In this post I will describe how-to add an extra data disk to a single node Nutanix Community Edition (CE) cluster. Before we start I want to point out that more then 4 disks is not within the requirements for CE. See: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Nutanix-Community-Edition-Getting-Started-v2_1:top-sysreqs-ce-r.html (Boot drive is not counted within those 4 drives). And CE is not for production workloads.
Some pointers:
After reboot the added drive is gone again 😉 And you cluster is broken.
This is not for nvme drives.
Added SSD’s can be seen as HDD, update you hcl.json
It is easier to just reinstall the CE node/cluster 😉
Oké lets start. My CE installation is currently having the following layout:
- 200GB Disk for CVM;
- 500GB Disk for Data.
Resulting in:
On normal production clusters, you will just plugin the extra disks and the storage pool will automatically extends his capacity. With CE this will not happen automatically. So I need to stop the cluster, shutdown the cvm, shutdown the node, add the disk and startup the node again. When the node is booted login to the CVM and shutdown the CVM again (sudo shutdown -h now). Now login to AHV with the root account and check if the new disk is shown. Run command: lsblk
Make a note of the disk name. In my case it is “sdc”
Now we must get the id-name of the disk. Run: ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/
Make a not of the id, in my case: scsi-1NUTANIX_NFS_4_0_1625_30031580_95b0_4ddf_b42c_6288ef2cceed
We need to add the disk to the CVM. Run: virsh list –all and make a note of the CVM name, in my case: NTNX-c91119e1
Then edit this domain with the command: virsh edit <cvmname>
Now add the disk by adding an extra disk block. The easiest method is copying the already present data disk and past it with the correct information. In my case I copied the block from the already present 500GB data disk. Make sure you change them all correct. As my node is a nested configuration (Running nutanix Ce in nutanix ce 😉 ) I cant use the hdparm -i command. If you are using a hardware node (not nested) then grep the serial number via: hdparm -i /dev/<disk-name>
The editor is vi, so all command are vi based. Do a quick google search if you want to know how the vi editor works.
When the config is saved start the CVM: virsh start <cvmname>
Make sure you dont start the cluster. Run lsblk to see the disk name the new disk has in the CVM. In my case: sdb
As we can see the new disk is present in the CVM we need to partition and format the new disk. We do this with the following commands:
- sudo /home/nutanix/cluster/bin/repartition_disks -d /dev/<newname>
- sudo /home/nutanix/cluster/bin/clean_disks -p /dev/<name_partition_name>
Now you can reboot the CVM (shutdown -r now) or mount the disk manually (sudo /home/nutanix/cluster/bin/mount_disks) Check if the disks are mounted: lsblk
The new disks should have a stargate disk name 😉
Now start the cluster and the extra disk should be added and the storage pool should be extended.
