Connecting Proxmox to FlashArray using FC

This guide provides instructions on how to connect your Proxmox instance to your FlashArray as a central FC LVM device that provides shared storage for a datacenter cluster.

1. Install Multipath tools on all of your Proxmox nodes:

   To ensure high availability and load balancing for your iSCSI storage, install the multipath tools on each Proxmox host:

   apt update
   apt install multipath-tools

2. Identify the Pure Storage WWID using the following command:

   root@proxmox1:~# cat /sys/class/fc_host/host*/port_name
   0x20000025b51a0032
   0x20000025b51b0032
   

3. Create the Proxmox hosts on the FlashArray and add the WWNs to the hosts:
   1. Go to Storage > Hosts.
   2. Click the + icon.
   3. In the pop-up window, give your host a name and under personality select none.
   4. Configure the Proxmox host WWN under the Host Ports section:

      

4. Create a host group and add the Proxmox hosts into it:
   1. Go to Storage > Hosts.
   2. Click the + icon.
   3. Click Create Host Group. In the pop-up window, give your host group a name:

      

   4. Add the Proxmox hosts to the host group:

      
5. Create a volume/LUN for your datastore:
   1. Go to Storage > Volumes.
   2. Click the + icon.
   3. In the pop-up window, give your volume a name and size and add your newly created host group to this volume/LUN.

   

   

6. Verify that you can see the LUN on the Proxmox nodes using the command -l /dev/disk/by-path:
   Note:

   Note the LUN number is 254:

   

   

7. Configure Multipath:
   1. Create the multipath.conf file in /etc/multipath.conf with the following content (If it doesn't already exist). This configuration blacklists all devices and sets the correct exceptions for Pure Storage:
      Important:

      • Blacklists will vary based on your setup. In this example, there is one local drive for the "boot" device. If you boot from SAN, your blacklist configuration will be different.

      • If you are using other storage vendors, you will need to change your blacklist exceptions to accommodate them as needed.

      defaults {
              find_multipaths off
      }
      
      blacklist {
              device {
                  vendor ".*"
                  product ".*"
              }
      }
      
      blacklist_exceptions {
          device {
              vendor "PURE"
              product ".*"
          }
      }
      

   2. Start the multipath service:

      systemctl start multipathd
      systemctl restart multipathd
      multipath -r

   3. Verify that the multipath device is correctly configured and active:

      multipath -ll

   The output should show the Everpure device with its paths active and ready:

   3624a9370730d187406c14775008ef137 dm-5 PURE,FlashArray
   size=100G features='0' hwhandler='1 alua' wp=rw
   -+- policy='service-time 0' prio=50 status=active
    |- 33:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 active ready running
    |- 34:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 active ready running
    |- 35:0:0:1 sde 8:64 active ready running
    - 36:0:0:1 sdd 8:48 active ready running

   Important: This step will need to be performed on all hosts in the cluster.
8. Create shared storage (LVM):

   To use the storage as a shared resource for all Proxmox nodes, create an LVM datastore. Perform these steps on only one Proxmox host:

   pvcreate /dev/mapper/<DEVICE_NAME>
   vgcreate VG_NAME /dev/mapper/<DEVICE_NAME>