Welcome to NetApp Filers Blog!
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Where to find ONTAP manpages
You can download the latest documentation set in zip format, and then install it right on a filer, and access it from the web.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Debugging security with sectrace
A new command called "sectrace" can help debug security problems (e.g. user cannot chown a file with NT ACL).
sectrace add -a -path /vol/software
will produce meesages such as these:
Sun Feb 1 13:10:52 IST [jim: sectrace.filter.allowed:info]: [sectrace index: 2] Access allowed because 'Synchronize, Read Attributes' permission (0x100080) is granted on file or directory (Access allowed by an explicit access control entry) - Status: 1:58720452:0:0 - 10.1.20.107 - NT user name: support\administrator - UNIX user name: root(0) - Qtree security style is NTFS and NT ACL is set on file/directory - Path: /vol/software/
Typically there is no need to use -a since you only want to debug DENY replies.
sectrace add -a -path /vol/software
will produce meesages such as these:
Sun Feb 1 13:10:52 IST [jim: sectrace.filter.allowed:info]: [sectrace index: 2] Access allowed because 'Synchronize, Read Attributes' permission (0x100080) is granted on file or directory (Access allowed by an explicit access control entry) - Status: 1:58720452:0:0 - 10.1.20.107 - NT user name: support\administrator - UNIX user name: root(0) - Qtree security style is NTFS and NT ACL is set on file/directory - Path: /vol/software/
Typically there is no need to use -a since you only want to debug DENY replies.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Migrate Data with Robocopy
robocopy C:\ \\\ /MIR /COPYALL /Z /LOG:C:\Robocopy.txt /R:0 /W:0 /NP /XD RECYCLER "System Volume Information" ~snapshot
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Next Generation Filesystems
OK, I'm proud of it - I have a webcast with Tony Asaro about next-generation filesystems and enterprise search - and how we at Exanet are changing the map:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/1901030/6000445
http://go.techtarget.com/r/1901030/6000445
Monday, June 11, 2007
NetApp for Dummies
If you are a newbie in NetApp and looking for information try:
Tech Library
Wikipedia has a few interesting articles on the technologies around NetApp: NAS, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS
If you are a customer/partner login to NOW Website and go to Documentation.
If you are a customer/partner login to NOW Website and go to Documentation.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Stupid Storage Blog
I just wanted to notify all of you that I maintain a funny storage blog called the Stupid Storage Blog which offers a nice opportunity to smile a little bit during your busy day with some stupid storage jokes or better yet low-level gigs... :-) Enjoy.
Friday, May 11, 2007
NetApp Filers Blog Reborn
Hi everyone!
It's been a while since I started this blog, and it's been quite fun to see its rapid growth from literally zero visits a month to over 80 a day.
I have decided to refresh the look & feel a bit, and make it more user friendly and useful.
I'll be happy to hear any comments on the content, and whether you'd like to see focused blog such as this one on competitive products.
Dr. Toaster.
It's been a while since I started this blog, and it's been quite fun to see its rapid growth from literally zero visits a month to over 80 a day.
I have decided to refresh the look & feel a bit, and make it more user friendly and useful.
I'll be happy to hear any comments on the content, and whether you'd like to see focused blog such as this one on competitive products.
Dr. Toaster.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
How can I erase a filer before returning it to NetApp?
Use the following command on every disk:
disk sanitize start <disk>
Monday, October 30, 2006
VMWare Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 and NetApp Filers
For those of you interested to run VMWare on NetApp, a few notes and reminders:
Look at these documents for more information:
Network Appliance and VMware ESX Server 3.0, Building a Virtual Infrastructure from Server to Storage
and two older documents:
Technical Case Study: Using a Network Appliance SAN with VMware to Facilitate Storage and
Server Consolidation
Network Appliance & VMware ESX Server, Instantaneous Backup & Recovery with NetApp Snapshot™ Technology
Look at these documents for more information:
Network Appliance and VMware ESX Server 3.0, Building a Virtual Infrastructure from Server to Storage
and two older documents:
Technical Case Study: Using a Network Appliance SAN with VMware to Facilitate Storage and
Server Consolidation
Network Appliance & VMware ESX Server, Instantaneous Backup & Recovery with NetApp Snapshot™ Technology
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Setting VERITAS NetBackup with a non-root NDMP user
VERITAS NetBackup NDMP setup with filers - How do I change the NDMP authentication from using root to another non-root user?
Add a user called ndmpuser for NDMP usage on the filer:
Type the challenge password into the following command on the NBU server:
In case things go bad, delete and recreate the filer entries:
Add a user called ndmpuser for NDMP usage on the filer:
useradmin user add <ndmpuser> -g Users
ndmpd password ndmpuser
Type the challenge password into the following command on the NBU server:
set_ndmp_attr -insert -auth <filer_hostname> ndmpuser <password>
In case things go bad, delete and recreate the filer entries:
set_ndmp_attr -delete -robot
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Sharing of Oracle Environments thru NFS
Question: What can be shared in Oracle environments?
Dr. Toaster's Answer:
There are 3 types of sharing models available when thinking of Oracle and NFS:
1. Shared Oracle Binaries - Sharing a single Oracle DB installation and configuring multiple databases to mount and use that single directory via NFS mounts.
2. Shared Oracle_HOME - Enabling single databases to share the same binaries, similar to RAC. Oracle 9i originally did not support Shared Oracle_HOME, but at this point it is supported to use a Shared Oracle_HOME over NFS mounts. Nevertheless, it is suggested to use it for testing and development environments. The Network Appliance™ Best Practice Guidelines for Oracle® recommends not to use it for production and HA environments.
3. Shared APPL_TOP - Sharing the Oracle E-Business Suite binaries. See Reducing Administration Costs for Oracle® E-Business Suite Using NetApp Filers for more information.
Dr. Toaster's Answer:
There are 3 types of sharing models available when thinking of Oracle and NFS:
1. Shared Oracle Binaries - Sharing a single Oracle DB installation and configuring multiple databases to mount and use that single directory via NFS mounts.
2. Shared Oracle_HOME - Enabling single databases to share the same binaries, similar to RAC. Oracle 9i originally did not support Shared Oracle_HOME, but at this point it is supported to use a Shared Oracle_HOME over NFS mounts. Nevertheless, it is suggested to use it for testing and development environments. The Network Appliance™ Best Practice Guidelines for Oracle® recommends not to use it for production and HA environments.
3. Shared APPL_TOP - Sharing the Oracle E-Business Suite binaries. See Reducing Administration Costs for Oracle® E-Business Suite Using NetApp Filers for more information.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
What is space reservation?
Question: I have 100GB LUN inside a 200GB volume - I am trying to expand it using SnapDrive but I can only increase it by a few GB. Can't I expand it by more?
Dr. Toaster's Answer: It is important to first understand the concept of disk space reservation. The simplest way to explain that is to think of a regular magnetic disk drive - it has addresses that hosts can refer to in order to read or write data - and hosts can always send I/O write commands to these data block addresses again and again - that's the whole idea of an address space.
The WAFL filesystem has a different write allocation policy - when you keep snapshots - point-in-time views of the same filesystem, WAFL keeps blocks untouched, so that one can recover from snapshots that reference these blocks.
So to connect the story here - LUNs are implemented on top of WAFL - so when snapshots are being taken, if a host (that is totally unaware of this virtualization) is writing data consistently into a LUN, more and more data blocks will be held "captive" by the snapshots. This is where space reservation algorithms kick in - to protect this behaviour from causing SCSI write errors to LUNs - by default, every LUN consumes its original size plus another 100% of its size as well as a protection against this rare case of frequent writes into a LUN on a volume with many snapshots created.
The simple solution to enable the expansion of the LUN is to enlarge the size of the underlying volume - with FlexVols that would be an easy change. If there is not enough disk space in the aggregate, one can reduce the amount of space reservations per volume using a command such as:
where 80 is a number below 100. Note that if snapshots will be taken and the rate of changes in the volume will be higher than 80% then SCSI writes to the LUNs may fail - in which case the filer will take the LUNs in the volume offline, and manual action will have to take place to clean up space (most likely by deleting some snapshots) and online the LUNs again (lun online lun_pathname).
A few other important notes:
1. Use the following commands to review the status of space reservation:
2. Data ONTAP 7.2 adds another solution which is to allow volumes to automatically clean up old snapshots and/or grow:
where 1000g is the maximum size that the autosize feature will allow the volume to grow to, and 1g is the increment.
The autosize feature will try to increment the volume size by 1GB increments, and if the aggregate is full it will try to delete snapshots. It is also possible to start with deleting snapshots by using the snap_delete policy instead of the volume_grow I suggest above.
Dr. Toaster's Answer: It is important to first understand the concept of disk space reservation. The simplest way to explain that is to think of a regular magnetic disk drive - it has addresses that hosts can refer to in order to read or write data - and hosts can always send I/O write commands to these data block addresses again and again - that's the whole idea of an address space.
The WAFL filesystem has a different write allocation policy - when you keep snapshots - point-in-time views of the same filesystem, WAFL keeps blocks untouched, so that one can recover from snapshots that reference these blocks.
So to connect the story here - LUNs are implemented on top of WAFL - so when snapshots are being taken, if a host (that is totally unaware of this virtualization) is writing data consistently into a LUN, more and more data blocks will be held "captive" by the snapshots. This is where space reservation algorithms kick in - to protect this behaviour from causing SCSI write errors to LUNs - by default, every LUN consumes its original size plus another 100% of its size as well as a protection against this rare case of frequent writes into a LUN on a volume with many snapshots created.
The simple solution to enable the expansion of the LUN is to enlarge the size of the underlying volume - with FlexVols that would be an easy change. If there is not enough disk space in the aggregate, one can reduce the amount of space reservations per volume using a command such as:
vol options vol_name fractional_reserve 80
where 80 is a number below 100. Note that if snapshots will be taken and the rate of changes in the volume will be higher than 80% then SCSI writes to the LUNs may fail - in which case the filer will take the LUNs in the volume offline, and manual action will have to take place to clean up space (most likely by deleting some snapshots) and online the LUNs again (lun online lun_pathname).
A few other important notes:
1. Use the following commands to review the status of space reservation:
df
df -r
snap delta
2. Data ONTAP 7.2 adds another solution which is to allow volumes to automatically clean up old snapshots and/or grow:
vol options vol_name volume_grow on
vol autosize vol_name -m 1000g -i 1g on
where 1000g is the maximum size that the autosize feature will allow the volume to grow to, and 1g is the increment.
The autosize feature will try to increment the volume size by 1GB increments, and if the aggregate is full it will try to delete snapshots. It is also possible to start with deleting snapshots by using the snap_delete policy instead of the volume_grow I suggest above.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Q&A on Microsoft Exchange, Snapshots and ESEUTIL
Question: I have a 2-years old Exchange 2003 database that I never defragmented. I am about to migrate the database to NetApp using SnapManager for Exchange. Should I run ESEUTIL before the migration?
Dr. Toaster's Answer: I would recommend this as there are a number of other advantages in addition to optimizing the database. A totally new database actually gets created and populated with all valid records in the current one. This directly addresses any underlying issues that there might be with a db as "old" as this (incremented repair count etc). It would be a very good preventative measure.
In general, after the migration, there is no need to run Exchange and/or NTFS defragmentation. It is recommended to review and upgrade to Data ONTAP 7.2 and enjoy the performance improvements that are available thru the new WAFL extents feature in 7.2.
Question: What are common best practices for snapshot schedules in SnapManager for Exchange?
Answer: That entirely depends on the amount of time that one could spend during a restore and this is directly affected by the amount of logs that need to be rolled. Of course, more time between backups = more logs to roll during a restore. I would recommend a backup every 4 hours, and then focus more on deferred/remote verification in conjunction with this.
Question: SnapManager Verification and the new SME 3.2 I/O throttling for verification - does it work well enough to configure verification during daytime?
Answer: See the previous answer - consider differing or using a remote verification server first if this is a high-IO environment. ESEUTIL throttling works very effectively, and translates to *real* maximum throughput for ESEUTIL, but the "cost" associated with this is that the verification itself would take longer to complete.
With a small amount of users (a few hundreds) it is possible to perform verification at backup-time. What actually takes longest is the mounting/unmounting of the LUNs, and that is another reason you might want to consider a less-aggressive backup schedule.
Question: How long is the Restore process of SnapManager for Exchange?
Answer: It is first important to note that SnapManager for Exchange releases use 2 distinct method to restore data:
1. Single File SnapRestore
2. LUN Clone Split
The Single File SnapRestore was the original form of LUN restoration, introduced as a way to recover large database files back in Data ONTAP 6.2, even prior to the announcement of FCP and iSCSI LUNs support. It uses a sophisticated algorhitm that goes thru the inodes of a file and relinks them to the relevant data blocks from a snapshot. Usually Single File SnapRestore (SFSR) takes a few seconds to a few minutes, but in some cases it can take longer than that, for very large files (hundreds of GBs).
The LUN Clone Split was invented to quickly create a read/write virtual entry point that resembles the original LUN. The method it works is not linear to the size of the LUN, so it takes a few seconds no matter the size.
SnapManager for Exchange 3.2 and Data ONTAP 7.1 support the new LUN Clone Split, and are the recommended method at this point. Make sure that the following option is turned on (do not try to turn it on prior to 7.1, the feature was hidden and would be ignored by SME 3.2):
Dr. Toaster's Answer: I would recommend this as there are a number of other advantages in addition to optimizing the database. A totally new database actually gets created and populated with all valid records in the current one. This directly addresses any underlying issues that there might be with a db as "old" as this (incremented repair count etc). It would be a very good preventative measure.
In general, after the migration, there is no need to run Exchange and/or NTFS defragmentation. It is recommended to review and upgrade to Data ONTAP 7.2 and enjoy the performance improvements that are available thru the new WAFL extents feature in 7.2.
Question: What are common best practices for snapshot schedules in SnapManager for Exchange?
Answer: That entirely depends on the amount of time that one could spend during a restore and this is directly affected by the amount of logs that need to be rolled. Of course, more time between backups = more logs to roll during a restore. I would recommend a backup every 4 hours, and then focus more on deferred/remote verification in conjunction with this.
Question: SnapManager Verification and the new SME 3.2 I/O throttling for verification - does it work well enough to configure verification during daytime?
Answer: See the previous answer - consider differing or using a remote verification server first if this is a high-IO environment. ESEUTIL throttling works very effectively, and translates to *real* maximum throughput for ESEUTIL, but the "cost" associated with this is that the verification itself would take longer to complete.
With a small amount of users (a few hundreds) it is possible to perform verification at backup-time. What actually takes longest is the mounting/unmounting of the LUNs, and that is another reason you might want to consider a less-aggressive backup schedule.
Question: How long is the Restore process of SnapManager for Exchange?
Answer: It is first important to note that SnapManager for Exchange releases use 2 distinct method to restore data:
1. Single File SnapRestore
2. LUN Clone Split
The Single File SnapRestore was the original form of LUN restoration, introduced as a way to recover large database files back in Data ONTAP 6.2, even prior to the announcement of FCP and iSCSI LUNs support. It uses a sophisticated algorhitm that goes thru the inodes of a file and relinks them to the relevant data blocks from a snapshot. Usually Single File SnapRestore (SFSR) takes a few seconds to a few minutes, but in some cases it can take longer than that, for very large files (hundreds of GBs).
The LUN Clone Split was invented to quickly create a read/write virtual entry point that resembles the original LUN. The method it works is not linear to the size of the LUN, so it takes a few seconds no matter the size.
SnapManager for Exchange 3.2 and Data ONTAP 7.1 support the new LUN Clone Split, and are the recommended method at this point. Make sure that the following option is turned on (do not try to turn it on prior to 7.1, the feature was hidden and would be ignored by SME 3.2):
options lun.clone_restore
Thursday, August 24, 2006
SnapManager for Exchange Restore fails with: 0xe000020d
The Problem: SnapManager for Exchange Restore fails with: 0xe000020d
Components:
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.02
SnapDrive 4.1
SnapManager for Exchange 3.2
The following error appears in the Restore log in SnapManager for Exchange:
SnapManager for Exchange is attempting to mount the snapshotted lun as part of the restore. This is actually performed by SnapDrive, which in turn is integrated to work with the Virtual Disk Service (VDS).
The Solution:
Restart the Virtual Disk Service service - this will restart the SnapDrive service as well.
Close and re-open the Computer Management screens as well as SnapManager for Exchange and retry the restore operation.
Components:
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.02
SnapDrive 4.1
SnapManager for Exchange 3.2
The following error appears in the Restore log in SnapManager for Exchange:
***VERIFYING DATABASES IN SNAPSHOT
Verifying databases in snapshot...
Mounting Snapshot [exchsnap__monkey__recent] for LUN F
[SnapDrive Error]: Error 0xe000020d occured. Description is not found.(SnapDrive Error Code: 0xe000020d)
Unable to mount snapshot, aborting database verification...
Failed to verify log and database for restore operation.
Error code: 0xe000020d, storage group name: First Storage Group
A filer autosupport message is sent on failure.
***SNAPMANAGER RESTORE JOB ENDED AT: [08-24-2006 11.09.00]
Failed to restore storage group.
**** RESTORE RESULT SUMMARY*****
Restore failed.
SnapManager for Exchange is attempting to mount the snapshotted lun as part of the restore. This is actually performed by SnapDrive, which in turn is integrated to work with the Virtual Disk Service (VDS).
The Solution:
Restart the Virtual Disk Service service - this will restart the SnapDrive service as well.
Close and re-open the Computer Management screens as well as SnapManager for Exchange and retry the restore operation.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
How to workaround ONTAP upgrade issues?
The problem: Having trouble upgrading ONTAP
Explanation:
A small and useful undocumented tip - if your upgrades fail, try to delete the contents of /etc/boot (\\filer\etc$\boot in Windows).
While it sounds scary, the filer doesn't really reference this directory other than when the download command is used, so it's practically safe to delete it, and then retry the software installation.
Another tip is to stop using this old setup.exe or tar file trick but rather copy the setup.exe file to /etc/software (\\filer\etc$\software) and use software install setup.exe; download instead.
Explanation:
A small and useful undocumented tip - if your upgrades fail, try to delete the contents of /etc/boot (\\filer\etc$\boot in Windows).
While it sounds scary, the filer doesn't really reference this directory other than when the download command is used, so it's practically safe to delete it, and then retry the software installation.
Another tip is to stop using this old setup.exe or tar file trick but rather copy the setup.exe file to /etc/software (\\filer\etc$\software) and use software install setup.exe; download instead.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
How to configure NetBackup SSO with NDMP?
The problem: Configure the filer to support NetBackup Shared Storage Option (SSO)
Explanation:
Data ONTAP 7.1.1 and 7.2.1 (not in 7.2) add the support for SCSI Reserve/Release, replacing the old Persistent Reservations code that previously existed in ONTAP, and is now supported for NetBackup SSO (starting with NetBackup 6.0).
To enable:
Explanation:
Data ONTAP 7.1.1 and 7.2.1 (not in 7.2) add the support for SCSI Reserve/Release, replacing the old Persistent Reservations code that previously existed in ONTAP, and is now supported for NetBackup SSO (starting with NetBackup 6.0).
To enable:
options tape.reservations scsi
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