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Networking and Active Directory Configuration for FlashArray File Services

Discover how to configure networking and Active Directory on an Everpure FlashArray to optimise file services for seamless access and security.
Walkthrough | 1107 min.
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00:00
In this video, we'll be navigating the steps to configure flash array networking for file access. So, let's get into it. Configuring the networking services required to run file services on your Pure Storage flash array is a pretty simple process and can be accomplished in one of two ways. There's the, let's call it hard mode, which is the manual process which I'll walk through
00:24
first, and there's the much easier and simplified configuration wizard that I would recommend most folks go through to make that process a little bit easier. But I'm going to show you the manual process just so you can kind of see under the covers what the configuration wizard is actually doing. So let's go ahead and get into our Pure Storage flash array and see how this is done.
00:45
So as you see here, I've already logged into our flash array system in my lab environment. I'm at the dashboard screen, or our main screen. First thing we want to do is go down to storage on the left-hand side. Then we're going to go into servers, right? So when we're talking about file services on a flash array, we refer to those as servers, right?
01:03
So under servers, we've got a default server which is an array server. We do support additional servers and in more advanced configurations, which we'll get into in a later video, but just know if you're just trying to get some simple, let's say file shares up for home directories or whatnot, using the default array server will be just fine. So we click on array server, it's gonna bring
01:25
us into the server configuration parameters. You'll see we have directory exports, which we have none as of yet. We see the interfaces available to us on the box in the interface section. We have subnets, we have DNS, Active Directory, users, local groups, all these different ways to authenticate against these directory exports.
01:46
But the first thing we need to do is create a virtual interface that the file services will listen on and clients will use to access. So under the interface section, on the far right here, if you click the little burger menu, the little dropdown, you'll see two options. You'll see create virtual network interface or create LACP bonding. Now, we do support LACP bonding for more
02:10
advanced networking configurations if you, you know, if your network folks want to, you know, bond mix together at the switch layer to drive more, You know, pipe to your flash array, completely supported. We just won't be walking through that in this demo because the majority of folks or majority of what we see in the wild is folks just using the IF or the virtual network interface.
02:28
So I'll go ahead and click that option. And that's going to bring up this little wizard. We need to give the VF a name, so I'm going to be really creative and call it file and just know that no special characters here, no dots, no dashes, nothing like that to keep the naming simple and so it wasn't
02:44
won't air out. So we're just gonna use file VF for the IP address, it'll be 10.21.204.153. I don't need to use any optional subnetting because I'm basically working with a pretty flat network in this environment, but if you have some options where you've got multiple VLANs or something like that, you may need to use the subnet options here.
03:05
And then for the sub-interfaces, I'm going to go and click this little pick menu. And on my box I've only got one interface per controller that I can use for my file access, and that's E5 on controller 0 and 1. And since this is a lab where I'm doing a demo here, that's totally fine, but for a production environment, we highly recommend that you use 2 interfaces per
03:28
controller for additional throughput, as well as availability. So just remember one is good for lab, you want 2 for production. So with that, we'll go ahead and click select. And you can see here I've got kind of all the information in the window filled out, so I'll go ahead and click add.
03:45
And that takes a second and just like that we've got our interface. I'll go down to the type box here and type in VF just so you see that it was created. So it's right here, file, and you see my IP management of 10.21.153. Now the next thing to talk about is the DNS. Now, but by default, we're going to go ahead and use the DNS servers of the management interface on your flash array,
04:09
and then for my lab environment, that's totally fine. If you have a requirement though where depending on your environment and the scale of your environment that you need additional DNS servers for file server access or hostname NS lookups and whatnot, definitely you would add those here by clicking the plus sign, and you could walk through the name, the domain suffix, and the additional DNS entries here.
04:32
And just know that that is available in those, you know, More advanced configurations, I would say, if you need that. But again, for my lab environment, I can just use the DNS servers that my Active Directory domain controllers are providing for my management network.
04:47
And speaking of Active Directory, the next thing we want to do is we need to go ahead and create the Active Directory account that the file server will be listed on when we get into the next video where, you know, I show using Active Directory shares and permissions to access and export. So on the far right here, we're going to go ahead and click the little plus sign.
05:06
For the name, uh, let's call it, uh, I'll just call it FA file test. The domain in my environment is TE Lab.com. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and use a pre-existing AD computer account to make things a little easier, but if you have the appropriate Active Directory permissions and you know the distinguished name for the path that you want to place this in computer account in,
05:29
you know, by all means go ahead and create it all through this process. I just know that the computer account already exists in my lab environment, so I'm just gonna say use existing account, and we called it FA file, and then I'm gonna use my AD creds basically to authenticate, so. Type in my creds here and give my password.
05:48
And then in my environment, uh, TLS is optional, um, so I can go and select that radio, but if your environment you're a little bit more secure, a little bit more locked down, and you require TLS mode, obviously use that checked as required or selected. From there I'll go ahead and click create.
06:04
And like that, we've got our computer name, um for FA file, so now we're, you know, authenticated against Active Directory. Now again, if you wanted to use local user accounts, which we'll get into in a future video, obviously that option is available down here. In the bottom below, but just like that, that is the networking requirements needed to get FA
06:24
file access up and running, specifically if you want to do like some SMB shares and whatnot in your environment. So what I'm going to do is quickly clean some of this up and show you how the wizard just kind of simplifies this all in a straightforward manner. So stay tuned, give me one second. All right, and we're back and I did the quick little clean up and just to show you that
06:42
Nothing is pre-existing if I go into a RAID server again. You'll, and I'll say like the type, let's go back to the VF. You'll notice there's no VF for file VI; you just see the management VI. The Active Directory area has been cleared out, so everything is back to kind of like fresh out of the box. So if I go back up to servers.
07:02
Now you notice here on the far right, hopefully you can see that it says initial configuration. Now this will launch the FAA File Services wizard, which will make things a little easier. A lot easier to configure compared to what I just walked through. So if I click initial configuration, we're going to get this File Services setup name. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to name the VF.
07:22
So again, I'm going to name it FileVI, and again the same naming parameters are here as well. No dashes, no dots, no special characters, so keep it pretty pretty, pretty generic basically. Uh, we don't need to use the VLAN subnet. Uh, the gateway for my network is 10.20.1204.1.
07:40
Again, my IP address will remain the same that we used before for the VI. Which is 10.21.204.153. We're going to select the same subinterfaces, so controller 0 and 1 with E5. And then, you know, I'm not using jumbo frames, so I'll just go and leave the MTU size at 1500. Go ahead and click next. This is where I was talking about like,
08:03
remember we talked about when the management figures if you need to use multiple or a different DNS configuration, you could do that here so you could create a new one or you can use the existing one. And again for my lab environment for my purposes, the management interface with my domain suffix and the DNS servers is perfectly fine for what we're going to be doing, so I'll leave that there.
08:23
But again, just know, if you have a need for additional DNS resolution, you would hit this drop down and you would select create new. Go and click next. We're gonna go ahead and set it up for Active Directory. Again, if you wanted, you could use this for local user only.
08:38
But for future videos, we're gonna be using some AD security rules. So we'll just use Active Directory. Again, for this, I will name it FA File Test. Now this is not the machine name in the domain. This is just what's going to show up in the Purity. The domain is TE Lab.
08:55
dot com. Again, I'm going to use an existing account. So again, the same thing applies if you have the appropriate permissions and you know the distinguished name of where you want the computer object to be created within your OU structure, go ahead and put it here, but I'm going to use the existing account. Computer name is FA file.
09:13
Again, I will use my domain creds, and again I will go ahead and leave the TLS as optional. You need it required, leave that selected. And then this time, unlike when we created the Active Directory in the manual process, it's like, hey, what’s the VI you're going to be using and notice it had already populated with the one that I created in the
09:31
first step. So I'll go ahead and click next. We're going to go and get the summary screen. I'll click complete setup and then you're going to kind of see it step through each of these processes. So let's go ahead and click that. So we've created the virtual interface, we enabled it, we've got all the AD stuff, everything checked out here.
09:49
So we'll go ahead and click on continue in server detail, which is going to take me into the, you know, the details of the array server and just like before, I'll go into type. I'll type in, you see that the VIF got created here. There's the file 1021, 204 153.
10:05
All that looks good. The DNS didn't change because I'm not doing anything specific here, but notice, you know, it says management and file, but it's still using the same DNS servers because we didn't, we don't have any need to change that.
10:22
The Active Directory account FA file test is there, the domain is TE Lab.com, and the computer name is FAFile, so all that got added as well. Again, for our next video when we walk through actually creating some exports and creating some, you know, some actual Windows AD home directories and shares like that.
10:39
And just like that, using the file services configuration wizard, we have our FlashRay box set up and configured to start exporting and sharing out some file shares to Active Directory users, which we'll be covering in the next video that you can find out here on Pure 360. So, till the next time, thank you for watching and I hope you have a great day.

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