toasters

toasters@lists.teaparty.net

13531 discussions

write lock
by Tom Yates 05 May '97

05 May '97

one of my F330s in back in write hell: during large chunks of the working day, the "disk write" statistic is non-zero (extremely non-zero) most of the time. given that i'm maxed out on NVRAM (8Mb), is there anything i can do to tune things? 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"

1 0

None
by Prashanth Rao U 02 May '97

02 May '97

unsubscribe prao(a)india.ti.com

1 0

None
by gsmith＠netapp.com 01 May '97

01 May '97

subscribe gsmith(a)netapp.com

1 0

NFS v3 tcp brokenness....
by alexei＠cimedia.com 01 May '97

01 May '97

Tonight my filer stopped serving NFS over its FDDI interface. Twice. I called NAC support, got a call back, they had me take the interface down and back up. That fixed it temporarily. It was then reccomended that I disable the tcp extension (of course, it involves some work on the client side as well; joy). I did it and now it seems to be happier. My beef with NAC is that the tech guy said that there had been many problems like this, alot of open tickets in the support queue and that the next release of the OS would have the tcp option disabled (as the default; not removed). Why in the world has NAC not sent out an advisory about this? If it has been causing so many problems, the least they could have done is let us know that it could happen. Since this is a new filer (f540, 256MB read cache, 8MB nvram, 100GB, 2x100bT, 1 fddi), the problem only affected some setup stuff I was doing. The problem seems worse with fddi than with ethernet connections (my mounts that occured over ethernet were fine while the fddi ones were not). Anybody from the peanut gallery? Alexei

3 3

toaster testing.
by Michael Salmon 29 Apr '97

29 Apr '97

We are about to loan a toaster to see how well it performs in our environment (mixed Sun/Auspex/pc, NFS/SMB, ATM(Fore)/Ethernet). Does anyone have any tips about toaster weaknesses that we should try? We aren't trying to run down NAC, all systems have weaknesses, it's the one that you don't know about that are troublesome. /Michael -- /--------------------------------\ ___ | Michael Salmon | / \ | Ericsson Utveckling AB | / | | ÄS/UAB/Z/IPE | / _| | Box 1505 | / | | 125 25 Älvsjö | / / | Sweden | / / | | | | +--------------------------------+ | \ | Michael.Salmon(a)uab.ericsson.se | / *| | | / _/ | Tel: +46 8 727 30 74 | | | | FAX: +46 8 647 82 76 | | / # | GSM: +46 705 902 842 | | __// \--------------------------------/ |_/ "*Real* wizards don't whine about how they paid their dues." -- Quentin Johnson (quent(a)atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu)

2 1

ATM NIC Compatibility
by John F. Kane 23 Apr '97

23 Apr '97

We are planning an ATM backbone for our network. What ATM Network Interface Cards are compatible with the F330s? Thanks. John F. Kane The MITRE Corporation

1 0

ATM NIC Compatibility
by John F. Kane 22 Apr '97

22 Apr '97

What ATM Network Interface Cards are compatible with the F330s? -- John F. Kane Lead Staff, G052 The MITRE Corporation

1 0

Re: 9Gb discs for F330s
by Steve Gremban 22 Apr '97

22 Apr '97

Are there any issues we should know about mixing different sized disks on the same system? I know it will work but is it something I should avoid? regards, Steve Gremban gremban(a)ti.com ------------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------- >this is great, and many thanks, but as someone who has only two slots left >in the third shelf of each of his F330s, and will need to know what to buy >shortly, could you give some indication of the timescale for the official >announcement? > >thanks. > > Tom Yates - Unix Chap - The Mathworks, Inc. - +1 (508) 647 7561 ------------- End Forwarded Message -------------

2 1

Re: 9Gb discs for F330s
by cheena＠netapp.com 21 Apr '97

21 Apr '97

Since I happen to be an official spokesperson for product related issues, I'll defer product details and schedules until the forthcoming announcement. NetApp expects to support 9 GB disks on all our current filers: NetApp F220, F330 and F540. Configuration details will be provided at product introduction time. Cheena

3 2

9Gb discs for F330s
by Tom Yates 21 Apr '97

21 Apr '97

would anyone care to comment on when we might expect to see 9Gb discs approved and available for the F330, and whether different shelves will be required? 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"

1 0

NetApp reports
by Christoph Doerbeck 18 Apr '97

18 Apr '97

Greetings, I've recently been approached by management and asked to produce some weekly/monthly reports on our F330's. Do you have any suggestions on which technique provides the best reports? Are there pubically available scripts you might recommend? ++-------------------------------------- Christoph Doerbeck Motorola ISG / DIS Mansfield, MA. USA (###) ###-#### doerbeck(a)dma.isg.mot.com ++--------------------------------------

5 4

Reporting Statistics on NetApp's
by Christoph Doerbeck 17 Apr '97

17 Apr '97

>> I've recently been approached by management and asked to produce >> some weekly/monthly reports on our F330's. Do you have any suggestions >> on which technique provides the best reports? Are there pubically >> available scripts you might recommend? >not to sound facile, but what sort of reports? disc-usage related? >network related? load related? availability related? I apologize for the lack of detail. Our admin who had been in charge of our NetApps has recently left, and now the maintenance of these systems has fallen into my hands. The reports I've been asked to generate focus mainly on who/what users are consuming most of the space. We would also like to chart growth in order to predict expansion needs. These items are not very technical, but given the added overhead of NFS and the .snapshots, I was just curious to know how others monitor their Network Appliances. Are there any cool tricks? I guess that means "disc-usage related"... ++-------------------------------------- Christoph Doerbeck Motorola ISG / DIS Mansfield, MA. USA doerbeck(a)dma.isg.mot.com ++--------------------------------------

2 1

F540 crashes while unlinking many files, Assertion failure?
by Ragnar Lonn 17 Apr '97

17 Apr '97

Hello, I have a Netapp F540 that has some 2-3 million files on its filesystem currently. I've been testing a news server setup on it and now I'd like to erase all these files, starting all over again with an empty filesystem. I did "rm -rf <dir>" (and no, I didn't erase the /etc dir on the Netapp) and it ran for a while, erasing lots of files, then the Netapp crashed and rebooted! I hoped it was a freak occurance so I did another rm when it got back up again but that made it crash once more. Now, I'm thinking this may have something to do with the snapshots. Because this is a newsserver I used "options nosnap on" following advice I got from people at Netapp. I also tried enabling snapshots and doing "snap sched 0 0 3@1,9,17" (just to test if it would make a difference) but the machine still was still prone to crash. I know the snapshot reserve may be too small - can that cause the server to crash like this? Yesterday I started an rm job and the F540 crashed at 2am this morning with the following message: PANIC: ../common/wafl/write_alloc.c:770: Assertion failure. version: NetApp Release 4.0.1c: Wed Jan 8 05:53:54 PST 1997 cc flags: 1 .dumping core: ........................................done ...it rebooted and ran until, I think, 4 am when it gave the same message but this time it didn't go online again because an old core file was present apparently: .Old core present on disk --- not dumped. This time it just halted. I think I read somewhere about this write_alloc.c:770: Assertion failure message/bug/whatever but I can't remember where. Can I just tell the Netapp to reboot again from the "ok" prompt or should I do something else? How do I make the machine *not* crash when erasing lots of files? Also, is there some way to re-initialize a Netapp server to the state it was when shipped? Doing a separate unlink on each file when you have several million files can be very time-consuming even if the server doesn't crash ;-) Regards, /Ragnar, Algonet

1 0

Re: Mail Strategy
by Dave Pascoe 10 Apr '97

10 Apr '97

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Tom Yates wrote: >we just moved /var/spool/mail from an Ultra-2 to the toasters. i wouldn't >say it has been completely painless by any means, though from some angles >it's been a win... dave, you want to comment further? I do have a few thoughts and observations: 1) Writing to /var/spool/mail via the F330 (NFS) was a win for us in this case, especially once we increased NVRAM from 2MB -> 4MB. This particular F330 is used for other (general) access, not just for mbox duty. Observations lately point to the need for more NVRAM at peak times, so we're going to 8MB shortly. The box gets really humped when it's stuck in constant physical disk writes. The old situation was a Fast-Wide SCSI disk attached directly to the UltraSPARC 1. That disk was doing way too much. 2) One of the reasons for migrating to the Toaster was to eliminate our mailhost from exporting /var/spool/mail. This enabled us to be able to do work on the mailhost/newshost without being too disruptive. The Toasters have to always be up anyway or all UNIX boxes hang. Our current thinking is that we might do well to go to a SPARCstorage array locally attached to the mailhost and *not* exporting /var/spool/mail at all, and forcing the use of POP3/IMAP. Those people using Elm will just have to use Pine. No big loss...in fact, a big gain. But making users change email software can be a pain, especially for the zealots who insist on performing every single action from within Emacs. Don't get me wrong, I love Emacs. But sometimes you gotta draw the line. 3) If you use POP3 you will be incredibly unhappy at times, especially if even a few users have large mailboxes. This is due to the way most stock poppers do mailbox locking. (write temp file called .user.pop and then write this file out again as user) Our current approach is to set a reasonable threshold on user mailbox sizes and email users informing them to check their mail settings and clean up. There are many variables here that relate mostly to POP settings in the client programs. 4) IMAP4 is pretty good. Use it if you can. It also solves a lot of the issues with being a mobile user. IMAP4 is better than POP3 in this respect. More like a true client-server mail package with all the benefits of having source code and not needing to open shrink-wrap. -- Dave Pascoe | mailto:dave@mathworks.com | Voice: 508.647.7362 KM3T | http://www.mathworks.com | FAX: 508.647.7002 PGP fingerprint: 53 AD 71 88 2F AA 45 AC D0 2E 68 91 71 77 39 AF

1 0

Next Gen filer?
by alexei＠cimedia.com 10 Apr '97

10 Apr '97

Has anybody seen the next generation of filers? The plan that NAC has laid out for the future is pretty cool. Not sure what things are NDA, but I am eager to see some of the stuff that the HA dude is working on. May the three stooges prosper. Alexei /.

1 0

Mail Strategy
by John F. Kane 10 Apr '97

10 Apr '97

We are configuring three F330s into our enterprise architecture to serve /home data to our users. We currently use SparcServer 1000s for this purpose. We are interested in how other organizations are implementing UNIX mail in this situation. Is it best to put /var/spool/mail on the NetApp filers or keep it on the UNIX mail server? Thanks. -- John F. Kane Lead Staff, G052 The MITRE Corporation

5 5

Re: full duplex on FE
by Arnie Thompson 10 Apr '97

10 Apr '97

If FE means Fast Ethernet, the answer is yes for the PCI-based models (220, 330 & 540). You need software release 4.X to support full duplex. Arnie from Netapp At 12:42 PM 4/8/97 -0400, Tom Yates wrote: >anyone know if the FE ports on the toasters can run full duplex? > > 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 > > > >

4 4

NFS research study -- sorry if you got this twice
by Rich Boberg 09 Apr '97

09 Apr '97

I just came across this email and it looked like it might be of interest to people on this mailing list. I apologize if you have already received a copy of this email via other paths. -- Rich (Note: NetApp has no formal relationship to this project, but it looks interesting :) >Forwarded message: >> Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970409112118.006cc3dc(a)postoffice3.mail.cornell.edu> >> Date: Wed, 09 Apr 1997 11:21:19 -0400 >> From: Ethan Rafferty <eer2(a)cornell.edu> ... >> >> On the following web site resides the research instrument for the NFS >> server research project. It is a simple form which should take 15 or 20 >> minutes to complete. It's kind of fun: you get to analyze different >> attributes of an NFS server and make trade-offs between them. >> >> 1. Please forward this e-mail right away to anyone you know of who may be >> interested in participating in the research project. >> 2. Please complete and submit the form on the web site below by Friday, >> April 11. >> >> <http://www.gsm.cornell.edu/courses/nba564/NFS.htm> >> >> This study is being performed by MBA students at Cornell's Johnson Graduate >> School of Management in order to analyze the market for NFS service in >> general and for specialized NFS server appliances in particular. The >> submission of the form is anonymous unless you choose to fill out the >> fields asking who you are. >> >> Thank you for your participation! >> >> Ethan Rafferty >> eer2(a)cornell.edu

1 0

NAC's CIFS
by Aamer Latif 09 Apr '97

09 Apr '97

I'd like to find out about using NAC's CIFS to support file sharing for a mixed UNIX+NT/PC environment. Specifically, how is file services performance when running both NFS and SMB on the same box. Also, how is level of integration of the a toaster running CIFS with an NT environment (e.g. support of domain security, WINS, File/directory Permissions, use of File/Server Manager tools). Any other experience information would be appreciated. Latif (a.latif(a)ieee.org)

1 0

full duplex on FE
by Tom Yates 08 Apr '97

08 Apr '97

anyone know if the FE ports on the toasters can run full duplex? 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

2 1

Re: NetApp F220 worth it?
by fred.abounader＠vantis.com 02 Apr '97

02 Apr '97

---} Yes, you can get a Sun and throw 20G worth of disks for about the same price ---} (or less) but you do not get the same performance, administration or ---} reliability. I do agree on two points above: 'administration' and 'reliability'. Upgrading the OS takes only a few minutes and so far the F200 has had 100% uptime. However, on the third issue 'performance', I'm experiencing slower (almost 50%) read performance from my F220 than from a Sun Sparc20 NFS server. This issue has been looked at by NetApp's and so far no solution or reason to this anomaly. I have had very good response from NetApps support in the past and have faith that they will resolve this problem. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ Fred Abounader Vantis (AMD's PLD Subsidiary) ~ ~ email: fred.abounader(a)vantis.com Mailstop 546 ~ ~ voice: (512)-602-1644 5300 E. Ben White Blvd. ~ ~ FAX: (512)-602-4148 Austin, TX 78741 ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2 1

NetApp F220 worth it?
by Janne Frosen 02 Apr '97

02 Apr '97

Hello, I just joined this mailing list, mainly to hear comments about the NetApps in practice. Our lab is planning to (maybe) purchase a NetApp F220. The simple question is: Is it worth it? ie. where are the true savings that justify the high price? As a comparison, it's possible to get the same amount of NFS disk with 2-3 times less $$. Will the additional features make up for it.. What was the deciding factor for you to get it? (Sorry if this is a boring FAQ) //Janne -- Janne Fr|sen <a href="http://iki.fi/jaf/"> jaf(a)iki.fi </a> Finland, Helsinki University of Technology, CS

3 2

Re: NetApp F220 worth it?
by David Drum 02 Apr '97

02 Apr '97

Tom Yates penned: > i reckon this is going to be a full-blown FAQ. you fancy collating > those replies, sorting them into some kind of summary, and posting > that when the question's asked? or maybe just volunteering to send > it to anyone who asks the question? to coin a rec.motoism, you could > end up being the KotWSGATTAFAQ (Keeper of the What's So Great About > Them Toasters Anyway? FAQ). I'll be happy to collate/summarize what I have received so far, but I can't yet guarantee to be a permanent keeper of the FAQ because we don't have and might not get a toaster. If worse comes to worst, I'll have to pass along what I collected to someone else. 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

1 0

Re: How do *you* manage snapshots?
by Steve Gremban 01 Apr '97

01 Apr '97

Vishy, I am backing up the toasters through nfs mounts on the OpenVision Netbackup server. The server is a Sun Ultra2 running Solaris 2.5.1. This means that nfs is multi-threaded and won't block if a mount hangs. It also means that the pathname to the mounted directory is no longer a link to /tmp_mnt/... which means it can be used without worrying about running a prebackup script to mount the directory and then backing up through /tmp_mnt. The toasters are fddi attached as is the backup server. The drives I use are DLT7000 drives and they are in an STK9710 tape library. Each tape holds 35GB native and the STK can hold 560 tapes. Our NFAS-1300 and NFAS-1400 toasters backup at about 2.6GB/hour and the F330 toasters at about 4.3GB/hour. OpenVision is working on a toaster client using the NDMP API developed by NAC and Budtool but I don't know when it will be available. I hope sooner than later. regards, Steve Gremban gremban(a)ti.com ------------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------- >From gplkrshv(a)cig.mot.com Tue Apr 1 07:47:08 1997 From: Vishy Gopalakrishnan <gplkrshv(a)cig.mot.com> Subject: Re: How do *you* manage snapshots? To: gremban(a)msp.sc.ti.com (Steve Gremban) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 07:45:29 -0600 (CST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steve, Could you describe your NetApp-OpenVision setup ? Our site has 3 F330s which we have to start using NetBackup on (we currently do an nfs mount and use some home grown scripts). What kind of performance (transfer rates) have you been getting ? Are you using DLT drives/jukeboxes ? Has OpenVision mentioned anything about NetApp-native NetBackup clients ? Any pinters appreciated. Thanks Vishy -- Vishy Gopalakrishnan | Motorola CIG ITS ------------- End Forwarded Message -------------

1 0

How do *you* manage snapshots?
by Steve Gremban 01 Apr '97

01 Apr '97

> We have the following policy: "snap sched 2 6 12", 2 > weeklies, 6 nightlys, and 12 hourlies. Since the data on our toasters is being edited interactively there is a high probability that lost or corrupted data will be discovered the day it occurs. By using 12 without the @ I can get back to good data to within an hour of when it was messed up on the day of occurrence. This has worked out well for us. NOTE: I am using up 20 snapshots which is the limit. If you are doing a dump (which creates its own snapshot) you should leave off 1 snapshot from the schedule. We are backing up toasters using nfs mounts and OpenVision Netbackup software. regards, Steve Gremban gremban(a)ti.com ------------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------- >From madhatta(a)turing.mathworks.com Mon Mar 31 16:43:31 1997 From: sterling(a)netapp.com (Bruce Sterling Woodcock) Subject: How do *you* manage snapshots? To: gremban(a)msp.sc.ti.com (Steve Gremban) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 14:41:50 -0800 (PST) Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > We have the following policy: "snap sched 2 6 12", 2 > weeklies, 6 nightlys, and 12 hourlies. Interesting. I use "snap sched 1 6 7@8,10,12,14,16,18,20". This tends to translate to about a 10 - 20% snapshot reserve depending on our filer's usage pattern... I like to keep that snapshot reserve 50 - 75% full most of the time so I have a buffer to handle large deletes gracefully when they occur. What snap reserve do you use? I am curious to hear from other admins on this issue as well. Someone else mentioned that when both the filesystem and snapshots are full, it can be very tricky and may require manually deleteing snapshots. This is quite true. As I think the manual mentions, "preventing" a snapshot from growing could lead to strange behavior (i.e. rm *failing* due to lack of disk space). The only real workaround is to keep a snap reserve large enough for your desired schedule. If you need to, buy more disk. :) Bruce -- Bruce Sterling Woodcock ------ Systems Administrator ][ sterling(a)netapp.com Network & Systems Administration - Network Appliance ][ sterling(a)netcom.com ------------- End Forwarded Message -------------

1 0

Jump to page:

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

toasters