Sun Storage 7110 networking woes

[cookie_monster]

Latest firmware on the SAN is done and the latest firmware is on the HP 2910al switch, i've also got the ILOM working as well. I'm currently looking at an iSCSI LUN to present to my Xenserver box.

[sjl]

All this is very interesting stuff - we are just waiting for our shiny new x4140's and 7110 to be delivered.

We are using the two X4140's & 7110 with VMWARE to virtualise the SIMS server, print server one DC / DNS, a DHCP server, RIS / DEPLOY / Anti-virus server - Aprox 6 servers in total once its all set up.

On advice we will probably keep a the root DC physical.

We will be using CIFS shares so users can directly access them via the network

We'll have a private network for SAN traffic.

We will be using NFS instead of iSCSI for our VMWARE images.

We will present drives with iSCSI to the SIMS server for the SIMS DB etc

Teaming - we will trunk two of the ports on the 2 servers to the SAN switch then trunk together 3 of the links on the 7110. The one remaining link will go into our core switch (for the CIFS shares) as will one or two links (teamed) from the servers.

We are using a 1U LTO4 tape drive with BE11d without the NDMP agent for now. We will backup the CIFS shares to tape along with the SIMS DB (using the BE agent).

Not too sure what software to use to backup the VMWARE images i will need to trial some software but they will be going to disk then either archived to tape or removable storage - not too sure on this yet.

Those are the rough plans for now anyway and will probably change.

[cookie_monster]

We'll have a private network for SAN traffic.

Will that be a seperate IP range or just a VLAN?


We're in the same boat as you for backup probably use BE with remote agents to backup data but as for the VM's we might just have to copy the images to external HD's when we make alterations. We'll also have a physical DC.

We will be using NFS instead of iSCSI for our VMWARE images.

I've just had a play with an iSCSI setup between my Xenservers and the 7110 i'm going to see if you can use NFS with Xenserver tomorrow as it's supposedly slighty faster on the 7110.

[john]

FYI: BackupExec do VMWare agents for use with BE 12.5, specially designed to go into VMWare V Machines for backing them up at VMWare level and stuff

[DMcCoy]

FYI: BackupExec do VMWare agents for use with BE 12.5, specially designed to go into VMWare V Machines for backing them up at VMWare level and stuff

I have the licenses for this, but until I get my new servers in my BE box has not got direct access to the fibre SAN. You really have to want it at £1000+ per ESX box. You will also need a paid for version of ESX or ESXi (not that I know if it works with esxi) to get the VCB license.

[sjl]

Will that be a seperate IP range or just a VLAN?


We're in the same boat as you for backup probably use BE with remote agents to backup data but as for the VM's we might just have to copy the images to external HD's when we make alterations. We'll also have a physical DC.



I've just had a play with an iSCSI setup between my Xenservers and the 7110 i'm going to see if you can use NFS with Xenserver tomorrow as it's supposedly slighty faster on the 7110.

Its on its own SAN network - see V2 of our SAN diagram attached. Like you, once i get the servers and SAN i'll test NFS / iSCSI although it looks as though NFS is the better option.

Cheers,

Steve.

[cookie_monster]

Can anyone tell me if the management interface on the 7110 can be part of a bond?

I'd like 2 cards in a bond on a private network for iSCSI traffic and 2 cards onto the LAN but one of them will be the management interface, will that cause any issues?


EDIT: Found an answer to this.

Citrix recommends configuring management networks using a dedicated network interface or interfaces configured in a bond. The interface may be shared with VMs if desired; however, Citrix recommends separating VM, management, and storage traffic.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118457

[screwdo]

I've got my 7110 up and running but we've had also sorts of NFS timeouts. I've eventually got around the problem by hooking up our development server to the 7110 using a crossover cable. Sort of defeats the object of the NAS device, but it works and I'm happy.

Until recently I've been admin-ing the box via the iLO GUI and the nge0 GUI. All of a sudden I can no longer access the nge0 GUI. I can't even ping the NIC card from the dev server. I've reported the problem to the Network guys who want me to check the IP config and routing information. I've done this via the iLO command line.

start /SP/console > routing > select route-002 > show

This displays the type, family, destination, mask, gateway & interface. And all looks OK. The Network team are now asking me to test connectivity from the 7110 to the devices availble on the subnet.

My question is:- Is there a 'ping' type command that I can issue from the 7110 command line? Or is there any other way I can test connectivity from the 7110, so I can get the Network guys off my back?

Cheers

[Duke]

My question is:- Is there a 'ping' type command that I can issue from the 7110 command line? Or is there any other way I can test connectivity from the 7110, so I can get the Network guys off my back?

I'm pretty sure it'll do ping and trace route from the CLI. See here.

:> traceroute
error: usage "traceroute [host|addr]"

:> ping
error: usage "ping [host|addr]"

:> nslookup
error: usage "nslookup [host|addr]"

Chris

[Soulfish]

I've got my 7110 up and running but we've had also sorts of NFS timeouts. I've eventually got around the problem by hooking up our development server to the 7110 using a crossover cable. Sort of defeats the object of the NAS device, but it works and I'm happy.

Until recently I've been admin-ing the box via the iLO GUI and the nge0 GUI. All of a sudden I can no longer access the nge0 GUI. I can't even ping the NIC card from the dev server. I've reported the problem to the Network guys who want me to check the IP config and routing information. I've done this via the iLO command line.

start /SP/console > routing > select route-002 > show

This displays the type, family, destination, mask, gateway & interface. And all looks OK. The Network team are now asking me to test connectivity from the 7110 to the devices availble on the subnet.

My question is:- Is there a 'ping' type command that I can issue from the 7110 command line? Or is there any other way I can test connectivity from the 7110, so I can get the Network guys off my back?

Cheers

I've had NFS timeouts from our 7110 before. Issue we had was to do with NFS under opensolaris carrying out a reverse DNS lookup on the connecting IP and not being able to correctly resolve it to a hostname.

For us this only affected our storage network which was only being used for virtual machine images. Added a linux VM running bind with the correct rDNS and NFS now works perfectly