Configuring VND storage resources

The following procedure explains how to set up virtual network disk (VND) storage so that a cloud end user can attach storage, such as a mapped drive or a mounted file system, to a running service instance. For example, you might have a VM service instance to which a user needs to add an external drive for storing output data.

You can attach block device or file system storage.

You do not have to configure storage resources when setting up platform-as-a-service (PaaS) resources.

Before you begin

You must have a storage service already created on your server, such as NetApp DataFabric Manager (DFM).

To set up VND storage resources

1. Create a business service for storage.
   The general steps for creating a service are given in Services.

2. Create a service offering for file system storage, block device storage, or both.

   Note

   When creating a service offering for VND storage, do not specify a service blueprint.

3. Using the Options editor, add an option for specifying capacity, with choices for each storage amount that you want to make available.
   
   Do not select the Multi-Select check box when creating option choices for VND storage.
   
   You can choose any name for the option. The option values must be numeric and must be followed by a space and MB for megabyte, GB for gigabyte, or TB for terabyte (for example, 8 GB). A value in any other format defaults to 32 MB for block device and 20 MB for file system storage.

   Note

   For NetApp filers, you must specify a minimum of 20 MB for file system storage and 32 MB for block device storage.

4. For each storage-related service offering, create a service request definition and, for Type, select one of the following types:
   • Storage-BlockDevice
   • Storage-FileSystem
     For information about about service offerings and service request definitions, see Creating a service offering.
5. Map the storage service request definitions that you created in the previous step to a storage resource provider and provide the configuration information, as described in Configuring VND storage offering mappings.
6. (Optional) Map tenants to vFilers, as described in Configuring tenant vFiler mappings.

After you set up storage resources, storage requests are available to cloud end users from the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management - My Cloud Services Console. Users can then attach a storage service to a running service instance. You can attach more than one service (VM) to a file system, but you can attach only one service (VM) to a block device.

If you want to provide My Cloud Services Console users with the ability to format a block device that is attached to a VM, you can create a transaction requestable offering (TRO) post-deployment custom action that calls an NSH script to format the device.

Related topics

Storage resources overview