ORIGINAL QUESTION:
==================
> From sun-managers-relay@ra.mcs.anl.gov Mon Mar 13 03:49 CST 1995
> Subject: QUESTION Any experience with Network Appliance Corp FAServer?
>
> Hi Gurus!
>
> I have a friend who is interested in Network Appliance Corporation's
> FAServer RAID appliance. I would greatly appreciate hearing from
> anybody that has any experience with this device.
SUMMARY:
========
The responses have been pretty impressive... just one general
complaint, one real problem, and a bunch of high praises. Mr. Soto's
response is representative:
"In short, its fast, its reliable, it only takes five minutes to set up,
REALLY! I brought mine online about three months ago and have not had
one problem. I forget its there."
The one problem reported has to do with the CPU "locking up" with
100% cpu utilization (see Todd Miller's full response below).
The general complaint is that dumps are awkward. Apparently you
have to dump the whole filesystem at once. Also, the dump
command is not the same for the FAServer as it is on the Sun.
Restores are done from the Sun (see Victor Churchill's full response
below). The implication here is that you should try restores before
you need to ;)
Many thanks to all those who replied. If your name is not listed below,
then I received your response after Wednesday, 15 Mar 95 06:00 CST.
Ravi Kagalavadi <rk@mozart.att.com>
David Fong <dsf@NSD.3Com.COM>
Heas <heas@maelstrom.Timeplex.COM
Andre Soto <asoto@wsc.com>
Ted Beatie <tcb@cipr-diva.mgh.harvard.edu>
Victor Churchill <vic@raven1.imatron.com>
"Todd C. Miller" <Todd.Miller@cs.colorado.edu>
Karl Poehleman <poehlem@img.wdc.com>
John Posey, EE DSP Graduate Student and part time UNIX Systems Programmer
InterNet: posey@utdallas.edu E&CS, The University of Texas at Dallas
Phone (lab) (214) 883-6433 PO Box 830688, MS EC33
Phone (H) (214) 727-5704 Richardson, Texas 75083-0688
===============================================================================
ORIGINAL REPLIES:
===============================================================================
>From rk@mozart.att.com Sun Mar 12 17:08:44 1995
Hi John
I am using the Faserver 1300 from Network Appliance. It works great.
It is a good NFS server machine. One single mount point, scalable to
54 GB disk space, Raid 4 architecture, online snapshots, 1 minute
reboots, NVRam for logging NFS requests, easy administration.
We use it for sharing home directories, applications, and common
project directories.
We have been using for the last 8 months, it has been very reliable.
===============================================================================
>From dsf@bridge2.NSD.3Com.COM Sun Mar 12 18:14:26 1995
John,
I have 5 NAC's and a 6th one on the way. If you like
you can give me a call at 408-764-5149 and I will help answer
any questions you have.
dsf
===============================================================================
>From heas@maelstrom.Timeplex.COM Mon Mar 13 08:14 CST 1995
RE: toaster
great, outstanding, spectacular....I mean it out-performs the auspex
(wish I had hard-core numbers, but it's noticable), extremely reliable, boots in
less than 2 minutes with 20G, you can now mix drives sizes, on-line (fast)
backups...no need to necessarily do dumps, ...
-heas
===============================================================================
>From asoto@wsc.com Mon Mar 13 08:57 CST 1995
In short, its fast, its reliable, it only takes five minutes to set up,
REALLY! I brought mine online about three months ago and have not had
one problem. I forget its there.
If you want more information, please let me know.
Andre L. Soto
asoto@wsc.com
PS - I am not a sales person. Just a sysadmin who has undergone the
torture of running NFS on PCs and workstations.
===============================================================================
>From tcb@cipr-diva.mgh.harvard.edu Mon Mar 13 09:36 CST 1995
We didn't buy it, but we tested it.. It looks /really/ promising. Transfer
rates up to 10 times as fast. I did some comparisons, I could fax/email
them..
--ted
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| It is better to live happily in risk, than depressed in safety. |
| -myself, not too long ago |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Ted Beatie |
| Center for Imaging Research, MGH |
| Chestnut Hill, MA Charlestown, MA |
| tcb@fandom-house.org tcb@cipr-diva.mgh.harvard.edu |
| http://www.cipr.mgh.harvard.edu/~tcb/ |
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===============================================================================
>From vic@raven1.imatron.com Mon Mar 13 11:25 CST 1995
We are using the FAServer 450 from Network Appliance. I have had
no problems with it so far.
Back-ups with dump are quite different though.
The dump command on the FAServer is not the same as the dump
command on Sun however it is compatible and if done with the
right parameters it works ( I found this out the hard way ).
It has no restore command. You use the Sun restore command.
After I got the correct parameters I was able to restore individual
files at will.
With Sun systems if you are using 4.1.4 or less when you type
the command df you will not get true space readings as Sun had
not fixed the problem until Solaris 2.3 However, all you have to
do is become root on your Admin host ( The system which is the
root host for your FAServer ) and use the command:
rsh <hostname> df
Then you will see the true amount of space.
Overall, It is a good system.
-Vic
===============================================================================
>From millert@suod.cs.colorado.edu Mon Mar 13 21:36 CST 1995
We've had prety good experience with NAC's Faservers. Their support
has been excellent and the boxes are solid. One problem we are
experiencing right now is that one of our faservers sometimes gets
in a wedged state with 100% cpu utilization. We'll be sending
NAC core dumps to try and get a handle on why this is occurring.
- todd
===============================================================================
>From poehlem@img.wdc.com Tue Mar 14 13:00 CST 1995
I've had some limited experience with NAC's product. On the whole it work's well with minimal support needed, however the backup scheme is less than optimal. Basicly you dump the entire spanned file system(upwards of 28gb). there is a provision for dumping parts of the file tree, but it can be cumbersome. They are supposed to be working on an improvement for this.
Karl
Karl Poehleman
System Administration
Western Digital Corporation
Voice:415-335-2552
Email:poehlem@img.wdc.com
Fax:415-335-2510
===============================================================================
John Posey, EE DSP Graduate Student and part time UNIX Systems Programmer
InterNet: posey@utdallas.edu E&CS, The University of Texas at Dallas
Phone (lab) (214) 883-6433 PO Box 830688, MS EC33
Phone (H) (214) 727-5704 Richardson, Texas 75083-0688
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