Using VMware vSphere High Availability with Storage Gateway - AWS Storage Gateway
Configure Your vSphere VMware HA ClusterDownload the .ova Image from the Storage Gateway consoleDeploy the Gateway(Optional) Add Override Options for Other VMs on Your ClusterActivate Your GatewayTest Your VMware High Availability Configuration

Using VMware vSphere High Availability with Storage Gateway

Storage Gateway provides high availability on VMware through a set of application-level health checks integrated with VMware vSphere High Availability (VMware HA). This approach helps protect storage workloads against hardware, hypervisor, or network failures. It also helps protect against software errors, such as connection timeouts and file share or volume unavailability.

vSphere HA works by pooling virtual machines and the hosts they reside on into a cluster for redundancy. Hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a failure, the virtual machines on a failed host are restarted on alternate hosts. Generally, this recovery happens quickly and without data loss. For more information about vSphere HA, see How vSphere HA Works in the VMware documentation.

Note

The time required to restart a failed virtual machine and re-establish the iSCSI connection on a new host depends on many factors, such as the host operating system and resource load, disk speed, network connection, and SAN/storage infrastructure. To minimize failover downtime, implement the recommendations outlined in Optimizing Gateway Performance.

To use Storage Gateway with VMware HA, we recommend doing the following things:

  • Deploy the VMware ESX .ova downloadable package that contains the Storage Gateway VM on only one host in a cluster.

  • When deploying the .ova package, select a data store that is not local to one host. Instead, use a data store that is accessible to all hosts in the cluster. If you select a data store that is local to a host and the host fails, then the data source might not be accessible to other hosts in the cluster and failover to another host might not succeed.

  • To prevent your initiator from disconnecting from storage volume targets during failover, follow the recommended iSCSI settings for your operating system. In a failover event, it can take from a few seconds to several minutes for a gateway VM to start in a new host in the failover cluster. The recommended iSCSI timeouts for both Windows and Linux clients are greater than the typical time it takes for failover to occur. For more information on customizing Windows clients' timeout settings, see Customizing Your Windows iSCSI Settings. For more information on customizing Linux clients' timeout settings, see Customizing Your Linux iSCSI Settings.

  • With clustering, if you deploy the .ova package to the cluster, select a host when you are prompted to do so. Alternately, you can deploy directly to a host in a cluster.

The following topics describe how to deploy Storage Gateway in a VMware HA cluster:

Configure Your vSphere VMware HA Cluster

First, if you haven’t already created a VMware cluster, create one. For information about how to create a VMware cluster, see Create a vSphere HA Cluster in the VMware documentation.

Next, configure your VMware cluster to work with Storage Gateway.

To configure your VMware cluster

  1. On the Edit Cluster Settings page in VMware vSphere, make sure that VM monitoring is configured for VM and application monitoring. To do so, set the following values for each option:

    • Host Failure Response: Restart VMs

    • Response for Host Isolation: Shut down and restart VMs

    • Datastore with PDL: Disabled

    • Datastore with APD: Disabled

    • VM Monitoring: VM and Application Monitoring

  2. Fine-tune the sensitivity of the cluster by adjusting the following values:

    • Failure interval – After this interval, the VM is restarted if a VM heartbeat isn't received.

    • Minimum uptime – The cluster waits this long after a VM starts to begin monitoring for VM tools' heartbeats.

    • Maximum per-VM resets – The cluster restarts the VM a maximum of this many times within the maximum resets time window.

    • Maximum resets time window – The window of time in which to count the maximum resets per-VM resets.

    If you aren't sure what values to set, use these example settings:

    • Failure interval: 30 seconds

    • Minimum uptime: 120 seconds

    • Maximum per-VM resets: 3

    • Maximum resets time window: 1 hour

If you have other VMs running on the cluster, you might want to set these values specifically for your VM. You can't do this until you deploy the VM from the .ova. For more information on setting these values, see (Optional) Add Override Options for Other VMs on Your Cluster.

Download the .ova Image from the Storage Gateway console

To download the .ova image for your gateway

  • On the Set up gateway page in the Storage Gateway console, select your gateway type and host platform, then use the link provided in the console to download the .ova as outlined in Set up a Tape Gateway.

Deploy the Gateway

In your configured cluster, deploy the .ova image to one of the cluster's hosts.

To deploy the gateway .ova image

  1. Deploy the .ova image to one of the hosts in the cluster.

  2. Make sure the data stores that you choose for the root disk and the cache are available to all hosts in the cluster. When deploying the Storage Gateway .ova file in a VMware or on-prem environment, the disks are described as paravirtualized SCSI disks. Paravirtualization is a mode where the gateway VM works with the host operating system so the console can identify the virtual disks that you add to your VM.

    To configure your VM to use paravirtualized controllers

    1. In the VMware vSphere client, open the context (right-click) menu for your gateway VM, and then choose Edit Settings.

    2. In the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box, choose the Hardware tab, select the SCSI controller 0, and then choose Change Type.

    3. In the Change SCSI Controller Type dialog box, select the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller type, and then choose OK.

(Optional) Add Override Options for Other VMs on Your Cluster

If you have other VMs running on your cluster, you might want to set the cluster values specifically for each VM. For instructions, see Customize an Individual Virtual Machine in the VMware vSphere online documentation.

To add override options for other VMs on your cluster

  1. On the Summary page in VMware vSphere, choose your cluster to open the cluster page, and then choose Configure.

  2. Choose the Configuration tab, and then choose VM Overrides.

  3. Add a new VM override option to change each value.

    Set the following values for each option under vSphere HA - VM Monitoring:

    • VM Monitoring: Override Enabled - VM and Application Monitoring

    • VM monitoring sensitivity: Override Enabled - VM and Application Monitoring

    • VM Monitoring: Custom

    • Failure interval: 30 seconds

    • Minimum uptime: 120 seconds

    • Maximum per-VM resets: 5

    • Maximum resets time window: Within 1 hrs

Activate Your Gateway

After the .ova for your gateway is deployed, activate your gateway. The instructions about how are different for each gateway type.

To activate your gateway

Test Your VMware High Availability Configuration

After you activate your gateway, test your configuration.

To test your VMware HA configuration

  1. Open the Storage Gateway console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/home.

  2. On the navigation pane, choose Gateways, and then choose the gateway that you want to test for VMware HA.

  3. For Actions, choose Verify VMware HA.

  4. In the Verify VMware High Availability Configuration box that appears, choose OK.

    Note

    Testing your VMware HA configuration reboots your gateway VM and interrupts connectivity to your gateway. The test might take a few minutes to complete.

    If the test is successful, the status of Verified appears in the details tab of the gateway in the console.

  5. Choose Exit.

You can find information about VMware HA events in the Amazon CloudWatch log groups. For more information, see Getting Tape Gateway Health Logs with CloudWatch Log Groups.