• Xsan

    Xsan: Promise RAID Command Line Arguments

    about        View utility information. array       View or edit array information.  Create, edit or delete a new or existing array.  Create, edit or delete logical drives in an existing array.  To physically locate an array in an enclosure.  Accept an incomplete array condition. battery     View battery information or to recondition a battery. bga         View status of all current background activities.  Enable or disable relevant background activities.  Modify the background task rate for each of the background tasks. buzz        View buzzer status, enable/disable and turn on/off buzzer. chap        View, create, edit or delete a CHAP…

  • Xsan

    Xsan: Tracking Down Latency Problems

    Xsan stores the logs for a volume in /Library/Filesystems/Xsan/data/<Volume Name>/log/cvlog.  When you’re trying to find whether there is too much latency you can look for the following in the logs: PIO HiPriWr SUMMARY <Storage Pool> sysavg This is updated every hour in the cvlog.

  • Xsan

    Xsan: File Locking with Bridgeheads

    AFP locks files by default.  With Xsan you want the cvfs to lock the files if they are in use (like when you’re putting multiple bridgehead servers in front of an Xsan volume for AFP sharing).  Therefore, you can use the AFP settings for the AFP daemon to prevent AFP from locking files.  You would do so using the following command: serveradmin settings afp:lock_manager = no

  • Xsan

    Xsan: Video Formats and Bandwidth

    As many environments will use multiple formats it is important to define the required bandwidth for various formats.  By lowering or increasing your format you will have the capacity to have more or less streams concurrently running against your SAN respectively: Standard Definition MiniDV, DVCAM, and DVCPRO – 3.6MBps DVCPRO 50 – 7.7MBps Uncompressed SD (8-bit) – 20MBps Uncompressed SD (10-bit) – 27MBps Compressed High Definition DVCPRO HD – 5.8MBps to 14MBps Apple ProRes 422 – 5.25 to 27.5 MBps Redcode RAW (24fps) – 28 MBps Uncompressed High Definition 720p 24fps – 46MBps 720p 30fps – 50MBps 720p 60fps – 100MBps 1080 24p (8-bit) – 98MBps 1080i (8-bit) – 120MBps…

  • Xsan

    LUNscaping

    In Xsan you need to plan your LUNs carefully.  I’ve decided to call this process LUNscaping.  Join me with this and feel free to take credit for the term…  😉

  • Xsan

    Practical ILM

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal The amount of data used by Small Businesses is on target to rise 30% to 35% in 2006. Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA and SEC Rule 17a-4 have introduced new regulations on the length of time data must be kept and in what format. Not only must data be kept, it must be backed up and secured. These factors have the cost of data storage for the Small Business increasing exponentially. Corporations valued at more than 75 million dollars are generating 1.6 billion gigabytes of data per year. Small and medium sized companies can reap the benefits of developments being made with larger corporations. Different methods and…