NAS device.

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Troubleshooting

 My VMS software does not detect the ION-NAS on boot-up

Depending on your software environment, it is possible that your VMS software completes its boot up sequence before the ION-NAS drives are made available on the NVR.

Discovery and mapping of iSCSI drives onto your NVR takes some time on boot up and you may need to configure a boot-up delay on your VMS services in order to ensure that they detect the drives properly.

In order to enable a startup delay, set your appropriate VMS service(s) to Automatic (Delayed Start). This mode specifies that the service(s) should be started approximately 2 minutes after the system has completed starting the operating system.

ION-NAS Network Storage Solutions