Connection Reset by Peer Node Isilon Over and Over Again

I posted an article on VMware vSphere and EMC Isilon (VMware vSphere and EMC Isilon – 1 datastore or many?) and covered some of the basics of SmartConnect when used with NFS datastores.  I talked about some of the abilities of SmartConnect, but didn't really cover how to configure it.

As mentioned in my previous post, SmartConnect Basic handles Round Robin IP distribution as nodes are added to a cluster, while SmartConnect Advanced handles advanced IP distribution every bit nodes are added, removed, or are unavailable, to the cluster.  In addition to managing IP addresses for a cluster, through DNS delegation, SmartConnect provides IP addresses for address resolution when connecting to a FQDN, rather than an IP accost.

SmartConnect Basic is included with the OneFS operating arrangement without an boosted licensing requirements.  SmartConnect Basic does provide the ability to use a DNS circular-robin connectedness policy to distribute connections to all nodes in a SmartConnect Zone.

Additionally, as nodes are taken offline for maintenance, or in the event of a failure, are no longer made available from the SmartConnect Zone.  This is not a loftier availability machinery, only rather a process that indicates that a node, or IP address, is no longer available to answer requests.  To truly leverage the round-robin benefits of SmartConnect Basic, clients take to continually perform DNS look-ups to decide if a destination node is available.

Configuring SmartConnect Basic
Configuring SmartConnect Basic is very straightforward. SmartConnect is a network component, click on Cluster > Networking from the Isilon Activity bill of fare in the Administrative Spider web Interface.

By default, a cluster will have at least one subnet, denoted as subnet0 hither. Every bit can exist seen, I take a SmartConnect zone of cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com and a DNS of 172.sixteen.1.1.

Clicking on the subnet0 hyperlink will permit us to configure subnet0 and the SmartConnect behaviour.

A couple things to take detect of are:

1. Pool0 IP range: 172.16.1.11-172.16.ane.xiii
2. SmartConnect settings
   • Zone name: cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com (need this for DNS)
   • Connection policy: Round Robin
   • SmartConnect service subnet: subnet0
   • IP allocation method: static
3. Pool members: Nodes 01-03

An important thing to remember about the IP range, is that at that place does non take to be a i-to-1 correlation betwixt nodes and IP addresses.  I'll get into that more subsequently, and even more than in Part Ii.  Likewise, SmartConnect Basic volition only allow a single SmartConnect zone, while SmartConnect Advanced will allow more than.

The SmartConnect settings are where you differentiate betwixt SmartConnect Bones and SmartConnect Advanced.

Considering SmartConnect Avant-garde requires an additional license, SmartConnect Basic is limits the Connection policy to Round Robin, and the IP Resource allotment method to Static .

A nice alert imprint lets us know that additional options require the SmartConnect Avant-garde license.

Later making all of the configuration settings, we need to confirm SmartConnect Bones is working.  To do this, open up a cmd prompt and ping cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com.

Nosotros will meet that we cannot resolve cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com. This is because we do not have whatsoever DNS entries for cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com.

Remember, that SmartConnect is going to hand out different IP addresses from nodes in our cluster in a Round Robin fashion.  With that existence said, we tin't simply make DNS A records to point to individual nodes in the cluster.  That would defeat the purpose of SmartConnect.

What nosotros are going to do instead, is make a DNS Delegation for the SmartConnect zone (cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com).  When a client queries their DNS server, the DNS server will delegate the DNS lookup to the SmartConnect Service IP.  The Isilon cluster will then service the query based on the Connexion policy configured for the SmartConnect zone.

In our DNS Management interface, we demand to make a New Delegation.

The delegated FQDN is our SmartConnect zone name, or cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com in this case.

I previously created a DNS A record, called smartconnect.isilon.jasemccarty.com, for my SmartConnect Service IP (172.16.1.10).  In the New Delegation Wizard, we tin can use either a FQDN or an IP address for the proper noun server (SmartConnect Service IP in this case).

In our Windows control prompt, we can now successfully ping cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com. Past pinging the Isilon cluster 3 times, we see the Round Robin Connection policy moving the FQDN from 1 IP address to the next.

I created a PowerShell script to perform multiple DNS requests and brandish the output for some boosted testing.

Write-Host "PowerShell Script to Query DNS Name/IP distribution" Write-Host "" #Clear any DNS cache Write-Host "Clear DNS cache" invoke-expression "ipconfig.exe /flushdns"  #Set the SmartConnect zone proper noun $SCZONE = "cluster.isilon.jasemccarty.com"  Write-Host "Query DNS for IP accost of $SCZONE" #Loop 12 times & perform NSLOOKUP of the SCZONE ForEach ($number in 1..12) {  try {   [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostEntry($SCZONE)|Select-Object Hostname, AddressList  }  catch {   Write-Host "No DNS Name $SCZONE" -foregroundcolor "crimson"  }  Start-Sleep -s 2 }        

When nosotros execute the PowerShell script, we come across the Round Robin Connection policy in action.

It is of import to remember, that with SmartConnect Basic, only bachelor IP addresses volition be given out.  With SmartConnect Bones, IP addresses are assigned 1-to-1 with nodes in the cluster.  Node 1 will get 1 IP address, Node 2 will become another, and then on. If a node, and resulting IP address, goes offline, that IP address will not exist handed out any longer.

When Node 2 is returned to service, the IP address will be handed out once again.

SmartConnect Basic
SmartConnect Basic is a pretty cool feature that is included with OneFS. It brings value by distributing a load across many IP addresses that are respectively assigned to multiple nodes.  It is intelligent enough to know which nodes are bachelor and take their IP accost out of the listing of available IPs when they are offline from scheduled maintenance or an unplanned outage.

If you are attention EMC Earth 2012, come up past the Hands On Labs and take HOL16 – Isilon Setup, Scaling, and Management Simplicity to accept hands on experience with SmartConnect.

If y'all would similar to know more about SmartConnect Avant-garde check out Configuring EMC Isilon SmartConnect – Function Two: SmartConnect Advanced.

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Source: https://www.jasemccarty.com/blog/configuring-emc-isilon-smartconnect-part-i-smartconnect-basic/