Blogs

Hitachi Vantara Storage Automation: Ansible Playbooks

By Chao Ho Chu posted 08-12-2025 17:23

  

Introduction

Automating storage management tasks improves efficiency, reduces operational risk, and ensures consistent results. Hitachi Vantara maintains several repositories with Ansible playbooks designed for different environments:

VSP One Block repo – General block storage tasks for VSP One Block systems

HIQ repo – Hitachi iQ integration for AI analytics platform

Oracle VSP repo – Oracle RAC storage provisioning

SAP HANA repo – SAP HANA storage provisioning

Below are quick references

Repository

Description Playbook Highlights

hv-playbooks-vspone-block

VSP One Block automation

Auto-expand LDEVs, Jira-based LUN provisioning, NVMe namespace setup

hv-playbooks-hiq

Hitachi iQ integration

Automate the setup and configuration of Kubernetes cluster for HIQ

hv-playbook-Oracle-VSP

Oracle RAC provisioning

Storage ports, host groups, storage pools, volume mapping pipelines

hv-playbooks-sap

SAP HANA TDI provisioning

Storage port and host group setup, pool and volume creation, SAP-compliant mapping

Playbook Highlights

Repository: hv-playbooks-vspone-block 

Auto-Expand High-Utilization LDEVs

Monitors LDEVs exceeding 80% usage, automatically expands them by 10%, and notifies admins. Designed for scheduled, proactive capacity management. Read more about this playbook at our community page.

Automating Storage Provisioning from Jira Tickets

Integrates Jira with Ansible to automate LUN provisioning by polling requests, creating LDEVs, and updating tickets—streamlining request-to-deployment.  Read more about this playbook at our community page

Provision LDEV to NVM Subsystem in VSM

Automates creating an LDEV, moving it to a VSM, and presenting it as a namespace to an NVM subsystem, simplifying multi-step provisioning.

Delete GAD Pair and SVOL

Ensures safe cleanup of secondary volumes after GAD pair deletion by verifying states, unmapping, moving volumes back to the meta pool, and deleting them.

End-to-End FC-NVMe GAD Pair Configuration

Executes a full pipeline to create active-active NVMe replication, including pool creation, port setup, host groups, remote connections, and GAD pair creation.  Read more about this playbook at our community page.

End-to-End TrueCopy Pair Configuration

Automates TrueCopy pair lifecycle: port configuration, remote connection, LDEV and host group creation, and TrueCopy pair creation, split, resync, and deletion. Read more about this playbook at our community page.

Repository: hv-playbooks-hiq 

This repository contains Ansible playbooks to automate the full lifecycle setup of a Kubernetes cluster. The playbooks cover:

Installing and configuring HAProxy and Keepalived for high availability with a Virtual IP (VIP)

Installing Kubernetes on control plane and worker nodes

Deploying essential applications and services including Jupyter Notebook, MinIO (object storage), Local Path Storage (persistent storage), and PostgreSQL (database)

These playbooks simplify cluster deployment and management by automating critical infrastructure and service setup.

Repository: hv-playbook-Oracle-VSP

This repository provides an Ansible playbook solution for LUN provisioning tailored to Oracle RAC environments on Hitachi VSP Block storage. The automation is orchestrated through a master pipeline (master.yml) that executes a sequence of playbooks to:

  • Configure storage ports
  • Create and configure host groups with WWNs
  • Create parity groups with required RAID settings
  • Create a storage pool with multiple pool volumes
  • Provision and map virtual volumes (VVOLs) for Oracle OS and database components (including OCR disk, redo logs, and data volumes) following Hitachi bestpractices

Variables are managed via dedicated variable files to support customization and lifecycle management. This pipeline streamlines Oracle RAC storage provisioning with consistency and efficiency.

Read more about this playbook at our community page.

Repository: hv-playbooks-sap

Automates SAP HANA scale-up storage provisioning on Hitachi VSP Block systems using tested Ansible pipelines:

sap-hana-tdi-su-single-pool for latest VSPs

sap-hana-tdi-su-two-pools for older VSPs

The pipeline configures storage ports, creates host groups, sets up parity groups, builds single or dual storage pools, provisions and maps VVOLs for OS and SAP HANA (shared, log, data volumes), and applies Hitachi best practices for performance and reliability. It uses separate variable files for configuration and secure credentials via Ansible Vault.

Read more about this playbook at our community page.

Operational Benefits

Using Ansible with our playbooks provides numerous benefits.

Reduced Manual Work: Automates complex provisioning and cleanup steps for multiple environments.

Consistent Execution: Ensures each process—for example NVMe setup or Oracle RAC mapping—runs the same way every time.

Integration with Workflows: Connects automation with systems like Jira and follows workflows for Oracle and SAP environments.

Handles Complexity: Supports multi-step setups, for example active-active replication to across metro distances.

Adaptable Templates: Create template for common operations.

Conclusion

Hitachi Vantara’s Ansible playbooks span a range of enterprise storage scenarios—from routine block storage tasks to mission-critical Oracle and SAP provisioning. These playbooks provide conceptual starting points and actionable automation examples.  Together, they form a powerful automation toolkit to streamline operations, ensure repeatability, and integrate storage workflows across diverse platforms.

0 comments
37 views

Permalink