Clusterducks

Getting Started

clusterducks is designed for intuitive use, though learning the concepts initially may take some time.

To help you get started, a series of alerts are visible on your control panel dashboard after first install or creation of new networks. Each alert indicates a problem that must be resolved before the network is operational.

Clients, Networks and Servers

Most items in clusterducks are tied to one object or another, as a mark of ownership:

  • Clients are the highest level of ownership
  • Users and Networks are owned by Clients
  • Servers, Devices, Containers, Menus (and all filesystems, because of replication) are owned by Networks

When clusterducks is first configured, a client is automatically created and associated with the admin user. No networks are created for you.

Adding your first network

Before a server or any devices can be configured, you must have a network:

  1. Go to the Networks page
  2. Click the New Network button
  3. Enter the new network name
  4. (Optional) Configure any network limits (MaxNetworks, MaxServers, etc)
  5. Select which client the network will be associated with
  6. Click Add
  7. Click the Edit icon for the new network
  8. Ensure that the appropriate tunnel server is selected

Voila! Your new network is now ready for configuration!

Configure a Tunnel Server

Tunnel servers are used to proxy commands to remote nodes. These servers are useful because they hide the actual ZFS nodes from the Internet.

  1. Go to the Tunnel Servers page
  2. Click the New Tunnel Server button
  3. Alias is a human-readable name for the tunnel server, it can be whatever you want.
  4. IP is a routable address that must be reachable by the panel webserver
  5. Click Add

You may need to click the "refresh" icon to force the table to update with the new server.

Register the Master Server

The first server that is configured is called the master server. It can be converted to a slave node later, if desired.

  1. Go to the Servers page
  2. Click the New Server button
  3. Enter the new server name; this is used for aesthetics only. The server name does not need to be a resolveable hostname.
  4. Enter the server iSCSI IP; this is used for network traffic between devices and storage nodes. It must be reachable by devices that the server will provide storage services for.
  5. Enter the server Replication IP; this must be reachable by any slave servers. If left blank, the iSCSI IP will be used instead. It is strongly recommended to use a dedicated network for replication traffic on medium to large networks.
  6. ZFS Pool Name is the name of a manually created ZFS pool. Any needed filesystems are created on the pool automatically:
    • poolname/iscsi/{devices,containers,ctemplates,groups,volumes}
      • Live filesystems
    • poolname/vdisks
      • Persistent data storage
    • poolname/erator
      • "Trash" data to be eliminated at administrator's leisure
  7. Tunnel Port is a port forward that will be opened on the network's selected tunnel server
  8. Click Add
  9. Go to the Networks page
  10. Click the Edit icon for the current network
  11. Ensure that your newly-added server is selected as the master server
  12. Save network settings
  13. Execute the installer on the new server