The installation and maintenance of scalable VAST Clusters features ever increasing complexity in the data center.
VAST Cluster enables you to define racks and assign equipment to racks in order to simplify the management of the data center, helping you to implement planned stacking and IP assignments, to keep track of, identify, and direct personnel to equipment locations for review and replacement, to review equipment for validation of environmental standards, and other such data center maintenance logistics.
Starting from VAST Cluster 5.2, racks can be defined as needed during installation and expansion. During the installation or expansion procedure, the pools of IP addresses that are assigned to the external management interfaces of the CNodes and DNodes are defined per rack so that the assignment of IP addresses can be done according to rack location.
Each CBox, DBox, or EBox is assigned:
A rack
An integer value called a subsystem, which is used in the formation of the IP addresses that are allocated to the nodes for the cluster's internal network. By default, the subsystem is 0 in all cases. Assigning subsystems to racks enables the allocation of a larger range of IP addresses as needed for higher scale clusters.
A unit, to identify the position of the unit in the rack.
After installation, in the VAST Web UI you can see which racks are defined on the cluster and which boxes are assigned to which racks. You can also edit rack details.
For clusters that are upgraded to VAST Cluster 5.2 from previous versions, you can add racks with details to define their location and the number of units per rack and you can assign boxes to racks. In this case, the management IP addresses are not assigned according to racks.
CBoxes, DBoxes and EBoxes can be moved to different racks after installation.
Viewing Racks
From the left navigation menu, select Infrastructure and then Racks.
The following details can be shown for each rack:
Tip
To display or hide fields, click
to the right of a column title, and then click
to open a dropdown where you can select or unselect fields.
ID | The ID of the rack. |
Name | The name of a rack that has been defined. |
Usable Capacity | The usable capacity of the rack.
|
Rack Unit | If provided, an indicator of the location of the rack in its row in the data center. |
Row | If provided, the row in the data center where the rack is located. |
Total Capacity | Total capacity provided by the rack.
|
Viewing Rack Assignments
The tree view on the right of the Infrastructure page includes racks, showing which CBoxes and DBoxes, or EBoxes, are assigned to each rack.
Identifying Racks with Remote LED Control
Starting with VAST Cluster 5.2.2, VAST Web UI lets you turn on or off rack LEDs to help identity the rack:
From the left navigation menu, select Infrastructure and then Racks.
Right-click the rack and select Led On or Led Off.
Adding Racks to an Installed Cluster
Use this procedure to add racks to a cluster that was installed previously to VAST Cluster 5.2. You could also use this to add racks prior to adding CBoxes, DBoxes or Eboxes to the cluster. However, you can add racks during the procedure for adding the boxes.
From the left navigation menu, select Infrastructure and then Racks.
Click Add New Rack.
Enter details in the General section:
Rack name (required)
A name for the rack.
Number of units (required)
The number of units in the rack. Units are added to the graphical representation under Assign Boxes to the Rack according to the number that you specify.
Row
The row in the data center where the rack is located.
Unit
The unit number in the row to indicate rack location.
Description
Any description that is helpful to note.
Under Assign Boxes to the Rack, select each unassigned CBox/DBoxe/EBox that you want to assign to the rack and drag it over to the appropriate empty unit in the rack diagram.
Click Save.
Editing Racks
Right-click the rack and select Edit from the menu.
Make changes as needed and then click Save.
Assigning CBoxes and DBoxes to Racks
This includes moving boxes from assigned racks to different racks.
From the CBoxes, DBoxes or EBoxes tab, right-click the box that you want to assign to a rack and select Assign to Rack.
In the Rack dropdown, select the rack to which you want to assign the box from the dropdown. If you want to create a new rack, click Add Rack in the dropdown.
The rack diagram shows which units are available in the rack.
Select an available unit from the Unit dropdown.
Click Save.