[ Note: This is still experimental and should not be taken as production materials. I took a couple days over the weekend to “muck” around the new Iconik plug-in in FreeNAS™ to prepare for as a possible future solution. ]
This part is the continuation of Part 1 posted earlier.
iconik has partnered with iXsystems™ almost a year ago. iconik is a cloud-based media content management platform. Its storage repository has many integration with public cloud storage such as Google Cloud, Wasabi® Cloud and more. The on-premises storage integration is made through iconik storage gateway, and it presents itself to FreeNAS™ and TrueNAS® via plugins.
For a limited, you get free access to iconik via this link.
iconik – The Application setup
[ Note: A lot of the implementation details come from this iXsystems™ documentation by Joe Dutka. This is an updated version for the latest 11.3 U1 release ]
iconik is feature rich and navigating it to setup the storage gateway can be daunting. Fortunately the iXsystems™ documentation was extremely helpful. It is also helpful to consider this as a 2-step approach so that you won’t get overwhelmed of what is happening.
- Set up the Application section
- Get Application ID
- Get Authorization Token
- Set up the Storage section
- Get Storage ID
The 3 credentials (Application ID, Authorization Token, Storage ID) are required to set up the iconik Storage Gateway at the FreeNAS™ iconik plug-in setup.
At the top, click on “ADMIN” and on the left navigation bar, click the Settings (Spanner icon). Then the Application Token (Fidget spinner icon).
On the right of the web page, click “ADD” as shown below.
Adding the application creates a long string of alphanumerics. This is the Application ID. Copy this.
Click “CREATE NEW”. This creates Authorization Token. Copy this.
iconik – The Storage setup
Then navigate to the left, and select Storage (Storage icon) as shown below:
Click “NEW STORAGE” on the right.
Provide a name for the iconik Storage repository, and select “Files” for Storage purpose and “FILE” for Storage type.
In the next page of the storage configuration,
Make sure that the Mount Point corresponds to the storage path in the iconik plug-in jails. This was described in Part 1 earlier. This is important because this is the bridge, the connector that links the iconik Storage Gateway (ISG) to the on-premises FreeNAS™ iconik plug-in’s storage path, which in turn is connected to the ZFS dataset created for this purpose.
Turn on “Read”, “Write”, “Delete” and “Scan” as shown above. This part is associated with the ISG Scanner, which requires the ZFS dataset in FreeNAS™ to be of “Full Control” for @everyone. This was in Part 1 as well.
A review page is presented. Click “FINISH”.
An itemized line is show. Click on Copy on the right. This is the Storage ID. Copy this.
Finishing the iconik plugin setup
We switch back to the FreeNAS™ GUI, and provide the information to the iconik plug-in. To keep things in order, I put the 3 pieces of information in an editor, as such:
At the iconik plug-in, select “MANAGE”.
The browser opens another tab and you key in the iconik credentials.
Once the credentials have been successfully updated, restart the iconik plugin. I find restarting the plugin useful in order for it to establish the connection to ISG.
iconik ISG is active
At the iconik cloud webpage, the Storage scanner turns to green and Active. This means that the entire setup is successful.
Under “Collections”, the Storage folders show the connected storage repository and its availability from the on-premises FreeNAS™ ZFS dataset.
Hope this has been helpful.
