Native VM PoC Onboarding Guide

Prerequisites

Before you start, please have the following information about your Azure environment ready:

• Your Azure tenant ID and subscription ID

• Your Azure billing account ID (how to locate billing account ID)

• The region where your host VMs are deployed (must be one of the supported regions)

• List of used Availability Zone(s) for VMs (it’s recommended to use a zone-assigned VMs over “regional VMs” due to resiliency impact, but it’s not a blocker for Trial testing)

Preview Scope and Guidelines

The preview has a few key parameters to consider. After you complete your testing, we’ll ask for your feedback through a short survey.

If any of the guidelines listed below presents a challenge to adoption in your environment, please make sure to highlight that in your survey response.

• Do not use any Storage Pool resources enrolled in this preview for any production workload.

• For billing reasons, if you’re already using the Everpure™ Cloud Azure Native for AVS, we recommend testing this functionality in a different Azure region or subscription.

• Storage Pool can be deployed into a single Availability Zone (LRS). ZRS deployments are currently not supported.

• Data in a Storage Pool currently cannot be replicated with other Purity based devices, including FlashArray or Everpure Cloud Dedicated, with any replication method (ActiveCluster, ActiveDR, Asynchronous Replicationor CloudSnap).

• Currently, Storage Pool resources cannot be connected intoEverpure Fusion Fleets.

• Storage Pool capacity and performance are set by the scope of your trial license and private offer. Note that exceeding these aggregate limits (30 TiB capacity / 2GBps performance) will incur overage charges, even during the trial period.

• The preview period runs for 30 days. Following the conclusion of this timeframe, the service subscription will transition to automatic renewal at standard Pay-As-You-Go rates (billed monthly) if no action is taken.

• It is currently not possible to convert the preview into a 1 or 3 year Subscription plan with discounted prices.

Step 1 - Accept a Private Offer

For the preview, Everpure will publish to your Azure tenant an Azure Marketplace Private Offer for Everpure Cloud Azure Native service. This will make sure you will test this functionality free of charge. Do not create public plan reservations outside of this private plan to avoid being charged for the use of the service during preview.

1. An Everpure representative will share with you a link for accepting a private offer. The link will also be shared with you via automated email fromAzure Marketplace.

2. Open the shared link.

3. Click on the button Accept Private Offer.

   

4. Once ready, there should be status Accepted for the Private Offer.

   

Step 2 - Enable the service

az provider register --namespace 'PureStorage.Block'

Once the task is completed, the provider should appear as follows:

Step 3 - Create New or Connect an Existing Virtual Network (VNet)

For optimal performance and security, the service is deployed into its own dedicated subnet within a Virtual Network (VNet). To minimize latency and simplify the data path, it is best practice to connect Azure VMs directly within the same VNet, avoiding any VNet peering for storage traffic. This setup provides a seamless and secure connection, optimal performance with minimal latency, and reduces potential costs.

To deploy a new virtual network (VNet), you can follow the step-by-step tutorials available here.

During the network design, please ensure that the subnet in the VNet for the service does not overlap with the reserved range 10.251.168.0/21. This range is allocated by the service for its internal purposes, so must be avoided.

Advanced VNet security features like Azure Bastion, DDoS protection, Azure Firewall etc. are not required, but can be included in the setup.

The service requires a dedicated subnet within the VNet. Each storage pool allocates 12 IP addresses within the selected subnet. To ensure future scalability and avoid potential disruptions, it's recommended to use at least a /27 subnet, or a /24 subnet for production environments. Since the subnet size cannot be modified after setup, choosing a larger address space provides flexibility for growth and additional resource allocation.

Furthermore, this subnet needs to be delegated to the Pure Storage.Block/storagePools service.

To delegate a subnet to anAzure service, please refer to the tutorial available here.

Step 4 - Deploy The service

To run and manage the service from the Azure Portal, you need to deploy an Everpure Cloud resource into a selected region. The resource represents the enablement of the service in the selected region for the specified subscription.

Step 5 - Create Volume group

Step 6 - Create a Volume

1. Click “+ Create a Volume” button that can be found in the lower section of the Volume Group screen.

   

2. Specify details of the new volume, Name and provisioned Size. Click Create.

   

Provisioning of a new volume will typically take a few minutes. The newly created volume will appear in the Volume Group. You can create up to 64 volumes in one Volume Group.

Step 7 - Mount to VM

1. To mount the volume to a VM, Click “Mount of VM”.

   

2. In the newly opened window, you will see details of the Volume Group, such as the virtual network it is connected to, and the availability zone of the Storage Pool.

   

3. From the dropdown selector in the AzureVM details section, select the VM you wish to mount Volume Group to. The dropdown should automatically present all the VMs in the same Azure Region and Subscription as the Everpure Cloud Azure Native service. The service was tested against the following OS versions and higher: Windows Server 2019, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, RHEL 8, SLES 15, Debian 11, Rocky Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8, and Oracle Linux 8.

   Tip:

   To ensure optimal performance and avoid unnecessary peering expenses, it is recommended to select a VM located in close proximity to the Storage Pool.

4. Select the desired number of iSCSI sessions and whether you want the VM to be rebooted automatically. Click Mount.

To facilitate connectivity, the service deploys a dedicated Azure VM Extension onto your chosen host, which automatically configures the necessary iSCSI sessions, best practices and configuration. Refer to the following article for more information in recommended number of iSCSI sessions - here.

Should you opt out of the automatic reboot, the Azure VM Extension might report a status of Provisioning failed. Reviewing the extension details will indicate that a manual restart is necessary to finalize the iSCSI setup.

Once the setup is complete, the volume will become available at the target VM. At this point, you can initialize the volume from within the OS.

Step 8 - Volume lifecycle

Adding additional volume to a VM can be done by simply clicking the "+ Create a Volume" button and specifying the Name and Size of the new volume.

After refreshing the OS view of available volumes, it should become available.

To Resize a Volume, open the volume from the volume list within the Volume Group. Click "Edit Volume".

In the newly opened window, define the desired Provisioned capacity of the volume. Please note that Volume size can only be increased and not decreased. Click Save to initiate volume resizing.

Cloning a Volume is also done from the Volume entity in the Azure portal. Click "Clone Volume", enter the name of the Clone and confirm by clicking Create in the lower section of the screen.

To Delete a Volume, simply Click the "Delete Volume" button and confirm deletion by typing the volume name when prompted.

Furthermore, you can review the Activity Log by navigating to the Storage Pool entity and selecting Activity Log in the left hand side menu.

Decommission the service

To correctly decommission the service, follow the steps below:

1. Unmount volumes in guest OS

2. Delete Volumes from the Volume Group (see Step 8)

3. Delete Volume Group

   1. Navigate to the Volume Group you want to delete

   2. Click “Delete Volume Group” button located underneath the Volume Group name

4. Delete the Storage Pool

   

5. Delete the Service

Please ensure these steps are followed in this specific order, do not skip any. Deleting a Volume Group with Volumes will delete the Volume Group but will prevent deletion of the Storage Pool later on.

Test Plan

We suggest evaluating the following scenarios to confirm the operational suitability of the Native VM use case for your needs. Please share any feedback on alignment or challenges you may encounter.

1. Service Creation – Set up and deploy the service to confirm the provisioning process works as expected.

2. Compatibility with Your Azure Landing Zone – Verify that the solution integrates smoothly with the way you organize and manage your Azure resources.

3. Host Support – Ensure the service can be used with the VMs you intended (OS versions, SKUs).

4. Host Management – Provide feedback on how storage for your Host VMs is managed in the Azure Portal GUI.

5. Mount Volume (Windows) – Test mounting a volume group on an existing Windows Host VM, preferably using the AzureVM Extension automation provided.

6. Mount Volume (Linux) – Test mounting a volume group on an existing Linux Host VM, preferably using the AzureVM Extension automation provided.

7. Mount Volume During VM Creation – Test creating and attaching a volume to a newly created Host VM using the provided VM Extension.

8. Volume Lifecycle – Validate volume connection, disconnection, and deletion workflows.

9. Performance and Capacity – Confirm that the solution meets your performance and capacity requirements. Share any feedback on potential gaps or opportunities for improvement.

10. Shared Volumes – If you use shared volumes (such as Microsoft Cluster Shared Volumes), test compatibility and provide feedback on your experience.

11. Backup and Recovery – Validate that your preferred backup and recovery tools function correctly with the storage volumes.

12. Host Management Using API – If you plan to manage storage through automation or scripting via API, please test that and share any insights and feedback.

Next Steps

Once your trial period concludes, you have several paths to determine your next steps:

Share Your Feedback

We’d love to hear about your experience with this preview. Please take a moment to complete this form.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any issues during the deployment, please contact your Everpure representative for assistance. Occasional issues and typical resolutions to them are documented here.