First things first, before getting started you need to create yourself a login at the Netapp NOW website http://now.netapp.com It usally takes 24-48 hours for your login to become active. The NOW website is where you get access to all the documentation, knowledge base, articles, software, licenses, etc
Once you’ve racked and cabled your Netapp SAN, according to the documentation on your SAN model you’re ready to start configuring.
Connect the supplied console cable to your pc and start your favourite terminal emulation program. I mainly use Putty which can be downloaded from here http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
As you power on the SAN it will go through all the POST tests and finally arrive at the setup wizard prompt
1. Enter the new hostname (Tip: When Netapp support refer to your controllers, they refer to them as top or bottom. To make it simple try and name and controller at the top something ending in top and for the bottom, something ending in bot. You don’t need to do this but it is less confusing later on down the track)
2a. Do you want to configure interface groups ? (On the back of our FAS2040 we have 4 gigethernet ports named e0a, e0b, e0c, e0d. You have the option of bundling 2 or more of these to create an etherchannel to your switch. This becomes beneficial if you are considering running iscsi, nfs or cifs as the traffic can be load balanced across the bundled ports. Within an interface group you can also create vlans to segment traffic, however I’ll touch on this a little later on. You don’t need to create an interface group, you can answer no here and configure a single port)
2b. If you answered yes to interface groups you are asked the following:
- Number of interface groups to configure
- Name of interface group (usually you would name it vif0 which stands for Virtual Interface)
- Is the interface_group_name a single [s], multi [m] or a lacp [l] interface group (If you are connecting back to cisco switches you would use lacp, though check with your switch vendor)
- Number of links for interface_group_name (How many physical ports do you want to include in the interface group)
- Name of link for interface_group_name (For example e0a, e0b, e0c, e0d)
- IP address for interface_group_name
- Netmask for interface_group_name
- Should interface group interface_group_name take over a partner interface group during failover ? (You would answer yes here if you are running redundant controllers and then enter in the second controllers interface name. These names would be identical on each controller)
- Media type for interface_group_name (If you are running 1 GB you can select auto)
2c. If you did not decide to create an interface group you will pretty much go through the same steps as above minus adding interfaces into a group. Additional options are enabling flow control and Jumbo frames, which if you are running a network protocol such as iscsi, nfs, cifs, etc you will definately enable.
3. You now have the option to continue setting up via the web interface or through the cli. We will continue through the cli
4. Please enter the name or ip address of the default gateway.
5. Please enter the name or ip address for aadministrative host. The administration host is given root access to the storage system’s /etc files for system administration. To allow /etc root access to all NFS clients enter RETURN below. (I would highly recommend entering in an ip address here, such as your management station so that only it has access to the root. This is achievable by enabling CIFS and browsing directly to the storage filer’s root)
6. Please enter timezone (GMT is the default, please refer to the setup.pdf documentation in the Resource area of this site)
7. Where is the filer located ? (This is SNMP location information)
8. What language will be used for multiprotocol files ? (en for english otherwise refer to the setup.pdf documentation in the Resource area of this site)
9. Enter the root directory for HTTP files (Files that are served through HTTP or HTTPS)
10. Do you want to run DNS resolver ? (Basically do you want to storage system to resolve DNS, select yes)
11. Do you want to run NIS client ?
12. Would you like to configure the BMC LAN interface ? (only if you have a BMC installed in your system)
13. Would you like to configure the RLM LAN interface ? (only if you have an RLM installed in your system)
14. Do you want to configure the Shelf Alternate Control Path Management interface for SAS shelves ? (Only if you have DS4243 shelves in your stack. The ACP should be cabled according to the DS4243 install guide, see the Resource section)
15. Setting the administrative (root) password for your filer ? (Enter the password and re-enter to confirm) and reboot.
16. If you are configuring the controllers for an active/active pair, repeat the same steps for the other controller.
17. Once the filer has rebooted you can access the web admin page type at https://<ip address>/na_admin
