Follow these essential post-installation steps to get VAST Cluster configured and ready to use.
Important
The following steps are assumed done:
All VAST Cluster hardware components are rack mounted and cabled.
The VAST Cluster is configured in the VAST Management System (VMS) as a manageable entity, such as through the VAST Web UI installer.
Step 1: Log Into the VAST Web UI
Make sure your PC has network access to all of the VAST Cluster compute servers (CNodes).
Browse to:
https://<VMS_virtual_IP>/, where<VMS_virtual_IP>is the management VIP that you provided during installation. This is the IP used to connect to the VAST Cluster management server (VMS).The VAST Web UI opens.
If this is your first time connecting to the VAST Web UI, click I agree to accept the VAST Data End User License Agreement.
Enter your Username and Password to log in.
For first time login, use the factory default VMS user account credentials:
username:
adminpassword:
123456
Note
VAST Cluster has one factory default VMS user account. You cannot delete the factory default VMS user account or reduce its permissions. After first time login, you can change the password for the default VMS user, create additional VMS users, and/or configure role based access with LDAP groups. For all options, see Authorizing VMS Access and Permissions.
Click Login.
You're now logged into the VAST Web UI and you're viewing the Dashboard.
Step 2: Change Your Password
Important
For good security practice, we recommend you change your management password immediately.
From the left navigation menu, select Administrator and then Managers.
Open the Actions menu for the manager named admin and select Edit.
In the Password field, enter a new password.
In the Retype Password field, enter the password again.
Click Update.
Your new password is saved.
Step 3: Configure Virtual IP Pool(s)
Virtual IP pools are ranges of IP addresses that VAST Cluster can use for listening for data traffic.
VAST Data recommends a minimum of two virtual IPs per CNode. For optimal load balancing, we encourage four virtual IPs per CNode for clusters with one Cbox (four CNodes); and four or more virtual IPs per CNode for larger clusters.
To learn more about virtual IP pools, see Configuring Network Access.
Configure one or more virtual IP pools to provide a recommended number of virtual IPs.
Note
If you would like your DNS server to resolve different subdomains to different virtual IP pools, set up a virtual IP pool per subdomain. In step 4, you will be able to set up load balancing and DNS service to complete the configuration.
From the left navigation menu, select Network Access and then Virtual IP Pools.
In the Virtual IP Pools page, click Create Virtual IP Pool.
Complete the General settings:
Tenant
Specifies which tenant the virtual IP pool should serve. A virtual IP pool can serve a specific tenant or all tenants.
Name
Enter a name for the virtual IP pool.
Role
Select a role for the virtual IP pool:
Protocols to enable network access to data stored on the VAST cluster.
Replication to create a virtual IP pool dedicated to VAST async replication.
VAST DB to create a virtual IP pool dedicated to VAST Catalog. If a virtual IP pool with this role exists, the virtual IPs in this pool are used for VAST Catalog queries run from the VAST Web UI. This pool is not required but creating a pool of this role can improve performance when running VAST Catalog queries.
Gateway IPv4
Enter an IPv4 address for the gateway.
The gateway IPv4 address is required if your storage clients are on multiple IPv4 subnets and you are routing the client storage traffic through a local gateway.
Gateway IPv6
Enter an IPv6 address for the gateway.
The gateway IPv6 address is required if your storage clients are on multiple IPv6 subnets and you are routing the client storage traffic through a local gateway.
Subnet CIDR IPv4
Specifies the subnet in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation for IPv4.
In CIDR notation, the subnet is expressed as the number of bits of each IP address that represent the subnet address. For example, the subnet mask 255.255.255.0 is expressed as 24 in CIDR notation.
Subnet CIDR IPv6
Specifies the subnet in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation for IPv6.
In CIDR notation, the subnet is expressed as the number of bits of each IP address that represent the subnet address. For example, the subnet mask 2001:db8 is expressed as 32 in CIDR notation.
VLAN
If you want to tag the virtual IP pool with a specific VLAN on the data network, enter the VLAN number (0-4096). See also Tagging Virtual IP Pools with VLANs.
Scroll down and set the Resource Selection settings:
VMS Preferred
Enable this setting if you would like the CNodes that are assigned virtual IPs from this pool to belong to a preferred domain for VMS failover. For more details, see VMS Hosting Impact and Preferences.
Note
Enabling this setting may cause VMS to move to another CNode, which will cause VMS to be unreachable for up to 60 seconds.
Port Membership
Determines which port (right or left) in a group of CNodes is allocated to the virtual IP pool. For more information, see CNode Port Affinity. By default, all ports on the pool's CNodes are included in the virtual IP pool.
Include all CNodes
This option lets you determine which CNodes serve the virtual IP pool.
If you want to dedicate a specific group of CNodes to the virtual IP pool, toggle this option off and in the pane that appears below it, select CNodes that you want to be included. The virtual IPs in this pool will only be distributed among the selected CNodes.
Otherwise, the pool will be distributed among all active CNodes.
If Port Membership for the virtual IP pool is set to RIGHT or LEFT, only right or left ports on the selected CNodes will be used for load balancing in this virtual IP pool.
Scroll down and set the IP Range List settings:
Enable proportional CNode VIP rebalancing
Enable this setting to balance VIPs across a combination of CNodes of newer and older generations, with the following ratios:
Ice Lake CNodes are allocated 50% more VIPs than Cascade Lake CNodes,
Cascade Lake CNodes are allocated 50% more VIPs than Broadwell CNodes.
VIPs are automatically moved to optimally balance the load across the CNodes according to these ratios. This feature allows you to leverage the increased CPU capacity of newer CNode generations that can handle a higher workload.
IP Ranges List
A set of IP addresses that belong to the virtual IP pool, which can include multiple different contiguous ranges.
For each range, add the Start IP and End IP.
To add a range, click the Add IP Range button.
To remove a range, click the Remove button for that range.
Scroll down and set the DNS Configurations:
VIP Pool Domain name
If you are using the VAST Cluster DNS server, specify a domain name to associate with the virtual IP pool. The domain suffix is defined in the DNS server configuration, is appended to the virtual IP pool domain name to form a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). Requests for that FQDN will be allocated virtual IPs from this pool.
The FQDN formed from the current value entered into the field and the domain suffix is displayed below the field as the DNS Service FQDN.
Optionally, in the Advanced pane, enable L3 access for the virtual IP pool.
Enable L3
Toggle this option on to enable L3 access for the virtual IP pool.
BGP
Select a BGP configuration to be used for L3 access, or click Add new BGP to create a new BGP configuration (you are then transferred to the BGP Configuration tab).
See Configuring Layer 3 Connections to the VIP using BGP for more about configuring BGP.
Click Create.
The virtual IP pool is saved. IP addresses from the pool are assigned automatically to the CNodes. You can view the assigned virtual IPs per CNode in the Virtual IPs tab.
Step 4: Configure DNS-Based Virtual IP Balancing and DNS Forwarding
See DNS-Based Virtual IP Distribution to choose how you would like to set up load distribution and DNS forwarding and follow one of the suggested configurations.
Step 5: Review and Complete Call Home Settings
The call home feature sends non sensitive data from your VAST Cluster to our central support server to enable us to provide proactive analysis and fast response on critical issues.
The data we collect is sent by HTTPS to a VAST Data AWS S3 bucket that we maintain for this purpose. For details, see the VAST Data Security Guidelines.
Follow the steps provided in Configuring Call Home Settings to:
Complete your call home settings. This is the only way we can ever know that the data we collect from your VAST Cluster is yours!
Run our test to make sure that your VMS can send call home bundles. If needed, set up firewall rules to allow the VMS to send call home bundles.
Your essential configuration is now complete.
You can continue to manage the VAST Cluster via the VAST Web UI or the VAST CLI.