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RE: VFM and DFS
by Palmer, Jason (EMEA) 29 Apr '05

29 Apr '05

Hi - VFM is a version of StorageX from Nuview (http://www.nuview.com which Network Appliance use to create a GSN (Global Storage Namespace) Nuview also has addition functionality that plugs into StorageX which is called ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) which takes advantage of virtulising the file system down to a file level. From what I can see there is an SQL database behing the application that holds information about where everything is in the storage environment. I have had StorageX installed on eval, and have recommended that we use it in favour of the Standard Windows DFS. It enables complex distributed storage environments to be presented, and manipulated very easily in comparison to the DFS with Windows. I hope this info is of help - Jason -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]On Behalf Of Charles Bartels Sent: 28 April 2005 23:37 To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: VFM and DFS Hi, My company currently has a couple of Netapps in the office along with a couple of Dell PC file servers. The windows admins would like to implement DFS. I don't really know what that is, but it sounded kind of like the Netapp VFM (Virtual File Manager). Could someone give me a short explanation of the two systems? Ideally I would like to consolidate our file servers onto the Netapps or at least avoid having to add unnecessary windows boxes. (These DFS servers sounded unnecessary to me, but if they are needed I wouldn't have a problem). Thanks. -C.

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RE: Use minra or not?
by Derek Lai 29 Apr '05

29 Apr '05

Steve, Nice to have new toys to play with, isn't it? Minra is one of those things that depends heavily on your application's I/O pattern. If you have an application that is pretty sequential in I/O access, then you want read ahead. From experience, I can tell you that our Oracle Loan servicing application were beating the heck out of the disks we had. We were only using about 50% of the disk space but the utilization were very high. We turned on minra=on and right away cut about 30% disk utilization off. The good thing is that there were no noticeable cut in application performance. One other thing you might want to try (not sure how production it really is in your environment) is no_atime_update. Might help if your email application does not depend on it. Again, Oracle does not seem to need this. Derek -----Original Message----- From: Steve Losen [mailto:scl@sasha.acc.virginia.edu] Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 3:03 PM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Use minra or not? Please forgive all these questions to the list -- new toy syndrome. We have deployed a FAS960c pair in a University wide email system with about 30,000 accounts. We have 3 large Sun Solaris servers running Communigate Pro and they connect to the filer pair over a FC SAN. We have mapped 2 LUNs to each server, one from each filer, and striped them with Veritas. This has nicely balanced the load across both filers. We built a Veritas vxfs filesystem out of the two striped LUNs on each mail server and copied the inboxes over. Each mail server holds 1/3 of the inboxes and operates independently of the other two. It went into production today and the netapps appear to be more than up to the task. We are using mbox format where an email folder is one sequential file. Consequently our email servers read a LOT more KB/sec than they write, by a factor of more than ten to one. This afternoon I noticed that our filers were each reading about 100 MB/sec to 120 MB/sec from the disks. But I also noticed that this was 25% to 30% more than was being written to the FC SAN. Each filer has 6G of RAM. Reading disk data at a rate of 100MB/sec should completely turn over the RAM cache in about a minute, and sure enough, the cache age was typically 1 minute or less. I figured that we were reading 25% to 30% more from the disks than we were writing to the FC SAN because of read ahead. So I set "minra on" on the volume. Immediately we started reading a little less from the disks than we were writing to the FC SAN. Also disk util dropped from around 22% to around 15%. Cache hit percentage dropped a little from 97% to 96%, but then went back up. (How can cache hits be so high with the RAM cache being turned over every minute?) So it appears that in this situation that minra=on is a winner or is there something I have missed? Steve Losen scl(a)virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640 University of Virginia ITC Unix Support

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RE: VFM and DFS
by Michael Schipp 29 Apr '05

29 Apr '05

The (possibly) best feature of DFS is that once created the underlining file shares can be moved from the current server(s) and consolidated on the Netapp (or any other file server) without having to change login script(s)/persistent connections etc. The DFS links just need to be changed. -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Sto Rage(c) Sent: Friday, 29 April 2005 10:22 AM To: Charles Bartels Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Re: VFM and DFS DFS (Distributed File System) - is a component of Microsoft Windows and runs on Windows 2000 or 2003 servers. Its a powerful feature but like everything else with Microsoft, they provide very basic tools to manage or implement it. Using DFS by itself was a disaster for us. VFM from Netapp - Provides an excellent wrapper around Microsoft's DFS, and provides lots of additional features. You can compare DFM - VFM to ntbackup - Netbackup from Veritas. Both DFS and ntbackup (builtin windows utilities) provides rudimentary features with hard to use GUI. Just enough to get you started. Whereas VFM and Netbackup provides a much better GUI and tons of other value adds. Hope you get the picture. We have been using DFS/VFM for almost 2 years and are very very happy wiith it. -G PS: Am just an end user and not affiliated to any of the vendors mentioned :) On 4/28/05, Charles Bartels <Charles.Bartels(a)tradebeam.com> wrote: > Hi, > > My company currently has a couple of Netapps in the office along with a > couple of Dell PC file servers. > > The windows admins would like to implement DFS. I don't really know > what that is, but it sounded kind of like the Netapp VFM (Virtual File > Manager). > > Could someone give me a short explanation of the two systems? Ideally I > would like to consolidate our file servers onto the Netapps or at least > avoid having to add unnecessary windows boxes. (These DFS servers > sounded unnecessary to me, but if they are needed I wouldn't have a > problem). > > Thanks. > > -C. >

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VFM and DFS
by Charles Bartels 29 Apr '05

29 Apr '05

Hi, My company currently has a couple of Netapps in the office along with a couple of Dell PC file servers. The windows admins would like to implement DFS. I don't really know what that is, but it sounded kind of like the Netapp VFM (Virtual File Manager). Could someone give me a short explanation of the two systems? Ideally I would like to consolidate our file servers onto the Netapps or at least avoid having to add unnecessary windows boxes. (These DFS servers sounded unnecessary to me, but if they are needed I wouldn't have a problem). Thanks. -C.

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Use minra or not?
by Steve Losen 28 Apr '05

28 Apr '05

Please forgive all these questions to the list -- new toy syndrome. We have deployed a FAS960c pair in a University wide email system with about 30,000 accounts. We have 3 large Sun Solaris servers running Communigate Pro and they connect to the filer pair over a FC SAN. We have mapped 2 LUNs to each server, one from each filer, and striped them with Veritas. This has nicely balanced the load across both filers. We built a Veritas vxfs filesystem out of the two striped LUNs on each mail server and copied the inboxes over. Each mail server holds 1/3 of the inboxes and operates independently of the other two. It went into production today and the netapps appear to be more than up to the task. We are using mbox format where an email folder is one sequential file. Consequently our email servers read a LOT more KB/sec than they write, by a factor of more than ten to one. This afternoon I noticed that our filers were each reading about 100 MB/sec to 120 MB/sec from the disks. But I also noticed that this was 25% to 30% more than was being written to the FC SAN. Each filer has 6G of RAM. Reading disk data at a rate of 100MB/sec should completely turn over the RAM cache in about a minute, and sure enough, the cache age was typically 1 minute or less. I figured that we were reading 25% to 30% more from the disks than we were writing to the FC SAN because of read ahead. So I set "minra on" on the volume. Immediately we started reading a little less from the disks than we were writing to the FC SAN. Also disk util dropped from around 22% to around 15%. Cache hit percentage dropped a little from 97% to 96%, but then went back up. (How can cache hits be so high with the RAM cache being turned over every minute?) So it appears that in this situation that minra=on is a winner or is there something I have missed? Steve Losen scl(a)virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640 University of Virginia ITC Unix Support

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RE: Aggregate snapshots?
by Fair, Robert 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Aggregate snapshots are also used by the 'aggr copy' filer command, which is the aggregate-level version of 'vol copy'. This copies an aggregate and all its flexible volumes from one location to another, using aggregate snapshots to get a consistent image. -----Original Message----- From: Skottie Miller [mailto:skottie@anim.dreamworks.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 12:29 AM To: Derek Lai Cc: Steve Losen; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Re: Aggregate snapshots? Derek Lai wrote: > Is this documented well anywhere? I've just started playing with > DataOntap 7.0 on the new FAS250 we bought. I've looked through NOW and > can't seem to find good documentation regarding Aggregate Snapshots. it's not documented well in any of the docs I have; my understanding is based on conversations with my SE and from a recent "7G migration" webcast. > It looks like there are a number of commands now that has -A options > added, i.e. snap list -A to list the aggregate snapshot. Would be nice > to know what Aggregate Snapshot are designed to do. There does not > seem to be anything in filerview that lets you work with Aggregate > snapshots? the use of -A is consistant throughput the command set; every command that you're using to using for a traditional volume works for volumes, and the -A version us ised to deal with the underlying aggregates. since we don't use RAID SyncMirror, my best practice for aggregate snapshots will be to disable them and to reclaim the space. If some compelling reason to use them can be explained to me, then I'll re-enable them. -skottie > > > Derek > > -----Original Message----- > From: Skottie Miller [mailto:skottie@anim.dreamworks.com] > Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 11:53 AM > To: Steve Losen > Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: Re: Aggregate snapshots? > > > My understanding of aggregate snapshots is that they provide an > additional layer of snapshot protection, and are useful in some > environments. > > restoring an aggregate snapshot restores *all* the flexVols within > that aggregate. aggregate snapshots are required if you use RAID > SyncMirror and/or MetroCluster configurations. or of you want to > snaprestore a whole aggregate (seems dangerous). > > Note that aggregate snapshots aren't allowed to grow abouve the > reserve, and will "autodelete" themselves to maintain space. > > on my test filers and in my test use of the simulator, I've been > running with aggregate snapshots disabled and the reserve set to 0. > NetApp "discourages" this, but unless they send me 5% more disks, > free, I want that space back for production. > > -skottie > > Steve Losen wrote: > >>We just got a R200 and FAS960c and I immediately upgraded them from >>6.5 to 7.0.0.1. I moved the root volume to a flex vol and destroyed >>the old root, so now I have one big aggregate that contains the root >>volume. >> >>I discovered the "df -A" command and was surprised to see that my >>aggregate has snap reserve space, a snap sched running, and five >>snapshots. This is independent of the snap reserve and sched of my >>root volume. >> >>What is the rationale behind aggregate snapshots? We don't have >>snapmirror licensed. Can you snapmirror them? Can you snaprestore >>them? I presume this mirrors (or restores) the entire aggregate. >>I doubt that you can access aggregate snapshots from a NFS or CIFs >>client, or can you? Can you somehow tease out volumes from an >>aggregate snapshot and NFS export them? Within an aggregate snapshot, >>do you have just the active volumes, or the volumes and all of their >>volume level snapshots as they existed at the time the aggregate >>snapshot was taken? Mind boggling. >> >>I am probably going to set the snap reserve on my aggregates to zero >>and turn off the snap sched and manage my snapshots at the volume >>level. Any reason to not do that? Using both aggregate and volume >>snapshots looks about the same as using a belt and suspenders to keep >>your pants up. >> >>Steve Losen scl(a)virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640 >> >>University of Virginia ITC Unix Support >> >> > >

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list admin page
by Robert Borowicz 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Can someone forward me the "list admin page" for the Toasters mailing list. I need to move my subscription to my new ISP. Thanks -Rob

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RE: Aggregate snapshots?
by Ehrhart, Rick 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

FilerView for ONTAP 7.0 concentrated on the commonly used features of Flexible Volumes and Aggregrates. Aggregate snapshots was not considered a commonly used feature. - Rick - > -----Original Message----- > From: Derek Lai [mailto:Derek.Lai@onyxco.com] > Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 6:12 PM > To: 'Skottie Miller'; Steve Losen > Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: RE: Aggregate snapshots? > > > Is this documented well anywhere? I've just started playing > with DataOntap > 7.0 on the new FAS250 we bought. I've looked through NOW and > can't seem to > find good documentation regarding Aggregate Snapshots. > > It looks like there are a number of commands now that has -A > options added, > i.e. snap list -A to list the aggregate snapshot. Would be > nice to know what > Aggregate Snapshot are designed to do. There does not seem to > be anything in > filerview that lets you work with Aggregate snapshots? > > > > Derek > > -----Original Message----- > From: Skottie Miller [mailto:skottie@anim.dreamworks.com] > Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 11:53 AM > To: Steve Losen > Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com > Subject: Re: Aggregate snapshots? > > > My understanding of aggregate snapshots is that they provide > an additional > layer of snapshot protection, and are useful in some environments. > > restoring an aggregate snapshot restores *all* the flexVols > within that > aggregate. aggregate snapshots are required if you use RAID > SyncMirror > and/or MetroCluster configurations. > or of you want to snaprestore a whole aggregate (seems dangerous). > > Note that aggregate snapshots aren't allowed to grow abouve > the reserve, and > will "autodelete" themselves to maintain space. > > on my test filers and in my test use of the simulator, I've > been running > with aggregate snapshots disabled and the reserve set to 0. NetApp > "discourages" this, but unless they send me 5% more disks, > free, I want that > space back for production. > > -skottie > > Steve Losen wrote: > > We just got a R200 and FAS960c and I immediately upgraded them from > > 6.5 to 7.0.0.1. I moved the root volume to a flex vol and > destroyed > > the old root, so now I have one big aggregate that contains > the root > > volume. > > > > I discovered the "df -A" command and was surprised to see that my > > aggregate has snap reserve space, a snap sched running, and five > > snapshots. This is independent of the snap reserve and sched of my > > root volume. > > > > What is the rationale behind aggregate snapshots? We don't have > > snapmirror licensed. Can you snapmirror them? Can you snaprestore > > them? I presume this mirrors (or restores) the entire aggregate. > > I doubt that you can access aggregate snapshots from a NFS or CIFs > > client, or can you? Can you somehow tease out volumes from an > > aggregate snapshot and NFS export them? Within an > aggregate snapshot, > > do you have just the active volumes, or the volumes and all > of their > > volume level snapshots as they existed at the time the aggregate > > snapshot was taken? Mind boggling. > > > > I am probably going to set the snap reserve on my > aggregates to zero > > and turn off the snap sched and manage my snapshots at the volume > > level. Any reason to not do that? Using both aggregate and volume > > snapshots looks about the same as using a belt and > suspenders to keep > > your pants up. > > > > Steve Losen scl(a)virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640 > > > > University of Virginia ITC Unix Support > > > > > > -- > > Scott Miller > skottie(a)DreamWorksAnimation.com >

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RE: Aggregate snapshots?
by Derek Lai 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Is this documented well anywhere? I've just started playing with DataOntap 7.0 on the new FAS250 we bought. I've looked through NOW and can't seem to find good documentation regarding Aggregate Snapshots. It looks like there are a number of commands now that has -A options added, i.e. snap list -A to list the aggregate snapshot. Would be nice to know what Aggregate Snapshot are designed to do. There does not seem to be anything in filerview that lets you work with Aggregate snapshots? Derek -----Original Message----- From: Skottie Miller [mailto:skottie@anim.dreamworks.com] Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 11:53 AM To: Steve Losen Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Re: Aggregate snapshots? My understanding of aggregate snapshots is that they provide an additional layer of snapshot protection, and are useful in some environments. restoring an aggregate snapshot restores *all* the flexVols within that aggregate. aggregate snapshots are required if you use RAID SyncMirror and/or MetroCluster configurations. or of you want to snaprestore a whole aggregate (seems dangerous). Note that aggregate snapshots aren't allowed to grow abouve the reserve, and will "autodelete" themselves to maintain space. on my test filers and in my test use of the simulator, I've been running with aggregate snapshots disabled and the reserve set to 0. NetApp "discourages" this, but unless they send me 5% more disks, free, I want that space back for production. -skottie Steve Losen wrote: > We just got a R200 and FAS960c and I immediately upgraded them from > 6.5 to 7.0.0.1. I moved the root volume to a flex vol and destroyed > the old root, so now I have one big aggregate that contains the root > volume. > > I discovered the "df -A" command and was surprised to see that my > aggregate has snap reserve space, a snap sched running, and five > snapshots. This is independent of the snap reserve and sched of my > root volume. > > What is the rationale behind aggregate snapshots? We don't have > snapmirror licensed. Can you snapmirror them? Can you snaprestore > them? I presume this mirrors (or restores) the entire aggregate. > I doubt that you can access aggregate snapshots from a NFS or CIFs > client, or can you? Can you somehow tease out volumes from an > aggregate snapshot and NFS export them? Within an aggregate snapshot, > do you have just the active volumes, or the volumes and all of their > volume level snapshots as they existed at the time the aggregate > snapshot was taken? Mind boggling. > > I am probably going to set the snap reserve on my aggregates to zero > and turn off the snap sched and manage my snapshots at the volume > level. Any reason to not do that? Using both aggregate and volume > snapshots looks about the same as using a belt and suspenders to keep > your pants up. > > Steve Losen scl(a)virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640 > > University of Virginia ITC Unix Support > > -- Scott Miller skottie(a)DreamWorksAnimation.com

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RE: How does FCP cfmode partner work?
by Hill, Aaron 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Yeah you have pretty much worked it out. For FCP Partner cfmode, the filer uses a feature called "FCP Proxy" to forward requests to the partner LUN. As you said, in normal mode, primary paths are through the A port on Filer 1 and B'' port (second adapter) of Filer2. The FCP Proxy allows MPIO s/w to maintain active-passive connection by using the VTIC adapter between the two filers to proxy commands. As far as I know, your host requires MPIO software to achieve this. I don't think this has changed for 7G, but I haven't reviewed it yet. Thie whole thing is possible because the B ports WWPN/WWNN are based on the Partner nodes WWNN. Thus for AIX/HP-UX types, the requirement that static S_ID and D_ID are maintained because the WWPN/WWNN don't change during failover. This keeps the MPIO software happy. No changes on the switch are made. Both access the Filer1 LUNs via the A port on Filer1 and B port on Filer2 (FCP Proxy does the forwarding) B port WWNN/WWPN based on partner WWPN. Hope that explains it. Now, if you start doing mixed cfmode using the public loop/multi-ID, it will take me a little longer to explain. --Aaron -----Original Message----- From: Steve Losen [mailto:scl@sasha.acc.virginia.edu] Sent: Wednesday, 27 April 2005 8:23 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: How does FCP cfmode partner work? We recently set up a new FAS960c pair of filers running 7.0.0.1 and I am trying to understand how cfmode partner works. According to the "Block Access Management Guide for FCP" the A port on each FC adapter is for accessing local LUNs while the B port is for accessing partner LUNs. In "cfmode partner" both ports are active. So does that mean that in normal operation (no failover) that initiators (hosts) can access a LUN on filer 1 from a B port on filer 2? That is what the manual seems to indicate. How is this accomplished? Does it happen within the switch? Do FCP requests for a B port get forwarded to an A port on the partner during normal operation? Obviously during a failover the surviving head takes over the disks of its partner and then satisfies requests to the B port itself. Steve Losen scl(a)virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640 University of Virginia ITC Unix Support ************** IMPORTANT MESSAGE ************** This e-mail message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please advise the sender by return email, do not use or disclose the contents, and delete the message and any attachments from your system. Unless specifically indicated, this email does not constitute formal advice or commitment by the sender or the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ABN 48 123 123 124) or its subsidiaries. We can be contacted through our web site: commbank.com.au. If you no longer wish to receive commercial electronic messages from us, please reply to this e-mail by typing Unsubscribe in the subject line. ***************************************************************

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