Subject says it all: anyone doing it? Any success or horror stories? Any caveats?
TIA.
-marc
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Hippocampus OSD, Inc. "Industrial Strength Internet Solutions" vox://416.979.9000 fax://416.979.8223 http://www.hippocampus.net
On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Marc Nicholas wrote:
Subject says it all: anyone doing it? Any success or horror stories? Any caveats?
We've had zero problems with Seagate 'cudda drives and Kingston parity SIMM's in the very first filer we bought. That same filer did have a disk problem, but it was with one of the four drives shipped by Netapp. All our other filers have had Netapp-sourced components, and I think every single one has had at least one component replaced.
We sourced the DEC Storageworks canisters and the drives separately, and spent a few hours putting them together, but they were a third the price from Netapp. The Kingston RAM was something like 80% off what Netapp wanted for 32MB SIMM's, so we could afford to buy double what we needed, in case one batch was bad. We've never had to swap any out yet. Can't say the same for Netapp-supplied RAM. :-/
We are moving a large amount of files onto our NetApp but first we had to delete a lot of files to make space for the new files. As the files are being deleted, the .snapshot is growing and seemingly there will not be enough space for the new files and the now bloated .snapshot. We're kind of new at this but we so far have not been able to verify that the space seemingly taken up by the bloated .snapshot will be released as needed to make room for the new files.
Will the NetApp release space from .snapshot to make room for new files, or do we need to somehow manually get rid of the .snapshot?
Sorry if this is a dumb question but the move is currently running and I'm not sure that I'll be able to find the answer before the NetApp runs out of space.
Thanks,
-- Mike
+--- In a previous state of mind, Mike Mueller Mike.Mueller@jpl.nasa.gov wrote: | | Will the NetApp release space from .snapshot to make room for new files, or | do we need to somehow manually get rid of the .snapshot?
You will need to get rid of the snapshots by hand. The filer will cycle through the snapshots.
to do this:
filer> snap list
[list of snapshots]
filer> snap delete nightly.5
(or whichever snapshot you deem worthy)
Remember, the older the snapshot, the larger it will be (in relation to others). At least true for nightlies. You may need to nuke the hourlies.
Good luck.
+--- In a previous state of mind, Marc Nicholas marc@hippocampus.net wrote: | | Subject says it all: anyone doing it? Any success or horror stories? Any | caveats?
Hmm. Perhaps making this a FAQ item might be good.. :)
I have not ever done this. We attempted to (with our first filer) but NetApp discouraged us (putting the storageworks canisters together can be fun).
If you read some of the whitepapers, you will find that the only customer that has ever suffered a dual drive failure was one that put their own drives in. Wether this is still true or not, I have no idea.
Now, after spending the ammount of $$$ we have on filers, paying a little (or alot) more for the drives is fine. My data (and job) are dependent on those drives...
Alexei
On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Alexei Rodriguez wrote:
If you read some of the whitepapers, you will find that the only customer that has ever suffered a dual drive failure was one that put their own drives in. Wether this is still true or not, I have no idea.
Definitely not true anymore: I know someone who had a dual drive failure in the past few weeks ;-)
-marc -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Hippocampus OSD, Inc. "Industrial Strength Internet Solutions" vox://416.979.9000 fax://416.979.8223 http://www.hippocampus.net
In a previous state of mind, Marc Nicholas marc@hippocampus.net wrote
| Subject says it all: anyone doing it? Any success or horror stories? Any | caveats?
I did it at io.com; it wasn't that terrible. We had a 220 with 2 external racks and we did our own drive support; in a year, I only had one drive (ST15230N) go bad, and it was quickly and easily replaced by Seagate (cross-shipped, which was nice).
We were also discouraged from this support choice by NetApp, but in hindsight, it would've been the best way to go. At the time, the cost was prohibitively expensive for us, and I'm thankful that nothing worse than a bad drive happened.
It *was* a pain to keep the drive shells in stock -- they're brittle and break easily; we ruined 2 or 3 over the course of a year.
I would not recommend doing third- or self-supported drives; it's worth it to me to have someone else worry.
-cgw-
-- christopher williams cgw@pobox.org nana korobi, yo oki fnord
On Sat, 21 Feb 1998, christopher williams wrote:
It *was* a pain to keep the drive shells in stock -- they're brittle and break easily; we ruined 2 or 3 over the course of a year.
The plastic construction isn't the sturdiest thing, but if you keep them in a cabinet somewhere, what is there to break? I suppose you could also look for DEC StorageWorks resellers and buy assembled drive canisters from them too, if you don't want to put them together yourself.
In message Pine.GSO.3.95.980221135920.501Y-100000@tor-adm1, you write:
On Sat, 21 Feb 1998, christopher williams wrote:
It *was* a pain to keep the drive shells in stock -- they're brittle and break easily; we ruined 2 or 3 over the course of a year.
The plastic construction isn't the sturdiest thing, but if youkeep them in a cabinet somewhere, what is there to break? I suppose you could also look for DEC StorageWorks resellers and buy assembled drive canisters from them too, if you don't want to put them together yourself.
That's what we did -- we put them together ourselves (the ULTIMATE in DIY... not recommended).
Upper Management[tm] thought we'd save money by assembling drive cannisters and drives ourselves. A couple of the shells got broken when they had to be disassembled to be put together correctly.
Also, instead of simply replacing the entire cannister, Upper Management[tm] decided that it would much cheaper to instead pull the cannisters apart and just replace the bad *drive*.
DIY support? I do not recommend it.
-cgw-
On Sat, 21 Feb 1998, christopher williams wrote:
Upper Management[tm] thought we'd save money by assembling drive cannisters and drives ourselves.
Even if we had to pay someone $200/hour to assemble the drives, we would still come out way ahead, so your Upper Management may have a point there...
A couple of the shells got broken when they had to be disassembled to be put together correctly.
... but then again, we didn't break any of ours. ;-) Getting those canisters apart is a *real* pain, and they cost a couple hundred bucks each. I had to do it a couple of times (once because I thought the LED strip was hooked up wrong, but it turned out to be the Netapp)... I don't think Netapp needs to worry about anyone swapping drives around on them. ;-)
Also, instead of simply replacing the entire cannister, Upper Management[tm] decided that it would much cheaper to instead pull the cannisters apart and just replace the bad *drive*.
DIY support? I do not recommend it.
It's a viable option if you simply don't have the resources to buy all Netapp components. I'll note that our seven other filers are all using Netapp-sourced drives and RAM (budgetary deadlines and laziness on my part account for most of that).
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Alexei Rodriguez -
Brian Tao -
Brian Tao -
christopher williams -
Marc Nicholas -
Mike Mueller