apaton Posted June 6, 2011 Posted June 6, 2011 Oracle have release a new release Q3.3.1. I've been awaiting this one for a while. Hope to fix some outstanding VSS issues and updated VMware SRM support. More details for everyone below. ak-2010.08.17.3.1 Release Notes - Fishworks - wikis.sun.com Note from Release Notes - "This release requires appliances to be running the 2010.Q3.2.1 micro release prior to upgrading to this release" 1
bossman Posted June 6, 2011 Posted June 6, 2011 @apaton: Before you go ahead with this I would speak to @john as he was just telling us last friday how the latest Oracle update had rendered his box virtually useless. This may be the update he has been waiting for but then again this may be the one he has installed.
Duke Posted June 6, 2011 Posted June 6, 2011 http://www.hardenhuish.wilts.sch.uk/avatar/oracleyuno2.png http://www.hardenhuish.wilts.sch.uk/avatar/oracleyuno1.png For those wondering... However, 6978261 is fixed (Notify Change buffering mechanism can cause a torrent of notify change requests/responses) which is awesome, because it has the rather unfortunate habit of doing this: http://www.hardenhuish.wilts.sch.uk/avatar/s7410_startmenu_highuse.png (it's worth noting that it stayed up and worked fine, although it wasn't happy)
john Posted June 6, 2011 Posted June 6, 2011 This is one of the ones I've been waiting for and that bug is one that I am suffering from, so will have to schedule some downtime and try and see what happens and if it improves anything as I am absolutely fed up of them now. I've been a big fan of the kit but as it gets older it gets more stroppy and sulky and when pushing it to the limits it just cannot cope. My general feeling is since the Oracle Take-over the product has lost its best qualities, things were fixed quick and fast with Sun and quality control was high, where as since Oracle took over releases are slow and more bugs come out and you end up waiting ages for them to be fixed, I've been waiting nearly 3 months for something to be fixed and the only reply I got was I am putting to much load on my box, yet it was fine with the Sun firmware doing the same work which I just don't get! I know @Ric_ isn't a happy guy with his boxes either, lets see if this release can bring back the fortunes of this kit?
Duke Posted June 6, 2011 Posted June 6, 2011 (edited) I've been a big fan of the kit but as it gets older it gets more stroppy and sulky and when pushing it to the limits it just cannot cope. My general feeling is since the Oracle Take-over the product has lost its best qualities, things were fixed quick and fast with Sun and quality control was high, where as since Oracle took over releases are slow and more bugs come out and you end up waiting ages for them to be fixed, I've been waiting nearly 3 months for something to be fixed and the only reply I got was I am putting to much load on my box, yet it was fine with the Sun firmware doing the same work which I just don't get! That's interesting, because my experiences since Oracle took over have so far been pretty good. I know I've been a bit of a fanboy about the S7000 stuff in the past, but if a product isn't performing properly then I'll complain just as quickly. I was offered binary fixes for 6978261 in 3.1 (installed and working) and 3.2 (never got around to upgrading). The fix for 3.1 broke SMB analytics but they fixed that in 3.2 apparently. My biggest complaint is still a lack of proper user quotas, but having seen Phil Lawrence recently we think we may have seen a simpler way than what I've previously proposed for Oracle to implement this. However, whether they actually will put it in is another story entirely as I've been asking for this for a couple of years... No real complaints about support and the Oracle Portal is actually easier to manage than phoning Sun was. Tim Jones is still around, not sure what the rest of support is like? I must admit, the gap between releases was a bit disconcerting, but besides 6978261 I haven't hit any bugs so didn't really mind. I was planning to buy a S7120 for failover soon, are you folks now looking elsewhere for storage? Chris Edited June 6, 2011 by Duke
john Posted June 6, 2011 Posted June 6, 2011 That's interesting, because my experiences since Oracle took over have so far been pretty good. I know I've been a bit of a fanboy about the S7000 stuff in the past, but if a product isn't performing properly then I'll complain just as quickly. I was offered binary fixes for 6978261 in 3.1 (installed and working) and 3.2 (never got around to upgrading). The fix for 3.1 broke SMB analytics but they fixed that in 3.2 apparently. My biggest complaint is still a lack of proper user quotas, but having seen Phil Lawrence recently we think we may have seen a simpler way than what I've previously proposed for Oracle to implement this. However, whether they actually will put it in is another story entirely as I've been asking for this for a couple of years... No real complaints about support and the Oracle Portal is actually easier to manage than phoning Sun was. Tim Jones is still around, not sure what the rest of support is like? I must admit, the gap between releases was a bit disconcerting, but besides 6978261 I haven't hit any bugs so didn't really mind. I was planning to buy a S7120 for failover soon, are you folks now looking elsewhere for storage? Chris In the couple of times I needed Sun Support it was instant and impressive, I currently have about 5 tickets open with Oracle, when there support portal is behaving as its laggy as anything and un-intuitive and not easily used if you have a lot of data in a ticket the box is so small to read past data its unusable tbh. I was not offered any extra fixes of any form for any of my issues thus my LAN has been effectively crippled by the SANs and they are holding me to ransom, they are great for around 36hrs or so but once your past that stage they start to suck the life from anything. My SMB analytics's have always been good in the sense they worked but only gave doom and gloom lol Must admit I had forgotten the Quota thing, we need it but not as much as I need products that work and are usable of which these are not really that good anymore. For the incredibly high support contract costs I expect a much better support experience from Oracle than I get. The support staff are helpful and polite, but if you hit it wrong and end up in the wrong case queue you have to ask for it to be re-assigned so it gets into a daytime queue, sometimes I found I only got one reply a day which wasn't that useful thus dragging stuff out, however when I had a major issue we did get it resolved in the day after lots of nagging and chasing. I find a lot of my issues have been fobbed off with oh its working now its fine we will close that, but surely that's fobbing off in my opinion, if it does it once then never again then yeh maybe it had a bad day (like we do with PCs etc) yet when it does it the next time, and time after and we still get excuses like oh its not doing it now or asking me for needle in haystack answers like can you tell me exactly when the BUI locks up, the only way of doing this is by physically clicking around it all day long?!!!? how can I answer that! If I had the money I wouldn't buy them again which is a shame, Oracle have destroyed yet another product in my view, but as I've not got any more after investing a lot in these I am having to live with them and the constant complaints which go with them. If they hadn't been such expensive items I would be planning of writing them off but that's not going to happen in the short term due to the costs. Although you have the big beasts don't you Chris? We have only got 7110 and 7120s and I think from what I've gathered from the support people, no-one likes these asthey are just too small to cope with all the features, for example they advised we don't replicate, compress or de-dupe to see if that makes it any better and responsive, the fact it had been responsive and fine for over a year until the latest Oracle firmware was irrelevant to them, the box is not designed to use those feautres as its too small thus not worth it. They need a long hard look at the product portfolio and to be honest about it and either give a major health warning or rip out the features that don't work that well with them on the lower models and admit defeat, or sell upgrade kits for the smaller units to improve them. I would strongly consider re-evaluating the market and looking at alternative kit for the future, I don't think I'll be buying any-more Oracle Storage Hardware now. 1
Duke Posted June 7, 2011 Posted June 7, 2011 Ouch, sorry you've had such a bad experience! Yeah, 7410 here and I suppose that has made a difference. The 7110 and 7120 were definitely different in design to the 7310/7410, I wonder if that's where the problem lies? If I remember right the 7120 uses a modified server chassis rather than the dedicated head that the 7410 has? Maybe once Amber Road was more established they moved away from 'fixing' issues with those models? Must admit, I'd like to see something from Oracle confirming their commitment to the lower end of the range and their smaller customers. Oracle are all about Exadata and the big 7720 boxes, but I wonder where that leaves us? Like I said, I'm overall very happy with my 7410, but I planned on Sun 7000 storage being my strategy for 5 years at least, and we're only 2 years in... Phil Lawrence has done a great job of keeping in touch and letting me know where the product is going, but when I fill out a support case feedback form I've noticed my rating for 'Ability to affect the product's planned features' has gone from a 9 to a 4 lol. Fun and games. No doubt we'd be having the same kind of conversation no matter which provider we'd gone with. Chris
Butuz Posted June 7, 2011 Posted June 7, 2011 Must admit, I'd like to see something from Oracle confirming their commitment to the lower end of the range and their smaller customers. Chris Ho ho ho. Oracle have no commitement to either of the above. They certainly are not interested in education any more like sun were. That is why we have dropped all support contracts, refused to pay the obscene fees they wanted to charge us and we are running all our sun kit to it's end of life and then throwing it in the bin. One company that will never be delt with by me or anyone I know ever again that's for sure. A very sad end to a story that started out beautifully a couple of years ago! Butuz 2
apaton Posted June 7, 2011 Author Posted June 7, 2011 VSS Providers + plugins patches available today. Patch 12629232: SUN ZFS STORAGE 7000 SOFTWARE 2010.Q3.3 PROVIDER FOR VSS, WINDOWS 64 BIT Patch 12629204: SUN ZFS STORAGE 7000 SOFTWARE 2010.Q3.3 PROVIDER FOR VSS, WINDOWS 32 BIT Patch 10378803: Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Software 2010.Q3 Providers and Plug-Ins. 1
linescanner Posted June 7, 2011 Posted June 7, 2011 Guys, just to let you know that I am pushing inside Oracle to see what the chuff is going on. This is unacceptable. 3
john Posted June 7, 2011 Posted June 7, 2011 Guys, just to let you know that I am pushing inside Oracle to see what the chuff is going on. This is unacceptable. Thanks Andy, although I will add that Cutter have been excellent at every step of the way with my Oracle issues my beef is with Oracle who make the hardware and the software / firmware call it what you will that runs on them not The Cutter Project who as ever have been excellent through and through. 1
Butuz Posted June 8, 2011 Posted June 8, 2011 Yes I too would like to clarify that I have recieved nothing but Excellent service from The Cutter Project and it's staff. I will happily continue to use Cutter to purchase (non Oracle) equipment and services and I'd like to also thank Andy for all his hard work in terms of dealing with Oracle on behalf of all of us over the last 6 months or so. Butuz 1
Duke Posted June 8, 2011 Posted June 8, 2011 Guys, just to let you know that I am pushing inside Oracle to see what the chuff is going on. This is unacceptable. Must admit, I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of an angry phone call from Andy! (he's a great bloke for those who don't know him) +1 on excellent support from Cutter. I've also had very good experiences with @apaton from WTL, so these Oracle issues in no way reflect the quality of the resellers. 1
linescanner Posted June 8, 2011 Posted June 8, 2011 Guys, thanks for the comments. We are still pushing Oracle to get some sensible answers for you.
MicrodigitUK Posted June 8, 2011 Posted June 8, 2011 That doesn’t fill me with confidence, seeing I’m just about to get one. Once the governors give me the cash.
Duke Posted June 8, 2011 Posted June 8, 2011 That doesn’t fill me with confidence, seeing I’m just about to get one. Once the governors give me the cash. What model are you getting again? Like I said, haven't had any problems with mine. Just had a chat with Rob at Corsham and besides a few niggles he's been pretty happy with his too (and reminded me I want clustered heads!).
john Posted June 8, 2011 Posted June 8, 2011 My personal view is I've got concerns over the range and Oracle's abilities on them, however steer clear of the small kit you want top end stuff as its the lower end kit that's suffering in my view. I've had some interesting issues tonight with the 7110 and it jamming up and then chucking me out and not working right, so that's another case to log tomorrow (too much going on today and too much good food to do it tonight plus I want an EMEA engineer not the US who messed me around tonight! Grrr!) I think its a case of when you really push and use the kit to the max which I am doing on the lower end stuff it just seems to go a bit EEKy and then not work right basically and mine seems to be in a bit of a strop now
linescanner Posted June 9, 2011 Posted June 9, 2011 Must admit, I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of an angry phone call from Andy! I am a pussy cat
Butuz Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 I am a pussy cat http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_iKcZ3qcCmyo/Rydt3rRiISI/AAAAAAAAB_8/jgjeI6-qn64/s400/lion22.jpg Butuz
MicrodigitUK Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 What model are you getting again? Like I said, haven't had any problems with mine. Just had a chat with Rob at Corsham and besides a few niggles he's been pretty happy with his too (and reminded me I want clustered heads!). Looking at geting a nice 7120 24 TB and will be using iSCSI CIFS and deduplication..... not NFS as we are looking at virtualization of new servers with hyper-v.... 1
john Posted June 15, 2011 Posted June 15, 2011 To update, we are still working on the issues, although we are getting a bit more progress. All roads as such are pointing to more upgrades to the firmware / software (call it what you will) on the hardware, still no answer over the fact we can not use half the features of the 7110 any more without it being advised to turn them off to make it actually do any decent work (that will be for a more future discussion). Requested workflow / bug fixes for a bug which they cannot provide in a simple non-reboot format unfortunately and its built into the latest release so with all the checks it now needs to be done will be a 2 to 3 hrs upgrade per unit.... Ironically if they had provided the fixes when the issue I have was first logged and assigned to a bug I could have done reboots but now its a busy time of year for revision etc so looks like that is my Saturday morning gone again I personally still wouldn't be investing in any-more Oracle hardware and have made that clear to Oracle that until all my issues are resolved fully and to my satisfaction I will not be buying any further Oracle hardware or recommending it any longer. 1
bossman Posted June 15, 2011 Posted June 15, 2011 (edited) @john: Sorry to hear you having so much hassle with your 7110 kit, we have been running ours now for over a year now with 3 hosts attached running 17 VMs and it doesn't seem to be breaking into a sweat. Uptime has been nearly a year (320 days) nice! Would like another 7110 4Tb one to mirror ours for total fail-over will be looking for a second hand one if its free to a good home. I do hope you get sorted John as you seemed to really enjoy running it. Let me know how it goes John Edited June 15, 2011 by bossman
john Posted June 18, 2011 Posted June 18, 2011 Ok to keep updating, the Q3.2.1 which is a pre-requisite went on both boxes fine, however got to the 7120 first to put the Q3.3.1 on and its now a VERY expensive paperweight.... Oracle support are working hard on it for me as I type but really not impressed that this release his bricked that one, and the 7110 which has failed to upgrade smoothly the last 2 times for major stuff is still to do....
apaton Posted June 18, 2011 Author Posted June 18, 2011 John, Sorry to hear about your troubles, let us know how you get on and why it broke. Andy
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