External Storage Backend for OpenStack

You can configure an external NetApp ONTAP storage system as the storage backend for StarlingX OpenStack, as an alternative or in addition to the internal Ceph storage backend.

The external storage backend is integrated into OpenStack through:

• NetApp Trident CSI for storage provisioning

• Helm overrides for service-level backend selection

• ONTAP FlexVols and LUNs for backing storage objects

The following storage protocols are supported:

• NFS (ontap-nas): file-based storage, commonly used for Cinder volumes, Cinder backups, Glance images, and Nova ephemeral storage.

• iSCSI (ontap-san): block storage, primarily used for Cinder volumes.

• FC (ontap-san with FCP): block storage over Fibre Channel fabrics, including multipath I/O support for Cinder volumes.

You can enable more than one protocol on the same system, but only in supported combinations. For more information, see Supported NetApp Storage Combinations.

For prerequisites, deployment, and troubleshooting information, see OpenStack External Storage Support Using NetApp.