Russ,

I don't have a conclusion yet, but I do have some progress. We replaced the disk shelves in the "older" filer and that allowed the new cluster partner F740 to recognize all the disk drives. However, for some unknown reason, the "older" filer is periodically halting with no error messages. The good news is that the cluster partner is immediately taking over and thus our customers do not see any failure (well, there may be a few who get a message about file access as the partner breaks the CIFS share). The bigger window for file errors is when we do a "giveback" as that must break all the CIFS shares first, and then reboot the filer that is being given back control.

We have replace the ServerNet card in the "older" filer in the effort to stop the halts, but that has not done so. It begins to look like a motherboard replace, but Netapp has yet to give its opinion. I'll let you know the next installment of "As the Netapp Clusters".

--srs

-----Original Message----- From: Russ Amidon [mailto:amidon@pico.sps.mot.com] Sent: Monday, March 08, 1999 11:06 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Future Newbie Needs Advice

Thank you to all that took the time to answer my posting. It is nice to hear

some positive responses when you are about to spend big bucks. I am particularlly interested in hearing the "conclusion" of Sam Schorr's Soap Opera about his experience with installation of cluster fail over.

Thanks again, Russ Amidon

Subject: Future Newbie Needs Advice To: toasters@mathworks.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Md5: gJvzv996YOYYC+QpWeuraQ==

Hello Everyone,

I am about to purchase two F760's w/ Cluster Failover Software and

Hardware

because we need a system that is 100% available and rock solid. I was

convinced

after talking to other Net App users that this was the way to go. After a

week

of reading this mailing list, I am no longer convinced. Does anyone out

there

have the system I described? Are you happy with it? I am particularly

concerned

about the fiber channel problems and all of the OS upgrades and patches.

We are also considering the new Auspex NS2000. Does anyone know of an

Auspex

mailing list like this one?

Thank you in advance for any advise you can offer to the "future newbie".

Russ Amidon UNIX Sys Admin