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Install Simplyblock

Installing simplyblock for production on plain Linux (Docker) requires a few components to be installed. Furthermore, there are a couple of configuration steps to secure the network, ensure the performance, and data protection in the case of hardware or software failures.

Simplyblock provides two test scripts to automatically check the system's configuration. While those may not catch all edge cases, they can help to streamline the configuration check. This script can be run multiple times during the preparation phase to find missing configurations during the process.

Automatically check the configurations
# Configuration check for the control plane (management nodes)
curl -s -L https://install.simplyblock.io/scripts/prerequisites-cp.sh | bash

# Configuration check for the storage plane (storage nodes)
curl -s -L https://install.simplyblock.io/scripts/prerequisites-sn.sh | bash

Before Starting

A simplyblock production cluster consists of three different types of nodes in the plain Linux (Docker) variant of the deployment:

  1. Management nodes are part of the control plane which managed the cluster(s).
  2. Storage nodes are part of a specific storage cluster and provide capacity to the distributed storage pool. A production cluster requires at least three nodes.
  3. Secondary nodes are part of a specific storage cluster and enable automatic fail over for NVMe-oF connections. In a high-availability cluster, every primary storage node automatically provides a secondary storage node.

In a plain-linux deployment multiple storage nodes can reside on the same host. This has to be done on multi-socket systems as nodes have to be aligned with NUMA sockets. However, the management nodes require separate VMs.

A single control plane can manage one or more clusters. If started afresh, a control plane must be set up before creating a storage cluster. If there is a preexisting control plane, an additional storage cluster can be added to it directly.

More information on the control plane, storage plane, and the different node types is available under Simplyblock Cluster in the architecture section.

Network Preparation

For network requirements, see System Requirements.

On storage nodes, simplyblock can use either one network interface for both storage and management or separate interfaces (VLANs or subnets).

Important

It is possible to configure a storage cluster with NVMe-oF multipathing. This requires two storage VLANs per host, routed via separate NIC ports and switches for fault tolerance. This configuration can be used as an alternative to a HA networking setup with link aggregation (such as LACP, MLAG, and similar). See Storage Network Multipathing for the setup instructions.

To install simplyblock in a specific environment, these commands may have to be adopted to match its configuration.

Network interface Network definition Abbreviation Subnet
eth0 Control Plane control 192.168.10.0/24
eth1 Storage Plane storage 10.10.10.0/24