Sun Storage 7110

[Ric_]

@pete: Funny that... my two 7110s sync fine with my two Server 2003 DCs.

[Duke]

pete - Sounds identical to what I experienced. Try restarting the NTP service on the Sun box and getting the details in quick. Once it's finally accepted them then it does seem to work fine. Nice to know it's not just me, no idea why there are problems though. I've got 800 XP clients talking to the NTP servers fine...

[kmount]

In the whitepaper for Windows Integration it specifically advises using NTP and even offers up a MS Support article to configure AD to allow this (which we'd all have already done ofc).

[pete]

In the whitepaper for Windows Integration it specifically advises using NTP and even offers up a MS Support article to configure AD to allow this (which we'd all have already done ofc).

 

Heh, I haven't got that far. I'm at the "hmm, a simple network service is behaving wierdly early on in the setup" stage. Will have a look at the Sun docs, cheers.

[kmount]

I'd be screaming NTP NTP NTP at it at this point to see if it made any difference

[pete]

I'd be screaming NTP NTP NTP at it at this point to see if it made any difference

 

I can't find the whitepaper you mention, have you got a direct link? Does it mean that the default windows sntp setup should be made changed to NTP?

 

What annoys me is the fabulously intermittent way the 7110 responds - it can handle the windows dc as an ntp source, it just occasionally chooses not to.

 

edit: just checked both dcs, they have NTP explicitly set already.

Edited June 10, 2009 by pete

[linescanner]

Sun Storage 7000 2009.Q2.2.1 Release

 

A new micro update to the 2009.Q2 software has been posted. This release contains only two small fixes, one to address spurious NTP failures and one to address a performance regression introduced in the 2009.Q2.2.0 release. Users with a heavy write workload running 2009.Q2.2.1 should upgrade at their earliest convenience.

 

Download is here

 

Complete release notes can be found here.

 

The fix for NTP should put a smile on a number of faces

[john]

I'd be screaming NTP NTP NTP at it at this point to see if it made any difference

Hopefully not screaming it at the SANs though Kim after this demonstration by the Fishworks team:

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4]YouTube - Shouting in the Datacenter[/ame]

[kmount]

Ah Brendan is a funny guy

[Duke]

A new micro update to the 2009.Q2 software has been posted. This release contains only two small fixes, one to address spurious NTP failures and one to address a performance regression introduced in the 2009.Q2.2.0 release. Users with a heavy write workload running 2009.Q2.2.1 should upgrade at their earliest convenience.

 

Cheers! Update all went smoothly, but I'm not going to try to reconfigure my NTP settings as they're now working. Good to know Sun are sorting out these little problems though, even if it only seems to be affecting a small number of people.

 

I did just start a scrub on the pool and the BUI does seem to have hung on me though...

 

Chris

[Soulfish]

 

I did just start a scrub on the pool and the BUI does seem to have hung on me though...

 

Chris

 

At the discovery day this happened as well. Turned out it was just the web interface rendering in the browser that had hung, rather than the box its self. They cured it by opening another tab and then moving back to the original.

[Duke]

At the discovery day this happened as well. Turned out it was just the web interface rendering in the browser that had hung, rather than the box its self. They cured it by opening another tab and then moving back to the original.

 

Right you are! The BUI hung at 11.4% but shares were still accessible and it pinged fine. A few minutes later I got an email from the box saying it was done scrubbing so I tired the BUI in a different tab and it worked fine.

 

I know I probably shouldn't post other topics here, but are any of you using NFS with the S7000 and VMware? I'm a looking for a little help, don't suppose anyone could lend a hand HERE?

 

Many thanks,

Chris

[dan400007]

Storage Configuration Time?

 

I've powered up my 7110 this morning, gone through the setup processes and am now waiting for the storage configuration (Double Parity RAID) to finish.

 

When I say waiting I mean the browser has timed out, re-open the web interface and it comes up with a box saying "Please Wait", and I've been waiting for 2.5 hours.

 

If I try to go to the console through the serial connection I get a message saying that the console has timed out and to wait another 45 seconds for the 'emergency console' to be loaded.

 

Any clues? Or should I read the manual?

[Duke]

Sound exactly like my first setup, it hung during the initial RAID configuration too. I left it overnight but it made no difference, and if the RAID config works properly then it should only take a couple of minutes at the most and it's usually more like a few seconds.

 

I ended up rebooting (might have been a hard shutdown) and doing a factory reset, and the second time it went through absolutely fine. If you can't get any access to the system, pressing the power button will initiate a graceful shutdown, and holding in the power button will force a hard shutdown. It'd be a good idea to have the serial console open while you do this so you can see what it's doing.

 

For what it's worth, I've had no issues with the storage/RAID config since it went through the second time.

 

Chris

[Soulfish]

Sound exactly like my first setup, it hung during the initial RAID configuration too. I left it overnight but it made no difference, and if the RAID config works properly then it should only take a couple of minutes at the most and it's usually more like a few seconds.

 

I ended up rebooting (might have been a hard shutdown) and doing a factory reset, and the second time it went through absolutely fine. If you can't get any access to the system, pressing the power button will initiate a graceful shutdown, and holding in the power button will force a hard shutdown. It'd be a good idea to have the serial console open while you do this so you can see what it's doing.

 

For what it's worth, I've had no issues with the storage/RAID config since it went through the second time.

 

Chris

 

I found the exact same thing. First time my 7110 hung at the RAID config, did a hard shutdown and started it again and it was fine after that.

[Butuz]

For once mine went well, it takes about 5 - 10 seconds for the raid config to do it's stuff. I've reconfigured the raid from scratch several times during benchmarking between raid 0 raid 5 raid 6 and it's never hung.

 

Butuz

[cookie_monster]

What are the dangers of having the Write cache enabled in the LUN settings, should it be ok as long as you have a UPS? Does the 7110 have a battery backed write cache?

[Duke]

I think it would be the same risks as a non-battery backed RAM cache on a RAID card. I don't know if it uses the RAM on the S7000 or the SSDs or both, but I guess if it ever experienced a hard-shutdown (e.g. due to a powercut without a UPS) you'd lose whatever was cached in the RAM?

[cookie_monster]

Hmm yes that's what I was thinking, I don't think i'll risk it for now.

[pete]

Has anyone worked out whether it's possible to offer a service based on an interface basis?

 

Say I have an air-gapped physical switch with nge1, nge2 and nge3 attached using LACP and I'd like to use NFS on them for Xen mounts, but not offer NFS on nge0, is that doable? It works on linux if I specify the interface in the config file, but I can't see the option on the 7110.

 

I'm trying to decide how to handle authentication for NFS mounts and whether to authenticate against AD, but the mounts will solely be used by a) the backup server b) the xen host servers c) my laptop plugged into the switch when testing/debugging and aren't required to be available on nge0 which is plugged into the main backbone switch. I'm also leery of getting into a "need authentication to mount the share, but the server you're authenticating against needs the share to boot" type loop.

 

On the attached green=end-users, blue=storage, red=management.

[dan400007]

Has anyone managed to get the 7110 to work with Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V using NFS? Connecting to NFS isn't a problem, running a VM from NFS is. Hyper-V fails with an access denied error.

 

Also a note for everyone: MS no longer support NFS and SMB as suitable storage for VMs:

 

Network-attached storage (NAS) is not supported for Hyper-V.

Implementing Disks and Storage

[sjl]

I set our 7110 up yesterday and got the same problem as a couple here - setting up the Double Parity RAID, it just hung there. Tried to do a graceful shutdown but it just got stuck on stopping a process, so i eventually had to power it off. I powered it back on and it had set the drives up and it seemed to be working fine.

 

I also experienced a couple of hangs with the web interface. I have updated it to the 2009 release now though and haven’t had any hangs as of yet.

 

I set our 7110 up via the Service Processor - i got the 7110 out the box, put it in the rack and connected our KVM switch however using the KVM i got no console. Basically what happens is I power on the device you get the BIOS screens etc then grub loader starts but it then just displays a flashing cursor on the screen.

 

Using the SP it all works fine you get the grub loader screen where you can choose the OS version etc then start the console. Is this by design? Is everyone elses like this or just ours?

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

[Ric_]

@sjl: I think that is by design (the lack of console display) so that you aren't tempted to 'play'. Although I seem to remember being able to redirect the output back.

 

Now that you have upgraded the 'firmware', try perfoming a factory reset in the BUI and reconfiguring to make sure your drive wierdness doesn't re-occur.

[teejay]

Yay, just had our full server infrastructure replacement project approved. Means we are getting a 22TB 7310 with 1x read and 2x write accelerators, plus some Dell servers which will attach to our existing 7110's for the virtualisation project.

[Soulfish]

Yay, just had our full server infrastructure replacement project approved. Means we are getting a 22TB 7310 with 1x read and 2x write accelerators, plus some Dell servers which will attach to our existing 7110's for the virtualisation project.

 

Now you're making me jealous