Is there any reason NOT to zero disks that you are leaving in the system as spares? They will have to be zeroed when you add them to a volume (or create a new one) anyway, thus delaying their availability in that volume for data. If they are chosen for reconstruct, they do not need to be zeroed ahead of time. But either way, the performance effect on the system of zeroing disks is negligible, so why not zero them all?
Cheers,
Steve
-----Original Message----- From: George Kahler [mailto:george@YorkU.CA] Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 10:15 AM To: watherton@BERKCOM.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Zeroing out disks
Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted. It is too bad that one has to go round about way of accomplishing this. An argument to the spares_zero command would do the trick.
I have few disks (now spares) that used to belong to a volume that was destroyed, however, I MUST zero out any data from these disks before they can leave our premises.
George
------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- George Kahler e-mail: george@yorku.ca
Sr. Systems Administrator humans: (416) 736-2100 x.22699 Computing and Network Services machines: (416) 736-5830 Ontario, Canada, M3J-1P3
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:01:27 -0700, William Atherton watherton@BERKCOM.com wrote:
George,
The NetApp Zeros the disks in parallel so the time it takes to zero 1
disk
should be the same as 7 disks. If you really do not want to zero the
other
spares out you could pull them from the filer and then run the command
to
zero all and then place the none zeroed disk back in. Hope this helps.
Thank you,
William Atherton
watherton@berkcom.com 510-644-1599 VOICE 510-644-1598 FAX 888-812-9040 TOLL-FREE
Berkeley Communications Corporation 2990 San Pablo Avenue Berkeley, CA 94702 http://www.berkcom.com
-----Original Message----- From: George Kahler [mailto:george@YorkU.CA] Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 6:53 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Zeroing out disks
Does anyone know how you can zero out a specific disk(s) ? The "disk zero spares" command or "spares_zero" diagnostic command seem to zero out ALL spare disks only.
Thanks, George
Becase most of the other spares if not all are already zeroed.
George
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:40:15 -0700, "Strange, Steve" Steve.Strange@netapp.com wrote:
Is there any reason NOT to zero disks that you are leaving in the system as spares? They will have to be zeroed when you add them to a volume (or create a new one) anyway, thus delaying their availability in that volume for data. If they are chosen for reconstruct, they do not need to be zeroed ahead of time. But either way, the performance effect on the system of zeroing disks is negligible, so why not zero them all?
Cheers,
Steve
-----Original Message----- From: George Kahler [mailto:george@YorkU.CA] Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 10:15 AM To: watherton@BERKCOM.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Zeroing out disks
Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted. It is too bad that one has to go round about way of accomplishing this. An argument to the spares_zero command would do the trick.
I have few disks (now spares) that used to belong to a volume that was destroyed, however, I MUST zero out any data from these disks before they can leave our premises.
George
George Kahler e-mail: george@yorku.ca
Sr. Systems Administrator humans: (416) 736-2100 x.22699 Computing and Network Services machines: (416) 736-5830 Ontario, Canada, M3J-1P3
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:01:27 -0700, William Atherton watherton@BERKCOM.com wrote:
George,
The NetApp Zeros the disks in parallel so the time it takes to zero 1
disk
should be the same as 7 disks. If you really do not want to zero the
other
spares out you could pull them from the filer and then run the command
to
zero all and then place the none zeroed disk back in. Hope this helps.
Thank you,
William Atherton
watherton@berkcom.com 510-644-1599 VOICE 510-644-1598 FAX 888-812-9040 TOLL-FREE
Berkeley Communications Corporation 2990 San Pablo Avenue Berkeley, CA 94702 http://www.berkcom.com
-----Original Message----- From: George Kahler [mailto:george@YorkU.CA] Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 6:53 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Zeroing out disks
Does anyone know how you can zero out a specific disk(s) ? The "disk zero spares" command or "spares_zero" diagnostic command seem to zero out ALL spare disks only.
Thanks, George
george@YorkU.CA (George Kahler) writes:
Becase most of the other spares if not all are already zeroed.
But "vol zero spares" doesn't zero spares that the filer already knows to be zeroed.
"vol status -s" reveals all -- well, as long as you know that if it doesn't say "(not zeroed)" that means that it _has_ been zeroed!
Chris Thompson Email: cet1@cam.ac.uk
Strange, Steve wrote:
Is there any reason NOT to zero disks that you are leaving in the system as spares? They will have to be zeroed when you add them to a volume (or create a new one) anyway, thus delaying their availability in that volume for data. If they are chosen for reconstruct, they do not need to be zeroed ahead of time. But either way, the performance effect on the system of zeroing disks is negligible, so why not zero them all?
Whenever I destroy a volume, but don't immediatly put the spindles into another volume, I zero the spares. the biggest reason: so that if those spindles are later made into a volume, or added to an existing volume, that operation is "instant", instead of having to wait for them to zero.
In general, I keep all spares zeroed; it's a low-impact operation and its a handy convenience. actually, I'd like to see an option that auto-zeros spares when they are inserted, so I never need to do it manually.
-skottie
In general, I keep all spares zeroed; it's a low-impact operation and its a handy convenience. actually, I'd like to see an option that auto-zeros spares when they are inserted, so I never need to do it manually.
Skottie, I agree with you for the most part. I zero my spares when I destoy a volume after a couple of days. However, I *don't* want it done automagically. One time (thank goodness) I thought I was going to have to work with NA to restore an already destroyed volume. Had the spares been zeroed I would have been SOL. I like having control of when they zero personally. Not sure how the rest of the world feels about it but I like being able to push the button.
I also know of a bug that caused disks to be seen as spares after an upgrade. Auto-zeroing was a really bad thing for that customer because after the upgrade all the disks seemed to be spares (even though they weren't) and the filer zeroed the disks. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the exact details. All I do know is that restoring from tape stinks. ;)
Just my 2 cents. C-
Chris Blackmor wrote:
In general, I keep all spares zeroed; it's a low-impact operation and its a handy convenience. actually, I'd like to see an option that auto-zeros spares when they are inserted, so I never need to do it manually.
Skottie, I agree with you for the most part. I zero my spares when I destoy a volume after a couple of days. However, I *don't* want it done automagically. One time (thank goodness) I thought I was going to have to work with NA to restore an already destroyed volume. Had the spares been zeroed I would have been SOL. I like having control of when they zero personally. Not sure how the rest of the world feels about it but I like being able to push the button.
that's why it needs to be an option, so each filer can be configured according to your sites best practice.
I also know of a bug that caused disks to be seen as spares after an upgrade. Auto-zeroing was a really bad thing for that customer because after the upgrade all the disks seemed to be spares (even though they weren't) and the filer zeroed the disks. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the exact details. All I do know is that restoring from tape stinks. ;)
bugs? we don't need no stinkin' bugs ! ;-)
-skottie
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Chris Blackmor -
Chris Thompson -
George Kahler -
Skottie Miller -
Strange, Steve