toasters

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13529 discussions

RE: "Wac"-ing the WAFL?
by Anders Ljungberg S (QDT) 30 Dec '99

30 Dec '99

This is my personal expirience from a heavy NFS Site. Which lead to replacing 2x7000/600 Auspex Netservers with a F740. To get realy good write performace lets say that you have to use atleast 7 drives/raidgroup.The performance raises up to lets say ~14. 7 drives without parity ( raid 4 or 5 ) is not verry funny considering the risk of a failing drive , restore times etc. So, in the Auspex case i had to go for mirrored stripes. ( Very bad price/performance and i finaly grew out of my cabinets ) On a filer i spend money on one "extra" drive instead of seven. The 740 is just cruising with the load which lead to the fall of the Netservers. Not to even mention the decreased need of administration. Anders Ljungberg As Jeff said, Netapp's RAID-4 implementation is not performance limiting in most cases. Most of the time a filer with RAID-4 will provide better performance than an equivalent product without RAID or with RAID-0. So I'm sure you will be quite pleased in your tests, particularly against a (*snicker*) Auspex. (Be sure to compare the price and number of filesystems in each system configuration as well.) I seem to recall some public talk waay back when about Netapp possibly offering RAID-0 since basically all you have to do is remove the parity drive. You could simulate this yourself by manually failing the parity drive and letting the filer operate in degraded mode with just the data disks. However, I'm not sure that the code is actually optimized for this case, so there might be some other normal RAID-4 checks that get in the way of realizing any performance gains. Bruce

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RE: Some fun things not to try at home
by Priebe, Jason 28 Dec '99

28 Dec '99

> Are you implying that you'd rather use 6 drives per shelf > rather than 7? No -- I'm just assuming that the 7th disk (the hot spare) is drawing little or no power. Perhaps this is a bad assumption. > > Is startup power the power required to "spin up" the > > disks? In that case, isn't that power only delivered once at boot > > time? > > In addition to this, if I remember correctly, the filer spins up disks > sequentially, so there shouldn't be more than one disk drawing startup > power at any one time. That's good to note. Jason Priebe WRAL OnLine http://www.wral-tv.com/

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RE: Some fun things not to try at home
by Priebe, Jason 27 Dec '99

27 Dec '99

Hmmm... that's interesting. I don't want to be foolhardy here, but I just checked the power requirements for the Seagate ST39173W (9GB Barracuda) drives and the ST15150W (4GB Barracuda) drives that are in the filer's shelf now. ST39173W ST15150W 12V startup 1.7 amps 2.18 12V typical 0.5 0.83 5V startup 1.2 amps 1.0 5V typical 0.75 0.75 It appears to me that, except for the 5V startup, the 9GB drives require _less_ power than the 4GB drives. Is the 5V startup the limiting factor? Can the power supply not deliver 1.2 amps at 5V to six drives? Is startup power the power required to "spin up" the disks? In that case, isn't that power only delivered once at boot time? Do the disks ever spin down in an active system? I really don't mean to be confrontational. We're just desperate to get some more life out of our F210 (we bought it new just two years ago). Jason Priebe WRAL OnLine http://www.wral-tv.com/ > -----Original Message----- > From: Bulfer, David [mailto:david.bulfer@netapp.com] > Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 5:30 PM > To: 'Priebe, Jason'; toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: RE: Some fun things not to try at home > > > Please be careful. I do not believe that your StorageWorks > shelf has enough > power for 9G drives. Buying a new supply from Compaq would > not solve the > problem either. Your results could be quite unhappy. > > David Bulfer > Director of Platform Engineering > Network Appliance, Inc. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Priebe, Jason [mailto:priebe@wral-tv.com] > Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 1:22 PM > To: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: RE: Some fun things not to try at home > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Bruce Sterling Woodcock [mailto:sirbruce@ix.netcom.com] > > If you find out something > > useful in your filer experience, plesae pass it along, even > if it's of > > the "I didn't read the manual, so I did this and it > crashed" variety. > > While we're airing dirty laundry -- a couple of months ago, I > mentioned > to the list that we wanted to try to replace our F210's 4GB SCSI disks > with 9GB disks (full shelf, no more shelves available from NetApp). > > I replaced two of the 4GB disks with 9GB ones, and all was well (of > course, the filer only used 4 of the 9GB, but we figured we'd dump > to tape, rebuild the file system, then restore once all the drives > were in place). > > So I'm opening the 3rd disk carrier, removing the flex circuit from > the disk drive (has anyone else ever tried to do this? How the #$%! > do you do it?) by prying with a screwdriver, and the screwdriver goes > right through the circuit. D'oh! > > I did find that I was able to call Compaq and order a new > circuit (only > $96 for that tiny little piece!). Still waiting on delivery, though. > I'll let you know how it goes. Wish I'd known you could still order > these parts -- I could have built a couple of my own carriers and had > them ready to go into the filer instead of failing a drive, > disassembling > the carrier, reassembling the carrier, and reinstalling. > > Jason Priebe > WRAL OnLine > http://www.wral-tv.com/ > >

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NFAS-1400
by Russell Murphy 27 Dec '99

27 Dec '99

I picked up a rack mount cabinet at the local electronic surplus and while looking it over to strip, I discovered it was a toaster. Before I cannibalize it, is there documentation available? Network Appliances' support pages appear to be customer only.

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Spam alert
by Clawson, Simon 27 Dec '99

27 Dec '99

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26 Dec '99

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RE: Some fun things not to try at home
by Bond, Andrew 23 Dec '99

23 Dec '99

Note that some disks are not labelled with WIDE SCSI; however the DEC part number may have "W" in it, eg: SHWHB-GB (but you can't rely on this either!). > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-dl-toasters(a)netapp.com > [mailto:owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com]On Behalf Of Timothy A. McCarthy > Sent: 22 December 1999 22:14 > To: tkaczma(a)gryf.net > Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: Re: Some fun things not to try at home > > > I've had this happen before... a long time ago anyway. > > Check the disk. In my case I tried to put a WIDE > SCSI disk into a narrow shelf. Result, not even recognized. > > Pulled it out, looked at the label, and in the wise > words of Homer Simpson said "Dogh!!" when I > read "4GB WIDE SCSI". > > --tmac > > tkaczma(a)gryf.net wrote: > > > On Wed, 22 Dec 1999, Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote: > > > > > Some of the older drivers didn't > > > like one version of the StorageWorks container, but did work > > > in another, and we spent the rest of the night scrounging for > > > parts off other containers for the right disk container. :) > > > > Is that right. I just plugged in a brand spanking new > spare (well it's > > been on the shelf for a while) into a 330's shelf and the > disk was not > > detected even after several tries (a defective spare?). I > pop a different > > disk in and it is detected immediately. I wonder whether > that was the > > problem, whether the shelf is becomming flakey, oe whether > it was simply a > > bad spare. > > > > Tom > > -- > ******All New Numbers!!!****** > ************* ************* > > Timothy A. McCarthy --> System Engineer, Eastern Region > Network Appliance http://www.netapp.com > 240-268-2034 Office \ / Page Me at: > 240-268-2002 Fax \/ 888-971-4468 > > > >

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RE: Some fun things not to try at home
by Priebe, Jason 23 Dec '99

23 Dec '99

> -----Original Message----- > From: Bruce Sterling Woodcock [mailto:sirbruce@ix.netcom.com] > If you find out something > useful in your filer experience, plesae pass it along, even if it's of > the "I didn't read the manual, so I did this and it crashed" variety. While we're airing dirty laundry -- a couple of months ago, I mentioned to the list that we wanted to try to replace our F210's 4GB SCSI disks with 9GB disks (full shelf, no more shelves available from NetApp). I replaced two of the 4GB disks with 9GB ones, and all was well (of course, the filer only used 4 of the 9GB, but we figured we'd dump to tape, rebuild the file system, then restore once all the drives were in place). So I'm opening the 3rd disk carrier, removing the flex circuit from the disk drive (has anyone else ever tried to do this? How the #$%! do you do it?) by prying with a screwdriver, and the screwdriver goes right through the circuit. D'oh! I did find that I was able to call Compaq and order a new circuit (only $96 for that tiny little piece!). Still waiting on delivery, though. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish I'd known you could still order these parts -- I could have built a couple of my own carriers and had them ready to go into the filer instead of failing a drive, disassembling the carrier, reassembling the carrier, and reinstalling. Jason Priebe WRAL OnLine http://www.wral-tv.com/

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RE: Some fun things not to try at home
by Bulfer, David 22 Dec '99

22 Dec '99

Please be careful. I do not believe that your StorageWorks shelf has enough power for 9G drives. Buying a new supply from Compaq would not solve the problem either. Your results could be quite unhappy. David Bulfer Director of Platform Engineering Network Appliance, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: Priebe, Jason [mailto:priebe@wral-tv.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1999 1:22 PM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: Some fun things not to try at home > -----Original Message----- > From: Bruce Sterling Woodcock [mailto:sirbruce@ix.netcom.com] > If you find out something > useful in your filer experience, plesae pass it along, even if it's of > the "I didn't read the manual, so I did this and it crashed" variety. While we're airing dirty laundry -- a couple of months ago, I mentioned to the list that we wanted to try to replace our F210's 4GB SCSI disks with 9GB disks (full shelf, no more shelves available from NetApp). I replaced two of the 4GB disks with 9GB ones, and all was well (of course, the filer only used 4 of the 9GB, but we figured we'd dump to tape, rebuild the file system, then restore once all the drives were in place). So I'm opening the 3rd disk carrier, removing the flex circuit from the disk drive (has anyone else ever tried to do this? How the #$%! do you do it?) by prying with a screwdriver, and the screwdriver goes right through the circuit. D'oh! I did find that I was able to call Compaq and order a new circuit (only $96 for that tiny little piece!). Still waiting on delivery, though. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish I'd known you could still order these parts -- I could have built a couple of my own carriers and had them ready to go into the filer instead of failing a drive, disassembling the carrier, reassembling the carrier, and reinstalling. Jason Priebe WRAL OnLine http://www.wral-tv.com/

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Some fun things not to try at home
by Brian Rice 22 Dec '99

22 Dec '99

Here is a tale of woe, which you will find entertaining not only because it offers lotsa useful information about filer management, but also because it makes me look like an idiot. Several weeks ago, some co-workers of mine and I undertook to add a fibre-channel controller and shelf to each of two F630's, each of which previously had only one dual-SCSI adapter. We did the wrong thing, as it turned out (much later). The FC cards are PCI cards with a long edge connector. F630's have two kinds of PCI slots: some long, some short. We naively jumped to the conclusion that long cards go in a long slot, so we installed the FC cards in slot 10, rather than slot 7, which had been our plan before opening the filers. Slot 10, it turns out, was a bad idea. Disk controller cards on F630's are only supported in slots 5-8, inclusive. And, believe it or not, you are supposed to put the card in there in spite of the fact that it is too big...you just leave the extra section of connector hanging in mid-air. So we had just put the filers in an illegal configuration. You may be interested to know the failure mode: None. The filers booted right up, found all the disks, and announced them; we added them to a volume, and we were off to the races. A week later, the regular disk scrubs found bizillions of parity inconsistencies on each filer and fixed them. Then the filers started crashing ("PANIC: Freeing free block"). They would only restart after a run of wackz. Then the next disk scrub would put us on the path to ruin again. After several interactions with several levels of NetApp technical support, eventually all parties came to understand what had happened, and the fact that the FC cards are not supported in slot 10. So we got the FC cards put into the right slots, did a wackz, and breathed easier. Then one of the filers crashed again. The culprit there: wackz and disk scrubs look at two completely different pieces of the puzzle. I had the (once again) mistaken idea that wackz fixed a superset of the problems that a disk scrub fixes. Wrong. Wackz only looks at the file system structure and ignores the parity data; to fix the parity data, you need a disk scrub. Moral of the story: to make sure your disks have happy data on them, do both a wackz and a disk scrub. Yer not done until you do both. With that problem fixed, we breathed a sigh of relief. Then one of the filers crashed again. It turned out that that filer had been in the middle of doing its nightly backup when it crashed the first time, and so it had created a snapshot. Call it "fred". The system came back up, and eventually got fixed, wacked, and scrubbed, but fred was still corrupt. My backup script contained this: rsh toaster snap create fred It did not check to see whether fred exists already; if so, the snap create would just fail, and then the backup would proceed to dump the (existing) fred. Which, if fred is corrupt, would panic the system. I deleted fred. Then the filer was able to back itself up fine. So: make sure your snapshots are fresh. My backup script now starts like this: rsh toaster snap list | grep fred > /dev/null 2>&1 if [ $? -eq 0 ] then echo I refuse to work under these conditions exit 5 fi rsh toaster snap create fred Brian P.S. If you know about PCI, you may know that long PCI cards are 64-bit, and short ones are 32-bit. I've omitted that from the discussion above, since what leaps out at you first when you go to install a PCI card is not its bit-width but its physical width...the latter was what got us started down this awful path in the first place. P.P.S. NetApp Engineering is looking into building checks for illegal configurations into future versions of ONTAP.

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