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Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps?
by Daniel Quinlan 15 Jan '98

15 Jan '98

Marc Nicholas <marc(a)hippocampus.net> writes: > I'm interested to hear what others think the shortcomings of the > current crop of NetApps are. In addition to what other people have said: 1. Out-of-date SNMP implemention - (no CIFS or disk system statistics, for example) 2. ndmpcopy - incrementals don't work, rsh as UID 0 doesn't work, requires password to be passed on command line 3. NetApps are reboot-prone. Often will reboot when it should have just failed an obviously bad disk. 4. No command line Unix permissions tool for CIFS, the graphical permissions tool uses an undocumented proprietary extension to CIFS (that is, it won't work with Samba). 5. Disk reconstructions take far too long. We had one on a 200GB filesystem take 24 hours (dial set to 2 because any faster was causing severe problems for users, and this is on a decked-out F630). Dan

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Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps?
by mds46523＠ggr.co.uk 15 Jan '98

15 Jan '98

On Jan 15, 11:14, James R Grinter wrote: > Subject: Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps? > On Thu 15 Jan, 1998, Alexei Rodriguez <alexei(a)cimedia.com> wrote: > >I understand the benefits. I just don't care for having 5 4GB > >slices which you have to manage (ala auspex). > > I thought the idea of multiple RAID sets is that you layer one > filesystem atop them all (if you want to. Of course, others want > to have multiple filesystems.) > My thought was that for once we'd have separate fs's in one NetApp box. Which would allow us to have separate snapshot schedules in the same box. Which would be nice and useful. > (Which is something you can, and people do, do with multiple > RAID controllers and Unix systems, etc) > > -- jrg. >-- End of excerpt from James R Grinter -- -Mark, TSG Unix admin and support, int 782 4412, ext +44 1438 76 4412. ... an Englishman in London ...

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Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps?
by mds46523＠ggr.co.uk 15 Jan '98

15 Jan '98

I've got two things to say about these points: (a) Testing. (b) Testing. (insert standard joke about 'it's so important I mention it twice') Seriously though, we've been bitten a once or twice by component failures on our NetApp's but compared to the DOA's we get from Sun, SGI and the rest, I'm quite happy for NetApp to spend more on their factory space, power, personnel and so forth, AND charge a little more. Maybe amortising the RnD costs of NetApp's over the whole range of components isn't as off-putting to users as dumping it all in the base price of the strictly NetApp-designed-and-built hardware and software. Plus it means that NetApp engineers can reasonably expect problems with hardware and software to be NetApp-owned because they were NetApp supplied. NetApp seem to want to make owning their boxes as painless and fruitful as they can. How often do you see Rolls-Royce's in the shop being fitted with parts that aren't approved by RR? Likewise Ferrari? I betcha parts for econoboxes would be cheaper, and might even come from the same basic supplier, but the added scrutiny means added reassurance, which is worth money. Maybe NetApp could introduce a poor-man's NetApp (called something more tactful and market-savvy of course)... But I think that would be more trouble than it's worth no matter which side you're on. On Jan 14, 22:33, Jonah Yokubaitis wrote: > Subject: Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps? > On Wed, 14 Jan 1998, Chris Caputo wrote: > > |>I'm interested to hear what others think the shortcomings of the current > |>crop of NetApps are. From my experience: > | > |My biggest beef is that the upgradability of these things is low. It > |seems that when you buy a unit you are buying a capacity and improvements > |in disk technology don't raise it. For example, our unit uses 4 gig > |drives. Its max capacity is 14 4 gig drives. We'd love to put 9 or 18 > |gig drives in it, but the software doesn't support it. I realize 9 or 18 > |gig drives would raise rebuild time, but that risk should be up to us. > > Amen to that. > > A paste from a sysconfig -r on an F630 > > 1: SEAGATE ST15150W 9107 Size=3.9GB (8388315 blocks) > > The ST15150W is an *OLD* drive that Seagate doesn't even list as a > current product..... > > Some newer drives please? 18gig drives please? It *can't* be that hard > to allow 18gig drives...if it is your programmers didn't do their job > correctly. > > |I also consider the high price per meg to be a shortcoming and because of > |it we are researching and developing alternatives. > > Just negotiate hard with Netapp. I still feel screwed everytime I want > an upgrade from netapp. The above drive model is $355 through > disribution...netapp quoted me $1700/drive. > > Their NVRAM pricing is LUDICRIOUS considering its 3rd party NVRAM > bought from Dallas semiconductor. Ditto for DRAM. > > Netapp: > > Make your money on your wonderful software, and stop trying to price > gouge your customers on *off the shelf* items like Seagate Hard > DRives, Samsung DRAM, and Dallas Semiconductor NVRAM. > > We really aren't that stupid I promise. > > Jonah > > Jonah Barron Yokubaitis | Austin|San Antonio|Houston > President | Dallas|Fort Worth|Boerne > Texas.Net | Georgetown|Dripping Springs > http://www.texas.net | Making 56k affordable > >-- End of excerpt from Jonah Yokubaitis -- -Mark, TSG Unix admin and support, int 782 4412, ext +44 1438 76 4412. ... an Englishman in London ...

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subscribe
by tonylai 15 Jan '98

15 Jan '98

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Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps?
by Richard Fairthorne 15 Jan '98

15 Jan '98

I would like to see the NetApp re-share CIFS according to cifsconfig.txt after a power-loss, not just a clean shut-down. Richard Fairthorne ---------- > From: Brett Rabe <brett(a)uswest.net> > To: Marc Nicholas <marc(a)hippocampus.net> > Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: Re: Shortcomings of current NetApps? > Date: Wednesday, January 14, 1998 1:18 PM > > > On Wed, 14 Jan 1998 12:40:47 EST, Marc Nicholas wrote: > >I'm interested to hear what others think the shortcomings of the current > >crop of NetApps are. From my experience: > > > > [snip] > >* Not quite enough redundancy for truly mission critical applications > > What other types of redundancy would you like to see? > > Brett > > --- > Brett Rabe Email : brett(a)uswest.net > Systems Administrator - U S West Phone : 612.664.3078 > 600 Stinson Blvd. Pager : 612.613.2549 > Minneapolis, MN USA 55413 Fax : 612.664.4770 > > If you aren't the lead dog, the view is always the same.

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Re: NetApp and amanda
by Alan Judge 14 Jan '98

14 Jan '98

> In article <199801131829.MAA18731(a)vortex.more.net>, > David Drum <david(a)more.net> wrote: >> I was wondering if anyone uses amanda to backup their NetApp(s)? Jan-Pieter> Yup, we do. At least, we used to, until yesterday :) The Jan-Pieter> load on the netapp during phase I of the dump is Jan-Pieter> prohibitively high, and consequently makes our webserver Jan-Pieter> very slow... we're currently rethinking things. We're doing something similar, though in our case we modified amanda itself to understand devices like /@filer1 and understand the output of NetApp dump, rather than replacing dump. Works great, though I have the same concerns as you about the cost of amanda's dump estimates. (Though the cost of creating a snapshot doesn't seem significant for us.) I'd be interested in hearing what solution you come up with. -- Alan

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Re: NetApp and amanda
by Jan-Pieter Cornet 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

In article <199801131829.MAA18731(a)vortex.more.net>, David Drum <david(a)more.net> wrote: >I was wondering if anyone uses amanda to backup their NetApp(s)? Yup, we do. At least, we used to, until yesterday :) The load on the netapp during phase I of the dump is prohibitively high, and consequently makes our webserver very slow... we're currently rethinking things. There are a few problems to backing up a toaster via amanda, and here are the solutions, roughly: - the toaster doesn't run amandad :) And you can't easily make it do so. Our solution is to have amanda backup /dev/netapp1/path on another machine. To keep the network happy, that "other machine" is also the one that the tape is connected to, and the one that amanda (the master program, or the client, whatever you want to call it) runs on. "dump" on this machine is actually a script that intercepts requests to dump devices of the form /dev/netapp*. If it isn't, it calls the regular dump. If it is, it calls a separate program, which translates some options, and then starts dump on the toaster, via rsh. (Note that the devices that amanda thinks it's backing up need to exist. Just create them and make them symlinks or hardlinks to /dev/null or /dev/zero. Doesn't really matter). Next problem: - amanda does not grok toaster "dump" output. Perl to the rescue again (the dump wrapper is perl, too :). Since we had to start a separate script anyway, we're piping STDERR through the script, and have it do on-the-fly translations so the output of "dump" as produced by the toaster is massaged into something that amanda understands. Additionally, we trap "dump W" and read the /etc/dumpdates file on the toaster too, and generate extra output for it. A few considerations you have to make: - amanda starts by getting estimates for all filesystems it backs up, that is, it makes at least 2 dumps for each filesystem, and terminates the dump once the "estimated" line is in. If the "dump" command on the toaster creates its own snapshot each time you do this, you waste a lot of CPU. We settled on generating a snapshot once each day, and running all backups from that. You have to take extra special care though not to refresh the snapshot while a backup is still running. - amanda doesn't know anything about "oh don't try to backup this so often". At least I can't configure it to do so (without extreme hacks). It knows about priorities, but it will always at least try to make a backup, and if it fits on tape, it will. This generally means that amanda does make a backup of all data on the toaster, at least incrementally. Not strictly necessary with the RAID and all that. If there is interest, I can post the sources we use to the list, or make them available on the web. Note that the sources are very alpha, and most definately not directly usable on other sites, some tweaking will be necessary. Best regards, -- #! ##### Jan-Pieter Cornet ##### <johnpc(a)xs4all.net> ##### perl ++$_;$!=$_+++$_;($:,$,,$/,$*)=$!=~/.(.)...(.)(.).(.)/;$!=$_+$_; ($(a),$\,$~)=$!=~/(.)(.).(.)/; $_="$,$/$:"; $@++; $~="$~$_";($_)= \$$=~/\((.)/;$|=++$_;$_++;$|++;$~="$~ $@$:";`$~$/$\$*$, $|>&$_`

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NetApp and amanda
by David Drum 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

Hello, I was wondering if anyone uses amanda to backup their NetApp(s)? Regards, David K. Drum david(a)more.net -- It's hard to be bored when you're as stupid as a line. [1] Reality has a tendency to be so uncomfortably real. [2] You can only measure the size of your head from the inside. [3] When you proceed deliberately, mistakes don't cascade, they instruct. [4] [1] Vernor Vinge [2] Neil Peart [3] Larry Wall [4] Stewart Brand

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Re: Usenet: Crosspost - File Exists error
by Ronan Mullally 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

> We've just installed a 540 to provide back-end storage for our news system. > Since going live the INN error log has been full of the following messages: > > crosspost cant link alt/jobs/16941 misc/jobs/offered/24616 : File exists > crosspost cant link talk/politics/misc/2349 alt/feminism/944 : File exists ... > Has anybody come across this before? What is to blame - INN, Linux > or the filer? The answer is "None of the above", I'd lost the '-L' flag for innd in the upgrade. Thanks to Ed Klein of BBN Planet for his speedy diagnosis :) -- Ronan Mullally 'In the Beginning there was Network Manager nothing, which exploded.' Ireland On-Line -- Terry Pratchett.

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Usenet: Crosspost - File Exists error
by Ronan Mullally 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

We've just installed a 540 to provide back-end storage for our news system. Since going live the INN error log has been full of the following messages: crosspost cant link alt/jobs/16941 misc/jobs/offered/24616 : File exists crosspost cant link talk/politics/misc/2349 alt/feminism/944 : File exists It appears that the crosspost daemon is generating this error while trying to create the necessary hard links for *every* crossposted article (I have yet to verify this) it encounters. The link *is* successfully made, and the article appears in the directory but the error log contains tens of thousands of error messages per day. Before switching to the filer we encountered no such problems. The INN feeder system is a Pentium running Linux 2.0.33. The filer is a 540 running 4.3R4. I encountered the same problem on a 210, also running 4.3R4. I've tracked the error down to the following code fragment (backends/crosspost.c line 172): /* 2nd try to link */ lnval = link(names[0], names[i]) ; if (lnval < 0 && errno == EXDEV) { #if defined(DONT_HAVE_SYMLINK) ... symlink stuff removed ... #endif /* defined(DONT_HAVE_SYMLINK) */ } else if (lnval < 0) { (void)fprintf(stderr, "crosspost cant link %s % names[0], names[i]); perror(" "); } So it appears that link() is returning an EEXISTS error. The link() man page includes the following: BUGS On NFS file systems, the return code may be wrong in case the NFS server performs the link creation and dies before it can say so. Use stat(2) to find out if the link got created. Has anybody come across this before? What is to blame - INN, Linux or the filer? -- Ronan Mullally 'In the Beginning there was Network Manager nothing, which exploded.' Ireland On-Line -- Terry Pratchett.

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