• VMware,  Xsan

    Resolve Error 1006.0005 For Qlogic Switches

    Error 1006.0005 can appear on a Qlogic fibre channel switch when using ACL zones. If you don’t need ACL zones, then the easiest thing to do here is to swap the offending zone back to a soft zone. To do so, open the Qlogic Switch and use the Edit menu to select “Edit Zoning …” From the zone editor, right-click on the zone to change and click on Set Zone Type. From the Set Zone Type pop-up, click on the option for Soft. Save the zoning and provided that you can actually use soft zones you are done. Now, what if you can’t use soft zoning? In that case, I…

  • Unix,  Xsan

    One Liner Script To Check If Xsan Is Installed

    The following will tell you whether Xsan has been installed on a client system. Here we’re checking if the file exists using the [] for a file (I always quote paths that aren’t variables when doing this type of thing) and and then echoing a response that it does. [ -f "/Library/Preferences/Xsan/uuid" ] && echo "Xsan is installed" If the file exists, we could also perform some other tasks or use an else and make changes, like copying an authorization and fsnameservers file into the directory when installing StorNext clients on OS X. The way I would likely do this, if I were saying if the uuid file doesn’t exist,…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Xsan

    Rorke Aurora Galaxy and Xsan

    With Apple bundling Xsan into Lion and opening up more storage options than before, it seems like time to start exploring alternatives to Promise Vtrak’s for Xsan storage. ActiveStorage makes a very nice RAID chassis and should be shipping metadata controller appliances soon. I’ve discussed both here before and they make for very nice kit. But in order to have an ‘ecosystem’ you really need a little biodiversity. And the Xsan environment needs to become more of an ecosystem and less of a vendor lock-in situation. So another option that I’d like to discuss is the Rork Aurora Galaxy. These little firecrackers have a lot of potential upside: 4 8Gbps…

  • Windows Server,  Xsan

    Installing Windows Clients for Xsan & StorNext

    There are a lot of environments that attach Windows client computers to an Xsan or StorNext filesystem. In the past I’ve looked at using different versions of StorNext to communicate with Xsan, but in this article we’re actually going to take a look at Quantum’s StorNext FX2 client software. Before getting started, you’ll want to have the StorNext media, have the serial number added to the metadata controllers, have the HBA (fibre channel card) installed, have the fibre patched into the HBA, have the IP addresses for the metadata controllers documented and have a copy of the .auth_secret file obtainable from the metadata controllers once they’ve been properly licensed. To…

  • Windows Server,  Windows XP,  Xsan

    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.

  • Windows Server,  Windows XP,  Xsan

    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.

  • Windows Server,  Windows XP,  Xsan

    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…

  • Mac OS X,  Xsan

    Graphically Viewing Xsan Utilization

    As I’ve covered, du and df are great tools for isolating disk utilization, both for HFS+ and for Xsan. When dealing with end users though, it sometimes helps to show them information graphically. Another tool I’ve covered (although not comprehensively) is Disk Inventory X. A connection I had never tried to make until recently is using Disk Inventory X to find the “big fish” in terms of volume utilization with Xsan. When you fire up Disk Inventory X it will ask you to select a volume, or you can click on the Select Folder: button to browse to a folder. Disk Inventory X will then catalog the contents and show…