Apple killed the Xserve RAID a couple of years ago. But the technology that went into the Xserve RAID was too good to let die. So the best of the team and the best of the product went off on their own and started Active Storage. The Active Storage XRAID is designed with all the features of the old Xserve RAID and some new ones to boot. There are two types of Active Storage XRAIDs. The first is the Active Storage ES, which comes with redundant cooling, power, drives and 2 4gbps fibre channel ports. The ES also allows for up to 16 SATA II drives (currently for up to…
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Disable NetApp FlexClone Snapshots
When you create a FlexClone, you will automatically enable scheduled snapshots. These can be disabled using the same command (snap) that you used to set them up. The snap command comes with a sched option, which if you want to disable for a specific LUN you would follow up with the name of the LUN and then a ‘0’. For example: snap sched fvolclone 0 If you are using your NetApp for Xsan LUNs then the snapshots are pretty much useless anyway…
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Xserve RAID Performance Settings
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Installing a Vtrak for Windows
If you are installing a Vtrak from Apple on Microsoft Windows you can download the drivers from Promise here: http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp Having said this, you can use the Promise drivers or generic drivers if you’re using the Promise as targets and connecting to those LUNs via StorNext that are managed by Xsan. The reason for this is that StorNext will manage the LUNs. To see the LUNs, check Windows Device Manager.
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New Windows Keystroke and Xsan Keys
OK, probably not new but oddly enough, this one is new to me. Control-Alt-Escape launches the Task Manager instead of using the ole’ three finger salute to fire up the screen to get to the Task Manager. I was on a KVM, switched between a Mac and PC accidentally, hit the same keystroke (funny keyboard map) and bam, there it was… Also, in Xsan. You can click on the Command key plus a number to cycle through the various options in the list along the left hand side of the screen. For example, the overview page when you first log in is Command-1 whereas the next one down in the…
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Debug Logging in StorNext
If you create a folder in c:Program FilesStorNext called debug then after you restart the FSS StorNext will create a file called c:Program FilesStorNextdebugnssdebug.out, which contains very verbose logs from the perspective of the StorNext system. This can be useful, for example, in debugging connectivity issues with other StorNext systems and/or Xsan.
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StorNext Command Line for Windows
StorNext for Windows comes with many of the same commands that are available with Xsan on Mac OS X. Located by default in the c:Program FilesStorNextbin directory, you can use the cv* commands in much the same way as on a Mac. This can help with regards to troubleshooting. For example, if you are having problems getting a volume to mount, even though it shows up when you go to map the drive in Client Configuration, you can use cvlabel -l (assuming your working directory is the StorNext bin directory) to see the LUNs that are accessible by your host. If you cannot see your LUNs then you also cannot…
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Stripe Breadths on Metadata LUNs
The default stripe breadth on a metadata storage pool is 256 blocks. However, this is way, way too high. Quantum recommends using a 16 or 64 block stripe breadth for metadata storage pools. If you have a relatively small volume with a small number of files then use 16 and if you have a larger environment with big files use 64. As with many things re: Xsan the tuning per environment is where you will get the biggest bang for your buck, but it is worth noting that no matter which way you go, this is a setting that should be changed on each deployment in order to keep with…
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Dealing with Xsan Latency
In Xsan, the PIO HiPriWr shows you how latent the connection to your LUNs is. If the connection to any of your LUNs is too high then it can cause instability and worse, potential volume integrity issues. If you run into issues with this kind of latency then you should fix it. But if you can’t, then you can deal with it programatically using the Buffer Cache Size. Increasing the buffer will allow for more caching, which will in turn allow for more latent LUNs to have less effect on the overall performance, health and viability of the SAN. Additionally, the iNode Cache should be increased for the same purpose…
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Xsan: Small Files & AFP
Xsan can be used as the back end storage to provide front end network file share services for a Mac OS X environment. This isn’t to say that it will work like a charm without some fine tuning though. One of the most important tools you have in performance tuning any Xsan volume is the block size. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the stripe breadth multiplied by the block size should total out to about 1MB total. The stripe breadth on the storage pools is therefore going to need to be customized any time you change the block sizes for the volume. If you are using Xsan as a…