Getting started with NexSan E60VT - Installing & Initial configuration

Physically installing the E60

Hello, this is just a quick note to say that I will not go into the physical installation of this beast - other than to suggest that you pick somewhere LOW DOWN as you are not going to want to lift this past shoulder height!
It's also worth pointing out that the E60 version that I have sticks out of the back of our rack by quite a bit, this is to be expected as the length of the unit is 1026mm (including the front panel).  Inside the box was the E60, rack mount kit, instructions CD, Power cables and a serial cable.

Configuring the NexSan E60

The instruction CD comes with manuals for a variety of products so make sure to pick the correct one.

The guide for setting up the system is the Nexsan RAID Storage User Guide which is in itself a catch all for Nexsan SATABoy, SATABEAST and E Series models.

When I first started trying to connect to the SAN, I could not find the NexSan on the network - I had neglected to press the miniscule sw0 switch next to the MGMT COM port, shown below

Configuring the IP address

We need to install the NexsanTools_x.x.x.exe to "find" the new SAN on the network, this can be found on the supplied CD in the Tools folder (or you can download NexsanTools_x.x.x.exe from nexsansupport.imation.com/article/AA-00322/0/Nexsan-Storage-Tools.html ).  I installed all of the Nexsan tools features on a server that I was going to connect the SAN to (multipathing features require that NexSan Tools be installed on the server in any case).  A restart might be required after installation.

Search for IP Configuration Tool in the windows start menu and screen and you should find the NexSan IP configuration tool. You can then configure the IP address of the device

Logon to web interface
Browse to the IP that you configured for the SAN
I was taken straight to the "checklist" tab which prompted me to register the device with NexSan which I did.  I decied to then follow the rest of the steps in the quick start in order:

1. Set the admin password (strongly advised) and the user password
2.  Set the "friendly" RAID system name (this appears in email communications and the webinterface to help identify the device)
3. I was prompted to add a second network cable for the second management port and assign an IP so I did that
4. Set the E-Mail SMTP server settings - it was not immediately obvious where to setup recipients - to configure these click configure in the far right column of the recipients table, not sure why but I missed that the first 2 times I looked at that screen
5. Setup time settings via the NTP server on our network
6. Setup SNMP settings
7. Setup my volumes using the Quickstart method as part of the "checklist" I had 20x 2TB disks to use for our backup solution so opted for RAID6 + 2 pool hot spares
8. Setup the "Default Access" to Deny as opposed to R/W!

Performing all of those actions gave me nice green ticks next to all checklist items.

Nice!

It is possible to get back to the checklist screen by clicking on the Home tab on the left hand side and clicking on the Review Checklist Button

Configure fibre connection to a Server 2012 R2 host
Make sure that the Multipath I/O feature is installed (I believe that this is installed automatically when NexSan tools are installed).
I assume that you have physically installed the fibre card and cables (ideally with redundant connections so that your host access tab on the NexSan looks like this:

On the SAN:
Click Configure Host Access on the left hand pane
Click on the hosts tab - you should see the fibre connections to your server

I then clicked on the Groups tab and created a new group (with my severname as the group name) I added both of the hosts into the group

You can add a more friendly name for each host connection (Recommended)

 Next you can click on the access tab

On the far right next to each of the host names click the Access button

Set the required access to each of the volumes you have created (in my case R/W)

On the server

It should now be as simple as going into the Disk Managment MMC snapin and clicking on rescan disks in the Action menu

 

You should see the Unkown offline disks, make them online, Initilise them (right click and click initilise) and partition them as required!

Done.