toasters October 2008

toasters@lists.teaparty.net

44 participants
32 discussions

Netapp and VMware... It's all so confusing!
by Timothy Hollingworth 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

So, say for example, I want to virtualize an Exchange server. Lets also say that I want to manage it via Snapdrive and SME. Lets also say, just for the heck of it, that I want both the new front-engined Acura NSX as well as the Porsche RC3. The cars aside, I would have to run iSCSI from within the VM, install and use Snapdrive from within the VM to provision LUNs, install Exchange and then use SME? It seems kind of silly to use iSCSI from within a VM if the ESX box were fiber attached to the Filer, just to be able to use Snapdrive and SME, no? I would love to be able to use the features of SD and SME within a completely virtual environment and am wondering what some real world implementations other VMware/Netapp customers are running. Do you run storage for the databases and logs in VMDK's and manage snapshots and backups from a VMware virtual machine perspective or do you manage them as iSCSI LUNs and use SD and SME? Or am I completely blind and missing something? Timothy L. Hollingworth Sr. Network Engineer, ePlus Technology Inc. 678.462.6698 (cell) AIM: HollingworthTim YIM: t_holling

11 15

do toaster need a day off? (WAFL scans)
by Todd C. Merrill 13 Dec '08

13 Dec '08

Two scenarios: 1. R200, 7.2.2, two 12 TB aggregates, 85 volumes of various sizes, 70-80% full snapvault secondary, ALWAYS receiving snapvaults and nearly ALWAYS spinning to tape. 2. 6070, 7.2.4, two 8 TB aggregates, 27 volumes between 150 and 700 GB, 60-70% full recent migration (via volume snapmirrors) from 980's, serves home directories to NFS and CIFS clients. We stopped all snapmirrors/snapvaults to the R200, terminated CIFS, and shut off NFS. CPU utilization remained 90%+ and disk reads remained high for the next 6-7-8 hours until it finally quieted down. After volume snapmirroring the home dirs from the 980's to the 6070, we re-pointed the snapvaults (modify; start -r) and allowed NFS and CIFS access. 5 days later, file server performance still blows (worse than the 980's -- D'oh! Egg, meet Face; Face, meet Egg), with moderate CPU load 30-40-50% but high disk reads. In both cases, we determined that lots of WAFL scans were going on: container block reclamation volume deswizzling active bitmap rearrangement (of course...this NEVER seems to stop) and a few other types that have already scrolled out of my buffer. So, we figure--eventually--the WAFL scans will catch up and performance will go back to normal on the 6070. The performance of the R200 always blows. So...here finally is the question: do toasters need a day off? Said another way, to maintain acceptable performance and low/fast response times, do toasters need a goodly amount of (relatively) idle time in order for these WAFL scans to complete? Could the sub-optimal performance of another group of six 6070's that we have, that we *pound on* 7x24, be explained in part by always having at least the container block reclamation scan going on? Until next time... The MathWorks, Inc. 508-647-7000 x7792 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760-2098 508-647-7001 FAX tmerrill(a)mathworks.com http://www.mathworks.com ---

5 7

File Copy between NTFS & UNIX Qtrees
by Jimmy Corncrake 22 Nov '08

22 Nov '08

Hi Toasters, I have setup 2 qtrees. QT1 is NTFS and QT2 is UNIX. File Data needs to be passed between the 2 QTREES in both directions which I am doing using ndmpcopy. However an unexpected consequence of this action is that the UNIX user account looses access to the UNIX QTREE after the copy if made from QT1 to QT2. Does anyone know what could cause this and how I can get around it? Both QTREEs are in the same Volume but I would not expect this to be relevant. thanks, Jimmy

9 15

Snapvault slow on one specific volume?
by Page, Jeremy 13 Nov '08

13 Nov '08

I have an aggr with two volumes on it. One of them is a 3.5 TB CIFS/NFS share that is reasonably fast to snapvault and a 1 TB NFS share (ESX VMs) that is exceptionally slow. As in it's been doing it's initial copy for over a week and still has not finished. NDMP backups of this volume are also quite slow, does anyone know why it would be so much slower then the other volume using the same spindles? The filer is not under extreme load, although occasionally it's pretty busy. Here is a "normal" sysstat: CPU Total Net kB/s Disk kB/s Tape kB/s Cache Cache CP CP Disk ops/s in out read write read write age hit time ty util 12% 1007 2970 8996 15769 9117 0 0 8 93% 49% : 41% 18% 920 2792 6510 11715 6924 0 0 8 99% 84% T 39% 15% 1276 3580 10469 15942 8041 0 0 10 92% 33% T 36% 13% 1487 3416 11347 15632 4907 0 0 11 89% 42% : 43% 17% 1417 3180 9890 14000 9444 0 0 9 98% 79% T 41% 13% 972 3704 9705 15427 9934 0 0 7 92% 46% T 51% 18% 1087 2947 11911 17717 4640 0 0 9 98% 33% T 47% 11% 1204 3358 11219 14090 5159 0 0 7 88% 100% : 50% 12% 1161 2808 9085 12640 5936 0 0 9 90% 33% T 44% 13% 981 4735 11919 16125 7097 0 0 9 92% 45% : 43% 15% 1158 5780 12480 17565 8266 0 0 10 92% 88% T 41% I'm just having difficulty trying to determine why two volumes on the same spindles would be so different in the time it takes to do their initial transfer. Also, the VM's do not seem slower then those hosted on other aggregates (this one is 3 RG of 11 disks each, Ontap 7.2.4 on a 3070A IBM rebranded). This message (including any attachments) contains confidential and/or proprietary information intended only for the addressee. Any unauthorized disclosure, copying, distribution or reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited and may constitute a violation of law. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by responding to this e-mail, and delete the message from your system. If you have any questions about this e-mail please notify the sender immediately.

7 15

Nodes Sharing Spares
by Brian.Beaird＠cat.com 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

We are using the IBM n-series filers with our aggregates using dual-parity. Our filer is a dual-node controller, so each node independently owns different disks from the storage shelves. My question deals with how spare disks are allocated. With how it's currently set up, each node has to reserve two disks that it owns as spares to support dual parity. I don't know that we necessarily need four spares for such a relatively small number of physical disks (21 total). It seems pretty wasteful to have all that space just sitting there, especially when the chances of more than two disks failing before we can get replacements in are pretty slim. Is there some way to just let the nodes share a couple spares so that either one can grab them if failures occur in one of their owned disks? It would be great if I could free up one or two of those spares for actual use. I know there's a way to force spare disksk into aggregates, but I don't want to do this if that means one node won't have any spares to use. Thanks, Brian Beaird

7 8

TR-3428 & Cross-stack Etherchannel
by Carl Howell 04 Nov '08

04 Nov '08

For those of you that are doing LACP/cross-stack Etherchannel in your ESX environments, like the example in section 6.8 on page 40 of TR-3428, what switches are you using? If you are doing LACP across Cisco 6500's, what SUP's are you using? Thanks, --Carl

12 15

Maximum number of SnapVaul/SnapMirrort relations that can be defined on a filer
by Filip Sneppe 29 Oct '08

29 Oct '08

Hi, I know about the maximum number of active SV/SM transfers one can have on the different filer models, but are there any limits to the number of relations that can be defined on a filer ? I've seen filers/nearstores with a couple of hundred SV relations, and they all looked fine to me, but that's it. Is it possible to define thousands of SV relations on one filer ? Apart from the transfer concurrency problems one is bound to run into, are there any other issues one should know about ? Thanks in advance, Filip

1 0

VARs
by Nicholas Bernstein 28 Oct '08

28 Oct '08

Could someone point me to a list of Netapp VARs? I remember seeing a page somewhere but couldn't seem to find a way to get google to point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance, Nick -- Nicholas Bernstein Technologist, Consultant, Instructor http://nicholasbernstein.com

2 2

Quick question about ASIS
by Page, Jeremy 22 Oct '08

22 Oct '08

So here's what my filer looks like: gvr-array02*> sis status Path State Status Progress /vol/nfs2 Enabled Active 2318 GB Searched /vol/nfs3 Enabled Active 3648 GB Searched /vol/nfs4 Enabled Idle Idle for 143:01:40 /vol/nfs6 Enabled Idle Idle for 05:27:23 /vol/nfs7 Enabled Active 28 GB (11%) Done /vol/shares Enabled Idle Idle for 82:53:20 /vol/vmware Enabled Idle Idle for 47:04:42 The weird thing is none of my NFS volumes are more then a TB in size, is it looking through the whole aggr? If so, why does the job run on a per volume level? Please be advised that this email may be a confidential communication and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by e-mail by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance. In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement; provided, that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.

2 1

Disk shelf connect
by toastrTek 22 Oct '08

22 Oct '08

Good day, Would I be able to add a disk shelf to an existing loop using SFP + LC cable instead of the normal SFP Copper shelf cables? I recall somewhere that there was an issue if running at 4Gb and 3m + SFP but would this be a problem if the shelves are set to 2Gb? Assistance much appreciated. Jo -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Disk-shelf-connect-tp20118914p20118914.html Sent from the Network Appliance - Toasters mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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toasters October 2008