I need some suggestion on best way to configure this old filer for performance.
It has one DS14 shelf of 36 GB drive, 1 DS14 of 18 GB drive, 1 FC9 with 9 GB zoned checksum, 1 FC9 with 18 GB zoned checksum and 1 FC9 with 36 GB zoned checksum disks. I'm using the 9 GB FC9 drives as root volume since these drives' performance seems to be really slow. This should not have negative performance impact, right?
I currently have 12 of the 36 GB drives in the DS14 configuired as 1 volume and the rest configured as another volume. I'm leaving 2 of each disk type as spare just in case due to the age of the drives. Now the users are telling me that the performance is really slow. They say that the performance is only a quarter (25%) of a volume with 14 DS14 72 GB drives on our other FAS940. I thought the 840 is about 60% of a 940? Does this look like some kind of configuration issue or is this about what it's supposed to do? Would I get better performance by combining all the drives into 1 volume? I've never dealt with zone checksum drives. How much performance do I lose?
Derek
-----Original Message----- From: Lai, Derek Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 12:07 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: EOA gear
Our parent company has a old netapp (F840) that they are lending to us for a 2-month critical project.
Unfortunately the machine is out of maintenance. It has old X219F, X221D, X225B, X233A and X234B drives. I saw on NOW that these are all pretty much EOA drives. X219F is even End of Hardware Support. Does that mean basically you can't get them from NetApp at all?
For the other drives, we are checking to see if we can get support for them. Although for 2 month, maybe we are better off just purchasing them from support? Is that something that we can readily do? What kind of turn-around can we expect? Anyone else been through this before?
Derek
Derek> I need some suggestion on best way to configure this old filer Derek> for performance.
Can you post the output of sysconfig -v and sysconfig -r as well? That will help. But just from the sound of it, I can't imagine that an F840 is all that slow. What kind of work are your users doing on this system? Is it NFS, CIFS or both? Which version on OnTap are you running?
Derek> It has one DS14 shelf of 36 GB drive, 1 DS14 of 18 GB drive, 1 Derek> FC9 with 9 GB zoned checksum, 1 FC9 with 18 GB zoned checksum Derek> and 1 FC9 with 36 GB zoned checksum disks. I'm using the 9 GB Derek> FC9 drives as root volume since these drives' performance seems Derek> to be really slow. This should not have negative performance Derek> impact, right?
Gah! What a mix. Basically, you should only put the same size disks into the same volume, or if you have to mix disks in a volume, each raid group should be the same size.
Can't you just sell off all the old stuff and get more DS14s instead? It would be worth it in my mind...
Derek> I currently have 12 of the 36 GB drives in the DS14 configuired Derek> as 1 volume and the rest configured as another volume.
So you're mixing disk sizes in one volume? Not a good idea in general. But you haven't said what you goal is here. Maximum disk space? Maximum performance? Maximum reliability? Least cost? Pick any three... :]
Derek> I'm leaving 2 of each disk type as spare just in case due to Derek> the age of the drives. Now the users are telling me that the Derek> performance is really slow. They say that the performance is Derek> only a quarter (25%) of a volume with 14 DS14 72 GB drives on Derek> our other FAS940. I thought the 840 is about 60% of a 940? Derek> Does this look like some kind of configuration issue or is this Derek> about what it's supposed to do? Would I get better performance Derek> by combining all the drives into 1 volume? I've never dealt Derek> with zone checksum drives. How much performance do I lose?
First off, you need to get some repeatable performance numbers. How are your users measuring the speed of the system? You can't make a decision until you really know what's going on here.
For example, you might have a network issue instead. You might have the storage controllers laid out in a non-optimal manner on the PCI bus.
More details, but my recommendation is do:
- chuck all the disks, except the DS14 with 36gb disks. Get more of those disks and you'll be happier. It will not only simplify maintenance, but it won't give you wierd performance bottlenecks either.
John
-
John Stoffel -
Lai, Derek