I need to upgrade present productin F840 cluster environment running DOT 6.4.2P6 in order to support LTO3 tape-drives and an ADIC library. This seems like an oportunity to go directly to DOT 7.x (traditional volumes only - no flex vols yet). I've been pouring over the Upgrade Guide and was wondering what experiences/problems others have came across.
1) What are some of the biggest/troublesome issues ?
2) How long does the upgrade take ? The docs only say hours (in an event that I need to revert back)
3) Has anyone found a need to revert back ? Why ?
4) Available Volume space I believe that as part of the upgrade DOT has to go and change all of the inodes. Are there any implications as far as available space in a volume ? Do I need to make sure that I have some n% of free space ?
5) How did you deal with the new /etc/exports ? I use /etc/netgroups and it seems that I need to totally rewrite the /etc/exports file since '-access' is no longer supported
6) Increased disk & CPU activity after the upgrade The Upgrade Guide mentions that there will be an increase. How much of an increase have people seen ? One of my 840s runs at about 90% busy all the time
7) What version of DOT 7.x would you suggest to upgrade to ?
Thanks, George
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 10:23:19AM -0400, George Kahler wrote:
- How did you deal with the new /etc/exports ? I use /etc/netgroups and it seems that I need to totally rewrite the /etc/exports file since '-access' is no longer supported
Thanks, George
The upgrade process will do the rewrite of the exports for you.
On 9/16/05, George Kahler george@yorku.ca wrote: <wack>
- How long does the upgrade take ? The docs only say hours (in an event that I need to revert back)
The actual upgrade is quick, but the filesystem conversion takes the longest amount of time. Depending on load it can take many hours, but usually it takes less then 30 minutes (on an idle filer) . There should be a message in the messages file (or the console) that tells you it's done. At this point I'd like to berate on the NOW site team for after searching for 10 minutes, I am unable to locate a KB article that shows when the wafl upgrade is complete, when you move to 7g. That sucks.)
- Has anyone found a need to revert back ? Why ?
As with any new release, there are going to be bugs, or subtle changes, that may break things. Be on the look out, and test thoroughly after the upgrade, and before rolling into production. Reverting back is easy, but can only be done after the initial wafl upgrade is complete.
- Available Volume space I believe that as part of the upgrade DOT has to go and change all of the inodes. Are there any implications as far as available space in a volume ? Do I need to make sure that I have some n% of free space ?
Yes the inodes are bigger, but I don't think it affects your usable space much, if at all. I think NetApp says we need to have 10% free space for the 7g OnTap upgrade.
-Blake
Blake Golliher thelastman@gmail.com writes:
On 9/16/05, George Kahler george@yorku.ca wrote:
[...]
- Available Volume space I believe that as part of the upgrade DOT has to go and change all of the inodes. Are there any implications as far as available space in a volume ? Do I need to make sure that I have some n% of free space ?
Yes the inodes are bigger, but I don't think it affects your usable space much, if at all. I think NetApp says we need to have 10% free space for the 7g OnTap upgrade.
The larger inodes (128 bytes => 192 bytes) came with 6.5.x (well, they were there in 6.5.1R1P6 when we went to that, anyway). They don't get any larger again with 7.x.
Larger inodes certainly doesn't affect disc space usage significantly. But if you are tight on RAM on the filer then it can make things that munge over lots of inodes (e.g. dump, quota on/off) have a worse effect on the cache.
- How long does the upgrade take ? The docs only say hours (in an event that I need to revert back)
On a smaller filer, the filesystem conversion only took a few minutes. But this was a largely empty box.
- Has anyone found a need to revert back ? Why ?
We ran into to some trouble with snapmirror. Support said that some aspect of it was broken and suggested we revert to 6.5.
Here's a hint. In the 3 step procedure to revert (download, revert_to, bye), don't leave out step 2... *ouch* (*blush*)
- Available Volume space I believe that as part of the upgrade DOT has to go and change all of the inodes. Are there any implications as far as available space in a volume ? Do I need to make sure that I have some n% of free space ?
It probably needs a bit of space, but I don't know how much. It shouldn't be a large amount.
- How did you deal with the new /etc/exports ? I use /etc/netgroups and it seems that I need to totally rewrite the /etc/exports file since '-access' is no longer supported
They are rewritten by the process. I saved a copy anyway, but didn't end up doing anything with it.
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Blake Golliher -
Chris Thompson -
Darren Dunham -
George Kahler -
Tom Haynes