we have the opportunity to build several filers from scratch for our LAN, which will serve all departments in the company, fileshare through Samba, host htdocs for the internal web site, etc. can someone please point me to a good document that offers guidelines for doing the rearchitecting?
our architecture is currently flat- one volume per filer with the data only split up into separate directories. all hosts can mount all directories on all volumes if needed. we are overpowered so i'm not too concerned about performance. it does makes sense to have multiple volumes for varying snap schedules, for instance; however i'd like to learn more about what the trade-offs are because i do understand there is a storage penalty. the security paradigm is to depend on firewall protection on the perimeter and to have a relatively open internal network. backups will be snap mirrors to a sibling filer at our offsite colo, with an occasional archival to tape for some of the data.
thanks in advance.
...lori
Lori> we have the opportunity to build several filers from scratch for Lori> our LAN, which will serve all departments in the company, Lori> fileshare through Samba, host htdocs for the internal web site, Lori> etc. can someone please point me to a good document that offers Lori> guidelines for doing the rearchitecting?
You'll find some on the NetApp web site, but in general I've got a couple of suggestions for you:
1. Goto Data OnTap 7.x, the latest release that's available. 2. Put all your data into FlexVols. And then into qtrees inside the flexvols.
Lori> our architecture is currently flat- one volume per filer with Lori> the data only split up into separate directories.
Are you using qtrees at all? I find them to be very useful.
Lori> all hosts can mount all directories on all volumes if needed.
Sure, makes sense. I assume you use permissions to keep people from touching what they shouldn't?
Lori> it does makes sense to have multiple volumes for varying snap Lori> schedules, for instance; however i'd like to learn more about Lori> what the trade-offs are because i do understand there is a Lori> storage penalty.
The big big big thing about OnTap 7G is that you now have FlexVols, which means you can grow and shrink volumes as easily as you grow/shrink qtree quotas. There are some gotchas in terms of the number of Volumes you can have per-filer, I think it's 200 FlexVols currently.
Lori> the security paradigm is to depend on firewall protection on Lori> the perimeter and to have a relatively open internal network. Lori> backups will be snap mirrors to a sibling filer at our offsite Lori> colo, with an occasional archival to tape for some of the data.
Sounds fine to me. Go with 7G and FlexVols, you'll be happy.
John John Stoffel - Senior Staff Systems Administrator - System LSI Group Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. - http://www.toshiba.com/taec john.stoffel@taec.toshiba.com - 508-486-1087
Whats the primary reason to use qtrees under flexvols?
--- John Stoffel john.stoffel@taec.toshiba.com wrote:
Lori> we have the opportunity to build several filers from scratch for Lori> our LAN, which will serve all departments in the company, Lori> fileshare through Samba, host htdocs for the internal web site, Lori> etc. can someone please point me to a good document that offers Lori> guidelines for doing the rearchitecting?
You'll find some on the NetApp web site, but in general I've got a couple of suggestions for you:
- Goto Data OnTap 7.x, the latest release that's
available. 2. Put all your data into FlexVols. And then into qtrees inside the flexvols.
Lori> our architecture is currently flat- one volume per filer with Lori> the data only split up into separate directories.
Are you using qtrees at all? I find them to be very useful.
Lori> all hosts can mount all directories on all volumes if needed.
Sure, makes sense. I assume you use permissions to keep people from touching what they shouldn't?
Lori> it does makes sense to have multiple volumes for varying snap Lori> schedules, for instance; however i'd like to learn more about Lori> what the trade-offs are because i do understand there is a Lori> storage penalty.
The big big big thing about OnTap 7G is that you now have FlexVols, which means you can grow and shrink volumes as easily as you grow/shrink qtree quotas. There are some gotchas in terms of the number of Volumes you can have per-filer, I think it's 200 FlexVols currently.
Lori> the security paradigm is to depend on firewall protection on Lori> the perimeter and to have a relatively open internal network. Lori> backups will be snap mirrors to a sibling filer at our offsite Lori> colo, with an occasional archival to tape for some of the data.
Sounds fine to me. Go with 7G and FlexVols, you'll be happy.
John John Stoffel - Senior Staff Systems Administrator - System LSI Group Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. - http://www.toshiba.com/taec john.stoffel@taec.toshiba.com - 508-486-1087
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On 11/10/05, Jerry juanino@yahoo.com wrote:
Whats the primary reason to use qtrees under flexvols?
from my reading, it looks like the only way to define access rights in a non-unix way is to have qtrees. i'd think this could be critical to admins in heterogeneous environments.
i found qtrees to be useful yesterday for their nfs ops stats. if you are stuck with one big volume of data, and all your other stats are aggregate, that's a blessing.
...lori
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Jerry -
John Stoffel -
Lori Barfield