SPARC T4-1/Solaris 11/Add 2 new HDDs in RAID 0 configuration


 
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Operating Systems Solaris SPARC T4-1/Solaris 11/Add 2 new HDDs in RAID 0 configuration
# 8  
Old 09-09-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by hicksd8
I was making the point that your O/S volumes might be UFS
They actually can't. Solaris 11 system disks are always on ZFS by design.
# 9  
Old 09-09-2012
Yes, it seems that both my existing volumes are ZFS:

Code:
$ df -n
/                   : zfs
/devices            : devfs
/dev                : dev
/system/contract    : ctfs
/proc               : proc
/etc/mnttab         : mntfs
/system/volatile    : tmpfs
/system/object      : objfs
/etc/dfs/sharetab   : sharefs
/dev/fd             : fd
/var                : zfs
/tmp                : tmpfs
/rpool              : zfs
/rpool/export       : zfs
/rpool/export/home  : zfs
/rpool/export/home/username : zfs
/home/username        : lofs

hicksd8, I also think SW raid would not be that much slower.. Is it much simpler process in that case ?
In the meantime, I'll check if I'm able to login to ILOM..
# 10  
Old 09-10-2012
They are undoubtedly ZFS as Solaris 11 doesn't support anything else anyway for its system disks.

Not sure about the T4-1 RAID controller performance but there is a common misconception than H/W RAID must be faster than S/W raid. Real-life tests seem to routinely demonstrate the opposite, although with your planned RAID-0, both should just be quite fast.
In any case, I would strongly recommend using ZFS for your disks, that would be at least one degree of magnitude simpler to setup and maintain than hardware raid. As DukeNuke2 already stated, a single command line can be enough:
Code:
zpool create data <disk1> <disk2>

Note that you won't have redundancy so no data self healing is possible in such a configuration.
# 11  
Old 09-10-2012
Hi Jillarge,

And thanks for your quick reply.
The plan indeed is to have backup, and data redundancy on another machine.
This is supposed to just be a scratch disk (client's dataset is bigger than 100GB), that will be overwritten daily anyway.
I suppose if there is no great differences in hw/sw raid, I could choose the simpler for me to configure.

Regarding the disk configuration; there seem to be many instructions around the net that I need to use cfgadm -c, to do some initial configurations to a new disk.. is this still needed ?

And about the zpool, so "zpool create name disk1 disk2", would create a pool "name", that I could afterwards format, and create a filesystem on ?
Sorry for possibly repeating stuff, I just want to be sure the order of operation I need to perform..
# 12  
Old 09-10-2012
Code:
zpool create name disk1 disk2

will create ZFS pool and ZFS filesystem and it will mount it under /name. You will be able to create additional ZFS filesystems using
Code:
zfs create name/new_fs_name

that will also be automatically mounted under /name/new_fs_name. If you would want to change mountpoint of any of those filesystems, simply use:
Code:
zfs set mountpoint=/other/mountpoint name

This User Gave Thanks to bartus11 For This Post:
# 13  
Old 09-10-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by julumme
Regarding the disk configuration; there seem to be many instructions around the net that I need to use cfgadm -c, to do some initial configurations to a new disk.. is this still needed ?
cfgadm is for hot plugging devices. Assuming you install them while the server is powered off, if the new disks do not show up at reboot with iostat -En, just run devfsadm -v and they should.
Quote:
And about the zpool, so "zpool create name disk1 disk2", would create a pool "name", that I could afterwards format, and create a filesystem on ?
You already did that with zpool create ...Should you need to create more than one file system later, better to create a specific one for your scratchpad as bartus11 already explained.
This User Gave Thanks to jlliagre For This Post:
# 14  
Old 09-10-2012
Tools

Hi again,

So I inserted the disks to the machine, to next available slot in the each controller (HDD1 and HDD5).

Now, when booting, there is a complaint about "Corrupt label/wrong magic number", about both new disks, but apparently that's normal when disks have no labels..
So moving forward. I check with format, what it shows:

Code:
$ sudo format
Password:
Searching for disks...done

c0t5000CCA025A297C4d0: configured with capacity of 279.38GB
c0t5000CCA025A329E0d0: configured with capacity of 279.38GB


AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0 <SUN300G cyl 46873 alt 2 hd 20 sec 625>  solaris
          /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78
          /dev/chassis//SYS/HDD0/disk
       1. c0t5000CCA025A297C4d0 <HITACHI-H106030SDSUN300G-A2B0 cyl 46873 alt 2 hd 20 sec 625>
          /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca025a297c4
          /dev/chassis//SYS/HDD1/disk
       2. c0t5000CCA0259C678Cd0 <SUN300G cyl 46873 alt 2 hd 20 sec 625>  solaris
          /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259c678c
          /dev/chassis//SYS/HDD4/disk
       3. c0t5000CCA025A329E0d0 <HITACHI-H106030SDSUN300G-A2B0 cyl 46873 alt 2 hd 20 sec 625>
          /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca025a329e0
          /dev/chassis//SYS/HDD5/disk

Seems all good here, so as per instructions (also found this: blog post), I see if I can create a zpool with the new drives (c0t5000CCA025A297C4d0 and c0t5000CCA025A329E0d0)

Code:
$ zpool create workarea c0t5000CCA025A297C4d0 c0t5000CCA025A329E0d0
cannot open 'c0t5000CCA025A297C4d0': no such device in /dev/dsk
must be a full path or shorthand device name

So, I go to the /dev/dsk to see what's going on. I check what the book disk (c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0) looks like:

Code:
/dev/dsk$ ls -la | grep c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s0 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:a
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s1 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:b
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s2 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:c
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s3 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:d
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s4 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:e
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s5 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:f
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s6 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:g
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          48 Aug  4 09:40 c0t5000CCA0259D2B78d0s7 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca0259d2b78:h

What does those letters from a-h mean in the scsi part ? They seem to correspond to those last 2 digits sX (1-7)..
So, when creating the zpool, looks like I need to assign the drive with one of those sX numbers as well.. Can I just start from 0 ?
What are they for ?

Thanks again for your help!

---------- Post updated at 11:42 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:50 AM ----------

D'oh, of course you have to be root to do that, so just "sudo" in front of the zpool command, and everything will go as in the movies Smilie

Last edited by julumme; 09-10-2012 at 10:52 PM.. Reason: adding a link to a blog post
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