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RE: NFS 2 -vs-3
by Mohler, Jeff 04 Mar '99

04 Mar '99

Nothing makes me think 2 is -better-, just that I see more "V2 is better" type arguments. Im just ferreting out actual facts *grin* > -----Original Message----- > From: kls(a)netapp.com [SMTP:kls@netapp.com] > Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 1999 10:17 PM > To: jeff.mohler(a)wilcom.com > Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: Re: NFS 2 -vs-3 > > > In a really short list, other than the attribute cache, why is vers 2 > NFS > > better than vers 3? > > What makes you think V2 is better than V3? > > > I will be working with directories with fewer than a dozen LARGE files > on > > each mount. > > With few files per directory, I can't think of anything in favor of > V2, and with large files I can think of various advantages to V3, > larger packet sizes being the major one. > > -- Karl

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Re: Gb-ether and Extreme: closure! :-)
by Bruce Walker 04 Mar '99

04 Mar '99

A very long time ago (mid-November 98), when I got my F720 filer with Gigabit ether, I tried to connect it to an Extreme Summit48, had trouble, contacted NetApp, despite excellent suggestions still had trouble and appealed to this list. Got a few "let us know what happens", but unfortunately no real leads. The story has a happy ending, and here's what did happen. First off: Gigabit on F720 to Summit48 works great. That's settled. Also, with the help I got from NetApp (Mark Smith, Tim McCarthy, David Zwick, Devi Nagaraj, possibly others!), if I had been actually able to concentrate on the problem for more than 30 minutes at a time (and more than 60 minutes per week :-), I might have noticed what was going on earlier. What the problem turned out to be is: on both of the Summit48's I had available to me to test the Gig ether link, the port I was using, always port 50, was missing from any VLAN list. What *that* means is that although the port appeared alive, no packets were ever delivered to that port from any other and it quietly acted as a packet sync for anything received from the filer. Now how did port 50 end up off of all VLANs, on both switches? Simple! Right after I first received my brand new switches, I had trunked the two fiber links on the two Summit48's together, just to see if it would work. I ran fiber from port 49 on one to port 49 on the other and 50 to 50. When the F720 arrived, I moved one fiber link (port 50) from the second Summit48 over to the 720 and unconfigured the trunking. But what happens when you unconfigure a trunked port on a Summit, apparently, is that the port ends up not being on *any* VLAN. The port is "alive" but nothing is routed to or from it. So, I reconfigured the affected ports (put all ports back on the Default VLAN) and the G/B link to the 720 now works just fine. There's still one small "cosmetic" glitch. When the filer comes up, it always reports that the G/B link is up, then right away that it's down. The last console message is always "e8: link down". But it is up (or I couldn't type this mail), so I'm not overly concerned. Do I really need Gigabit ether to an F720? Possibly not. I've only managed to drive the link to 1.5 times the speed of a 100Mbit link so far. But with the prices of Summit48's back when I bought them, I figure the Gig interfaces came for free. Plus, this way I don't have to trunk 100Mbit ether ports and waste good sockets on the switch. And anyway, I'm always adding more clients to load down the filer. That reminds me: has the Progress db been certified yet? -- -bmw | Double helix in the sky tonight | Throw out the hardware | Let's do it right -- Steely Dan; Aja

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newbie asking about autoloaders
by Kathy Fischer 04 Mar '99

04 Mar '99

Hi everyone, I'm brand new to this mail group, and to toasters. We just recently setup our new toaster (720), and we are currently implementing into our environment. Part of this process is developing a backup policy for our toaster, and hooking up an autoloader! Can anyone out there recommend an autoloader (DLT type), or warn against any for use with the toaster? We need to buy one pretty quick, and I want to be sure we get one that won't cause us major headaches :-) !! FYI, we've been looking at the DLT4700, but are unsure which brand to go with. Thanks in advance for any help, Kathy Kathleen G. Fischer Research Systems, Inc. (303)413-3909 kfischer(a)rsinc.com

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RE: Dell Deal
by Strange, Steve 04 Mar '99

04 Mar '99

> From: Dane Jasper [mailto:dane@sonic.net] > > If only the power switch wasn't on the front. We had to tape a half of a > plastic backup tape box on unit to keep someone from pushing the big black > button. You must have an F630 or earlier filer -- your wish came true on the 700-series! Steve

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"5.1.2P2D7"? Whoa, Nelly.
by Brian Rice 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

I had no idea that x.y.z.Pm.Dn could exist. So thanks for the tip (sigh). I'm guessing that 5.1.2P2D7 is probably my best bet for a retrograde target, if it comes to that. Any horror stories with that one? I'm not running any cutting-edge hardware...just boring old SCSI shelves (well, one of the F630's is FC). I just want all my filers running the same release, and not panicking when I do a "quota on". It'd be lovely if said release didn't have a name suggestive of a Star Wars droid, but I'll take what I can get. Brian Rice (known to his friends as B2R2)

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Re: Dell Deal
by Jay Sekora 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Dave "Color Me Cool" Hitz wrote: > The most consistent complaint that we've had about the > 700 series is that the bezel isn't "cool" enough. > > I've done some serious rabble rousing, and I've gotten > a strong commitment that the bezel on our next high > end system will be cool. My officemate's response to this was: `They don't think that thing's cool? I think that thing's _mad_ cool! What're they talking about?' So you have at least one voice of approval for the coolness of the 700-series bezels. However, I have to admit that we haven't actually seen the stainless steel ones here. Jay Sekora Northeatern University College of Computer Science PS - I think `mad cool' is supposed to mean something like `very impressive' or `extremely appealing', but I wouldn't know - I don't speak cool.

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RE: Dell Deal
by Bulfer, David 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

No, chrome was never really considered. It was supposed to look slightly unrefined, somewhat brash, totally in your face. Aluminum was selected because of the tooling budget that NetApp could afford at the time and because of the expected volume of the F540. Had we known that we'd sell as many F540s as we did, thing may have turned out differently. David -----Original Message----- From: kls(a)netapp.com [mailto:kls@netapp.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 1999 12:20 PM To: hitz(a)netapp.com Cc: jeff.mohler(a)wilcom.com; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Re: Dell Deal > > Is there any way we can get some -real- faces on the F760s? > > > > Seriously, my management was quite unhappy to see four non-matching purple > > plastic faces on our 760s after the sweet Stainless on the demo 630 we had > > *grin* Polished aluminum, actually. It was really supposed to be chrome, but the story I heard was that chrome would have been *really* expensive. > The most consistent complaint that we've had about the > 700 series is that the bezel isn't "cool" enough. > > I've done some serious rabble rousing, and I've gotten > a strong commitment that the bezel on our next high > end system will be cool. A refrigerated bezel? :-) I guess a refrigerated toaster wouldn't make much sense. -- Karl

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RE: Dell Deal
by sirbruce＠ix.netcom.com 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

On 03/03/99 08:57:44 you wrote: > >A faux-tigerskin bezel, a fireplace, a scantily-clad young lady stroking said >bezel while purring appreciatively. Has anyone contacted our advertising agency? Does the scantily-clad young lady included with the bezel? I bet they could sell a lot of filers that way.... Bruce PS - This would make a great ad campaign. Show a picture like the above, the woman stroking the bezel and the words, "Is your file server... sexy?" Then you could have a little asterisk and at the bottom of the advert the words: *Scantily-clad young lady not included. Bruce

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Re: 5.2.1 blues (salient points for exploiting NetApp support facilities, a worked example ;)
by mds＠gbnet.net 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

On Tue 2 Mar, 1999, Graham Knight <grahamk(a)ast.lmco.com> wrote: > Our encounter (albiet brief) with 5.2.1 was pretty disasterous too. I'm > camped at 5.1.2P2 and have no reason to move. Except for the occasional > 5.2.1 floppy boot for the fiber channel diagnostics. ;-) I've a long story about 5.1.2...are we sitting comfortably? I shall begin: Well, we'd decided to move to 5.1.2 as a Y2K compliance upgrade. I fished around on the NOW site to check whether there were any patch releases available. You see we've been bitten several times by the following scenario: o upgrade to recommended release. o get hit by *known* bug. o get told that we should have gone straight to the latest official patch release (now apaprently the x.y.zPa releases, but once x.y.z.Da ..) which, bizarrely is invisible in the NOW site, unless you go fishing. o upgrade *again* So I fished around the un-linked-to parts of the Software Library and found 5.1.2P1, P2, D1, D2, and which now has D5, D6, and god-(and NetApp)-only knows what else. I never touch X releases. If any other letters are in use, I wouldn't know. I read over the descriptions and decided that 5.1.2P2 was the latest and greatest and officially sanctioned with a 'P' release moniker and that that was what we should go for. My colleagues, gaining experience with the filers, while I went off to upgrade our DNS/etc. infrastructure, undertook to upgrade our remaining 4 F330's, F520, 3 F630's and F540. They'd carefully tested the upgrade on another F330 a week earlier. All was apparently go-for-launch. After the upgrade there was a problem with the quotas one one filer - we couldn't turn them on because the filer would crash. Because we'd upgraded from 4.3.1 they could back-out without going to 5.0 first, which they didn't have, and didn't know how to find in NOW (I'm the only angler). I proposed they get NetApp support on the case and progress the issue - as the filer was still running and serving. For extra entertainment value 2 filers threw 3 disks between them (1 threw 2 in quick, but not lethal, succession - scary!) and another started misbehaving doing restores in the next day. Then another machine threw a disk, and *crashed* as a result. We logged calls for some failures and a call was automagically logged for the last one, from the autosupport mail (even though they're _all_ configured for autosupport), and cores were ftp'd for analysis. We were told that we needed to use wackz (not wackq, not wacky.. wackz *sigh* the Great UnDocumented, what a confidence builder) from, get this, 5.1.2P2D7. to fix the quotas problem on our one limping filer. 5. 1. 2. P2 _D7_ ferchrissakes!!! Dutifully my colleague did so. Now I, in my greater experience would then have booted from the 5.1.2.P2D7 floppies, and installed the 5.1.2P2D7 sysfiles, downloaded and then rebooted avoiding at all costs the known-to-be-buggy 5.1.2P2 code that still lurked on the filer. Sadly my colleagues just ran the wackz and rebooted...back to the known buggy 5.1.2 install. *sigh* I was very convincing, and somewhat impassioned and the upgrade was done, belatedly, but hopefully without any damage during the brief 5.1.2P2 run-time. I'm probablyoverstating the danger, but _D7_! Sheesh! Anyway. Long story, doubt many of you are still with me, but the moral I draw is this: NetApp have now achieved an overly baroque and divaricated release tree and have obscured it behind a screen of cgi's and HTML. They've developed wonderful support mechanisms that don't seem to be applied 100%, which means they can't be relied upon. These issues need to be addressed before they get worse. Being more forthright about all the patchings at each release, and making clear statements about which one the developers and support folk think customers should be running, rather than hiding all but the first release in the Software library would be very good. Patches being made for one specific customer site should perhaps be furnished only to that site, not placed into the public software library. Now I love NetApp kit and software for their evident virtues and I consistently champion them in my company, but I'm getting somewhat disenchanted, even annoyed by the increasingly less-than-polished releases of DOT and the support structure backing us up. The dismal state of backup-and-restore technology is also causing me to worry about the long-term ability of NetApp boxes to fulfill our needs. Maybe I'll change my opinion about that when we get Veritas Netbackup working...*if* we get it working. But that's another story, for another day. 8) I rather hope someone in NetApp takes up these points, seeing as so many of the fine folks on this list are NetApp stalwarts. This is the sort of feedback that I hesitate to give to front-line support folk lest they take it personally, or just bury it. This list at least hits doers at all levels in the NetApp organisation! There, that's off my chest... And everyone lived happily ever after. > > One day, i'd really like to see NetApp move to a user patchable OS. Anyone > else? Well, the patches may be big, but NetApp boxes are user patchable. We don't need our NetApp SE's to do everything for us. 8) > > Graham > >-- End of excerpt from Graham Knight

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RE: VIF command
by Mohler, Jeff 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

> The filer is quite busy at the moment: > > CPU NFS CIFS HTTP Net kB/s Disk kB/s Tape kB/s Cache > in out read write read write > age > 75% 2695 1322 0 1554 2930 769 0 0 0 > 3 > 86% 2596 1150 0 2668 6273 4564 1953 0 0 > 2 > 94% 2515 1125 0 4332 6292 6295 3998 0 0 > 2 > 92% 2447 1197 0 3581 6829 6164 3836 0 0 > 2 > 87% 2257 1017 0 3251 6568 7332 3976 0 0 > 2 > 78% 2683 1028 0 1482 7961 5595 0 0 0 > 1 > 90% 2796 1057 0 743 10365 5145 3399 0 0 > 1 > 88% 2525 1262 0 2772 9479 5426 0 0 0 > 1 --- This is what I see on averate..and right now: CPU NFS CIFS HTTP Net kB/s Disk kB/s Tape kB/s Cache in out read write read write age 41% 831 0 0 754 5852 7311 8801 0 0 1 62% 897 0 0 322 7038 16440 11499 0 0 1 42% 673 0 0 823 4661 14210 2550 0 0 1 50% 1122 0 0 1175 8226 14409 1054 0 0 1 44% 855 0 0 480 6941 18302 1889 0 0 1 62% 1674 0 0 758 13759 15735 768 0 0 1 71% 1857 0 0 1004 15127 16968 896 0 0 1 84% 1663 0 0 1015 13346 19151 2810 0 0 1 77% 1616 0 0 1002 12960 16984 8008 0 0 1 76% 1351 0 0 610 11101 16928 11891 0 0 1 65% 1633 0 0 928 13222 16540 912 0 0 1 57% 1416 0 0 438 11811 15956 920 0 0 1 66% 1591 0 0 1676 12067 16540 864 0 0 1 59% 1433 0 0 1316 11089 16616 1249 0 0 1 48% 1109 0 0 677 8873 14048 864 0 0 1 50% 1147 0 0 1311 8566 16660 1601 0 0 1 58% 1385 0 0 2106 9911 14210 1089 0 0 1 53% 1197 0 0 2193 8149 14192 1184 0 0 1 64% 1465 0 0 3085 9515 15295 1025 0 0 1 And I only see traffic on two interfaces, although I can unplug working ones, and it fails over to idle ones.

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