To add additional disk storage to your Charon-SSP Azure instance (for example, for storing virtual disk containers), perform the steps described below.
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Steps in the Azure Management Environment
Step 1: To start the process of adding a disk, open the disk section of your VM (from the VM details section) by clicking on Disks in the left-hand pane.
The following image shows a sample.
If no disk has been added before, only the system disk is displayed on this screen. The temporary storage disk is not shown.
To add a new disk, click on Create and attach new disk. This will display the disk configuration area. If you select to attach an existing disk, you will be offered the options to select it.
Step 2: Create a new disk.
The following sample shows the configuration options of a new disk:
Step 3: Enter the disk configuration data.
Add at least the following information in the disk creation area:
- Unique LUN
- Disk name
- Disk size and type
- Disk performance data
- Encryption setting
Once you have filled in all the necessary data, click on Save at the top of the screen to create the disk and attach it to your VM.
Step 4: Review the new disk configuration.
On the disk overview screen, you will see the selected (or newly created) disk. It is now attached to your VM.
Steps on the Charon-SSP Host System
Mounting a Newly Attached Volume Using the Storage Manager (AL Images only)
After the volume has been attached to the instance, it must be included in the Charon-SSP host system configuration. On Charon-SSP AL instances, this is achieved via the Charon-SSP Manager.
- Open the Charon-SSP Manager on your local system and connect to your Charon cloud instance.
- Select Tools > Azure Cloud > Storage Manager.
- In the Storage Manager window, perform the following steps:
- Select the new device.
- Click on the cog-wheel symbol.
- Only if required, select Format Volume to create a filesystem on the new device.
Please note: this will delete all data on the volume. - Click on the cog-wheel symbol and select Mount the Filesystem.
This will mount the new volume under /charon/storage/media/<UUID>/. The following image shows a sample storage manager window:
Once the filesystem has been mounted, the space is available to the Charon-SSP host system. After the first mount via the Storage Manager, the filesystem will be automatically mounted after a restart of the Charon host instance.
Mounting a Newly Attached Volume Manually
This is an example of how to mount (and if necessary partition) an additional disk on a Charon host system. Please refer to the Linux manual pages for details.
The general tasks on the Charon host system require to identify the disk, add a file system to it (if this has not been done before), and mount the disk on a suitable mount-point.
Step 1: Identify new disk
After logging in on the system, you can identify the new disk using the lsblk command:
# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 20G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 200M 0 part /boot/efi └─sda2 8:2 0 19,8G 0 part / sdb 8:16 0 200G 0 disk
In the example above, the new disk is /dev/sdb. The output shows no mount-point, i.e., the disk is not mounted yet. It also does not have any partitions.
Please note:
- A disk without partitions can also have a filesystem and data on it. Hence be sure that the disk really does not have any important data on it before you partition it.
- If a system has many disks, it is helpful to run the lsblk command before the new disk is added. This makes it easy to identify the new disk in the output after it has been added.
Step 2: Partition disk (fdisk or parted) - only if required
Please note: This step is only meant for new disks or to re-partition an existing disk. It will destroy all data on an existing disk.
Please refer to the manual pages ($ man parted and $ man fdisk) of your Linux distribution for details on the disk-partitioning commands. If the whole disk is used for one filesystem, it is not strictly required to create a partition. The decision of which disk layout is required depends on the customer requirements is the responsibility of the user.
After creating one partition on disk with fdisk (# fdisk /dev/sdb), the lsblk output shows the new partition:
# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 30G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 500M 0 part /boot └─sda2 8:2 0 29,5G 0 part / sdb 8:32 0 64G 0 disk └─sdb1 8:33 0 64G 0 part
Step3: Create a filesystem on the new partition(s)
Use the mkfs command to create a new filesystem. The selection of a filesystem depends on customer requirements. For example, to create an XFS filesystem, use
# mkfs.xfs /dev/sdb1
Please refer to the documentation of your Linux distribution for details about the mkfs command.
Step 4: Create a mount-point and mount the new filesystem
The following example shows how to create a mount-point and mount the file system. Please note that this is just a basic example. As the /dev/sdX device names are not guaranteed to be persistent, it is better to use names from the /dev/disk/by-* hierarchy (for example by-uuid) for permanent use.
# mkdir /space# mount /dev/sdb1 /space
The df command shows the mounted filesystem:
# df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 4065684 0 4065684 0% /dev tmpfs 4077556 16 4077540 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 4077556 9224 4068332 1% /run tmpfs 4077556 0 4077556 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/sda2 30929148 1677416 29251732 6% / /dev/sda1 508580 65512 443068 13% /boot tmpfs 815512 0 815512 0% /run/user/1000 /dev/sdb1 65923628 53272 62498580 1% /space
Step 5: Mount the disk automatically at system boot
To mount the disk automatically when the system boots, you must add it to the file /etc/fstab.
Please note: The device naming /dev/sdXN (e.g., /dev/sdb1) is not guaranteed to be persistent across reboots. Hence, it is advisable to use a persistent name from the /dev/disk/by* hierarchy (for example, the UUID).
You can use the ls or the blkid command to identify the UUID. Examples:
$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ total 0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 2020-08-14 21:14 0c523909-fb78-48cb-9dc8-e7a08197a673 -> ../../dm-4 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 2020-08-14 21:14 31fa8e8c-a6c0-45f7-9892-da13ba81e0e5 -> ../../sdb1 $ blkid |grep sdb1 /dev/sdb1: UUID="31fa8e8c-a6c0-45f7-9892-da13ba81e0e5" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="xfs" PARTUUID="db62deaa-f25f-43d4-b958-700c1c13d844"
To add the device to /etc/fstab perform the following steps:
- As the root user, open the file /etc/fstab with a text editor.
- Add the mount command to the file. Please note: The following is for illustration only. The exact options depend on your requirements.
Sample fstab entry:UUID=31fa8e8c-a6c0-45f7-9892-da13ba81e0e5 /space xfs defaults 1 2 - Save the file.
- Test if the automatic mount works correctly.
Unmounting a Volume
To unmount a volume before perform the following steps:
- Stop all Charon instances that might use the volume that is about to be unmounted.
- On host systems based on AL images:
- In Charon Manager go to Tools > Azure Cloud > Storage Manager.
- Select the volume.
- Click on the cogwheel symbol and select Unmount the Filesystem.
- On other systems:
- Use the command
# umount <device-path>or# umount <mount-point> - To make this permanent, remove the corresponding entry in /etc/fstab.
- Use the command
Please note: When you delete a virtual machine in Azure, by default, the disks that are attached to the VM will not be deleted. If you do not require a disk anymore, delete it to avoid unnecessary cost.