Welcome to the Oracle Linux Storage Appliance

The Oracle Linux Storage Appliance is a web interface that enables you to configure, monitor, and administer an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure compute instance.

To learn more about provisioning a compute instance in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, refer to the information that is provided at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

This web interface has the following four pages that you can access from the Navigation bar of your browser:

Oracle application toolbar
  • Dashboard
  • Provides a quick overview of the storage capacity of the appliance, as well as status information.

  • Storage
  • Provides the ability to create and manage NFS and SMB shares on the appliance.

  • Appliance
  • Provides more detailed information about the appliance's configuration and current status.

  • Administration
  • Provides access to administrative actions that you can perform.

You can also obtain more information by selecting the Help option in the Admin drop-down list that is located at the top right corner of each page.

Click the right arrow to advance to the next help topic. Clicking the left arrow takes you to the previous help topic.

Dashboard page

After logging in to the browser interface for the appliance, the landing page (also called the Dashboard page) for the appliance is displayed. This page provides an overview of the storage capacity and the status of the appliance.

dashboard page

Storage Status

Provides information about the overall RAID storage usage on the appliance, which does not include the appliance's individual storage space. This page also displays the number of NFS and SMB clients that are currently connected to the appliance.

Appliance Status

Provides a visual overview of the main resource usage for the appliance, which includes the following:

  • CPU
  • Memory
  • root file system utilization
  • Network inbound and outbound instant traffic

Note: You can view additional information on the Appliance page.

Storage page

The Storage page enables you to administer shares for the appliance. The page also provides information about the RAID health status of the appliance.

A share represents storage space that can be accessed by users using multiple export protocols. Currently the NFS and SMB protocols are supported.

The following information is displayed for each share:

  • Name - Name of the share.
  • Size - Overall share disk space that is reserved for the share.
  • Free - Remaining free space available for this share.
  • Export protocols - List of protocols currently used to export the share content.
  • Last backup - Date of the last backup.

The Add button enables you to add a new share.

The Actions drop-down list enables you to view/modify, duplicate, delete, back up and restore shares.
The Mount Information provides information about how to access exports from client instances.

Adding and Deleting Shares

  • To add a share:
    1. Click the Add button.
    2. In the Add New Share dialog, provide the following information:
      • Share name - Is the name of the share.
      • Share size - Is the disk space to be allocated for the share.
    3. (Optional) Associate an export protocol (NFS or SMB) with the new share by clicking the Add export... button.

      For instructions, see "Adding and Deleting Export Protocols".

    4. Note: To add an export protocol to an existing share, modify the share by using the View/Modify dialog.

    5. Click Create to create the share.

      A confirmation message is displayed

  • To delete a share:
    1. Click the share that you want to delete.
    2. Click the Actions drop-down list, then select Delete.
    3. In the confirmation dialog, click Ok to delete the share or click Cancel to cancel the operation.
    4. Close the Delete dialog.
    5. Verify that the share has been deleted by checking the Shares section of the Storage page.

Warning: Deleting the share also deletes the associated data for the share on the appliance.

Viewing/Modifying and Duplicating Shares

The Modify operation enables you to modify the settings of an existing share. The Duplicate operation creates a new share by copying all of the settings of an existing share, except for the share's name.

  • To view or modify a share:
    1. Click the share that you want to view or modify, then from the Actions drop-down list, select View/Modify.
    2. Modify the share.
    3. Click Modify to save the changes. Click Cancel to cancel the operation.
    4. Click Ok in the Successful Modification dialog.
  • To duplicate a share:
    1. Click the share that you want to duplicate, then from the Actions drop-down list, select Duplicate.
    2. In the Duplicate Share dialog, enter a name for the new share.
    3. Click Create to create the new share. Click Cancel to cancel the operation.
    4. A message indicating the new share has been successfully created is displayed.

    5. Close the dialog.

Adding and Deleting Export Protocols

When creating a new share on the Storage page of the appliance, you can optionally associate the NFS or SMB export protocol with the share by clicking the Add export... button in the Add New Share dialog. To add an export protocol to an existing share, use the View/Modify dialog.

Note: When adding an SMB export, you must configure the Samba global settings on the Administration page in order for the export to work.

  • To associate the NFS or SMB export protocol with a new share:
    1. After completing Step 2 of the To add a share: procedure in the Add New Share dialog, click the Add export... button.
    2. Select either the NFS export or the SMB export option.
    3. Provide all of the required information for each field.
    4. Note that contextual help is provided for these entries.

    5. Click Create to add the share and the associated export protocol.
    6. A confirmation message is displayed.

  • To delete an export protocol:
    1. Click the export that you want to delete.
    2. From the Actions drop-down list, select the View/Modify option.
    3. Click the tile that you want to delete, then click the "x" next to Remove to remove the tile.
    4. To validate the change, click the Modify button.

See the relevant information regarding NFS and SMB configuration in the Oracle Linux 7 System Administrator's Guide.

Backup and Restore

Shares can be archived and restored by using the OCI object storage service.

Prerequisites

1. You can do either of the following:

  • Provide OCI credentials so that you can back up shares. You can add credential information on the Administration page by clicking the Configure access to OCI services button. See the OCI configuration documentation for details. If these credentials are already created, they can be found in $HOME/.oci/config.

  • Make the Oracle Linux Storage Appliance instance part of a dynamic group. In this case, OCI credentials are not required.

2. Create a new bucket, or reuse an existing bucket, to store the archived objects in the OCI Object Store. See the Documentation for further details.

Backup

To archive a share, first select the share, then select the Backup option in the Actions drop-down list that is located on the Storage page.

The archive is then stored as a object in an OCI object store bucket.

Note: You do not need to modify the share's read or write settings in preparation for backup, as a temporary snapshot of the share is created, which enables the share to be used normally during backup.

Namespace information can be found on the Bucket Details page in the OCI console.

Restore

To restore a share, select the share, then select the Restore option in the Actions drop-down list that is located on the Storage page.

The archive will overwrite the current content for that share.

Appliance page

The Appliance page displays configuration information about the appliance, which includes the status of its main resources and the state of key services.

appliance page

On the Appliance page, you can view the following information about the platform status for the appliance:

  • CPU
  • Memory
  • Swap usage
  • root file system utilization

Items shown in Green indicate an Okay status for the appliance. Items shown in Red indicate a potential problem. To troubleshoot common issues, go to the Administration page. On this page, you can view log files and perform administrative actions such as reboot the appliance and restart NFS and SMB services.

Administration page

The Administration page enables you to perform administrative actions, such as migrating one OCI compute instance to another OCI compute instance. You can also access and monitor log files for the appliance on this page, as well as perform several other administrative actions on the appliance.

System Logs

Provides access to the following log files and their location:

System Actions

Enables you to perform the following actions on the appliance by clicking the button that corresponds to the specified option:

User Actions

Enables you to perform the following actions on the appliance by clicking the button next to the specified option:

Shape Migration

You can migrate one OCI compute instance to another OCI compute instance.
This feature is useful if any initial instance resources, such as OCPU or memory, are running out.

Migration Process

Caution: The initial instance will be unusable when the 'Prepare for migration' action is confirmed.

Caution: Migration only works for shapes that have remotely attached block volumes, not for DenseIO shapes with local NVMe devices.

Requirements

  • A running Oracle Linux Storage Appliance instance (source) with storage that consists of block volumes.
  • A destination Oracle Linux Storage Appliance instance (dest) that is running the same or later version of the appliance as the source instance.

Migrating Instances

  1. In the source instance UI, click the Administration tab, then click the Prepare for migration button.
  2. In the OCI console (source instance), do the following:
    1. Stop the source instance.
    2. Detach all of the block volumes that are currently attached to the source instance, then terminate the source instance.
  3. In the OCI console (dest instance), create a new appliance instance.
  4. The instance must meet the following requirements:

    • Use a shape with no local storage attached
    • Be in the same compartment and availability domain as source instance
    • Appliance version must be the same or later than the source instance's version


  5. Attach all of the block volumes that were detached from the source instance to the dest instance.
  6. Note: The process of attaching the volumes may take a few minutes.

  7. Reboot the dest instance.
  8. In the dest instance UI, log in to confirm that all of the shares and exports are available, as they were before.