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RE: simple SAN?!
by Julio Calderon 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

You should be able to levereage nfs for vmware -----Original Message----- From: Willeke, Jochen [mailto:Jochen.Willeke@wincor-nixdorf.com] Sent: Thu Nov 23 03:25:26 2006 To: Davies,Matt; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: simple SAN?! We already use ISCSI, but we aer thinking about VMWare and VMWare has some nice features (e.g. VCB) which need an FC-SAN. Thanks anyway Jochen ________________________________ From: Davies,Matt [mailto:MDAVIES@generalatlantic.com] Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 11:59 AM To: Willeke, Jochen; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: simple SAN?! If you are looking at low cost san, I would go Iscsi, as long as everything you need on Iscsi is on Gig ethernet ports, it should work fine. Cheers Matt ________________________________ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Willeke, Jochen Sent: 23 November 2006 10:11 To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: simple SAN?! Hi, as we use not too much SAN at our site i am not really used to this topic. Yesterday i read an article about "simple SAN". "Simple SAN" seems to mean as an plug-n-play solution. But what about the components espacially the SAN-switches? Do we see really new (and cheap :D) SAN-switches or only old products "reassembled" as a solution for small companies. Regards Jochen

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(SOLVED) Problem mounting NFS from a Fedora Core 6 machine
by Gustavo Chaves 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

>>>>> On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:43:20 -0800, "Learmonth, Peter" <Peter.Learmonth(a)netapp.com> said: > Check out options ip.fastpath.enable. It's in the man pages. > Peter Thanks, Peter. We tried that but it didn't work for us. However, a friend of mine found a solution. If I specify the option "-o proto=tcp" in the mount command the problem is solved. We found out that by default Fedora tries to use NFS over UDP. When it has to ask the filer's portmapper for the NFS UDP port it sends a UDP packet and receives a UDP response comming from a different interface. When we specify the option "proto=tcp" for the mount command, it connects to the portmapper via TCP and asks the for the NFS TCP port. Since it's a TCP connection, the filer must use the same interface to send the response packets. What's interesting is that the "proto=tcp" option affects not only the protocol NFS uses but also the protocol the mount command uses to talk to the portmapper. I investigated why my Ubuntu machine doesn't have this problem. It asks for NFS over TCP by default. Thank you all for thinking about the problem. Gustavo.

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Re: simple SAN?!
by Fred Grieco 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

I'm pretty sure you can use FC to the VMs if you use virtual ports or NPIV. http://storagemagazine.techtarget.com/magLogin/1,291245,sid35_gci1228666,00… This is a little like "NAT" for fibre channel. It also requires sophisticated cards and switches. Fred ----- Original Message ---- From: "Davies,Matt" <MDAVIES(a)generalatlantic.com> To: "Willeke, Jochen" <Jochen.Willeke(a)wincor-nixdorf.com>; toasters(a)mathworks.com Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 6:24:50 AM Subject: RE: simple SAN?! On the VMware side, as far as I understand you can only use FC to the physical machine, not to a virtual machine, as the VM's do not support FC. I believe you can still use VCB with Iscsi, it just needs a bit more scripting, I would check out the VMware discussion groups on the VMware website, I have always found them very helpful. Cheers Matt From: Willeke, Jochen [mailto:Jochen.Willeke@wincor-nixdorf.com] Sent: 23 November 2006 11:07 To: Davies,Matt; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: simple SAN?! We already use ISCSI, but we aer thinking about VMWare and VMWare has some nice features (e.g. VCB) which need an FC-SAN. Thanks anyway Jochen From: Davies,Matt [mailto:MDAVIES@generalatlantic.com] Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 11:59 AM To: Willeke, Jochen; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: simple SAN?! If you are looking at low cost san, I would go Iscsi, as long as everything you need on Iscsi is on Gig ethernet ports, it should work fine. Cheers Matt From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Willeke, Jochen Sent: 23 November 2006 10:11 To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: simple SAN?! Hi, as we use not too much SAN at our site i am not really used to this topic. Yesterday i read an article about "simple SAN". "Simple SAN" seems to mean as an plug-n-play solution. But what about the components espacially the SAN-switches? Do we see really new (and cheap :D) SAN-switches or only old products "reassembled" as a solution for small companies. Regards Jochen __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: Problem mounting NFS from a Fedora Core 6 machine
by Gustavo Chaves 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

>>>>> On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 01:45:37 +0100, Åke Beckman <Ake.Beckman(a)proact.se> said: > I suppose the clients that aren't directly connected will specify > the interface that the netapp uses as its default route for their > mount requests, in which case the reply will always come back from > that interface too. Hence, there shouldn't be a problem? The reply comes from the same router, but the source IP address is different. Gustavo.

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RE: simple SAN?!
by Davies,Matt 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

On the VMware side, as far as I understand you can only use FC to the physical machine, not to a virtual machine, as the VM's do not support FC. I believe you can still use VCB with Iscsi, it just needs a bit more scripting, I would check out the VMware discussion groups on the VMware website, I have always found them very helpful. Cheers Matt ________________________________ From: Willeke, Jochen [mailto:Jochen.Willeke@wincor-nixdorf.com] Sent: 23 November 2006 11:07 To: Davies,Matt; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: simple SAN?! We already use ISCSI, but we aer thinking about VMWare and VMWare has some nice features (e.g. VCB) which need an FC-SAN. Thanks anyway Jochen ________________________________ From: Davies,Matt [mailto:MDAVIES@generalatlantic.com] Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 11:59 AM To: Willeke, Jochen; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: simple SAN?! If you are looking at low cost san, I would go Iscsi, as long as everything you need on Iscsi is on Gig ethernet ports, it should work fine. Cheers Matt ________________________________ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Willeke, Jochen Sent: 23 November 2006 10:11 To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: simple SAN?! Hi, as we use not too much SAN at our site i am not really used to this topic. Yesterday i read an article about "simple SAN". "Simple SAN" seems to mean as an plug-n-play solution. But what about the components espacially the SAN-switches? Do we see really new (and cheap :D) SAN-switches or only old products "reassembled" as a solution for small companies. Regards Jochen

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RE: simple SAN?!
by Davies,Matt 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

If you are looking at low cost san, I would go Iscsi, as long as everything you need on Iscsi is on Gig ethernet ports, it should work fine. Cheers Matt ________________________________ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Willeke, Jochen Sent: 23 November 2006 10:11 To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: simple SAN?! Hi, as we use not too much SAN at our site i am not really used to this topic. Yesterday i read an article about "simple SAN". "Simple SAN" seems to mean as an plug-n-play solution. But what about the components espacially the SAN-switches? Do we see really new (and cheap :D) SAN-switches or only old products "reassembled" as a solution for small companies. Regards Jochen

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iSCSI SAN Queries
by Raj Patel 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

Hi, We're in the preliminary scoping phase for a low/mid-range iSCSI SAN solution. I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative real-world experiences with - NetApp 270c HDS AMS200 EMC CX320 At the moment the NetApp is the most familiar to me as I have used one of their NAS boxes before and the simulator provides a pretty good indication of how it works. However the iSCSI seems a bit of a 'bolt-on' and its not clear if it will handle tiered storage as well as the other vendors (then again does it matter?). The HDS & EMC are unknown quantities (other than what I can glean from the web). Any feedback concerning ease of use, expansion, licensing, snapshot mechanism (the EMC seems clunky from their literature but I don't know if that's the case in operation). Also does anyone have any iSCSI 'gotchas' ? Is a TOE one of those 'nice to have but not really necessary' things on a modern server or should it be factored into the solution ? Cheers, Raj.

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RE: iSCSI SAN Queries
by Learmonth, Peter 22 Nov '06

22 Nov '06

That page is mostly links to other docs, most of which are external. http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3250.pdf http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3338.pdf http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3357.pdf http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3323.pdf http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3376.pdf http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305547 http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3302.pdf http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3280.pdf Share and enjoy! Peter ________________________________ From: Raj Patel [mailto:phigmov@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 11:24 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Re: iSCSI SAN Queries >http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/bpg/san_ipsan/man_admin_iscsi. shtml One slight annoyance is that this site is member only and basic membership doesn't let you get to this page (Cisco has something similar on their site and its just as aggravating). The EMC page did come straight up though. I'll see if I can get the doc out of a local NetApp vendor. Cheers, Raj. On 11/23/06, Julio Calderon <jcalderon(a)agami.com> wrote: Thanks for sharing your findings. Rule of thumb, regardless of what vendor you choose to go with, review their specific best practices Netapp has them here: http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/bpg/san_ipsan/man_admin_iscsi.s html EMC has them here: http://www.emc.com/techlib/pdf/H1784_Celerra_iSCSI_Solutions_MS_Exch_ldv .pdf Hitachi, I looked but could not find their best practices. My personal recommendation is to review what other vendors have to offer as well. If you do a quick search on the net, you will find many. Best Regards, Julio C.

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RE: iSCSI SAN Queries
by Pichardo, Socrates 22 Nov '06

22 Nov '06

Greetings and salutations, We have deployed, quite successfully, Netapp 3020 with iSCSI for all our Exchange and SQL servers. This solution has been in prod for more than a year now and the issues that we have seen are not directly related to iSCSI. Of course, we did put in place some safe guards that we believe has made the whole solution more reliable like: - Run complete separate network for our iSCSI traffic. - TOE cards for our heavy-duty servers. - Overcapacity on our filer heads. We did this since our iSCSI decision had nothing to do with cost (which at the time of the RFP FC was still significantly more expensive than iSCSI) but with our desire to keep our installation simple and not having to bring a new protocol/environment (FC) under our management. iSCSI has proven to be as fast, reliable and cost effective as we expected it without the steep learning curve of FC. Here are a few findings: - TOE: On our lab we saw a 7%to 12% CPU savings by using them therefore we did not justify them for performance reasons but we ended up using them for SAN booting requirements. - iSCSI Performance: on our lab/RPF we noticed better performance out of FC under heavy load conditions. Under our expected loads (low to average), we did not noticed any significance performance gains on FC over iSCSI. - iSCSI Implementation: We also noticed that a year ago iSCSI looked like an "add-on" to most of the SAN vendors we spoke with. We selected Netapp for their simplicity and easy of management and both have been proven to be true. Regards, SPV ________________________________ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Julio Calderon Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 9:21 PM To: Raj Patel; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: iSCSI SAN Queries Greetings, I've had first hand experience with Netapp 270s / iSCSI on couple of windows host. (past life) Nutshell: SLOW, don't try exchange on it, it kept timing out on me. I've also seen a large client have issues with Lotus notes when using Gfilers 980c and HDS as the backend storage. (this was a poor configuration issue, too many LUNs over a 1 gig connection) I've also tried it for another purposes and I lost my LUN a few times. The only way of getting it back then was by restarting the client! not a fun thing to do when you are running multiple apps on the same server. Suggestion would be, directly attach application servers via GigE across to your iSCSI device. If direct connecting your app servers is not realistic. use VLANs to segregate traffic, dedicate iSCSI traffic to a set of bonded ports. Start slow, make sure that the number of LUNs being provisioned to the app servers are provisioned in a control manner. (meaning, see how your application behaves in a controlled environment before doing any big role out) Monitor performance, use a testing tool (iozone) to see how much performance you would gain or loose from moving away from current solution. Also, consider the advantages and disadvantages an iSCSI solution would bring your environment. (replication, HA, speed, easy of management, backup, etc) TOE ? I think that the purpose of having iSCSI in your environment is to lower the investment of FC (SAN) solution by leveraging your current network infrastructure and current staff expertise so, if you start purchasing the TOE cards, you will in fact start cutting into the savings a properly architected and managed IP SAN (iscsi) solution would offer your company. I have not had the opportunity to try a TOE card nor have I needed it to yet since I am able to reach almost wire speeds on GigE at the moment. Can not comment on the HDS and EMC solutions but I can't believe they would be better than what Netapp has to offer since their main business is in the FC world. Hope this helps guide you! Best Regards, Julio Calderon West Region - Systems Engineer agami <http://www.agami.com/> 1269 Innsbruck Drive <http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1269+Innsbruck+Drive%2CSunnyvale%2CCA+940 89%2CUSA&hl=en> Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA Work: 408.349.0414 Mobile: 408.394.5638 Fax: 408.349.0393 Email: jcalderon(a)agami.com <mailto:jcalderon@agami.com> IM: juliocus (Yahoo) Want a signature like this? <http://www.linkedin.com/e/sig/2105155/> ________________________________ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Raj Patel Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 11:40 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: iSCSI SAN Queries Hi, We're in the preliminary scoping phase for a low/mid-range iSCSI SAN solution. I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative real-world experiences with - NetApp 270c HDS AMS200 EMC CX320 At the moment the NetApp is the most familiar to me as I have used one of their NAS boxes before and the simulator provides a pretty good indication of how it works. However the iSCSI seems a bit of a 'bolt-on' and its not clear if it will handle tiered storage as well as the other vendors (then again does it matter?). The HDS & EMC are unknown quantities (other than what I can glean from the web). Any feedback concerning ease of use, expansion, licensing, snapshot mechanism (the EMC seems clunky from their literature but I don't know if that's the case in operation). Also does anyone have any iSCSI 'gotchas' ? Is a TOE one of those 'nice to have but not really necessary' things on a modern server or should it be factored into the solution ? Cheers, Raj. <font size="2">"IMPORTANT NOTICE: The information in this email (and any attachments hereto) is confidential and may be protected by legal privileges and work product immunities. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not use or disseminate the information. Receipt by anyone other than the intended recipient is not a waiver of any attorney-client or work product privilege. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify me by "Reply" command and permanently delete the original and any copies or printouts thereof. 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RE: iSCSI SAN Queries
by Ledbetter, Charles 22 Nov '06

22 Nov '06

Julio pretty well summed things up. Think of iSCSI as iSAN. It's still a SAN setup and the blocks move over the very same SCSI protocol. Whether it's SCSI over FCP or SCSI over IP makes no real difference. With that in mind, you should treat your iSAN setups with the same consideration as SAN. Dedicated links, VLANs, etc. A TOE card should only be deployed once you know you need one. Start with a standard host NIC and watch your host's CPU. If it's being driven to capacity, a TOE or iSCSI HBA will help. If it's not, you're really just wasting money. -Charles -----Original Message----- From: Julio Calderon [mailto:jcalderon@agami.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 9:21 PM To: Raj Patel; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: iSCSI SAN Queries Greetings, I've had first hand experience with Netapp 270s / iSCSI on couple of windows host. (past life) Nutshell: SLOW, don't try exchange on it, it kept timing out on me. I've also seen a large client have issues with Lotus notes when using Gfilers 980c and HDS as the backend storage. (this was a poor configuration issue, too many LUNs over a 1 gig connection) I've also tried it for another purposes and I lost my LUN a few times. The only way of getting it back then was by restarting the client! not a fun thing to do when you are running multiple apps on the same server. Suggestion would be, directly attach application servers via GigE across to your iSCSI device. If direct connecting your app servers is not realistic. use VLANs to segregate traffic, dedicate iSCSI traffic to a set of bonded ports. Start slow, make sure that the number of LUNs being provisioned to the app servers are provisioned in a control manner. (meaning, see how your application behaves in a controlled environment before doing any big role out) Monitor performance, use a testing tool (iozone) to see how much performance you would gain or loose from moving away from current solution. Also, consider the advantages and disadvantages an iSCSI solution would bring your environment. (replication, HA, speed, easy of management, backup, etc) TOE ? I think that the purpose of having iSCSI in your environment is to lower the investment of FC (SAN) solution by leveraging your current network infrastructure and current staff expertise so, if you start purchasing the TOE cards, you will in fact start cutting into the savings a properly architected and managed IP SAN (iscsi) solution would offer your company. I have not had the opportunity to try a TOE card nor have I needed it to yet since I am able to reach almost wire speeds on GigE at the moment. Can not comment on the HDS and EMC solutions but I can't believe they would be better than what Netapp has to offer since their main business is in the FC world. Hope this helps guide you! Best Regards, Julio Calderon West Region - Systems Engineer agami <http://www.agami.com/> 1269 Innsbruck Drive <http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1269+Innsbruck+Drive%2CSunnyvale%2CCA+940 89%2CUSA&hl=en> Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA Work: 408.349.0414 Mobile: 408.394.5638 Fax: 408.349.0393 Email: jcalderon(a)agami.com IM: juliocus (Yahoo) Want a signature like this? <http://www.linkedin.com/e/sig/2105155/> _____ From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Raj Patel Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 11:40 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: iSCSI SAN Queries Hi, We're in the preliminary scoping phase for a low/mid-range iSCSI SAN solution. I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative real-world experiences with - NetApp 270c HDS AMS200 EMC CX320 At the moment the NetApp is the most familiar to me as I have used one of their NAS boxes before and the simulator provides a pretty good indication of how it works. However the iSCSI seems a bit of a 'bolt-on' and its not clear if it will handle tiered storage as well as the other vendors (then again does it matter?). The HDS & EMC are unknown quantities (other than what I can glean from the web). Any feedback concerning ease of use, expansion, licensing, snapshot mechanism (the EMC seems clunky from their literature but I don't know if that's the case in operation). Also does anyone have any iSCSI 'gotchas' ? Is a TOE one of those 'nice to have but not really necessary' things on a modern server or should it be factored into the solution ? Cheers, Raj.

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