Summary: Need comments on ClearCase (4/5)

From: Boris.XSSC@fxap.xerox.com
Date: Wed Feb 05 1997 - 03:41:23 CST


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Jason Keltz
cs911089@ariel.cs.yorku.ca

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 09:32:48 -0500
From: Craig Ledbetter <cledbett@engr.homeaccount.com>
To: cs911089@ariel.cs.yorku.ca
Subject: Re: Need comments on ClearCase

Funny you should ask. My company has been going through the process of
selecting a version control system, and ClearCase is one of our
options. As a sysadmin I hate the product. It creates nfs mounts of
special virtual devices on the fly (thus increasing my network load on
the server and stealing cycles for maintance of those mounts). It
requires a one of only a couple PC stacks with nfs, and we don't use nfs
as a rule for our PCs. Samba has always been a better choice for file
sharing for us, and if the PCs don't use samba, they use an nfs stack
that is not supported under ClearCase. Plus half of my system utils
broke when I installed ClearCase. Any util that does file system
recursion will break without modification due to a circular directory
that ClearCase installes. Don't make the mistake of running "find /
-name "something" -print" because /view (which ClearCase creates without
asking you.) is circular. Every dir under view points back to the
systems root dir and find has a field day with the system processor. My
managment has decided to go with this product against my strong
objections, and have told me to learn how to admin it. I can't commment
on the additional workload due to admining ClearCase, but I can tell you
that my workload has increased just working around the changes ClearCase
has made to my system. I haven't worked out a backup strategy for the
VOB's yet, but I can tell you that /view dir has nicely trashed my
backups using Solstice Backup (it was actually a Solstice Backup bug,
but I wouldn't have had to worry about it if it wasn't for ClearCase).
My overall suggestion to you is to stay as far away from ClearCase as
you can (from a systems point of view). My users would tell you
differently because they think it is the best thing since sliced bread.

Craig Ledbetter
Systems Engineer
Home Account Network Inc.
cledbett@homeaccount.com
http://www.homeaccount.com

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Jason Keltz
cs911089@ariel.cs.yorku.ca

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 97 05:59:01 PST
From: John Reynolds <reynolds@acetsw.amat.com>
To: cs911089@ariel.cs.yorku.ca
Subject: Re: Need comments on ClearCase

Hi.

We are in the process of setting up ClearCase. Other people are doing
the conversion from RCS to ClearCase, so I can't say much about that
side of the business. From my point of view (sysadmin) :

1) There's more work as sysadmin : there are various cron jobs that
clean up the VOBs every night, which must be checked, and corrections
made. The number of steps involved in moving a VOB from one place to
another (lock the VOB, unregister, move the files, re-register, unlock)
is such that you sure don't want to do it often.

Multisite promises to be even more fun.

2) We have dedicated a SPARC10 and a 16GB disk pack just to VOB/view services.

3) Network traffic doesn't seem too bad.

4) I wrote a script to lock the VOB, tar it to an unused disk, and
backup the tarfile, and inserted it into our backup system. I don't
know what we would have done if we were using Networker, or something
which didn't take to homemade scripts.

5) The "df" command gets ugly, since each VOB is displayed as a
separate mount point, on every client system.

6) Since I don't particiapte in the build process, I can't say how much
help ClearCase is, but the users seem sold, so I guess they feel it's
worth the overhead.

Hope that helps.

John Reynolds
Applied Materials Time travel means never having to say
2901 Patrick Henry Dr. MS 5502 you will have been going to be sorry.
Santa Clara CA 95054
(408) 235-6352
reynolds@acetsw.amat.com

> From sun-managers-relay@ra.mcs.anl.gov Thu Jan 30 20:39:57 1997
> Sender: sun-managers-relay@ra.mcs.anl.gov
> X-Ns-Transport-Id: 08003700A494045836B5
> Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 17:45:26 PST
> From: boris.xssc@fxap.xerox.com
> Followup-To: boris.xssc@fxap.xerox.com
> Subject: Need comments on ClearCase
> To: sun-managers@ra.mcs.anl.gov
> Content-Length: 739
>
>
> Hi,
>
> My company is considering buying ClearCase. We have about 100 software
> developers and document writers. Project group size is 3 - 6 persons. On
> average we have 20 projects active. We have a mix of Sparc5, Sparc 20, and
> some PC. We use Solaris 2.5.x on a few machines. Most of the rest of sparc
run
> SunOs 4.1.x. The PCs run DOS, Win95, and WinNt.
>
> I would like to know what is the impact of using ClearCase:
>
> 1. Any additional work needed in system admin? Percentage increae in
workload?
> 2. Hardware/resources requirements on Server, and Client stations.
> 3. Increase in network traffic.
> 4. Any VOB backup/restore issue?
> 5. Any file system management issue?
> 6. Others.
>
> Comments from users also welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Boris.
>

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