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IBM Fusion Access SAN

Official documentation:

Tested with:

Component Version
OpenShift v4.20.4
OpenShift Virt v4.20.x
IBM Fussion Access for SAN 2.12.0

Prerequisites

Create an IBMid

https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en/signup?formid=urx-19776

Request a 60day IBM Storage Fusion trail version

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/storage-fusion/storage/2.6.0?topic=overview-storage-fusion-trial-version

Create an Entitlement key

https://myibm.ibm.com/products-services/containerlibrary

Create an OpenShift cluster

  • With at least 3 worker nodes each with ~32 GB memory
  • All nodes need a shared disk. Via iSCSI, FC and KVM
  • OpenShift internal registry is running with storage

Warning

OpenShift internal registry is mandatory because IBM Fusion Access for SAN builds via a container image with the kernel module.

It means you need highly available storage for the internal registry to start highly available storage.

Install Operator

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/fusion-software/2.12.0?topic=san-installing-fusion-access-operator

Create a Kubernetes pull secret

with the entitlement key from above:

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oc create secret -n ibm-fusion-access generic fusion-pullsecret \
--from-literal=ibm-entitlement-key=<ibm-entitlement-key>

At this point, there is a demo video available

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayXgD4e61K4

Creating the FusionAccess CR

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/fusion-software/2.12.0?topic=san-creating-fusionaccess-cr

Creating a storage cluster

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/fusion-software/2.12.0?topic=san-creating-storage-cluster

Creating a filesystem

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/fusion-software/2.12.0?topic=san-creating-filesystem

Notes for various lab environments

Add a shared disk to all worker nodes

Plain KVM envrioment

I deployed via https://github.com/RedHat-EMEA-SSA-Team/hetzner-ocp4. Now let's add a shared lvm disk becaus all is running on one node.

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lvcreate -L1T -n fusion vg0

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virsh attach-disk  /dev/mapper/vg0-fusion  sdb --type raw --targetbus scsi --cache none --persistent --live --wwn 5000c500155a3456

[root@pluto ~]# virsh attach-disk demo-compute-0 /dev/mapper/vg0-fusion  sdb  --targetbus scsi --cache none --persi
stent --live --wwn 5000c500155a3456
Disk attached successfully

[root@pluto ~]# virsh attach-disk demo-compute-1 /dev/mapper/vg0-fusion  sdb  --targetbus scsi --cache none --persi
stent --live --wwn 5000c500155a3456
Disk attached successfully

iSCSI & RHCOS

This is ugly as hel, but works for quick testing.

2025-12-30 2025-12-30 Contributors: Robert Bohne