NetApp E-Series BeeGFS Collection

NetApp has partnered with ThinkParQ (the company behind BeeGFS) to deliver high performing, highly scalable, yet cost effective storage solutions. The netapp_eseries.beegfs collection contains roles and playbooks to automate deploying BeeGFS on NetApp E-Series, as described in NetApp's deployment guides and technical reports. This approach enables the delivery of end-to-end storage solutions using Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

This collection supports both NetApp Verified Architectures (NVAs) and Custom Architectures. NVA designs are thoroughly tested and provide customers with reference configurations and sizing guidance to minimize deployment risk and accelerate time to market. NetApp also supports custom BeeGFS architectures running on NetApp hardware, giving customers and partners flexibility designing file systems to meet a wide range of requirements. Both approaches leverage Ansible for deployment, providing an appliance-like approach managing BeeGFS at any scale across a flexible range of hardware. Additional information about the collection architectures can be found in:

• NetApp Verified Architectures (NVA)
• Custom Architectures

The roles in this collection make it easy to start automating BeeGFS and E-Series, providing copy-and-update example inventory files and playbooks. The roles are designed and developed for specific BeeGFS major releases in either a high availability (HA) or non-HA mode of operation.

Compatibility

This collection version has been tested with Ansible core 2.16.

Tested BeeGFS Configuration

BeeGFS Service	BeeGFS Version	Operating System
beegfs-mgmtd	7.4.3	RedHat 9.3
beegfs-meta	7.4.3	RedHat 9.3
beegfs-storage	7.4.3	RedHat 9.3
beegfs-helperd	7.4.3	Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
beegfs-client	7.4.3	Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Tested Block Node Configuration

Platform	SANtricity OS version	Protocol
EF600	11.80 or newer	NVMe/IB

Additional information about tested configurations can be found in the test matrix.

Requirements

• The Ansible control node must have the following installed:
  • Python 3.9 or later
  • Python3 pip
  • NetApp E-Series Ansible Collections:
    • netapp_eseries.santricity 1.4.0 or later.
    • netapp_eseries.host 1.3.2 or later.
  • The following Python packages must be installed via pip:
    • ipaddr
    • netaddr
    • cryptography
• Passwordless SSH must be configured from the Ansible control node to all BeeGFS HA nodes and client nodes. Do not set up passwordless SSH to the block nodes. This is neither supported nor required. To set up passwordless SSH, follow these steps:
  1. On the Ansible control node, if needed, generate a pair of public keys using ssh-keygen
  2. Set up passwordless SSH to each of the file/client nodes using ssh-copy-id <ip_or_hostname>.
• The BeeGFS HA nodes must have the following configured:
  • HA repositories containing the necessary packages (pacemaker, corosync, fence-agents-all, resource-agents, pcs) are enabled via package manager.
    • Enable command example: subscription-manager repo-override repo=rhel-9-for-x86_64-highavailability-rpms --add=enabled:1

Getting Started with this Collection

Install the collection to your Ansible control node using the ansible-galaxy cli:

ansible-galaxy collection install netapp_eseries.beegfs

The netapp_eseries.beegfs collection will automatically install the following collection dependencies:

• netapp_eseries.santricity
• netapp_eseries.host
  • ansible.posix
  • ansible.utils
  • ansible.windows
  • community.general

After installing the collection, build the inventory and playbook files according to your BeeGFS cluster requirements using the instructions in the getting started README document.

Submitting Questions and Feedback

For questions, feature requests, or to report an issue, submit them at https://github.com/netappeseries/beegfs/issues.

License

BSD-3-Clause

Maintainer Information

• Christian Whiteside (@mcwhiteside)
• Vu Tran (@VuTran007)