Configuring the NTNX Docker Plugin VM

The Nutanix Docker Volume Plugin (DVP) enables Docker Containers to use storage persistently. Normally, if a container is moved from one container machine to another, storage does not move with it. The Acropolis Container Services (ACS) provide a storage volume plugin that enables Docker deployments to be integrated with Nutanix external storage systems and enable data volumes to persist beyond the lifetime of a single container machine host. This opens up all new possibilities for cloud-native apps while expanding container support for traditional workloads.

Key Features:

  • Simplified Container Management: easily spin up Docker hosts on Nutanix clusters to build and run stateful containerized applications
  • Container Plus Virtualized Applications: A common platform that supports both virtualized and containerized applications allow teams to explore and utilize containers without creating an infrastructure silo
  • Enterprise-Grade storage backing: The Nutanix Distributed File System (DSF) provides distributed access, built-in resiliency with self-healing capabilities, and many data protection and compression technologies

Requirements:

The plugin has been qualified on Centos 7, Rhel 7.3 and Ubuntu 16.04.2. It may work for older versions, but hasn’t been tested.

Installation:

Installed the iscsi initiators utilities:

$ yum install iscsi-initiator-utils

Start the iscsi daemon:

$ systemd-tmpfiles --create
$ systemctl start iscsid
$ systemctl enable iscsid

Ensure iscsid is running using:

$ systemctl status iscsid

Once you’ve configured the Docker Host VM, the plugin can be installed as follows:

$ docker plugin install ntnx/nutanix_volume_plugin:latest PRISM_IP="prism-ip" DATASERVICES_IP="dataservices-ip" PRISM_PASSWORD="prism-passwd" PRISM_USERNAME="username" DEFAULT_CONTAINER="some-storage-container" --alias nutanix

Notes:

  • PRISM_IP: Prism management IP address of the Nutanix cluster
  • DATASERVICES_IP: Data service IP configured in the Nutanix cluster
  • PRISM_USERNAME: Username of a Prism user
  • PRISM_PASSWORD: The corresponding password for the Prism user
  • DEFAULT_CONTAINER: This is the name of an existing storage container on the Nutanix cluster. This storage container will be used to store the created persistent volumes

Check if plugin is installed and enabled using:

$ docker plugin ls

  ID                  NAME                DESCRIPTION                        ENABLED
  db1d93096fb9        nutanix:latest      Nutanix volume plugin for docker   true