toasters October 1997

toasters@lists.teaparty.net

32 participants
47 discussions

NT sp3 and CIFS
by matthew zeier 15 Oct '97

15 Oct '97

Has anyone been able to use CIFS off an filer after installing NT 4.0 service pack 3? I can still mount shares from other NT boxes or 95 machines but not from any of my filers. Dunno if this is a bug with the filter (4.1dD4) or the service pack. - mz -- matthew zeier -- mrz(a)3com.com -- 3Com EWD Engineering -- 408/764-8420 ...................................................................... "Y el mundo se mueve, mas rapido y mejor." - Fey

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Re: NT sp3 and CIFS
by Tracy Howard 14 Oct '97

14 Oct '97

You can also refer to the following Tip and Technique document on NOW (NetApp's online support site). The document provides links to several other documents to get additional information about NTSP3 and CIFS. http://now.netapp.com/cgi-bin/tans/tanview.cgi?tan=1132 If you do not have an account for NOW, fill out the request for password to get into the site. At 01:19 PM 10/14/97 -0500, Mike Horwath wrote: >On Tue, Oct 14, 1997 at 10:06:59AM -0700, matthew zeier had written: >> >> Has anyone been able to use CIFS off an filer after installing NT 4.0 >> service pack 3? I can still mount shares from other NT boxes or 95 >> machines but not from any of my filers. Dunno if this is a bug with the >> filter (4.1dD4) or the service pack. > >After installing SP3, NT defaults to encrypted passwords. > >You need to turn that off. > >The MS knowledgebase system can tell you how to fix it, but I can't >remember the article number. > >-- >Mike Horwath IRC: Drechsau LIFE: Lover drechsau(a)yuck.net >Visi: info(a)visi.com drechsau(a)Geeks.ORG >Twin Cities area Internet Access: 612-288-0880 for more info >The founding member of Minn. Coalition for Internet Accessibility > > *********************************************************** Tracy Howard Customer Satisfaction NOW Project Manager tracy(a)netapp.com

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quota overhead questions
by Daniel Quinlan 14 Oct '97

14 Oct '97

Howdy. Can someone tell me the performance impact of using quotas (all types)? How much disk space and memory is used to store quota information? How long does a "quota off; quota on" take to complete on a fully- populated filesystem? Thanks. Dan

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Re: DLT stackers for NetApp?
by Arnie Thompson 14 Oct '97

14 Oct '97

At 03:29 PM 10/13/97 -0500, Gregory Gulik wrote: > >I heard once that the NetApps support DLT stackers (not >libraries) so you can automatically do multi-volume backups >without manual intervention. We support the DLT4700 and Breece-Hill Q2.15 devices in stacker mode with our native "dump" command. Using NDMP with a control host allows you to use the library mode of these devices as well. NDMP allows the control host to manipulate the jukebox robotics. > >Is this true? > >If so, which tape stackers are supported? > > > >

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Re: DLT stackers for NetApp?
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 14 Oct '97

14 Oct '97

On 10/13/97 17:02:01 you wrote: >+--- In our lifetime, "Gregory Gulik" <greg(a)wwa.com> wrote: >| >| >| I heard once that the NetApps support DLT stackers (not >| libraries) so you can automatically do multi-volume backups >| without manual intervention. > > >Not sure which models are supported. Anything that is simply a tape drive that runs in a "stacker" or "autoloader" mode (not a "smart" library mode) should work. I have had great success with Quantum's DLT-4700, and I believe (not positive) that for 7000-level backup, the Breece Hill Q.45 was currently the recommended choice. However, I don't see why something like the DLTStor from Quantum wouldn't work with a 7000 in it, or something like a DLT-7700, if they ever release such a product. >The problem with hanging a >stacker off of the filer (or any machine for that matter) is that >they have a strong tendency to hang. Thus you need to reboot the filer >to clear the scsi fault. Not something I can do too frequently >to my filer :) Having done literally thousands of backups on Netapp equipment, I can honestly say that I've *never* had this problem. Tape drives may go bad, but I've never had it just "hang" due to a SCSI problem between it and the filer that requires a reboot. >Not sure if being able to send a scsi reset to the bus would clear the >fault. Perhaps that would be an interesting feature request.... If the bus is truly "hung", any attempt to talk to the tape drive will hang, and the bus will automatically be reset after failed attempts to talk to the drive. So any old mt command should work. If this is not happening for you, I suspect the problem isn't a SCSI bus "hang" per se, but is in fact something else. Certainly, power-cycling the tape drive should clear any problems; if you have to power-cycle the filer, I'm tempted more the believe that you had a "dump in progress" according to the filer's internal state (which is, IMHO, a problem, but a different one from what you mention). If it really is SCSI problems, I would encourage you (if you haven't already) to contact Netapp support... it could be something as simple as termination, or you might need a new cable or SCSI card. Finally, one could always suspect the DLT drive itself as having bad firmware or some other hardware problem... I can tell you that the DLT-4700 does work, so if you can get one to test, you might be able to use that the isolate where the problem is before fiddling with other components. Perhaps I am taking your description of a bus hang too literally, and you actually are experiencing a different problem, but in that case I would need more detail to help. Bruce

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DLT stackers for NetApp?
by Gregory Gulik 13 Oct '97

13 Oct '97

I heard once that the NetApps support DLT stackers (not libraries) so you can automatically do multi-volume backups without manual intervention. Is this true? If so, which tape stackers are supported?

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migrating an F330 to a mixed-disc configuration
by Tom Yates 13 Oct '97

13 Oct '97

well, that was an interesting weekend. we dump/restore upgraded an F330 to a mixed-disc configuration. i thought i'd share some of the high points in case anyone else is thinking of doing this. i'd add that i'm typing this at 0300 on monday, so excuse the typos. this is also quite long, so feel free to ignore completely. if you just want to find my recommendations, look for digits in column one. that F330 had three shelves of 4Gb FSCSI discs. we wanted to upgrade to two shelves of 4Gb FSCSI discs and one shelf of 9Gb FWSCSI discs. ONTAP 4.2 is a prerequisite for this, so we'd been running stably at 4.2 for about ten days prior to the weekend (thanks, ja mah). our vendor (OSS) was lending us an F330 with two shelves of 9Gb FWSCSIs to dump my toaster to, as i'd prefer not to get 98% of the way through a tape restore and have i/o errors (thanks, OSS). design note: first impression on the eurologics shelves. these things came from the hans giger school of weird and creepy alien design. also, they look substantially less well-made than the old storageworks shelves. i'm putting that down to the lack of a guide bar ensuring that all the discs are precisely lined up. not that it matters. i hope. having installed the loaner toaster, the question of how to dump arose. i'd already borrowed an Ultra-2 from another project, and set it up as administration host for both local and loaner toasters. we'd heard that good things arose from fddi - dump times very significantly faster than even 100bT - so we tried using fddi/cddi on all three boxes connected to our cddi/fddi concentrator. the dump failed after about ninety minutes. just hung. i presumed that this was due to the cddi drivers being somewhat old, and decided to punt to 100bT, connecting all machines to our main switch (catalyst 5000). the dump hung after about ninety minutes. i presumed that this was an old dump bug biting us and down-rev'ed the local toaster to 4.0.1cD10 (which it had been running stably for some while before this) and restarted the dump over 100bT. the dump hung after about ninety minutes. i presumed i was being stupid and needed sleep and went home. in the light of day, some console messages gave us a clue to the truth: our cisco router was lying about the ethernet address of the administration host, and the local toaster was losing touch with the admin host. although this is a feature of our local network topology, i think recommendation one has to be 1) use a private network. i don't care how good your main networking kit is, you can do without the other packets. we put them onto a private fddi/cddi conentrator and started the dump. whilst it didn't hang, i wasn't getting stellar dump times, so we aborted the dump, and moved everything onto a private 100bT switch. dump times were much better, which i put down to the fddi drivers on the Sun being somewhat crufty, whilst the FE drivers are cutting-edge. recommendation two: 2) doesn't matter how great fddi is if the drivers aren't stellar. FE may well be better. if anyone's curious, the dump syntax was brutally simple: admin# rsh local "dump 0f - /" | rsh loaner "restore rfD - /restore" dumps finished about midnight (after an excellent sushi dinner for the unix and networking crew. thanks, shogun 9.). it took fifteen hours to dump 70Gb over FE, with fairly aggressive writing on the destination toaster (continuous writes and CPU at 70-80%). which leads me to 3) the netapp white paper on migration suggests doing a level 0 to your destination machine in work time a day or so beforehand, and following up with a level 1 in downtime. i really wish i'd done that instead of doing my level zero in (expensive) downtime. i then zeroed out all the disc labels on my toaster (floppy boot, option 5) and pulled off the third shelf. removed slot 9 SCSI card, replaced it with FWSCSI card, tried to boot. F330 hangs in "probing devices" phase of boot. thanks to some excellent late-night phone support by tony liu (MANY thanks, tony) it turns out that the FWSCSI card requires firmware 1.6, although ONTAP 4.2 doesn't. i'd already asked my vendor that question directly and got a different answer (grumble). emergency firmware upgrade to 1.6 ensues. toaster now boots, so i can get on with making a new file system (floppy boot, option 4). you've never known true nervousness until you watch all your users' home directories being newfs'ed. we've been told that the correct way to get a 9Gb and a 4Gb hot spare is to allow the newfs to allocate a 9Gb hot spare, and then RAID SWAP in a 4Gb into a slot left unoccupied in shelf 0. when we try the RAID SWAP, the bus fails to reset properly, and the damn thing goes into a variety of raid panic situations. all discs in the shelf on slot 0 are also showing amber "failure" lights, although they appear to work fine. lengthy calls to netapp fail to rectify this problem, and it's getting to the point where the restore won't finish until after 0001 monday, which is getting closer to the promised 0700 "everything back" time than i'd like, so i decided to go with a system which seems to handle the hot spare disc correctly - in the event of a disc failure, it RAID reconstructs to the 9Gb hot spare - but can't do hot swap. it's no worse than my old 450s, though i hope netapp will be able to rectify this later in the week, as does tony. the precise positioning of the thin gray ribbon cable that used to go to the narrow SCSI card in slot 9 seems to be an important unknown, since i understand this cable is responsible for carrying raid swap information around. in the event, the restore finishes around 0130 monday, and the servers (mostly) restart happily. summary: any migration involving a dump-and-restore is highly traumatic. we were right to avoid this when we went to the F330s, and we'd be well advised to avoid it in any future migrations - data copy to a new toaster is tolerable for our datasets, but copy-and-back isn't viable any more. the mixed-shelf configuration isn't exactly bug-free yet. sleep is a much under-rated phenomenon. Tom Yates - Unix Chap - The Mathworks, Inc. - +1 (508) 647 7561 MAG#65061 DoD#0135 AMA#461546 1024/CFDFDE39 0C E7 46 60 BB 96 87 05 04 BD FB F8 BB 20 C1 8C

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Re: migrating an F330 to a mixed-disc configuration
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 13 Oct '97

13 Oct '97

Three comments: 1. Dump and restore is traumatic, but it's really the best way for large datasets. I think what it tells you more is: plan ahead! Know the limits of the filer you have so you won't have to do migration ahead of time, and when you do have to do it, know all the steps involved and have a good backoff plan. Also, backup and restore is much, much better than it used to be... I would not try this scheme with anything less than the latest software. 2. Your comment about the CDDI drivers is very true. I have also found the old Crescendo/Cisco cards to be lacking, and have had the best success with the NuBus CDDI cards. 3. Sounds like the bottom line for the mixed-shelf scheme is: "not yet." Still some bugs and lack of enough documentation. Oh, and always go direct instead of through third-party vendors if you can, but I came to that conclusion a long time ago... it applies to almost all computer companies, not just Netapp. Bruce PS - How about the NTAP stock?

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reducing the size of a NetApp -- temporarily
by Daniel Quinlan 10 Oct '97

10 Oct '97

We recently purchased an F630 system with 26 9GB drives (two shelf pairs of 13 drives). Because multiple RAID groups (and to a less extent, multiple filesystems) are not supported, I have concerns about bringing a 200GB filesystem into the world. All of the space won't be needed for at least several months. The main problems brought on by large filesystems and are backup dataset size (and time), but the biggest concern is that when a disk goes, the raid reconstruction affects more of your data if you have a single RAID group. (As well as worse fault tolerance, etc.) And since we can add new drives by swapping them in, it doesn't seem like it would hurt to only bring 13 drives online at first. Since we have an active filesystem, can someone tell me what the best route to do this is? Any caveats? I have had one report from someone at NetApp that I should erase disk labels (I don't know if he meant all of them, just the ones being removed, or the ones staying) before starting, and another that it would be fine to just yank the disks I don't want and newfs the remaining ones. Dan

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subscribe gsterlin@jjprayc1.jnj.com
by Greg Sterling 09 Oct '97

09 Oct '97

subscribe gsterlin(a)jjprayc1.jnj.com

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toasters October 1997