Hi all,

"not very stable" is not my experience also, but it *could* mean the following as I have experienced:

If I use SDCLI in scripts together with puttylink in some rare cases it does not work. You may not use SnapDrive via CLI scheduled with mutiple steps at the same time on the same filer. SnapDrive and the console can work only sequentially on a filer.

SnapDrive 5, ONTAP 7.2.4

From different servers I let the following happen:

sdcli disk disconnect -d driveletter -f "C:\Program Files\Putty\plink.exe" ... lun unmap ... sdcli snap delete ... sdcli snap create ... sdcli disk connect -p snapshotname ... -dtype dedicated

One step after the other, each has to be finished before the next begins. I have scheduled all these tasks for some different luns on a MS cluster which are nightly snapped consitently and the snapshot-backed luns are mounted to a different offloading backupserver. If I leave 5 minutes between the steps I have no errors.

with kind regards ______________________________________creating IT solutions

Dipl.-Chem. Knut Kristan Weber

Senior Solutions Engineer CAx Professional Services

science + computing ag Hagellocher Weg 73 phone +49 7071 94 57 473 72070 Tübingen, Germany fax +49 7071 94 57 411 http://www.science-computing.de

-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Milazzo Giacomo Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 11:53 AM To: lists@up-south.com; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: R: Snapdrive alternative

Not very stable? I suggest you to review your environment for we've lot of W2K3 systems and heavy apps (SPS, E2K3, E2K7, SQL fm 2K to 2K5...) using Snapdrive (fm 4.x to 5.x) and SManager since months with no issues at all...(fiber and iSCSI)

-----Messaggio originale----- Da: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] Per conto di Steve Rieger Inviato: venerdì 25 aprile 2008 4.05 A: toasters@mathworks.com Oggetto: Snapdrive alternative

We found that snapdrive is not very stable. Are there any alternatives ?

Setup is as follows Win 2k3 servers Sql dbs 3070c running 7.2.2 With fiber Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

We've discussed about this for long on these pages. Anyway, I'll try to summarize. First, you speak of RPC errors...this sounds to me you've to check in your DNS, something has not been registered or well replicated. You've Windows server as member ones of an AD domain: so, why using a local user? Create a domain users "snapdrive" and put it in the local administrators group of servers and filers. You can create but you can not mount...sounds like timeout errors recalled by Snapdrive...double check you config. Did you remove some client access or file&print services protocol fm your Windows server NIC setup? Did you setup MPIO of MS initiator together with DSM? This is a terrible thing! :-) It does not work. Fori SCSI you don't have to spend money for DSM, the free MPIO fm MS Initiator works very well! For fiber instead it's better (a must have) to use DSM...obviuosly if you have 2 HBAs for host. Anyway it has to work.

Alternatively the free MS initiator (configured of course to see NetApp and this one configured to mask LUNs) or the fiber HBA drivers let you 'see', mount and format disks under the disk management interface. How expand them? Simple but manual. Open the Filerview or via CLI and expand the LUN. Disk management will show you free unowned space. Open a DOS prompt and with Diskpart expand the partition...

That's all folks Bye

-----Messaggio originale----- Da: Bluezman [mailto:lists@up-south.com] Inviato: venerdì 25 aprile 2008 18.52 A: Milazzo Giacomo Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Oggetto: Re: R: Snapdrive alternative

Milazzo Giacomo wrote:

Not very stable? I suggest you to review your environment for we've lot of W2K3 systems and heavy apps (SPS, E2K3, E2K7, SQL fm 2K to 2K5...) using Snapdrive (fm 4.x to 5.x) and SManager since months with no issues at all...(fiber and iSCSI)

all our servers are vanila installs (new setups) win 2k3 64 bit fully patched, mpio from MS is installed iscsi from MS is installed snapdrive 5.0 is installed hosts are tied into AD. local user on host is snapdrive, also created a user on the filer "snapdrive", added user to Administrators group. snapdrive runs as the local user "snapdrive" created volumes, shared them to everybody via cifs when i go to snapdrive on the host side, i keep getting RPC errors, however i can see the volumes, and can create luns, but can not mount the luns.

to summarize

do i actually need snapdrive to mount luns ? or can this be done, via windows drive mapping ? if via drive mapping, how would i expand a volume ?

Holloway, Chris wrote:

I've seen RPC errors on SnapDrive before with a customer. Does the LUN get created on the filer and then not mounted on the server?

In this case, it turned out to be this bug:

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/bol?Type=Detail&Display=103404 http://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/bol?Type=Detail&Display=103404

Sorting the name resolution fixed it.

this was the issue,

the filers hostname (locally) was fl1 the filers hostname (in AD) was irfl1

when the windows host connected via snapdrive we put it the ip addy, which caused the issue, we changed the filers hostname (locally) to irfl1, and updated the hosts file.

all good now.

We were given short notice that we had to put 2 MSCS clusters and 2 non-clustered Windows Servers on our NetApp. 3 of the 4 cluster nodes are virtual, one is physical. The P/V cluster is using Veritas DMP for multipathing.

We have been running like this for 2 months. We were looking at getting SNAPDRIVE and/or NetApp DSM but because the support renewal was delayed (we are covered now) we couldn't even get quotes for either product. Now we have the quotes and I need write up the justification.

We have not had any problems (other than me confusing 70MB with 70GB and over-subscribed the volumes with a 70GB lun on a 70MB volume) since then.

I would be interested in hear peoples opinions about which combination of products on which of the 4 servers they would recommend.

Jack