Seagate EXOS X for AWS Outposts Deployment Guide
AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends the AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to virtually any data center, colocation space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS Outposts is ideal for workloads that require low latency access to on-premises systems or local data storage.
Seagate's Exos X Storage arrays offer block storage over the iSCSI protocol to EC2 instances running on
AWS Outposts Rack and Servers. This is especially helpful for Outposts 1U and 2U Servers which only contain instance (boot) storage. The Exos X Arrays have the same controller modules whether installed in a 2U24 All-Flash or Hybrid Array or a 5U84 Hybrid or all HDD Array, with raw storage capacity over
2PB and is easily expandable to over 6PB. As such the configuration of the Array is identical except for the type and number of storage devices.
Seagate's Exos X Storage Arrays support traditional RAID levels 0,1,10,5,50,6 as well as Seagate's ADAPT
distributed raid protection algorithm which provides greater durability and faster rebuilds than traditional RAID levels. Other features include host-side multipath, volume-based snapshots, and
Windows VSS support, as well as replication and tiering. Most of these features are outside the scope of this guide but links are provided below to help with the deployment of these particular features.
Exos X Arrays with AWS Outposts provides a best of class hybrid-cloud storage experience; a cost efficient, massive-scale private block storage platform for applications that require profiles from highperformance All-flash to high-capacity HDDs and everything in-between.
A simple diagram of Seagate Exos X iSCSI Array with AWS Outposts is below.
Requirements for deployment:
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An AWS Account with AWS Outposts configured and functional in the local DC.
An Exos X iSCSI Storage Array reachable from the Outposts Server or Rack.
EC2 instances on Outposts with routing to the on-premises network
Configuration of AWS Outposts to on-premises data sources can be found on this AWS BLOG post:
Deployment Steps:
The following steps provide the basic configuration for creating and mapping an iSCSI volume on Ubuntu
Linux with an Exos X iSCSI Array deployed on-premises. Note that the initial Array configuration steps are assumed to be complete which includes:
1. Exos Management Controller hostnames or IP's (2, one for each controller)
2. One or more iSCSI service ports from each controller (up to 8 total)
3. Storage pools / disk groups created under each controller (dg01,dg02)
These steps can be found in the Getting Started Guide:
https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/support-content/disk-arrays/exos-x4006/_shared/files/83-00007887-10-01-c_exos_x_4006_getting_started.pdf
Additional configuration for Storage Pools and other servers can be found in the Storage Management
Guide for 4006 Controllers:
https://www.seagate.com/content/dam/seagate/assets/support/disk-arrays/exos-x-40062u12/_shared/files/204468700-01-A_4006_SMG.pdf
The following example of CLI commands on the Exos X Storage Array show the steps to:
1. Create a 5TB volume using an existing disk-group (dg01)
2. Assign a host to a linux (ubuntu) initiator
3. Map the new volume and LUN (2) to iSCSI ports A0,1 and B0,1
Note: The Exos X CLI Reference Manual can be found here
Open a secure-shell, ssh, session to a Management Controller hostname or IP with sufficient privileges.
# ssh manage@exos-array
