Fibre Channel Storage - Access by multiple hosts

[Jim Watson]

I have "inherited" a project which the original integrators have dumped with
not much info available. Basically the system is as follows:

5 solaris (2.6) hosts are connected through a 100Mb ethernet switch and each
also has a Fibre Channel (FC) HBA connected through a FC switch.

Each host requires access to a FC storage system ( JBOD -10x36GB). This
JBOD should have been ideally a 320GB RAID, or even a large stripe as the
users have to aquire a large analogue signal, convert to digital and dump to
storage before analyzing.

I can use disksuite to create the RAID/stripe (probably stripe until a
hardware FC RAID controller is purchased). My main concern is that the
software stripe would have to be exported for use by the other users. Does
this mean that the only way the other terminals can see the "big" disk is by
access across the ethernet and through the host running disksuite?, or will
the other hosts "see" the stripe on the FC side?

Ideally all data transfer would be across the FC. If I can prove the system
to work I intend to get the finance deptartment to sanction an external RAID
controller for attaching to the JBOD and hence presenting a large drive on
the FC.

Apologies if I have made any glaring goofs on my interpretation of
Fibre-Channel, I was only introduced to it 48 hours ago!


Jim Watson

[Elias]

Jim Watson wrote:

> I have "inherited" a project which the original integrators have dumped with
> not much info available. Basically the system is as follows:
>
> 5 solaris (2.6) hosts are connected through a 100Mb ethernet switch and each
> also has a Fibre Channel (FC) HBA connected through a FC switch.
>
> Each host requires access to a FC storage system ( JBOD -10x36GB). This
> JBOD should have been ideally a 320GB RAID, or even a large stripe as the
> users have to aquire a large analogue signal, convert to digital and dump to
> storage before analyzing.
>
> I can use disksuite to create the RAID/stripe (probably stripe until a
> hardware FC RAID controller is purchased). My main concern is that the
> software stripe would have to be exported for use by the other users. Does
> this mean that the only way the other terminals can see the "big" disk is by
> access across the ethernet and through the host running disksuite?, or will
> the other hosts "see" the stripe on the FC side?
>
> Ideally all data transfer would be across the FC. If I can prove the system
> to work I intend to get the finance deptartment to sanction an external RAID
> controller for attaching to the JBOD and hence presenting a large drive on
> the FC.
>
> Apologies if I have made any glaring goofs on my interpretation of
> Fibre-Channel, I was only introduced to it 48 hours ago!
>
>
> Jim Watson
>
>

You'll need QFS in order to do what you want through FC. And to
upgrade to Solaris 8 or 9 in order to use QFS.

[url]http://www.sun.com/storage/software/performance/[/url]

Elias

[Jim Watson]

Elias,

Taking the multiple access to a single file out of the equation(major point
of QFS) , do you know if, as it currently stands, the disksuite stripe will
be accessible from the Fibre Channel to other hosts?

There is not a requirement for multiple users to acccess the same file at
the same time. If I letf diskuite out of it and present the 10x36GB JBOD on
the fibre-channel, other hosts can access files on the 10 disks as the disks
are treated just like an attached SCSI disk to each machine. Fron my
original post you can see that I have a requirement to present a larger disk
than the 10 independent disks.

Ideally I would like to automount a large RAID/stripe on bootup of the
workstation. I'm just concerned that using disksuite is going to require
access to the "disksuite host" through the ethernet connection. I don't
know if a fibre-channel daemon will intercept the request for the virtual
disk and transfer the data through FC or not.


"Elias" <nospam@charter.net> wrote in message
news:vim0poev9e7q76@corp.supernews.com...

> Jim Watson wrote:
>

> > I have "inherited" a project which the original integrators have dumped

with

> > not much info available. Basically the system is as follows:
> >
> > 5 solaris (2.6) hosts are connected through a 100Mb ethernet switch and

each

> > also has a Fibre Channel (FC) HBA connected through a FC switch.
> >
> > Each host requires access to a FC storage system ( JBOD -10x36GB). This
> > JBOD should have been ideally a 320GB RAID, or even a large stripe as

the

> > users have to aquire a large analogue signal, convert to digital and

dump to

> > storage before analyzing.
> >
> > I can use disksuite to create the RAID/stripe (probably stripe until a
> > hardware FC RAID controller is purchased). My main concern is that the
> > software stripe would have to be exported for use by the other users.

Does

> > this mean that the only way the other terminals can see the "big" disk

is by

> > access across the ethernet and through the host running disksuite?, or

will

> > the other hosts "see" the stripe on the FC side?
> >
> > Ideally all data transfer would be across the FC. If I can prove the

system

> > to work I intend to get the finance deptartment to sanction an external

RAID

> > controller for attaching to the JBOD and hence presenting a large drive

on

> > the FC.
> >
> > Apologies if I have made any glaring goofs on my interpretation of
> > Fibre-Channel, I was only introduced to it 48 hours ago!
> >
> >
> > Jim Watson
> >
> >

>
>
> You'll need QFS in order to do what you want through FC. And to
> upgrade to Solaris 8 or 9 in order to use QFS.
>
> [url]http://www.sun.com/storage/software/performance/[/url]
>
> Elias
>

[sharona]

"Jim Watson" <watson@quattro666.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message news:<bgeku4$igj$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>...

> I have "inherited" a project which the original integrators have dumped with
> not much info available. Basically the system is as follows:
>
> 5 solaris (2.6) hosts are connected through a 100Mb ethernet switch and each
> also has a Fibre Channel (FC) HBA connected through a FC switch.
>
> Each host requires access to a FC storage system ( JBOD -10x36GB). This
> JBOD should have been ideally a 320GB RAID, or even a large stripe as the
> users have to aquire a large analogue signal, convert to digital and dump to
> storage before analyzing.
>
> I can use disksuite to create the RAID/stripe (probably stripe until a
> hardware FC RAID controller is purchased). My main concern is that the
> software stripe would have to be exported for use by the other users. Does
> this mean that the only way the other terminals can see the "big" disk is by
> access across the ethernet and through the host running disksuite?, or will
> the other hosts "see" the stripe on the FC side?
>
> Ideally all data transfer would be across the FC. If I can prove the system
> to work I intend to get the finance deptartment to sanction an external RAID
> controller for attaching to the JBOD and hence presenting a large drive on
> the FC.
>
> Apologies if I have made any glaring goofs on my interpretation of
> Fibre-Channel, I was only introduced to it 48 hours ago!
>
>
> Jim Watson

Just one note Jim,

My personal experience with the JBODs is that they are crap. If one
disk in the array goes south, the whole array is gone. We replaced
all of our JBODs with EMC's disk arrays with hot swapable disks.
Believe me, restoring that amount of data is a real pain.. Better to
have the hot swapable disks!!

Sharona

[Jim Watson]

Sharona,

I understand your comments, my way of thinking at the moment is to use
disksuite to provide the stripe as the software RAID would probably be too
slow. If I can prove the concept at no extra cost then I will be in a
better position to get the finance deptartment to agree to shelling out for
what they should have bought in the first place.

This project started 4 years ago and was only recently installed. As I
don't have any experience in fibre-channel, I am hoping that this thread
will result in somebody confirming the working of the stripe through
disksuite. Ultimately, I see the hardware external RAID controller as they
way forward, at the least cost, given the equipment available already. It
is unlikely that the users (there are only 5 analysts involved) will need to
access the same files. Therefore file locking is not a major issue.


"sharona" <sallan1055@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7191cfcb.0308020303.426ae86f@posting.google.c om...

> "Jim Watson" <watson@quattro666.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message

news:<bgeku4$igj$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>...

> > I have "inherited" a project which the original integrators have dumped

with

> > not much info available. Basically the system is as follows:
> >
> > 5 solaris (2.6) hosts are connected through a 100Mb ethernet switch and

each

> > also has a Fibre Channel (FC) HBA connected through a FC switch.
> >
> > Each host requires access to a FC storage system ( JBOD -10x36GB). This
> > JBOD should have been ideally a 320GB RAID, or even a large stripe as

the

> > users have to aquire a large analogue signal, convert to digital and

dump to

> > storage before analyzing.
> >
> > I can use disksuite to create the RAID/stripe (probably stripe until a
> > hardware FC RAID controller is purchased). My main concern is that the
> > software stripe would have to be exported for use by the other users.

Does

> > this mean that the only way the other terminals can see the "big" disk

is by

> > access across the ethernet and through the host running disksuite?, or

will

> > the other hosts "see" the stripe on the FC side?
> >
> > Ideally all data transfer would be across the FC. If I can prove the

system

> > to work I intend to get the finance deptartment to sanction an external

RAID

> > controller for attaching to the JBOD and hence presenting a large drive

on

> > the FC.
> >
> > Apologies if I have made any glaring goofs on my interpretation of
> > Fibre-Channel, I was only introduced to it 48 hours ago!
> >
> >
> > Jim Watson

>
> Just one note Jim,
>
> My personal experience with the JBODs is that they are crap. If one
> disk in the array goes south, the whole array is gone. We replaced
> all of our JBODs with EMC's disk arrays with hot swapable disks.
> Believe me, restoring that amount of data is a real pain.. Better to
> have the hot swapable disks!!
>
> Sharona

[Darren Dunham]

Jim Watson <watson@quattro666.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> Elias,

> Taking the multiple access to a single file out of the equation(major point
> of QFS) , do you know if, as it currently stands, the disksuite stripe will
> be accessible from the Fibre Channel to other hosts?

It's not access to the same file, its multiple mounts.

If you have a UFS or a normal VxFS filesystem on the storage, I don't
care if it's SCSI, FiberChannel, or carrier pigeon, you can't mount it
on more than one host at a time.

This is fine if you want some sort of failover arrangement, but not if
you want one host to update a filesystem and other machines to have
access to it.

Besides 'raw access' (say oracle or other databases), there are a number
of commercial 'multi-access' filesystems.

QFS
Veritas Cluster Filesystem
ADIC StorNext Filesystem.

> There is not a requirement for multiple users to acccess the same file at
> the same time. If I letf diskuite out of it and present the 10x36GB JBOD on
> the fibre-channel, other hosts can access files on the 10 disks as the disks
> are treated just like an attached SCSI disk to each machine.

As long as you're not using UFS, or as long as they're mounting
independent disks instead of all of them.

Again, this has nothing to do with FiberChannel.

--
Darren Dunham [email]ddunham@taos.com[/email]
Unix System Administrator Taos - The SysAdmin Company
Got some Dr Pepper? San Francisco, CA bay area
< This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

[Anthony Mandic]

sharona wrote:

> My personal experience with the JBODs is that they are crap. If one
> disk in the array goes south, the whole array is gone.

Is that right? I am yet to observe this bizarre phenomena.

> We replaced
> all of our JBODs with EMC's disk arrays with hot swapable disks.
> Believe me, restoring that amount of data is a real pain.. Better to
> have the hot swapable disks!!

How were your JBODs configured?

-am © 2003

[sharona]

Anthony Mandic <qu@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3F2C7C74.90F4F390@hotmail.com>...

> sharona wrote:
>

> > My personal experience with the JBODs is that they are crap. If one
> > disk in the array goes south, the whole array is gone.

>
> Is that right? I am yet to observe this bizarre phenomena.
>

Anthony, if you are using a JBOD on and Enterprise machine and have
not dealt with jbic problems or a disk in the array going down, you
are lucky indeed.

They are not hot swapable and I have personnaly spent hours restoring
over 60gb of data to our JBOD array. Believe me it was no picnic.

> > We replaced
> > all of our JBODs with EMC's disk arrays with hot swapable disks.
> > Believe me, restoring that amount of data is a real pain.. Better to
> > have the hot swapable disks!!

>
> How were your JBODs configured?
>

They were configured with ODS on Solaris 2.6.. I wasn't the person
who set this configuration up, just the one that got stuck with the
mess..

Sharon

> -am © 2003

[Anthony Mandic]

sharona wrote:

> > Is that right? I am yet to observe this bizarre phenomena.
> >

> Anthony, if you are using a JBOD on and Enterprise machine and have
> not dealt with jbic problems or a disk in the array going down, you
> are lucky indeed.

If you mean the problems with the Vixel GBICs, yes, I've had
them replaced. Where possible I always try for more than one
loop. As for the entire array going if one disk goes, would
that be with one stripe set in the array?

> They are not hot swapable and I have personnaly spent hours restoring
> over 60gb of data to our JBOD array. Believe me it was no picnic.

I suppose I should ask what array model was it?

-am © 2003