toasters March 2001

toasters@lists.teaparty.net

113 participants
149 discussions

MS Exchange on Netapps
by Cooper, Brian 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

I have run Exchange 5.5 (sp3) on a Filer for 2 years now without incident. The front end boxes serve up data to greater than 3000 users in a 3 state area. No problem. In fact, my ability to recover from ANY incident is greatly enhanced by this configuration. (I also use Snapmanager for Exchange). I think the KB article referenced speaks more to MS political leanings than actual technical issues. Which is weird, when you know that Netapp is a full partner with Intel and Microsoft concerning implementations of Exchange (and SQL) on Filers. I think the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Ours likes Oracle as well - so go figure. Big high transaction DB's are its meat and potatoes. And I wouldn't waste my money on EMC crap. Poor design and a million bucks everytime they open their mouths. Feel free to email me for more details on our SUCCESS story. Thanks Brian Cooper BOkf Technical Services Tulsa, Oklahoma bcooper(a)mail.bokf.com -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 1:30 PM To: 'Mike Sphar'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps Yes my point exactly, MS is protecting themselves. Is anyone running Exchange with/without issues. As for Oracle on NetApp I heard it doesn't like high transaction dbases. What is the ideal place for Exchange dbase ?(my bet EMC since that pretty close to have local disk) -----Original Message----- From: Mike Sphar [mailto:mikey@Remedy.COM] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:21 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps My thoughts are that any article that refers to gigabit Ethernet as an "emerging technology" is highly suspect. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to insinuate that Oracle databases (which can run over NAS) are less "robust" and "high-performance" than their jet-based exchange DB, which allegedly can't. Having said that, I probably wouldn't put my Exchange DBs on a filer. Too much risk of something going wrong and MS saying "Sorry, we told you not to. You're on your own." -- Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services - Remedy Corporation BOFH, GWP, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, BFD "We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" - Niels Bohr "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands and hoist the black flag." - H.L. Mencken (paraphrased) -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 10:32 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: MS Exchange on Netapps Any thoughts on this from anyone one... why is NetApps saying they are working with MS on this issue? doesn't sound like it from this KB article... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q288/2/12.asp

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RE: Oracle DBs on a filer
by Maglinger, Paul 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

The only issue that I'm running into using our 740 to store our database files is that the information is changing every day and as a result our snapshots are eating our volume alive. I increased the reserve to 25% and that helped for awhile, then I reduced the amount of snaps to twice a day and retain 4. Still, I'm over 100% constantly. -----Original Message----- From: Yarmas, Tom [mailto:Tom.Yarmas@netapp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 14:43 To: 'Jennifer Armenta'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: Oracle DBs on a filer I would agree that Filers work well for databases, but I would not limit that to DSS workloads. In fact, I would say that Filers offer tremendous benefits to OLTP environments. Particularly performance and admin features. As for performance, everyone has an opinion, and every application will re-act differently. It is very difficult to make a blanket statement like "it only works for ...". I am with NetApp, and you were probably looking for shall we say, less biased input. However, I felt compelled to respond. I hope you will indulge me. I have used Filers with Oracle while working at Oracle, and had very good performance. I will let others attest to their own experiences, but I will point you to a document comparing perf. of locally attached FC disks with a Filer - http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3105.html I am not sure what you mean by NetApp comes right out and says that they don't recommend using their box in OLTP configurations. I don't know of any recommendation like that. > The biggest reason is that OLTP database tend to be lots of little transactions and since you are using NFS (relatively big transactions) you won't get the performance gains as you would with a DSS config. Relative to what? Databases usually deal in block sizes of 4K, 8K or larger. Since the database block is the smallest amount of data that would be read or written, I don't think that NFS would cause an undue burden. In fact the NFS frame size can be set to match the database block size if that were necessary. But in fact, most databases will do read ahead (like the multi-block read ahead in Oracle) so that larger read sizes could benefit the database even in an OLTP environment. -tom

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RE: ASP caching
by Benn, Paul 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

Jean-Christophe, If you haven't already done so, be sure to set the cifs.max_mpx option according to section 4.3.1 of the same paper. An inappropriate setting might also cause this problem: http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3078.html#4.3.1 Regards, Paul Benn Network Appliance -----Original Message----- From: Jean-Christophe Smith [mailto:jsmith@publichost.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:37 AM To: 'toasters(a)mathworks.com ' Subject: ASP caching We have a cluster of Windows 2000 servers running IIS 5.0, content lives on a NetApp F720 running OnTap Release 5.3.7R2. Our customers use FTP to upload their web pages. IIS is caching ASP(active server pages), customers will make changes to their ASP files and try to view them(view IIS) and they see the older pages. I read about this issue entitled "5.3 Active Server Page Caching" in the NetApp document "Integrating a NetApp Filer with Microsoft IIS". I understand it is an issue with CIFS change/notify events and the way IIS was designed. Does anybody know a way of fixing this? or maybe way to increase the change/notify events, or... For now, we have to restart IIS when changes are made. Maybe I could write a program to manually induce change/notify events? Thanks, Jean-Christophe Smith jsmith(a)publichost.com VitalStream.com

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RE: ASP caching
by Benn, Paul 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

Perhaps this will help: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q247/3/89.ASP -----Original Message----- From: Lyons, Jim [mailto:jimbo@ti.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 12:13 PM To: 'theffron(a)wisedata.com'; 'toasters(a)mathworks.com ' Subject: RE: ASP caching This is a setting on the IIS server. In IIS 4.0, you set this in the application configuration for apps that are set to run in a separate memory space. This is under the 'Process Options' tab. You can set it to cache ASP or not. We run some apps that cache and some that don't on the same IIS servers with the virtual directories located on netapps. I'm not sure where this is in 5.0, but look around, I am pretty sure this is not a netapp problem. Jim -----Original Message----- From: Jean-Christophe Smith [mailto:jsmith@publichost.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 1:37 PM To: 'toasters(a)mathworks.com ' Subject: ASP caching We have a cluster of Windows 2000 servers running IIS 5.0, content lives on a NetApp F720 running OnTap Release 5.3.7R2. Our customers use FTP to upload their web pages. IIS is caching ASP(active server pages), customers will make changes to their ASP files and try to view them(view IIS) and they see the older pages. I read about this issue entitled "5.3 Active Server Page Caching" in the NetApp document "Integrating a NetApp Filer with Microsoft IIS". I understand it is an issue with CIFS change/notify events and the way IIS was designed. Does anybody know a way of fixing this? or maybe way to increase the change/notify events, or... For now, we have to restart IIS when changes are made. Maybe I could write a program to manually induce change/notify events? Thanks, Jean-Christophe Smith jsmith(a)publichost.com VitalStream.com

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RE: MS Exchange on Netapps
by Loux, Linda 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

I have been running Exchange databases on a F720 for about three months. While documenting our Disaster Recovery procedure, I managed to fill the disks, causing a failure. I should have disabled snapshots while I was doing this, as my frequent changes caused snapshots to consume way too much disk space. I got great support from Network Appliance in restoring the database -- after I had the case escalated. The first support engineer I was talking to had very little experience with Exchange. While I understand they all need to learn about SnapManager, the time to do this was not during my emergency. Since this problem occurred, I have started using SnapMirror, and could now get back to any time within the past 4 hours from my mirrored volume. Linda Loux Systems Administrator Rosetta Inpharmatics -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:30 AM To: 'Mike Sphar'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps Yes my point exactly, MS is protecting themselves. Is anyone running Exchange with/without issues. As for Oracle on NetApp I heard it doesn't like high transaction dbases. What is the ideal place for Exchange dbase ?(my bet EMC since that pretty close to have local disk) -----Original Message----- From: Mike Sphar [mailto:mikey@Remedy.COM] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:21 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps My thoughts are that any article that refers to gigabit Ethernet as an "emerging technology" is highly suspect. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to insinuate that Oracle databases (which can run over NAS) are less "robust" and "high-performance" than their jet-based exchange DB, which allegedly can't. Having said that, I probably wouldn't put my Exchange DBs on a filer. Too much risk of something going wrong and MS saying "Sorry, we told you not to. You're on your own." -- Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services - Remedy Corporation BOFH, GWP, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, BFD "We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" - Niels Bohr "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands and hoist the black flag." - H.L. Mencken (paraphrased) -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 10:32 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: MS Exchange on Netapps Any thoughts on this from anyone one... why is NetApps saying they are working with MS on this issue? doesn't sound like it from this KB article... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q288/2/12.asp **************************************************************************** This e-mail message is the property of Rosetta Inpharmatics and may contain information that is confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, disclosure, copying, or communication of the contents of this message is prohibited. If this message was received in error, please forward a copy to mail_admin(a)rii.com and delete the message and any attachments from your computer. Thank you. ****************************************************************************

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ASP caching
by Jean-Christophe Smith 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

We have a cluster of Windows 2000 servers running IIS 5.0, content lives on a NetApp F720 running OnTap Release 5.3.7R2. Our customers use FTP to upload their web pages. IIS is caching ASP(active server pages), customers will make changes to their ASP files and try to view them(view IIS) and they see the older pages. I read about this issue entitled "5.3 Active Server Page Caching" in the NetApp document "Integrating a NetApp Filer with Microsoft IIS". I understand it is an issue with CIFS change/notify events and the way IIS was designed. Does anybody know a way of fixing this? or maybe way to increase the change/notify events, or... For now, we have to restart IIS when changes are made. Maybe I could write a program to manually induce change/notify events? Thanks, Jean-Christophe Smith jsmith(a)publichost.com VitalStream.com

2 1

RE: Oracle DBs on a filer
by Yarmas, Tom 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

I would agree that Filers work well for databases, but I would not limit that to DSS workloads. In fact, I would say that Filers offer tremendous benefits to OLTP environments. Particularly performance and admin features. As for performance, everyone has an opinion, and every application will re-act differently. It is very difficult to make a blanket statement like "it only works for ...". I am with NetApp, and you were probably looking for shall we say, less biased input. However, I felt compelled to respond. I hope you will indulge me. I have used Filers with Oracle while working at Oracle, and had very good performance. I will let others attest to their own experiences, but I will point you to a document comparing perf. of locally attached FC disks with a Filer - http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3105.html I am not sure what you mean by NetApp comes right out and says that they don't recommend using their box in OLTP configurations. I don't know of any recommendation like that. > The biggest reason is that OLTP database tend to be lots of little transactions and since you are using NFS (relatively big transactions) you won't get the performance gains as you would with a DSS config. Relative to what? Databases usually deal in block sizes of 4K, 8K or larger. Since the database block is the smallest amount of data that would be read or written, I don't think that NFS would cause an undue burden. In fact the NFS frame size can be set to match the database block size if that were necessary. But in fact, most databases will do read ahead (like the multi-block read ahead in Oracle) so that larger read sizes could benefit the database even in an OLTP environment. -tom

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RE: MS Exchange on Netapps
by Morgan, Joshua 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

We actually run multiple Databases per Volume beacuse of the way we do snap shots -----Original Message----- From: Martin Hughes [mailto:Martin.Hughes@Halliburton.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 3:02 PM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps We have a Win2K server running Exchange 5.5, using the NAS as local disk though a non-routed Gb ethernet fibre connection. Works like a charm. We're using Snapbackup for Exchange and have live mailboxes working without problems. We're starting to go with this solution for all of our major property locations, having been assured by our local NetApp guys that the Snapmanager programs for Exchange 2K are going to be available within our timeframe (Apr/May 01). We don't have huge numbers of mailboxes on the filer as yet but we're aiming to have a 100Gb information store/volume as soon as we can migrate the users across. Only issues I have with it is the requirement to have a volume 2.1xExchange database size to allow for restores (there has to be space to restore the full database back to the same volume) but this is being addressed in the E2K release as well. The one database/volume restriction also adds some overhead but not a huge amount. Regards Martin Enterprise Storage/Enterprise Server Group <mailto:martin.hughes@halliburton.com> cellphone: +1 713 303 9214 office: +1 281 871 4124 -----Original Message----- From: Morgan, Joshua [mailto:JMorgan@nuvox.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 1:42 PM To: 'Jennifer Armenta'; 'Mike Sphar'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps We are currently running Exchange with our Databases located on an F760 we also use Snapshots to do backups -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 2:30 PM To: 'Mike Sphar'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps Yes my point exactly, MS is protecting themselves. Is anyone running Exchange with/without issues. As for Oracle on NetApp I heard it doesn't like high transaction dbases. What is the ideal place for Exchange dbase ?(my bet EMC since that pretty close to have local disk) -----Original Message----- From: Mike Sphar [mailto:mikey@Remedy.COM] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:21 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps My thoughts are that any article that refers to gigabit Ethernet as an "emerging technology" is highly suspect. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to insinuate that Oracle databases (which can run over NAS) are less "robust" and "high-performance" than their jet-based exchange DB, which allegedly can't. Having said that, I probably wouldn't put my Exchange DBs on a filer. Too much risk of something going wrong and MS saying "Sorry, we told you not to. You're on your own." -- Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services - Remedy Corporation BOFH, GWP, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, BFD "We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" - Niels Bohr "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands and hoist the black flag." - H.L. Mencken (paraphrased) -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 10:32 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: MS Exchange on Netapps Any thoughts on this from anyone one... why is NetApps saying they are working with MS on this issue? doesn't sound like it from this KB article... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q288/2/12.asp

1 0

RE: ASP caching
by Lyons, Jim 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

This is a setting on the IIS server. In IIS 4.0, you set this in the application configuration for apps that are set to run in a separate memory space. This is under the 'Process Options' tab. You can set it to cache ASP or not. We run some apps that cache and some that don't on the same IIS servers with the virtual directories located on netapps. I'm not sure where this is in 5.0, but look around, I am pretty sure this is not a netapp problem. Jim -----Original Message----- From: Jean-Christophe Smith [mailto:jsmith@publichost.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 1:37 PM To: 'toasters(a)mathworks.com ' Subject: ASP caching We have a cluster of Windows 2000 servers running IIS 5.0, content lives on a NetApp F720 running OnTap Release 5.3.7R2. Our customers use FTP to upload their web pages. IIS is caching ASP(active server pages), customers will make changes to their ASP files and try to view them(view IIS) and they see the older pages. I read about this issue entitled "5.3 Active Server Page Caching" in the NetApp document "Integrating a NetApp Filer with Microsoft IIS". I understand it is an issue with CIFS change/notify events and the way IIS was designed. Does anybody know a way of fixing this? or maybe way to increase the change/notify events, or... For now, we have to restart IIS when changes are made. Maybe I could write a program to manually induce change/notify events? Thanks, Jean-Christophe Smith jsmith(a)publichost.com VitalStream.com

1 0

RE: MS Exchange on Netapps
by Brian Hostetter 19 Mar '01

19 Mar '01

I use Oracle 8.1.7 on a netapp with a very high transactional rate. That is what netapp does best. Netapp is not the best place to store a data warehouse, but is a great place to store a transactional based oracle DB. We do almost 10 transactions a second running 8.1.7 under Tru64Unix, with a 760. --Brian -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 1:30 PM To: 'Mike Sphar'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps Yes my point exactly, MS is protecting themselves. Is anyone running Exchange with/without issues. As for Oracle on NetApp I heard it doesn't like high transaction dbases. What is the ideal place for Exchange dbase ?(my bet EMC since that pretty close to have local disk) -----Original Message----- From: Mike Sphar [mailto:mikey@Remedy.COM] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:21 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps My thoughts are that any article that refers to gigabit Ethernet as an "emerging technology" is highly suspect. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to insinuate that Oracle databases (which can run over NAS) are less "robust" and "high-performance" than their jet-based exchange DB, which allegedly can't. Having said that, I probably wouldn't put my Exchange DBs on a filer. Too much risk of something going wrong and MS saying "Sorry, we told you not to. You're on your own." -- Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services - Remedy Corporation BOFH, GWP, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, BFD "We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" - Niels Bohr "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands and hoist the black flag." - H.L. Mencken (paraphrased) -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 10:32 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: MS Exchange on Netapps Any thoughts on this from anyone one... why is NetApps saying they are working with MS on this issue? doesn't sound like it from this KB article... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q288/2/12.asp

1 0

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toasters March 2001