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13531 discussions

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 27 Aug '97

27 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 12 Aug '97

12 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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Quotas
by dheiland＠lucent.com 07 Aug '97

07 Aug '97

With 4.1c quotas have improved by allowing restrictions on users in a specific tree - which makes me wonder how people are using quotas. One use is clearly limiting space users can use to force them to use space wisely. A more important use seems to be restricting certain areas from growing too large and preventing other areas from running out of space. For instance, you don't want a user directory preventing incoming mail from being written. In this case, what could be useful in addition to an upper limit on directory sizes is having a guaranteed minimum space for a directory. For example, reserving 1 GB for incoming mail regardless of the constraints on other areas. This would add extra complexity and might not even be possible - has anyone else considered this to be possibly useful? Quotas also seem to be a bit confusing in that the /etc/quotas file defines all the quotas, and 'quota on' or 'quota resize' activates the quotas, but you have to create a quota directory via 'quota qtree'. This means you can't just add an existing directory to /etc/quotas and run quota off/on to enforce quotas on it, and that qtrees and entries in /etc/quotas can be out of sync. It seems more sensible just to have the /etc/quotas file and quota on/off/resize. Dave Heiland dheiland(a)lucent.com

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Inconsistent drive ID labels
by Brian Tao 05 Aug '97

05 Aug '97

Does anyone else find the wording of syslog messages confusing? I almost had a small heart attack when I saw this after failing out a marginal drive, thinking that two drives had just died. "Disk 8" and "Data disk 7" are the same thing, and I wish the filer would use one or the either. Mon Aug 4 15:45:27 EDT [raid_disk_admin]: Unload of disk 8 has completed successfully. Mon Aug 4 15:45:27 EDT [raid_stripe_owner]: Read on data disk 7 failed, reverting to degraded mode. -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob(a)netcom.ca) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"

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Deleting large file gives "not responding still trying"
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 05 Aug '97

05 Aug '97

We have an F330 which normally functions as a News spool (and works very well, btw). Today I tried storing a large (1.5 GByte) file on the NetApp, and a while later (a few hours) tried to delete the same file. During the delete, I got *lots* of Aug 1 15:37:22 snipp unix: NFS server snapp not responding still trying Aug 1 15:37:22 snipp unix: NFS server snapp ok in the log. As soon as the delete was finished, everything was back to normal again. The NetApp runs 3.1.5 (3.1.5d, I believe), and is connected to the NFS client machine (snipp) via a dedicated 100TX Ethernet. The NFS client machine is an Ultrasparc running Solaris 2.5.1. Anybody seen this before? Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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CacheFS vs squid vs harvest vs ...
by alexei＠deepthroat.cimedia.com 03 Aug '97

03 Aug '97

We have a semi-large web-server farm and use NFS on the back-end to distribute content (we have lots of sites running on multiple boxes). The back-end NFS server is doing ok, but it is usually running at about 3000 NFSops with a cpu utilization of 50-70%. Our avg cache age is 4 minutes. We are using a f540 with 256MB of read-cache, and use fddi for the nfs network. Our content is updated throughout the day. But most folks hit the same pages over time. Every page has an advertisement or 2. I see a few different ways of extending the life of the back-end server, and these may involve: - cachefs (on the client) - squid or harvest (as a web cache) Has anybody out there already done such an analysis of caching? We have about 50GB of content. Are there other solutions out there that may also help? We are a homogenous Sun shop. I have used harvest before, but not across virtual hosts. Upgrading to a f630 is an option, but it would probably take forever to move the content (as well as consume the filer). Anybody out ther done testing on any of these pieces? Thanks. Alexei s

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Re: Deleting large file gives "not responding still trying"
by Ketil Kirkerud Elgethun 02 Aug '97

02 Aug '97

sthaug(a)nethelp.no writes: > We have an F330 which normally functions as a News spool (and works > very well, btw). Today I tried storing a large (1.5 GByte) file on > the NetApp, and a while later (a few hours) tried to delete the same > file. During the delete, I got *lots* of > > Aug 1 15:37:22 snipp unix: NFS server snapp not responding still trying > Aug 1 15:37:22 snipp unix: NFS server snapp ok > > in the log. As soon as the delete was finished, everything was back > to normal again. > > The NetApp runs 3.1.5 (3.1.5d, I believe), and is connected to the > NFS client machine (snipp) via a dedicated 100TX Ethernet. The NFS > client machine is an Ultrasparc running Solaris 2.5.1. > > Anybody seen this before? Yes. This is fixed in 3.1.6, if memory serves me. -- ---Ketil Kirkerud Elgethun, Scandinavia Online "Frihed, lighed og en lille en i kaffen"

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NetApp vs. FFP 7000 (was Re: Hello...)
by mer＠world.evansville.net 31 Jul '97

31 Jul '97

I'm following up on a thread from mid-June. You may recall that I asked for assistance deciding between a couple of small NetApps and a Falcon Systems FastFilePro 7000. I've include Andy Watson's response below for context. We made our decision to go with NetApp last week. Two key factors: - NetApp is the market leader and has strong momentum. With NetApp, I'm not concerned about owning an orphaned product, and I expect that the product line will continue to develop rapidly. NetApp's large customer base is a major asset because I feel comfortable that the toasters user community will be a good source of information as well as a point of leverage for ensuring that NetApp is responsive. - NetApp's entry-level price is very low compared to that of the FastFilePro 7000, and upgrades are easy and penalty-free. Our plans have changed a bit -- we're buying an F210 now for a big customer project and the two we originally wanted this fall. Thanks very much everyone for sharing your thoughts with me. -- Marc Rouleau VP and Chief Technology Officer Voice: (812) 479-1700 Fax: (812) 479-3439 World Connection Services, LLC http://www.evansville.net On Jun 13, 4:36pm, Andy Watson wrote: > Marc -- > > Given that no one else has offered you opinions (none that I've > seen on this distribution list, anyway), I thought I ought to > comment. I'll try not to exhibit too much of a NetApp vendor bias. > >> Apologies if this is off the charter -- let me know (gently, please!) >> and I'll desist -- but I'm evaluating dedicated NFS servers and have >> narrowed things down to Network Appliance (F220, qty 2) versus Falcon >> Systems (FastfilePro 7000, qty 1). I must admit that I'm leaning >> toward the 7000 due to its superior expandability and greater >> administrative flexibility (multiple filesystems and RAID sets, ability >> to run old drives via JBOD on the SCSI port). ... > > As I'm sure you are aware, NetApp has made design choices towards > simplification. The goal is not to offer "administrative flexibility" > but instead to provide a dedicated function appliance where admin > is streamlined to a minimal set of tasks. > > For example, unlike a mundane file server that requires the > administrator(s) to load balance among multiple file systems, > and reallocate storage between them, a NetApp filer has a single > file system that can be *software*-partitioned among subtrees > such that space allocation can be managed on-the-fly by simply > editing the tree quotas in /etc/quotas, and where no load-balancing > whatsoever need be attempted. You can export the single file system > as if it were multiple file systems by exporting subtrees with > various permissions and options specified in the /etc/exports file. > >> ... Also, the 7000 tests >> about even with the F540 in various magazine reviews, and NetApp's own >> LADDIS testing shows the F220 to be only half as fast as the F540 (is >> this true in the real world?). > > Well, in at least one magazine review I think it was UNIX REVIEW, > as I recall) a benchmark called "bigdisk" was used, which showed > Falcon's performance as comparable to a NetApp filer. Other than > that I don't recall other reviews where Falcon matched NetApp. > Anyway, in that article, bigdisk exercised the Falcon using NFSv2 > over UDP, because at that time Falcon's software did not support > NFSv3 nor NFS over TCP. NetApp was tested with NFSv3 over TCP. > Running NFS over TCP is known to hurt performance compared to UDP, > but TCP is provided because it is better for WANs and other "lossy" > networks where packet loss can cause heavy retrans overhead. > Anyway, we ran bigdisk internally, using NFSv2 over UDP, and > our performance was significantly better than what that magazine > reported for Falcon. > > On the broader topic of benchmarking, the industry-standard > benchmark of NFS file server performance is SFS (also known as > "LADDIS") from SPEC. SPEC has a peer review process whereby > official results are submitted, and if accepted by SPEC, can > be published in the SPEC Newsletter and on the SPEC website -- > (see http://www.specbench.org/osg/sfs93/results/results.html). > You will find Falcon and NetApp SFS benchmark results at that > site (and in the hardcopy Newsletter, if you have access to it). > NetApp has also published SFS results which have been accepted > by SPEC, but which have been inexplicably delayed in appearing > on the SPEC website. SPEC assures me that they will appear > very soon, probably by early next week. In the meanwhile, you > can see our latest results for our F210, F230, F520, and F630 > filers at http://www.netapp.com/technology/performance.html. > > Falcon has published four results via SPEC, but none of them > are annotated as being for a model "7000", so I'm not sure > what that machine's SFS benchmark results might be. Also, > in 3 out of those 4 tested configurations, Falcon used a > SSD (SolidState Disk) to significantly accelerate their > performance. If the proposed Falcon configuration you are > considering does not include that SSD, then you should ask > to have that added if you want to optimize that system's > performance. On the 4th Falcon configuration for which they > have published SFS results, instead of SSD, they combined > a BBU (Battery Backup Unit) with a Mylex disk controller's > RAM cache to accelerate Write performance. If you are > considering that approach, instead of using SSD, be sure not > to omit the BBU, because otherwise pending Writes (asynchronously > acknowledged to the clients) could be lost in the event of > a power interruption. (NetApp uses battery-backed NVRAM > ((Non-Volatile RAM)) to capture and preserve updates to the > file system, evenin the event of an interruption in power. > > The SPEC results will show you that our filers outperform Falcon's > servers in terms of average response time. This means we provide > faster replies to clients. Also, Falcon has only published results > for one configuration where parity RAID protection was enabled. > That happens to be for a model 9000 system with 62 disks, with > three RAM-caching Mylex controllers, and an SSD. Even so, two > F220s together will present more total ops/s (1213 ops/s each, > or 2426 together) than the large-config Falcon 9000 (2392 ops/s). > Each F220 needed only 14 disks to achieve this performance, > so even two of them together were exercising less than half the > spindles than the high-end Falcon. And with our latest software > release, and the newer F230 filer, the performance has improved > both in terms of faster response time (4.5ms for 1221 ops/s, > compared to the F220's 9.4 ms for 1231 ops/s) and greater max > throughput (1610 ops/s). > > But this is benchmarking numerology, to some extent. You are > wise to ask about realworld performance. We have consistently > found that NetApp filers deliver better performance for actual > application environments than indicated by the SFS benchmark > because the benchmark has a "worst-case" workload, compared > to most application requirements. Also, unlike other vendors > (including Falcon) where the SFS benchmark load is *perfectly* > load-balanced across many file systems, NetApp is benchmarking > with a single file system. Realworld applications depend on > the performance of the individual file system where the target > data resides. It is rare to find an individual application that > is actively exercising data stored in multiple file systems. > > I've written a paper which goes into greater detail on this > topic: "Interpreting SPEC SFS ('LADDIS') Benchmark Results" > (http://www.netapp.com/technology/level3/3010.html). It doesn't > specifically mention Falcon, but I think you will find it useful > in the analysis of your requirements and the comparison of NetApp > filer performance versus benchmark results for multiple-file system > configurations such as Falcon's. > >> On the other hand, NetApp tells me that the highly random nature of my >> traffic -- typical ISP work including email, USENET news, and webservers -- >> should point me toward multiple servers to maximize main memory cache hits. >> They say that the main memory cache on the 7000 will become worthless as I >> expand storage and that performance will drop off. I don't have a good >> feel for the importance of main memory cache here -- the 7000 uses hardware >> RAID controllers with onboard cache, so it seems like it would be less >> important to the Falcon product than it is to the NetApp line. But I must >> admit that NetApp's larger installed base -- 1000's versus 100's of >> systems -- makes it a safer choice on the surface. > > On the above topic, you should check out Karl Swartz's paper: > "The Brave Little Toaster Meets Usenet" (a USENIX LISA paper -- > see http://www.netapp.com/technology/level3/brave.html). > > In general, for large data sets and the highly randomized loads seen > by growing ISPs, it is futile to try to solve your I/O problems with > larger caches. Let's say you have 20 GB of data that is being accessed > by a large population of diverse users, such that there is relatively > little likelihood of data re-use from the cache. If even only 25% of > that 20-GB is exercised, then you would need 4 GB RAM, and you'd > merely fill it with data retrieved only to never need it again, > as the next 4-GB of different data flows through the cache over the > next equivalent time interval. > > So what you really need to focus on is disk subsystem performance. > And that's where we excel. Note that we have published all our > benchmark results with relatively small disk complements, giving > us the best per-disk (and per-file-system) performance results > in the industry. > > >Anyone care to share his/her thoughts on this topic? > > Well, I hope this helped. I tried to provide as much relevant > information as I could, with references, and to avoid spouting > unsubstantiated opinions. > > Good luck in your exploration of alternatives! > > -- Andy > > Andy Watson > Director, Technical Marketing watson(a)netapp.com > Network Appliance +1 408 367 3220 voice > 2770 San Tomas Expressway +1 408 367 3151 fax > Santa Clara, CA 95051 <http://www.netapp.com/> > > "It's really stupid to be an intellectual when you're young. > You should be an intellectual when you're a hundred years old > and can't feel anything anymore." > -- a character in Bruce Sterling's novel, HOLY FIRE > > > >

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Net App and databases
by Tim & Patty Lewis 31 Jul '97

31 Jul '97

Is anyone out there using their NetAPP to house Oracle, Informix or Sybase databases? If so what have been the results? Any feedback on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Tim Lewis

3 2

problems mounting netapps on sgi's.
by s.a.johansen＠kjemi.uio.no 25 Jul '97

25 Jul '97

I have a 220 with 4.0.3 and 37 quoted trees. These mount fine on all our machines (solaris, aix, linux, ultrix, digital unix), except on sgi's with IRIX 6.2 or higher, regardless of model. On 5.2 or 5.3, there is no problem at all. Upon doing 'mount -a' i get the following errors: mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u37 already mounted mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u36 already mounted mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u35 already mounted mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u20 already mounted chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u34 mounted on /mn/chatelier/u34 chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u33 mounted on /mn/chatelier/u33 chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u32 mounted on /mn/chatelier/u32 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u30 server not responding: Timed out mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u31 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u31 mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u30 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u29 server not responding: Timed out mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u28 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u29 mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u28 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u27 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u27 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u26 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u26 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u25 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u25 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u24 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u24 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u23 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u23 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u22 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u22 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u21 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u21 mount: chatelier:/mn/chatelier/u19 server not responding: Timed out mount: giving up on: /mn/chatelier/u19 As you can see, the sgi will mount some trees and time out on the rest. Each time I mount -av some more trees will mount, and the rest will time out. Has anyone else seen this? -- Ståle Johansen, University of Oslo.

1 0

Snapshot bug?
by David Drum 22 Jul '97

22 Jul '97

Hello everyone, I am quite perplexed by the behavior I am seeing below: david@vortex ~ $ find * -type f -print | sed -e 's%.*%ls -ldtr "&" .snapshot/*/"&"; echo%' | bash > messed.up.files .snapshot/*/Mail/.dir.tiff: No such file or directory .snapshot/*/NeXT/Apps/.dir.tiff: No such file or directory .snapshot/*/NeXT/Apps/.opendir.tiff: No such file or directory .snapshot/*/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/brushes/.places: No such file or directory .snapshot/*/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.places: No such file or directory .snapshot/*/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list: No such file or directory ^C david@vortex ~ $ ls -l .snapshot/*/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1095 Nov 14 1992 .snapshot/hourly.0/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1095 Nov 14 1992 .snapshot/hourly.1/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1095 Nov 14 1992 .snapshot/hourly.2/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1095 Nov 14 1992 .snapshot/hourly.3/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1095 Nov 14 1992 .snapshot/weekly.0/NeXT/Apps/Icon.app/help/.list Would anyone care to comment? This is greatly disturbing. Regards, David K. Drum david(a)more.net -- "That man has a rare gift for obfuscation." -- ST:DS9 * "It's hard to be bored when you're as stupid as a line." -- Vernor Vinge * "Reality has a tendency to be so uncomfortably real." -- Neil Peart * "You can only measure the size of your head from the inside." -- Larry Wall

2 5

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