Installation Best Practices
Software Recommendations
Refer to the General System Requirements article to view supported operating systems and kernels for the Lightbits cluster software.
Recommendations Validation
| Parameters | Recommendation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Bios version | Latest | Lightbits recommends keeping the server BIOS up to date. See the vendor media for additional information. |
| Lightbox version | Latest | Lightbits recommends keeping Lightbits software up to date, to benefit from the new functionality and improved stability. Use the “lbcli version” command to check your installed version. |
| Boot drive size | Minimum of 128 GB | Lightbits’ recommendation is to set a separate partition for etcd. |
| SSD FW version | Latest | Lightbits recommends keeping the drive’s firmware up to date. See the vendor media for additional information. The “nvme list” command displays the current firmware for each installed drive. |
NTP Sync
Having the Lightbits cluster nodes stay time synced is crucial to the cluster’s functionality, Lightbits provides events (lbcli list events), for time drifts between servers. If a time drift has been detected, you will need to force the NTP client sync. The following text describes how to do that.
For Chrony:
# chronyc -a 'burst 4/4'
# chronyc -a makestep
For NTP:
# service ntpd stop
# ntpd -gq
# service ntpd start
For getting the most accurate command based on the distro running or latest changes on the NTP client, refer to the relevant ntpd/chronyd pages.
Periodic System Health Check
It is recommended to periodically run the following set of commands:
| Parameter | Expected Value |
|---|---|
lbcli list nodes | All nodes are active. |
lbcli list server | All servers are in “NoRiskOfServiceLoss” state. |
lbcli list volumes | All volumes are “FullyProtected”. |
lbcli list events | No active critical events. |
NTP/Chrony config (cat/etc/ntpd.conf) | All nodes are synced with the same NTP server and have no time drifts. |
Utilized storage (lbcli get cluster -o yaml) | The recommended cluster utilization is up to 80%. To calculate the current utilization, use the following formula:
|
Generating Logs
You can gather logs from a Lightbits server by running the following command from a server:
# lbcli fetch logs --path=logs-`hostname -s`.tar.gz
This will generate a tarball log file for the server into the current working directory. Copy the tarball out using Winscp or SCP to your computer or another storage location. Optionally, you can delete the generated tarball.
To gather the logs from all members of the cluster, repeat the command from the other servers.
Hardware Recommendations
The following table defines the major hardware requirements and guidelines for Lightbits storage nodes.
| Requirement | Guideline |
|---|---|
| CPU | 32 cores per Lightbits instance |
| RAM | Each Lightbits instance requires a minimum of 128 GB of RAM. For precise memory sizing based on specific capacity requirements, please consult with Lightbits. |
| Networking | IPMI: Should be connected Access NIC: 1GbE Data NIC: 25GbE or higher (100GbE recommended) |
| Boot Device | 2x SATA or NVMe in RAID1 |
| etcd volume | The drive or volume hosting etcd should support at least 10K IOPs at 4K blocksize. Any healthy SSD should provide this requirement. Note that ETCD can reside on LVM or on the boot device. |
| NVMe Storage Drives | Six drives or more (capacity based on storage requirements), |
- Lightbits storage nodes can have one or two running Lightbits software instances.