Sorry everyone. I misquoted the formula in this reply (it's late and has
been a long day):
Incorrect:
SnapInfo LUN size = ((number of transaction logs generated per day * 5
MB) * (number of backups to keep online))
Correct:
SnapInfo LUN size = ((number of transaction logs generated between
backups * 5 MB) * (number of backups to keep online))
________________________________
From: Benn, Paul
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 8:36 PM
To: Glenn Dekhayser; Sto RageC ; Willeke, Jochen
Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com
Subject: RE: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp
Hi Glenn,
Echoing my private reply from last week to the Toasters list for
everyone's benefit, plus adding some detail that I did not include in
that reply....
There are formulas in the administrator's guide that can be used
for proper sizing of the LUN and storage appliance volume. There are
separate formulas for the SnapInfo LUN when it is on its own separate
LUN or on the same LUN as the Exchange transaction logs. For example,
here is the formula for calculating the LUN size for SnapInfo when it
resides on its own, separate LUN:
SnapInfo LUN size = ((number of transaction logs generated per
day * 5 MB) * (number of backups to keep online))
In addition to that, it is a "best practice" to use the backup
retention features that are built into SnapManager. There is the option
to delete backups in excess of a specified amount as part of the backup
job. A new feature introduced in today's SnapManager 3.2 release is age
based backup retention.
I have no idea why your SnapInfo LUN ran out of space but please
allow me to make a couple of suggestions so that this can be prevented
from happening again.
1) Make sure that your SnapInfo LUN (and the storage appliance
volume that it resides on) are properly sized according to the
administrator's guide or better yet get your configuration analyzed by
your NetApp technical sales representative and have them run it through
the Exchange sizer.
2) Take advantage of the backup retention features (age based
retention is new in 3.2)
3) Consider archiving the older backup sets. There are several
ways that this can be accomplished and they are documented in the
administrator's guide along with some sample scripts. You can also
archive the SnapManager backups to another NetApp storage appliance.
This is described in detail in NetApp Knowledge Base article 3990.
Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any further
questions or concerns.
Regards,
Paul Benn
SnapManager Development Team
Network Appliance
________________________________
From: Glenn Dekhayser [mailto:gdekhayser@voyantinc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 12:19 PM
To: Sto RageC ; Willeke, Jochen
Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com
Subject: RE: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp
Be VERY careful here. If your SnapInfo Lun isn't big
enough, SME backups WILL fail (experience talking here). It needs to be
big enough to house (potentially) the entire transaction log, plus some.
Glenn (the other one again).
________________________________
From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com
[mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Sto Rage(c)
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 1:15 PM
To: Willeke, Jochen
Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com
Subject: Re: snapinfo -- exchange on netapp
Hi Jochen,
Snapinfo-lun is needed for SnapManager for
Exchange(SME). This is where SME stores its information for recovery.
Its basically used when running "up to the minute recovery", where it
copied all the transcaction logs before it truncated them while creating
the snapshot backups. So when you do an "up to the minute" recovery from
older snapshots, it uses this location to bring in the older transaction
logs to be replayed.
Why do you want to configure 2 separate aggregates? did
you mean volumes? I'd rather have a very large aggregate with as many
disks I can get hold of instead of 2 smaller aggregates. It definetly
improves performance.
The way we have it setup in our environemnt is 1 large
aggregate with 3 volumes per exchange host..
- 1 vol for the storage group with luns for each store
- 1 vol for log lun
- 1 vol for snap info lun
We also have other CIFS shares on volumes/qtrees within
the same aggregate.
Hope this helps
-G
On 3/29/06, Willeke, Jochen
<Jochen.Willeke(a)wincor-nixdorf.com> wrote:
Hi everybody,
we are setting up an exchange 2003 system on a
filer. Right now i am
about to size the system. I often read that i
need to have a
snapinfo-lun. But i do not understand where i
need this lun for.
Exchange does not need it, does it?
What i want to configure are two aggregates. One
containig qtrees with
luns for the databasefiles and one aggregate
with qtrees and luns for
the logfiles. And if really needed i would put
the snapinfo-lun into the
logfile aggregate.
Perhaps somebody has already set up an exchange
server on netapp storage
and can help me.
Thanks a lot in advance
Jochen