toasters July 2004

toasters@lists.teaparty.net

60 participants
79 discussions

RE: automate netcache cli commands
by You, Qinghong 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

rsh definitely works on NetCache, unless you disable it when you install secureadmin. try yourhost> rsh <cache_ip> -l root[:password] <cmd> thanks Qinghong -----Original Message----- From: Kerry Herschel [mailto:margaret.k.herschel@jpl.nasa.gov] Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 2:11 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: automate netcache cli commands Hi, I would like to script some netcache cli commands like ejecting objects on a regular basis. Is it possible to do this with SecureAdmin? I know with Data OnTap I would do this with rsh but rsh doesn't appear to work the same on NetCache. Thanks, Kerry ================================================================ Margaret.K.Herschel(a)jpl.nasa.gov JPL Information Services Jet Propulsion Laboratory Phone 818.354.1111 DISCLAIMER: The personal and professional opinions presented herein are my own and do not, in any way, represent the opinion or policy of JPL.

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RE: DR project - SnapMirroring Oracle database
by Derek Lai 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

I have just 1 database sitting on 2 volumes on netapp02 that are 600GB together. The database is only about 250GB or so. The volumes were sized that way to give sufficient performance (26 X 36GB drives). We are using QT SnapMirror to another filer's (netapp) volume so we can backup to tape from there. We would not want to do volume snapmirror since we will have to waste quite a bit of disk space in order to do so. So now that we are doing DR, it seems logical to do it from the qtrees that were already snapmirrored on netapp. We really want to avoid having to do it from the original volumes since these disks are already being hit very hard by the production database. We are actually considering adding more disks to the production database even though we are only 43% full just so we can get better performance. If we have to do volume snapmirrors this will at least double if not triple that requirement and it seems outrageous to have to do so. Best solution is to have cascading Qtree SnapMirror. Anyone know if this is in the works? I can't believe that I'm the only one who needs this. Derek -----Original Message----- From: James Brigman [mailto:jbrigman@nc.rr.com] Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 8:41 PM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: DR project - SnapMirroring Oracle database Derek, et. al; I'll reply to you publicly on the list and see if I get a rise out of any of the others on Toasters. First: I'd advise you to not yet rule out qtree snapmirrors because they won't cascade. Tell us all why you need more than one mirror to do DR and backup with? Second: I just finished setting up qtree mirrors for a couple databases I've got. What I have, actually, are five volumes: Orabackup Oraarch Oradata Orabase Oralog I've got five databases, and five qtrees in each volume, one per database. And let me tell you: as bad as you might think qtree mirroring is, volume mirroring is worse for this configuration. Anyway: you can do your backup any number of ways. The ways I considered are: 1) Shutdown of the database and mirror or snap of the "oradata" contents (database files themselves). 2) Do nightly full dumps and snap, mirror or backup those. 3) Put the database into hot backup mode and snap both the data and the logs. There might be other, more creative ways, but I'm not a dba. Anyway: the task was to mirror these existing volumes to an R200. Right away, a bad problem surfaced: my oralog volume on my production filer was only two 72GB drives. Doing volume mirroring would eat up huge amounts of space on the R200 destination filer for no good reason. So I mirrored all the qtrees while doing a hot backup operation. Seems to work OK. Watch out! It takes extra space for the mirror snaps on the source filers! For what it's worth: NetApp filers stand the OFA on it's head, and there don't seem to be many people walking around who know this yet. There are some good hints on Oracle configuration on now.netapp.com, but they don't go into extreme detail at all. In the next couple weeks, I hope to change this on a few of my test/dev databases by making one huge volume and exporting the database mounts from qtrees. I will recover SIX parity drives for reuse as data if I do this! Keep up the chatter. This is an important topic that few seem to understand well. JKB -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Derek Lai Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 1:09 PM To: 'toasters(a)mathworks.com' Subject: RE: DR project - SnapMirroring Oracle database I have not gotten much response. Hopefully it is due to the timing of my Friday afternoon email. If you have done a DR project with Database and SnapMirroring, I'd love to hear about your experience. Over the weekend I just came across another big obstacle to using SnapMirroring - you can't cascade qtree SnapMirror! This one seems to be a very big restriction as it means wasting quite a bit of space to do things like backup and DR. Derek -----Original Message----- From: Derek Lai [mailto:Derek.Lai@onyxco.com] Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 3:12 PM To: 'toasters(a)mathworks.com' Subject: DR project - SnapMirroring Oracle database I'm in the process of architecting a DR project for mirroring our production Oracle database and would love to hear from those who have done so already. We have been SnapMirroring the daily changes from one of our cluster F940 filer to the other for backup. In looking through the SnapMirror log I see that we are snapmirroring about 23GB of data on average. This is on a database of about 200GB total. We were thinking about using the max of the daily snapmirror number to size the pipe we need to the DR site. That is figuring to be a fair size pipe. Now our DBA is telling me that using Oracle's archive log they could just ship the logs to the remote site and play it back and achieve pretty much the same result. And the archive logs are averaging only about 4.5GB. That is 1/5 the size. It is fairly significant when you are shipping it half-way across the country! (We are in Foothill Ranch, CA and our DR site is in St. Louis). If that is true then management will probably choose to go with log shipping as opposed to SnapMirroring the data. I'm going through the data that we are SnapMirroring to figure out if there is something wrong with our setup. I think we are actually SnapMirroring the archive logs as well. Has anyone else been down this path? Any other ideas or suggestions? We are thinking that the log shipping method is going to involve alot more manual work and would like to avoid it if possible but we need to have good justification for that as well. Derek

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Oracle NetApp and async_io
by Jason Frank 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

Several years ago, we put our Oracle datafiles on our F880. We quickly found out that if you expect to do things like mount your database, you should turn off async_io. That was on Solaris 7, Oracle 8.1.6, and DOT 6.2.2 BTW. It's well known that Solaris 7 had really bad support for async_io, so I'm sure that has improved since. Once I finally get to bed this Sunday morning, we should be on Oracle 8.1.7.4, Solaris 9 MU 5, and DOT 6.3. In looking at the NOW site, I found some docs that recommend turning it on, and some that recommend turning it off. I'm going to try to squeeze an official answer from NetApp tomorrow, but I'm curious what experiences other people have had. Any comments? Jason

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RE: RAID Group Size Limits?
by Michael Christian 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

Why would DP cut your max raidsize in half? If anything, it should increase it, though I doubt Netapp allows it. Here's a quiz for everyone: Q: You have a fully loaded R200, 96TB, 24 shelves, 336 disks. You use a 2 disk root vol and want no more than 2 hot spares in the system. What raidsize do you use, so as not to end up with an inordinate number of spares? -----Original Message----- From: Hill, Aaron [mailto:aaron.hill@cba.com.au] Sent: Wed Jun 30 17:41:38 2004 To: 'James Brigman'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: RAID Group Size Limits? The absolute limit will depend on both your platform (FAS900 series, FAS250, R100, R150, R200 or F series) and ONTAP Version. Check the ONTAP release manual for your version. For example, 6.5 supports max of 28 for FAS900 & F series filers. I think this has been the same for quite a few releases. RAID DP cuts that in half. Seems you have two goals; 1) Consolidate exisiting volumes into fewer, larger volumes 2) Get some performance increase by increasing spindles You can make your volumes & raid groups larger and thus get more spindles. However, there are two questions you need to answer first; 1) Are you sure that disk I/O is the bottleneck in your DB performance? i.e. Run a statit analysis on your filer for some high and low usage periods over the next few days and examine the results. 2) How important is volume restore time? Remember, the larger the volume, the longer it will take to restore if there is a double-disk failure. (Of course, you can always mitigate some of the risk here by upgrading to 6.5.1 and using RAID DP, however this limits you to max raid size of 14). I believe NetApp recommends to keep volumes under 0.5? TB for this very reason. Now, if (1) is true and (2) is not so important, you still have one more thing to keep in mind; Increasing spindles follows the law of diminishing returns. I recall reading somewhere that the optimum raid size for performance was 10-14, anything larger than that and the performance return is exceedingly small. At one place we ran Sybase DB's on 36G disks with RAID sizes of 10 & 12 with good results. Although there are a lot of other factors that come into play with DB performance. Ok, that should be enough information to help you make some preliminary judgements. Let me know how you go. Aaron _____ From: James Brigman [mailto:jbrigman@nc.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, 1 July 2004 9:06 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RAID Group Size Limits? Does anyone on the list have experience with RAID group size limits? I seek to convert my qty 5 small volumes for Oracle into qty 2 volumes (one big, one little) for oracle and use lots of spindles. In fact, I'd like to just do a big, giant volume on my filer and put everything in qtrees shared/exported. Anyone out there done this yet? Hit any RAID size limits? Thx; JKB ************** IMPORTANT MESSAGE ************** This e-mail message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please advise the sender by return email, do not use or disclose the contents, and delete the message and any attachments from your system. Unless specifically indicated, this email does not constitute formal advice or commitment by the sender or the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ABN 48 123 123 124) or its subsidiaries. We can be contacted through our web site: www.commbank.com.au **************************************************

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RE: RAID Group Size Limits?
by Hill, Aaron 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

You are absolutely correct. I read it from the 6.5 release guide and translated into my email in reverse. 28 with DP 14 without -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christian [mailto:mchristi@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, 2 July 2004 10:44 AM To: Hill, Aaron; James Brigman; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: RAID Group Size Limits? Why would DP cut your max raidsize in half? If anything, it should increase it, though I doubt Netapp allows it. Here's a quiz for everyone: Q: You have a fully loaded R200, 96TB, 24 shelves, 336 disks. You use a 2 disk root vol and want no more than 2 hot spares in the system. What raidsize do you use, so as not to end up with an inordinate number of spares? -----Original Message----- From: Hill, Aaron [mailto:aaron.hill@cba.com.au] Sent: Wed Jun 30 17:41:38 2004 To: 'James Brigman'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: RAID Group Size Limits? The absolute limit will depend on both your platform (FAS900 series, FAS250, R100, R150, R200 or F series) and ONTAP Version. Check the ONTAP release manual for your version. For example, 6.5 supports max of 28 for FAS900 & F series filers. I think this has been the same for quite a few releases. RAID DP cuts that in half. Seems you have two goals; 1) Consolidate exisiting volumes into fewer, larger volumes 2) Get some performance increase by increasing spindles You can make your volumes & raid groups larger and thus get more spindles. However, there are two questions you need to answer first; 1) Are you sure that disk I/O is the bottleneck in your DB performance? i.e. Run a statit analysis on your filer for some high and low usage periods over the next few days and examine the results. 2) How important is volume restore time? Remember, the larger the volume, the longer it will take to restore if there is a double-disk failure. (Of course, you can always mitigate some of the risk here by upgrading to 6.5.1 and using RAID DP, however this limits you to max raid size of 14). I believe NetApp recommends to keep volumes under 0.5? TB for this very reason. Now, if (1) is true and (2) is not so important, you still have one more thing to keep in mind; Increasing spindles follows the law of diminishing returns. I recall reading somewhere that the optimum raid size for performance was 10-14, anything larger than that and the performance return is exceedingly small. At one place we ran Sybase DB's on 36G disks with RAID sizes of 10 & 12 with good results. Although there are a lot of other factors that come into play with DB performance. Ok, that should be enough information to help you make some preliminary judgements. Let me know how you go. Aaron _____ From: James Brigman [mailto:jbrigman@nc.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, 1 July 2004 9:06 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RAID Group Size Limits? Does anyone on the list have experience with RAID group size limits? I seek to convert my qty 5 small volumes for Oracle into qty 2 volumes (one big, one little) for oracle and use lots of spindles. In fact, I'd like to just do a big, giant volume on my filer and put everything in qtrees shared/exported. Anyone out there done this yet? Hit any RAID size limits? Thx; JKB ************** IMPORTANT MESSAGE ************** This e-mail message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please advise the sender by return email, do not use or disclose the contents, and delete the message and any attachments from your system. Unless specifically indicated, this email does not constitute formal advice or commitment by the sender or the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ABN 48 123 123 124) or its subsidiaries. We can be contacted through our web site: www.commbank.com.au **************************************************

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automate netcache cli commands
by Kerry Herschel 01 Jul '04

01 Jul '04

Hi, I would like to script some netcache cli commands like ejecting objects on a regular basis. Is it possible to do this with SecureAdmin? I know with Data OnTap I would do this with rsh but rsh doesn't appear to work the same on NetCache. Thanks, Kerry ================================================================ Margaret.K.Herschel(a)jpl.nasa.gov JPL Information Services Jet Propulsion Laboratory Phone 818.354.1111 DISCLAIMER: The personal and professional opinions presented herein are my own and do not, in any way, represent the opinion or policy of JPL.

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AW: Raid DP conversion?
by Engmann, Tobias 01 Jul '04

01 Jul '04

Correction the raidgroupsize setting will change but if you have already multiple raid groups THIS will not be change -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Engmann, Tobias Gesendet: Mittwoch, 30. Juni 2004 19:27 An: 'Brubaker, Paul' Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com Betreff: AW: Raid DP conversion? Just set the raidlevel from raid4 to raid dp vol options "volname" raidtype dp the filer will grap a spare and do a reconstruct on it the Raidgroupsize will NOT change ! cheers tobias -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Brubaker, Paul [mailto:paul.brubaker@attws.com] Gesendet: Mittwoch, 30. Juni 2004 18:48 An: toasters(a)mathworks.com Betreff: Raid DP conversion? Question on Raid 4 vs. Raid DP. We just upgraded to Ontap 6.5.1 and the new feature of Raid DP is now present. Our existing volumes created on Ontap 6.4.2 are setup as Raid 4. Is there any "easy" conversion process to change the old Raid 4 volumes to the newer Raid DP config? Any benefits? Advice? Best practices? thanks! Paul M. Brubaker, Jr. RIDS - Intel System Support AT&T Wireless - Harrisburg PA e-mail: paul.brubaker(a)attws.com office #: 717-526-5011 cell #: 717-578-2254

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Raid DP conversion?
by Brubaker, Paul 01 Jul '04

01 Jul '04

Question on Raid 4 vs. Raid DP. We just upgraded to Ontap 6.5.1 and the new feature of Raid DP is now present. Our existing volumes created on Ontap 6.4.2 are setup as Raid 4. Is there any "easy" conversion process to change the old Raid 4 volumes to the newer Raid DP config? Any benefits? Advice? Best practices? thanks! Paul M. Brubaker, Jr. RIDS - Intel System Support AT&T Wireless - Harrisburg PA e-mail: paul.brubaker(a)attws.com office #: 717-526-5011 cell #: 717-578-2254

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RE: RAID Group Size Limits?
by Michael Christian 01 Jul '04

01 Jul '04

I believe there is still a limit of 24 with DP. Not positive though. _____ From: Ehrhart, Rick [mailto:Rick.Ehrhart@netapp.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 5:00 PM To: Michael Christian; James Brigman; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: RAID Group Size Limits? Don't forget there is double parity RAID on 6.5 and later. - Rick - -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christian [mailto:mchristi@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 4:38 PM To: James Brigman; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: RAID Group Size Limits? Sure, just keep your raid group size at a reasonable level, to avoid double disk failures, and use multiple raid groups. I had a semi-large volume running RAC for about a year which had 6 groups of 12, so 72 spindles in the volume. (I certainly wouldn't use a raid group of 72 though!) -MC _____ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of James Brigman Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 4:06 PM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RAID Group Size Limits? Does anyone on the list have experience with RAID group size limits? I seek to convert my qty 5 small volumes for Oracle into qty 2 volumes (one big, one little) for oracle and use lots of spindles. In fact, I'd like to just do a big, giant volume on my filer and put everything in qtrees shared/exported. Anyone out there done this yet? Hit any RAID size limits? Thx; JKB

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toasters July 2004