This NetApp technical report has some information that will be helpful, including how to exclude/include data from specific volumes. There is a link to it on the Flash Cache web page of NetApp.com.

Flash Cache and PAM Best Practices Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3832.pdf

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Jeff Mohler Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 3:03 PM To: Fletcher Cocquyt Cc: toasters@teaparty.net Subject: Re: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

1) Just put it in the preferred slot, according to the NOW site docs for your box. 2) You can use the priority command to set a volume to keep/reuse/never status in PAM (very nice) 3) Cache Age, is next to...useless. It used to mean something, back in 5.0 and earlier...but you wanna use On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Fletcher Cocquyt <fcocquyt@stanford.edumailto:fcocquyt@stanford.edu> wrote: We are taking delivery of a couple flash cache cards (512Gb demo units) soon. I plan to install them in our standby 3270 cluster then present several cache enabled volumes for various benchmark us cases (Oracle, VMware, Web etc)

Qs: 1 - how easy/hard is the physical installation? Any gotchas to avoid? 2 - can I enable / disable caching on the volumes to help define the benefit flash cache is providing? 3 - how do I best monitor the flash cache metrics (I use cacti to graph "Cache Age" currently)..so..

Check the wafl:wafl:read_io_* stats. That will show WHERE requested blocks are being service from:

wafl:wafl:read_io_type.cache:95% wafl:wafl:read_io_type.ext_cache:4% wafl:wafl:read_io_type.disk:0%

Put that together with PAM stats using the stats command to review the status of the ext_cache_obj counters..and you will learn and see a lot. :)

thanks

-- Fletcher Cocquyt Principal Engineer Information Resources and Technology (IRT) Stanford University School of Medicine [cid:image001.jpg@01CCB8E1.02367EE0] Email: fcocquyt@stanford.edumailto:fcocquyt@stanford.edu Phone: (650) 724-7485tel:%28650%29%20724-7485

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Chris et al, thanks for the great feedback I installed the cards in 30 minutes and setup the custom view for tracking the key metrics per the KB doc (thanks for the link Chris) We'll benchmark Oracle, VMware, web use cases and measure the results

Cheers,

Fletcher

On Dec 12, 2011, at 3:47 PM, Chris Muellner wrote:

If you have Performance Advisor (Operations Manager 4.x or OnCommand 5) running in the environment you can create a view to monitor the FlashCache cards’ performance. It’s easier on the eyes and brain than watching CLI based stats in my opinion.

Here’s the KB on how to do it: https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=1012673

There’s an error in the KB at the following line though:

dfm option set perfAdvisorShowDiagCounters=enable

should be

dfm option set perfAdvisorShowDiagCounters=Yes

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Woods, Mark Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:16 PM To: Jeff Mohler; Fletcher Cocquyt Cc: toasters@teaparty.net Subject: RE: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

This NetApp technical report has some information that will be helpful, including how to exclude/include data from specific volumes. There is a link to it on the Flash Cache web page of NetApp.com.

Flash Cache and PAM Best Practices Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3832.pdf

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Jeff Mohler Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 3:03 PM To: Fletcher Cocquyt Cc: toasters@teaparty.net Subject: Re: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

1. Just put it in the preferred slot, according to the NOW site docs for your box.
2. You can use the priority command to set a volume to keep/reuse/never status in PAM (very nice)
3. Cache Age, is next to...useless. It used to mean something, back in 5.0 and earlier...but you wanna use

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Fletcher Cocquyt fcocquyt@stanford.edu wrote: We are taking delivery of a couple flash cache cards (512Gb demo units) soon. I plan to install them in our standby 3270 cluster then present several cache enabled volumes for various benchmark us cases (Oracle, VMware, Web etc)

Qs: 1 - how easy/hard is the physical installation? Any gotchas to avoid? 2 - can I enable / disable caching on the volumes to help define the benefit flash cache is providing? 3 - how do I best monitor the flash cache metrics (I use cacti to graph "Cache Age" currently)..so..

Check the wafl:wafl:read_io_* stats. That will show WHERE requested blocks are being service from:

wafl:wafl:read_io_type.cache:95% wafl:wafl:read_io_type.ext_cache:4% wafl:wafl:read_io_type.disk:0%

Put that together with PAM stats using the stats command to review the status of the ext_cache_obj counters..and you will learn and see a lot. :)

thanks

-- Fletcher Cocquyt Principal Engineer Information Resources and Technology (IRT) Stanford University School of Medicine <image001.jpg> Email: fcocquyt@stanford.edu Phone: (650) 724-7485

---

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I forgot to mention the error was unable to connect to port 8488. Prior to clicking OK, the server service is running, and the port is listening. After I click ok, I get the error that cannot connect to port 8488, and the DFM server service crashes.

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Klise, Steve Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 2:22 PM To: 'Fletcher Cocquyt'; Chris Muellner Cc: Woods, Mark; toasters@teaparty.net Subject: RE: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

I may need to open a ticket on this, but level 1 support is lacking in this area.

I have tried this procedure in past versions of DFM (4.0, 4.1, etc) and the issue is still on 5.0 for me. When I click on finish after following all the steps in the KB article, it says the port is not open on the DFM server (yet I can telnet to the port), and it crashes the DFM server service.

Any ideas, or any help? I would love to see these stats for our environment.

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Fletcher Cocquyt Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 11:20 PM To: Chris Muellner Cc: Woods, Mark; toasters@teaparty.net Subject: Re: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

Chris et al, thanks for the great feedback I installed the cards in 30 minutes and setup the custom view for tracking the key metrics per the KB doc (thanks for the link Chris) We'll benchmark Oracle, VMware, web use cases and measure the results

Cheers,

Fletcher

On Dec 12, 2011, at 3:47 PM, Chris Muellner wrote:

If you have Performance Advisor (Operations Manager 4.x or OnCommand 5) running in the environment you can create a view to monitor the FlashCache cards' performance. It's easier on the eyes and brain than watching CLI based stats in my opinion.

Here's the KB on how to do it: https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=1012673

There's an error in the KB at the following line though:

dfm option set perfAdvisorShowDiagCounters=enable

should be

dfm option set perfAdvisorShowDiagCounters=Yes

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.netmailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Woods, Mark Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:16 PM To: Jeff Mohler; Fletcher Cocquyt Cc: toasters@teaparty.netmailto:toasters@teaparty.net Subject: RE: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

This NetApp technical report has some information that will be helpful, including how to exclude/include data from specific volumes. There is a link to it on the Flash Cache web page of NetApp.comhttp://NetApp.com.

Flash Cache and PAM Best Practices Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3832.pdf

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.netmailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net]mailto:[mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Jeff Mohler Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 3:03 PM To: Fletcher Cocquyt Cc: toasters@teaparty.netmailto:toasters@teaparty.net Subject: Re: Installing & Testing Flash Cache cards

1) Just put it in the preferred slot, according to the NOW site docs for your box. 2) You can use the priority command to set a volume to keep/reuse/never status in PAM (very nice) 3) Cache Age, is next to...useless. It used to mean something, back in 5.0 and earlier...but you wanna use On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Fletcher Cocquyt <fcocquyt@stanford.edumailto:fcocquyt@stanford.edu> wrote: We are taking delivery of a couple flash cache cards (512Gb demo units) soon. I plan to install them in our standby 3270 cluster then present several cache enabled volumes for various benchmark us cases (Oracle, VMware, Web etc)

Qs: 1 - how easy/hard is the physical installation? Any gotchas to avoid? 2 - can I enable / disable caching on the volumes to help define the benefit flash cache is providing? 3 - how do I best monitor the flash cache metrics (I use cacti to graph "Cache Age" currently)..so..

Check the wafl:wafl:read_io_* stats. That will show WHERE requested blocks are being service from:

wafl:wafl:read_io_type.cache:95% wafl:wafl:read_io_type.ext_cache:4% wafl:wafl:read_io_type.disk:0%

Put that together with PAM stats using the stats command to review the status of the ext_cache_obj counters..and you will learn and see a lot. :)

thanks

-- Fletcher Cocquyt Principal Engineer Information Resources and Technology (IRT) Stanford University School of Medicine <image001.jpg> Email: fcocquyt@stanford.edumailto:fcocquyt@stanford.edu Phone: (650) 724-7485tel:%28650%29%20724-7485

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