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13515 discussions

NIC card for NetApp?
by Wayne D. Correia 05 Sep '97

05 Sep '97

Hi, Are any of the NetApp 630 accessories like hard disks, disk shelves, NIC cards, and RAM for the NetApp available via any other source than NetApp? Their prices for the add-ins are quite high and I am trying to plan out a system purchase now. Quick responses really appreciated. :-) -w Wayne D. Correia 1-415-826-6000

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Re: Clarification
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 05 Sep '97

05 Sep '97

> > In my specific circumstance (lots of small files grouped in large > > quantities in single directories), I am unhappy with the performance of > > the F540 that I have. NetApp tech support and I have been working on the > > issue for almost 3 months now, and resolution may be in sight. ... > But this application sounds disturbingly similar to Internet news...and > the NetApp's tend to excel in that! > > We noticed a 300% performance increase versus a Sun StorageArray, for > example. We use an F330 for News, and are very happy with the performance and stability. That being said, our NetApp/Ultrasparc system still isn't very happy with 200.000 (or more) files in control.cancel, and we also see the occasional "not responding still trying" during renumbering (i.e. readings lots of directory entries, including some moderately large ones. (We no longer have the problem with control.cancel after we started deleting the cancel messages every few hours. The renumber problem is still with us, but isn't *enough* of a problem to worry about.) My conclusion is that a NetApp works much better than the traditional Unix file system for lots of small files - but there are limits even to what a NetApp will take of file system "abuse". The obvious long term solution for News is a few large files for the article store, like Diablo does it - and like Scott Fritchie's mods to INN. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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Clarification
by Jaye Mathisen 05 Sep '97

05 Sep '97

To clarify a comment I made earlier... In my specific circumstance (lots of small files grouped in large quantities in single directories), I am unhappy with the performance of the F540 that I have. NetApp tech support and I have been working on the issue for almost 3 months now, and resolution may be in sight. As to the hardware itself, it's nice stuff, fast, reliable, easy to care for, couldn't ask for anything more. So if your situation is similar to mine, the NetApp may not be the optimal choice.

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quotas to track disk usage
by Daniel Quinlan 05 Sep '97

05 Sep '97

Given these parameters: - I would like to use quotas to track user disk space usage (but not limit it) - Quotas trees are not usable because you can't mv files from one quota tree to another (according to the docs). - I only want to track usage in /home/* only, not the entire disk (since there are other areas on the filesystem that users use, but I do not want included in the quota report. Is this possible or are the docs wrong about #2 ? - Dan

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Re: Nice hidden command: mv
by Ketil Kirkerud Elgethun 05 Sep '97

05 Sep '97

Michael Douglass <mikedoug(a)texas.net> writes: > How about having an 'enabling' command that enables those 'undocummented' > commands. There is one already. And it _does_ enable a lot of commands, most of them are obviously meant for testing only. -- ---Ketil Kirkerud Elgethun, Scandinavia Online

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Re: NetApp and FDDI
by dheiland＠lucent.com 05 Sep '97

05 Sep '97

Are these NFS server not responding messages occurring at any specific time? I'm seeing similar messages about 3am each night - the same time that a cron runs to remove .nfs files. I'm still looking into and for me it might just be a matter of changing from soft mounts to hard mounts, or even problems with NIS binding. Dave > On Thu, Sep 04, 1997 at 09:59:11AM -0400, Alexei Rodriguez said: > > > Looking through the logs on the clients, we have "NFS server not responding" > > errors (for 0 sec duration) across all the clients. Those that > > beat more heavily on the NetApp (like one box that constitutes 70% of > > the traffic) has these every few minutes. > > These occur using full duplex 100T and suns as clients as well. So I > don't think that FDDI is the key. I think I remember reading that netapp > had fixed this, or were working on a fix. > -- > Michael Douglass > Texas Networking, Inc.

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Re: NIC card for NetApp?
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 04 Sep '97

04 Sep '97

On 09/04/97 00:34:43 you wrote: >I might agree with you if I didn't have experience with netapp's RMA >department. We have been shipped replacement motherboards with >*mismatched* DRAM simms in them from netapp. Mistakes do happen. I've gotten motherboards with bad onboard ethernet, slots that didn't work, etc. But by working with Netapp these are put into the corrective feedback loop and prevented from happening again (at least in theory). >All accessories we put in >our netapps are *Exactly* the same part numbers as what netapp uses. >Down to the same Samsung Simms that netapp does, the same Seagate >drives that netapp does, the *same* DEC Storageworks canisters, the >*same* dallas semiconductor nvram. I don't think the nvram simms are an approved component for customer buy, but that may have changed. I mean, you think it's the same because of the serial number, but how do you know there isn't something else Netapp changes? Nvram is probably a bad example of this but you can easily think of other examples. >Guess what...it all works *perfectly* as expected So far... what are you going to do if it doesn't? >I was not talking about unapproved components. I would *never* risk >the chance of a failure due to an unapproved component. I do however >have a problem with paying 200-300% *more* for the same accessories. Again, I didn't think nvram was an approved component (as in approved for customer buy), although I know that some memory is. But what about future filers that have memory that isn't (I think the F630 is that way now?) or the new 9GB cannisters? I dunno if those are readily available elsewhere. I agree 200% is steep, but I would have no qualms about paying 150% for the same component I could get elsewhere but had been tested or modified by Netapp to work properly with their equipment. Bruce

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Re: NIC card for NetApp?
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 04 Sep '97

04 Sep '97

On 09/04/97 08:33:11 you wrote: >> Mistakes do happen. I've gotten motherboards with bad onboard >> ethernet, slots that didn't work, etc. But by working with Netapp >> these are put into the corrective feedback loop and prevented from >> happening again (at least in theory). > >But didn't someone _just_ say that the parts you get are tested for >reliability... Yes (it was me). Of course, that process isn't perfect... >I'm sure that was speculation on the part of the >speaker--but I guess this just goes to show you that they are _NOT_ >testing their product before shipping it. We've sent numerous >motherboards back. One would would be curious to know the circumstances. Perhaps RMAs are not tested the same way as shipped product, or perhaps shipped product breaks during shipping (DOA). Neither of these negate what I said about the testing (which does occur normally), nor does it negate the assertion that these problems are resolved through corrective action. I agree, though, that as the quality of the testing process degrades, the trade-off for premium prices diminishes. Keep in mind also that my point of testing was not that it prevents normal breakage, but that it ensures compatibility and realibility of the working part. Disk drive failures, memory simm failures (due to slighting off timing), and compatibility of difference card revisions (i.e. the card you buy off the shelf from DEC may not be the same as the one in your Netapp, even if it looks the same and seems like it should work). Bruce

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Re: NIC card for NetApp?
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 04 Sep '97

04 Sep '97

> Netapp *really* does its customers a disservice but its RIDICULOUS > pricing on common accessories. > > $1950 list for a F/W Cuda 4 from netapp...and they offered us this > *incredible* 15% discount...wow $1657.50... > > Tech Data had the same drive for $665. > > I love our toasters, but someone in netapp marketing really needs to > get a grip on reality. It may be more relevant to compare the NetApp prices with a new Cuda from other sources in a Storageworks shelf. Here in Norway you can only get disks in Storageworks shelves from DEC, and they are *much* more expensive than the disks themselves. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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Re: NIC card for NetApp?
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 04 Sep '97

04 Sep '97

On 09/03/97 21:04:48 you wrote: >Netapp *really* does its customers a disservice but its RIDICULOUS >pricing on common accessories. > >$1950 list for a F/W Cuda 4 from netapp...and they offered us this >*incredible* 15% discount...wow $1657.50... > >Tech Data had the same drive for $665. > >I love our toasters, but someone in netapp marketing really needs to >get a grip on reality. > >Jonah I take the Devil's Advocate (and probably unpopular) position. Sure, everyone would love to be able to get the parts cheaper, but that carries a higher risk unless you are using approved parts. The parts Netapp sells you are going to be tested to some extent. The failure rate of disk drives is very high; you are paying a premium partly for that reliability testing. You may think you see the same part elsewhere... but is it *really* the same part? Is the drive's firmware version the same? What about the NIC card's ethernet chip revision? Or firmware on your FDDI or ATM card? Those things do matter, and just because you may have a third-party component that appears to work doesn't mean it doesn't have a lingering bug, or that it won't stop working in a subsequent software release due to Netapp changing their drivers. Would you want to risk explaining to your boss that the filesystem is trashed or the server won't come back up because you decided to save a few hundred or even a thousand dollars on an acessory, and that Network Appliance can't be blamed for the failure? Now, that having been said, I do agree that many of the prices are steeper than I would like to see as a customer, and I think they need to be reduced to discourage customers from doing what I described above and getting into some serious trouble. But I personally wouldn't risk an unapproved component, and I would be remiss in not advising others to avoid it as well. Bruce

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Re: Nice hidden command: mv
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 04 Sep '97

04 Sep '97

On 09/02/97 22:58:32 you wrote: > >(I'm assuming this mailing list is still active.) > >As an ice-breaker (teaser?), I thought I would share a useful hidden >command that is present in NetApp Release 4.1d (and probably most >others). It isn't listed in any online help (well, that's almost true) >or documented anywhere, but you can use it anytime on the console. >Note: I found this command on my own (i.e., it was not disclosed to me >by NetApp). There are several "hidden" commands, some more hidden than others. Some of them can only be acessed via special instructions Netapp tech support provides. In any case, there's usually a reason the commands are hidden. In many cases they aren't "safe" to use, and you can be sure they certainly don't go through the usual QA cycle. Now, I'm not saying mv is dangerous (I don't know the code), but I would not be surprised if it didn't fail to lock certain buffers properly in multiuser operation, or not update the filesystem correctly for CIFS attributes, or any number of other problems. I wouldn't want to risk the possibility of corruption and/or a crash unless it was an "approved" Netapp command. Bruce

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subscribe
by Jason C Ingham 03 Sep '97

03 Sep '97

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Re: restoring from snapshot
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 26 Aug '97

26 Aug '97

On 08/26/97 15:35:53 you wrote: >Unfortunately there is no magic way, so you simply have >to use your favorite copy command. > >The "cp" command does scary things with symlinks and >device drivers, so "tar | tar" like you've done, or >"find | cpio -pdmv" are better. Yeah, tar has bugs in differnet versions... and cp is just bad. I prefer "find . -print | cpio -pdumv /path/to/newdir" myself. However, long filenames with spaces in it can break this too. :) Gotta write a fancy shell-script wrapper or something... Bruce

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restoring from snapshot
by Christoph Doerbeck 26 Aug '97

26 Aug '97

Greetings, I've run into this scenario where a directory of "useful" stuff got deleted (about 7 gigs of "useful" stuff). At any rate, it all appears to be sitting in the hourly.1 snapshot as expected, but now I wonder... What is the best way to restore it? I`ve disabled the snapshots while my "tar cf - | tar xpf -" does it's thing, but is there a better way? I also wonder, since a "mv" blew away the directory in the first place (this is what I was told), can I "mv" the directory right back out of .snapshot? So what is the BEST snapshot restore method? ++----------------------------------+ )) Christoph Doerbeck (( Motorola ISG )) email: doerbeck(a)dma.isg.mot.com ++----------------------------------+

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Very slow fcntl() calls from Solaris to F230
by Brian Tao 20 Aug '97

20 Aug '97

I noticed a very serious problem this morning on one of our news servers with a Netapp-based spool (Ultra 170, 1GB RAM, Solaris 2.5.1 + Aug 16 rec. patches). That server was recently upgraded from a 2.5 Ultra running INN 1.4unoff4 to the 2.5.1 Ultra running INN 1.5.1. Building or adding to the overviews files takes a *very* long time. I trussed the overchan as well as an expireover process, and I'm seeing a long delay (on the order of a minute or more) after one of the open() calls. I believe it is sleeping on fcntl(): [reading in article headers...] open("/news/spool/a/a/mis/talk/1944", O_RDONLY) = 4 read(4, " P a t h : t o r - n n".., 8192) = 1293 read(4, 0x0004D060, 8192) = 0 fstat(4, 0xEFFFF5A8) = 0 close(4) = 0 open("a/a/mis/talk/.LCK.overview", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC, 0664) = 4 open("a/a/mis/talk/.overview", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0664) = 5 [big delay here] fcntl(5, F_SETLK, 0xEFFFF5AC) = 0 fstat(5, 0xEFFFFAA0) = 0 writev(4, 0xEFFFFB28, 1) = 7404 rename("a/a/mis/talk/.LCK.overview", "a/a/mis/talk/.overview") = 0 close(4) = 0 close(5) = 0 open("/news/spool/a/bsu/programming", O_RDONLY|O_NDELAY) = 4 fcntl(4, F_SETFD, 0x00000001) = 0 [continue with next newsgroup...] It spends 99% of the time waiting for that fcntl() to return. The spool is mounted NFSv2, UDP. I've tried both hard and soft mounts. The same NFS configuration (AFAIK) worked fine on the old news server. I still have the old server online, and I can verify this (rm the overview file, then regenerate from scratch): old-server% time expireover -a -f /tmp/test.active 0.03u 0.11s 0:00.14 100.0% new-server% time expireover -a -f /tmp/test.active 0.04u 0.13s 1:17.25 0.2% Over a minute to create a 44-line .overview file? lockd and statd are running on the Solaris side, rpcinfo reports nlockmgr is registered. I must be missing something obvious, but I can't see it. :( -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob(a)netcom.ca) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"

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filers and ClearCase
by matthew zeier 18 Aug '97

18 Aug '97

My group's looking to rollout a ClearCase implementation soon. We're a heavy NetApp house and most obviously want to use our filers in any implementation we come up with. However, I'm getting mixed stories as to the roll my filers can play in with ClearCase. On one hand I have my Sun sales guy telling me all about Sun's drive solutions and how the filer "simply won't cut it". He's convinced that ClearCase won't work on an NFS box all together. On the other hand I have confusion - PureAtria seems to be mixed if they can or can't (the instructor during the training class I was at had never heard of NetApp). NetApp, however, says their box does work and says that PureAtria uses filers inhouse too. If I've gathered my facts correctly, three out of the four ClearCase pools can sit on a filer, with the db part remaining on local disk. It's unclear to me how large the db can get, so I'm not sure how much local disk space I truely need. Does anyone have any metrics I can use? Local disk size per view, per vob? What type of setups have you deployed, using the filer and ClearCase? What class of hardware are you using for how many users? Any help you can give me is great. Thanks. - matthew -- matthew zeier -- mrz(a)3com.com -- 3Com EWD Engineering -- 408/764-8420 ...................................................................... "To live and die, it seems, is a waste without a dream." - BoDeans

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Re: Disk space arithmetic
by mds46523＠ggr.co.uk 12 Aug '97

12 Aug '97

On Aug 12, 0:55, Jim Davis wrote: > Subject: Disk space arithmetic > I'm curious about accounting for the disk space on our filer, which has 19 > "4gb" data disks. > > Naively multiplying 19 disks * 4000 mb/disk * 1024 kb/mb gives 77824000 > kb. > > Now subtract 10% for the FFS-ish reserve space; that leaves 70041600 kb. > > df on the filer shows 69682640 kb for / and /.snapshot combined. That > leaves 358960 kb -- what did I overlook? Inode space? >-- End of excerpt from Jim Davis Disk manufacturers use metric megabytes... 19disks x 4 x 10 ^ 9Bytes/disk = 7.6 x10 ^ 10 = 76000000KBytes Which shaves some off the difference. Having said that, most disks are actually 4.x GBytes, so you'll probably see the full 4GBytes useable. I didn't think there was any FFSishness left in the WAFL - though WAFL metadata evidently requires a fair bit of space, especially if well used. Have you already deducted the Parity and Hot Spares space? 19disks - 1 Parity - 1 HotSpare = 17 disks for user-data. 17disk x 4 x 10 ^ 9Bytes/disk = 68000000KBytes. Which looks very close to your figure from df... -- -Mark, TSG Unix admin and support, int 782 4412, ext +44 1438 76 4412.

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Re: Read errors on a spare disk?
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 12 Aug '97

12 Aug '97

On 08/11/97 14:37:07 you wrote: > >On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Kenneth Whittaker wrote: >> >> Disk 9a.3 can only mean trouble in the future. I recommend getting >> disk 9a.3 out of your system, but before you pull a drive, call >> technical support. > > That's odd... as I mentioned, the error appeared on two of our >filers, both on the hour immediately following a spare disk >replacement. Are you saying the new drives I plugged in both happen >to be bad too? I've already got two sitting on my desk to be >returned, and I sure hope I don't need two more going back. I don't understand Ken's response either. He should be well aware that there is a bug on this, where most of the time a disk will report a Unit Attention error on the hourly check after being swapped in... I filed the bug myself a year or two ago. Bruce

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Backing up multiple Netapps
by Brian Tao 12 Aug '97

12 Aug '97

What do people do for enterprise-wide Netapp backups? It's nice to plug in a big tape drive into the dedicated SCSI port on each filer, but management becomes a hassle, and the hardware itself gets pretty expensive. If you centralize everything to a backup server and do dumps over the network, what do you use to manage the scheduling and auditing of the tapes? Is there a way to get Amanda to work with a bunch of Netapps? Anyone using NDMP-based tools? -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob(a)netcom.ca) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"

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Read errors on a spare disk?
by Brian Tao 11 Aug '97

11 Aug '97

Why am I seeing problems with a disk that isn't even active? Does the Netapp do periodic media checks on the spare drives? I had just added this drive in a couple hours earlier that day, and I've only seen this one occurrence so far. Fri Aug 8 13:00:00 EDT [isp_main]: Disk 9a.3(0x004e6290): READ sector 0 unit attention (6 29, 0) Fri Aug 8 13:00:00 EDT [isp_main]: Disk 9a.3(0x004e6290): request succeeded after retry #1 RAID Disk DISK_ID# HA.SCSI# Used (MB/blks) Phys (MB/blks) --------- -------- -------- -------------- -------------- parity 5 9a.1 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 1 4 9a.2 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 2 0 9b.0 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 3 1 9b.1 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 4 2 9b.2 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 5 3 9b.3 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 6 8 9a.4 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 7 9 9a.0 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 8 6 9b.5 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 data 9 7 9b.4 4000/8192000 4095/8388312 spare 10 9a.3 0 4095/8388312 spare 11 9a.5 0 4095/8388312 -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob(a)netcom.ca) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"

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Re: Read errors on a spare disk?
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 11 Aug '97

11 Aug '97

> Why am I seeing problems with a disk that isn't even active? Does > the Netapp do periodic media checks on the spare drives? I had just > added this drive in a couple hours earlier that day, and I've only > seen this one occurrence so far. I heard rumors that NetApp was going to add disk scrubbing for spare disks in a later release. What release are you running? Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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Filer stops serving NFS over FDDI?
by alexei＠deepthroat.cimedia.com 09 Aug '97

09 Aug '97

I have a f540 which has (on more than one occasion) stopped serving NFS over its FDDI interface. At first this was because of the nfs over tcp bug. But I have had that turned off for a while. Tonight it occured again. Nothing in the logs. Clients over the ethernet side could get to the filer fine. The fddi interface was up. (while I should have spent more time debugging, I needed the filer back in action; I rebooted and all is well again) Has anyone seen anything like this before? My f540 has 24 4GB drives, 256MB read cache, 8MB nvram, fddi and ethernet. I run 4.0.1c (haven't had a chance to upgrade). Thanks. Alexei

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Re: Quotas
by Dave Heiland 08 Aug '97

08 Aug '97

>I call a guaranteed space allocation a "reservation". Reservations are >possible, but they do impose more complexity and more processing >overhead. We've had little if any strong pressure for reservations. ... >Applying quotas to an arbitrary subtree is tricky... I agree with keeping things simple. If setting up reservations, or applying quotas to arbitrary trees adds to the complexity of the software too much relative to the number of people requiring it, then the current design of quotas is fine. >I don't know whether this level of detail in our design process is >interesting to people or not, but hopefully it helps explain why quotas >work they way they do. I'd have to say that knowing why things are designed the way they are make a big difference, and its not often that users get the reasons behind decisions that can seem arbitrary from the outside. -- Dave Heiland

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Mixing narrow and wide drives...
by Brian Tao 08 Aug '97

08 Aug '97

Stupid question time... does an F230 allow mixing narrow and wide 4GB drives in one shelf? One drive on our F230 (which uses wide drives) was freaking out the rest of the system, and I replaced it with a spare from our F220 (which uses narrow drives). The F230 didn't like that at all. ;-) I was under the impression that you were allowed to mix narrow and wide drives on a wide bus (as long as the narrow drives were within ID 0 to 7). -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob(a)netcom.ca) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"

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Amanda and network appliance machines (fwd)
by Tom Yates 07 Aug '97

07 Aug '97

this one just cropped up on the AMANDA mailing list. any amanda-toaster experts have any light to shed? we use amanda, but not for the toasters. 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 "Microsoft (tm) is a single-sofa supplier" ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 15:24:24 -0400 From: Ernie Oporto <ernie_oporto(a)MENTORG.COM> To: amanda-users(a)cs.umd.edu Subject: Amanda and network appliance machines Resent-Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 15:24:41 -0400 (EDT) Resent-From: amanda-users(a)cs.umd.edu Has anyone attempted to do anything with AMANDA and Network Appliance's machines? They're one of the companies we were thinking of buying a server from, but without good AMANDA support, we would probably stick with Auspex. -Ernie -- http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/9276 _____/ ____ / /Ernie "Shokk" Oporto-SysAdmin _____ ____ / \ __ / __ Mentor Graphics Corporation \______/ __ __ \______/ __ \___ __ \___

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