I would highly recommend going with 1 volume and 1 RAID group given your initial buy. With one shelf, you are going to get 1 parity and 6 data without leaving any disks as a spare - not a good idea. So, if use 1 disk for spare, then you have 5 data and 1 parity. Even with only one volume, you can easily setup NFS mount points and CIFS shares that either mix or do not by creating sub-directories or folders that reside on the 1 volume. Remember that you also give up space to NTAP, the O/S, and to snapshots which are volume specific (default is 20% of total volume size). That will leave you with about 4 drives of live file space. So, 4*32gig=128 gig size of volume.

-----Original Message----- From: lgkloft@usgs.gov [mailto:lgkloft@usgs.gov] Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 8:44 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Cc: lgkloft@usgs.gov Subject: Toaster newbie questions

I am setting up my first toaster - an F720 with one shelf (seven 36GB drives). I'm seeking some "real-life" experiences and recommendations based on what I am trying to do.

I work in a small office with approximately 50 employees and utilize UNIX and NT operating systems. I currently have several $HOME, $PROJECT, and GIS-related filesystems residing on my UNIX system. I plan to move these filesystems to the filer, but will be unable to create a separate volume for each filesystem. I considered creating two raid-groups, one for $HOME and one for $PROJECT, but I think there will be a performance hit (only 1-2 data disks per volume) and it will cost me two drives for parity, not to mention the spare disk drive. I am now looking at employing one large volume (the root volume) and establishing Qtrees to establish and manage HOME, PROJECT, and GIS areas within this volume, which would require NFS and CIFS access. I am also considering the idea of creating an additional Qtree to maintain user's roaming profiles for the NT environment - which would require CIFs access only. I don't like the idea of doing this all in one volume (especially /vol/vol0), but it looks as if this is the route I will be taking unless someone has a better recommendation. Finally, how difficult, or is it even possible, to remove a Qtree? I didn't find anything in the SA Guide to do this.

Thanks, Loren