Sun Storage 7110

[z_rizvi]

Hi,

My team and I recently acquired the Sun Storage 7110. We successfully initiated it. There were no problems with the RAID configuration. However a couple of weeks back the server's GUI stopped responding. The configured IP would not ping. Eventually we rebooted the server through the SP. On the graphical console what we can see the server booting. It boots to the GRUB, gives the prompt Booting to GRUB Stage 2, after that the server just gives a prompt on the screen and nothing else.

Can anyone diagnose what went wrong?

regards,

z_rizvi

[teejay]

Hi,

My team and I recently acquired the Sun Storage 7110. We successfully initiated it. There were no problems with the RAID configuration. However a couple of weeks back the server's GUI stopped responding. The configured IP would not ping. Eventually we rebooted the server through the SP. On the graphical console what we can see the server booting. It boots to the GRUB, gives the prompt Booting to GRUB Stage 2, after that the server just gives a prompt on the screen and nothing else.

Can anyone diagnose what went wrong?

regards,

z_rizvi

 

If you are connecting to the console through lights out management, the console is turned off once you reach the grub stage. You then need to use an ssh telnet client such as Putty to access the console.

[z_rizvi]

sorry I forgot to mention the OS is not responding the OS IP is not pinging.

My question is: could the GRUB have been corrupted somehow?

[Duke]

Anything is possible I guess... Monitoring the iLOM is a bit weird: Do a full shutdown and pull the power plugs then wait a couple of minutes. Hook up the serial cable and start up a Putty session on the serial port, then plug in the power leads on the S7000. You should see it start booting up and eventually it will get to a login screen with SP in the hostname. About halfway through this process the power light should have started flashing. Once you've got the prompt up, get a ping -t running on the network hostname then hit the power button. The screen shown on your Putty session won't change but the S7000 will now start booting up to the main OS. After a few minutes it'll hopefully start pinging, and shortly after that the BUI should be available...

 

If you don't get that, call Sun Support!

[cookie_monster]

sorry I forgot to mention the OS is not responding the OS IP is not pinging.

My question is: could the GRUB have been corrupted somehow?

 

 

Is it still not working? If it's new then Sun will offer free support give them a ring they're very good.

[linescanner]

sorry I forgot to mention the OS is not responding the OS IP is not pinging.

My question is: could the GRUB have been corrupted somehow?

 

Try a factory reset and re-import the zpool

[z_rizvi]

Thanks a lot guys! something worked we've our server back online

[Duke]

Oracle update time!

 

This one is the most interesting for us:

 

Oracle: Storage trouble in store

 

Oracle is putting a heavy focus on Sun's 7000, tape and flash storage products, implying the rest of the bought-in storage line is not so well-regarded and may be under threat. [...] Only the 7000 line of storage arrays and its software, including the Apple-rejected ZFS file system, has been mentioned at a top level.

 

Good news for us I guess, and I think it's fairly understandable. This backs up everything I've heard from semi-official sources and that Larry has a real interest in developing the S7000 stuff. If you look for a strong product in Sun's storage range then the S7000 really stands out, whereas the other products don't compete as well with other manufacturers' solutions.

 

Interesting times ahead?

Chris

[john]

Oracle update time!

 

This one is the most interesting for us:

 

Oracle: Storage trouble in store

 

 

 

Good news for us I guess, and I think it's fairly understandable. This backs up everything I've heard from semi-official sources and that Larry has a real interest in developing the S7000 stuff. If you look for a strong product in Sun's storage range then the S7000 really stands out, whereas the other products don't compete as well with other manufacturers' solutions.

 

Interesting times ahead?

Chris

I certainly find that a comforting bit of info that clearly Oracle like the S7000 kit and should see it around for a good time

[Duke]

I certainly find that a comforting bit of info that clearly Oracle like the S7000 kit and should see it around for a good time

 

That's the way I'm reading it. I know Larry wants to sell his integrated 'database machines', but everything I've read suggests he'll happily sell anyone the individual components too, be it Solaris, the DB software or the storage boxes.

[PRicho]

BOO! Its not even in use yet

 

Description: A level 1 Data Cache on this cpu is faulty.

Type: Major Fault

Impact: Performance of this system may be affected.

Affected components:

100% Holgate-SAN: CPU 0 (out of service)

Manufacturer: AMD

Part name: 1002

Model number: Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ Processor 2356

Revision: 03

 

 

Its happened again! CPU 1 this time, Phone home uploaded a support package at 11pm, I phoned Sun to log the case yesterday morning.. not heard anything else from them as yet. Duff batch of CPU's!?

[Duke]

Its happened again! CPU 1 this time, Phone home uploaded a support package at 11pm, I phoned Sun to log the case yesterday morning.. not heard anything else from them as yet. Duff batch of CPU's!?

 

Ouch, sounds like you're having a lot of bad luck mate! It's not running unusually hot or anything like that is it?

[Duke]

Hey all,

 

Phil Lawrence from Sun is popping down to see me towards the end of February. It's generally just for a catch-up, but I've also invited people from a few local schools to come along for a couple of hours to talk storage solutions and similar issues in schools.

 

Just wondering if anyone on here was interested and able to make it over to Chippenham (Wiltshire) for a few hours on Feb 26th? If so post here or PM me and I'll see what I can do.

 

Cheers,

Chris

[Duke]

Soo, time for me to be a bit evil...

 

Had Phil, Mike from Cutter and a couple of local schools in on Friday to talk Sun storage, and although a lot of what I saw was under NDA I think I can share a few vague details to get you all tempted.

 

The first 2010 Q1 release will be out very soon and has some really nice features, including one that will save you a lot of a space and is insanely easy to implement (think you can probably figure that one out).

 

There are some changes coming to the product line that will really improve expandability, especially on the lower end. This is really going to open up enterprise-level storage to those on a budget.

 

For those with expansion JBODs, the next one you buy is going to be awesome compared to your current one.

 

The roadmap for the future looks really solid, lots of great stuff and things I hadn't even thought about that we'll benefit from.

 

And finally... there's a new product coming out, it's way beyond what any of us will ever need or be able to afford, but it's 3.1PB of friggin coolness!

 

Chris

[Soulfish]

Soo, time for me to be a bit evil...

 

Had Phil, Mike from Cutter and a couple of local schools in on Friday to talk Sun storage, and although a lot of what I saw was under NDA I think I can share a few vague details to get you all tempted.

 

The first 2010 Q1 release will be out very soon and has some really nice features, including one that will save you a lot of a space and is insanely easy to implement (think you can probably figure that one out).

 

There are some changes coming to the product line that will really improve expandability, especially on the lower end. This is really going to open up enterprise-level storage to those on a budget.

 

For those with expansion JBODs, the next one you buy is going to be awesome compared to your current one.

 

The roadmap for the future looks really solid, lots of great stuff and things I hadn't even thought about that we'll benefit from.

 

And finally... there's a new product coming out, it's way beyond what any of us will ever need or be able to afford, but it's 3.1PB of friggin coolness!

 

Chris

 

[john]

Refuses budget request as you get too much fun already

 

Can't wait for some shiny new features, but the biggest that we need is the Quotas to be more like Server 2003 R2's file quotas

[Duke]

 

Lets just say you'll have a lot more bandwidth and disk space to play with.

 

Can't wait for some shiny new features, but the biggest that we need is the Quotas to be more like Server 2003 R2's file quotas

 

Unfortunately not on cards, but I will keep pestering as I feel the same way. I assume all you need is to be able to apply a quota to the top-level of folders for things like userspaces, same as us?

 

Chris

Edited March 1, 2010 by Duke

[john]

Lets just say you'll have a lot more bandwidth and disk space to play with.

 

 

 

Unfortunately not on cards, but I will keep pestering as I feel the same way. I assume all you need is to be able to apply a quota to the top-level of folders for things like userspaces, same as us?

 

Chris

We need to do the individual users as we currently have quotas per project which work well, but some little darlings are taking the you know what within those limits (especially staff, we have 3 staff that are now over 20GB each!)

[Duke]

We need to do the individual users as we currently have quotas per project which work well, but some little darlings are taking the you know what within those limits (especially staff, we have 3 staff that are now over 20GB each!)

 

Ah right, so you do it per-user rather than per-folder? We have per-folder quotas that are applied to a share so that each top-level folder inside that share has a quota on it, regardless of who is accessing it.

 

I thought the S7000 already did per-user quotas? Not something I use but I was under the impression you could limit a specific username to a certain amount of storage space - does this not do what you need? Also, I didn't think FSRM in 2003 R2 did it per-user as you've described?

 

Even more confused now!

 

Chris

[john]

Ah right, so you do it per-user rather than per-folder? We have per-folder quotas that are applied to a share so that each top-level folder inside that share has a quota on it, regardless of who is accessing it.

 

I thought the S7000 already did per-user quotas? Not something I use but I was under the impression you could limit a specific username to a certain amount of storage space - does this not do what you need? Also, I didn't think FSRM in 2003 R2 did it per-user as you've described?

 

Even more confused now!

 

Chris

I didn't think it was at that level, then again I'm still about 3 version behind on the software after the disasters with backups and crashing systems I had.

 

I say per user, it was per folder, it used to be per user on NT style quotas.

[Duke]

I didn't think it was at that level, then again I'm still about 3 version behind on the software after the disasters with backups and crashing systems I had.

 

I say per user, it was per folder, it used to be per user on NT style quotas.

 

I think we're probably talking about the same thing on the Windows boxes.

 

Here's what the docs say on User and Group Quotas:

 

User or group quotas

 

Quotas can be set on a user or group at the filesystem level. These enforce physical data usage based on the POSIX or Windows identity of the owner or group of the file or directory. There are some significant differences between user and group quotas and filesystem and project data quotas:

 

• User and group quotas can only be applied to filesystems.
  
• User and group quotas are implemented using delayed enforcement. This means that users will be able to exceed their quota for a short period of time before data is written to disk. Once the data has been pushed to disk, the user will receive an error on new writes, just as with the filesystem-level quota case.
  
• User and group quotas are always enforced against referenced data. This means that snapshots do not affect any quotas, and a clone of a snapshot will consume the same amount of effective quota, even though the underlying blocks are shared.
  
• User and group reservations are not supported.
  
• User and group quotas, unlike data quotas, are stored with the regular filesystem data. This means that if the filesystem is out of space, you will not be able to make changes to user and group quotas. You must first make additional space available before modifying user and group quotas.
  
• User and group quotas are sent as part of any remote replication. It is up to the administrator to ensure that the name service environments are identical on the source and destination.
  
• NDMP backup and restore of an entire share will include any user or group quotas. Restores into an existing share will not affect any current quotas.
  

 

Basically I think you can say 'User A can have 100MB usage on this share' no matter where the data is stored. For me this is a lot of hassle and not really what I want, particularly as I'd need to do it for 250 users per share.

 

I want to say: 'Folders in this share have a 100MB quota' so each folder in the root directory of that share can only ever have 100MB in them, regardless of the user (this stops someone in tech support accidentally dumping a 1GB uncompressed video from a camera in a student's userspace without checking the size first!). Does that sound like what you want?

 

Chris

[john]

I want the latter, well sort of.

 

I currently have a project and thus share, per year group

I want to say user 09joeblo can have a 100mb quota on his documents folder within that share, and obviously if 09joeblo is a good boy I may give him more etc

 

But with the way I have mine setup with a project and share per year group, and shared areas, profiles etc all in seperate projects and shares it may sort of work.

 

I read that bumph and it looks confusing, I think I'll have to re-download the simulator and try it out and see what it does on that

[Duke]

Yeah, we considered a per-user share and that would resolve our problem, but it means I'll have over 1500 shares on the S7000 which I wanted to avoid. On the Windows servers we actually did have a share for each userspace, but automating the creation of a Windows share was easier than an S7000 share. I might get back in touch with the Sun guys and see if there's any progress on FSRM-style quotas, I can't believe it would be that hard to implement...

 

Chris

[cookie_monster]

Yeah, we considered a per-user share and that would resolve our problem, but it means I'll have over 1500 shares on the S7000 which I wanted to avoid. On the Windows servers we actually did have a share for each userspace, but automating the creation of a Windows share was easier than an S7000 share. I might get back in touch with the Sun guys and see if there's any progress on FSRM-style quotas, I can't believe it would be that hard to implement...

 

Chris

 

 

Yes that would be the iceing on the cake for me. Currently user folders are shared through an iSCSI connection that's hosted by a Windows server so we can use quotas effectively. TBH the performance is fine for those needs if they need any fast file space I can setup a CIFS share directly on the SAN. In future though it would be nice to have this feature so home folders could be shared directly from the SAN.

[Duke]

I've emailed the Fishworks team to see if it's something we can get them to work on. I can't believe it would be particularly hard to implement and I know quite a few people want it.

 

If you want to add your weight to the request, log into your S7000 and click the 'Feedback? Let us know' link at the bottom-right then let them know it's something you want too. Might be worth mentioning my email too so they can keep track of the requests.

 

Chris