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• How to set up IP forwarding on Nexenta (Solaris)?

  - by Gleb

  I am trying to set up IP forwarding on my Nexenta box: root@hdd:~# uname -a SunOS hdd 5.11 NexentaOS_134f i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris The box has 2 network interfaces: root@hdd:~# ifconfig -a lo0: flags=2001000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,VIRTUAL> mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 e1000g1: flags=1001100843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,ROUTER,IPv4,FIXEDMTU> mtu 1500 index 2 inet 192.168.12.2 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.12.255 ether 68:5:ca:9:51:b8 myri10ge0: flags=1100843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,ROUTER,IPv4> mtu 9000 index 3 inet 10.10.10.10 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 10.10.10.255 ether 0:60:dd:47:87:2 lo0: flags=2002000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv6,VIRTUAL> mtu 8252 index 1 inet6 ::1/128 192.168.12.0 is my normal LAN with 192.168.12.1 being the firewall/gateway 10.10.10.0 is a separate LAN for iSCSI (with no internet access) I want to set up IP forwarding so that a computer on 10.10.10.0 will be able to access the internet by using 10.10.10.10 as a gateway (I don't need any port forwarding) I have turned on IP forwarding: root@hdd:~# routeadm Configuration Current Current Option Configuration System State --------------------------------------------------------------- IPv4 routing disabled disabled IPv6 routing disabled disabled IPv4 forwarding enabled enabled IPv6 forwarding disabled disabled Routing services "route:default ripng:default" Routing daemons: STATE FMRI disabled svc:/network/routing/rdisc:default disabled svc:/network/routing/route:default disabled svc:/network/routing/legacy-routing:ipv4 disabled svc:/network/routing/legacy-routing:ipv6 disabled svc:/network/routing/ripng:default online svc:/network/routing/ndp:default But when I dry to start ipnat, I get an error: root@hdd:~# ipnat -CF -f /etc/ipf/ipnat.conf ioctl(SIOCGNATS): I/O error Here is the config: root@hdd:~# cat /etc/ipf/ipnat.conf #!/sbin/ipnat -f - # map e1000g1 10.10.10.10/24 -> 192.168.12.2/32 So the question is how to fix this.. Thanks in advance!

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• "postgres blocked for more than 120 seconds" - is my db still consistent?

  - by nn4l

  I am using an iscsi volume on an Open-E storage system for several virtual machines running on a XenServer host. Occasionally, when there is a very high disk I/O load on the virtual machines (and therefore also on the storage system), I got this error message on the vm consoles: [2594520.161701] INFO: task kjournald:117 blocked for more than 120 seconds. [2594520.161787] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. [2594520.162194] INFO: task flush-202:0:229 blocked for more than 120 seconds. [2594520.162274] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. [2594520.162801] INFO: task postgres:1567 blocked for more than 120 seconds. [2594520.162882] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. I understand this error message is caused by the kernel to inform that these processes haven't been run for 120 seconds, most likely because a disk access to the storage system has not yet been processed. But what is the effect on the processes. For example, will the postgres process eventually write its data when the storage system is idle again after a few minutes, so that all data is still consistent? Or will it abort the write, leaving some tables in an inconsistent state? I certainly expect that the former should be the case - if the disk access is slow, postgres (or any other affected process) should just wait as long as it takes. I can live with the application hanging for a few minutes. But if there is a chance for data corruption then any of these errors is really bad news. Please advise what to do here.

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• ProCurve 1800 switch issue

  - by user98651

  I recently deployed ProCurve 1800-24G switches in place of some older ProCurve 2424M switches in my network. However, I'm having a serious problem with the switch connected to the router. It seems, every night when our Windows 2008 R2 server (off site) runs a backup to a iSCSI target (on site) [facilitated through a PPTP tunnel] the LAN loses connectivity with the router. To clarify, there is only one router which is connected to the switch affected by this problem. The only way to resolve the issue is to either reboot the router or pull the ethernet cable that goes to the router and plug it back in. During the outage, clients cannot receive DHCP requests, DNS requests, ping, or do anything else with the router in this state. Now, neither the switch or router are configured extensively and the issue only seems to have surfaced with the new switch in place. I have tried a number of things including replacing cables, rebooting and checking the switch configuration (it is literally as basic as you can get at this point-- flat LAN, no trunking). Interestingly, the router shows (accessed externally) no changes in configuration or status during this state but similarly cannot ping or access other hosts on the network. This issue occurs in different stages of backup (ie, different amounts transferred). I've also dumped packets from the switch into WireShark but cannot seem to find any anomaly yet (I'm looking at packets around the time the issue appeared and at the time when I reset the NIC). Any suggestions for what to look for? Ideas on what could be causing this? I'm seeing some transmit/receive errors on the NIC from both the router and switch side but nothing serious when compared to the total packet counts. I'm seriously doubting hardware at this point, as I have tried another switch, different cables, and a different NIC on the router.

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• What are the most important aspects to consider when choosing a SAN for a small office virtualizatio

  - by Prof. Moriarty

  I am in the process of consolidating 6 physical servers running 6 different operating system flavors (don't ask) into two identical physical servers (Dell PowerEdge 2900), using the free VMware ESXi 4.0 platform. We will install an iSCSI SAN over a 1GbE network, and store all virtual machine images on the SAN. Each physical server would run 3 VMs, and in the case of a physical server failure, we would manually switch over the other 3. These are all internal servers, while important, they can tolerate some amount of downtime (say <1h) to keep cost and complexity associated with HA down. I now need to choose the SAN to be used for the setup, on a low budget. We currently have about 2TB of data, but of course I want to able to grow, do backups of VM snapshots on other drives and remove them to a different location, etc. So what I would like to know is: Which are the must have features for this setup, without which using a SAN is not worth it? We are mostly a Dell shop, so I have been looking at the EqualLogic PS4000E High Availability model. Any opinions, anecdotes, bad experiences with this model? (This is one of the few models which could accomodate our existing disks from the physical servers.) If you can recommend something that is not Dell, but it has better value, I would most definitely consider it. Caveats, things to look out for?

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• Network Misconfiguration when adding first host to new vSphere cluster

  - by dunxd

  I am building a new vSphere cluster from scratch. I have installed ESXi on the first host, and built a vCenter server on a VM residing on that host (storage is on the local hard drive, although we have iSCSI targets which I can reach from the host). The cluster is configured for HA. When I try and add the host to the cluster, I get an error at the point where HA is configured - Cannot complete the . I have stripped the network configuration of the host down to the most basic - a single NIC attached to a single vSwitch - this is running the VMKernel Port on VLAN 8 - that is our Management VLAN. The vCenter server will have a network address on this VLAN, so I also set the initial Virtual Machine Port Group to this VLAN, and connected the vCenter server NIC to this port group. I understand I can't connect the vCenter server to the VMkernel port group, but shouldn't I be able to connect the vCenter server to a Port Group in the same VLAN? If not, do I need to create a VLAN specifically for VMKernel Port Group? I plan to set up another port group for vMotion with a dedicated and isolated VLAN (i.e. VLAN isn't routed) so this wouldn't allow vCenter to communicate. Does anyone have any suggestions, or other ideas for what might be causing the problem. I've read through the documentation, but it isn't giving me any pointers, and the error message isn't helping me beyond telling me something is wrong with my network config.

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• 10Gbe sfp+ Cross Over Cable required? Is there such a thing?

  - by dc-patos

  To preface, this is my first experience with 10GBe networking and I have encountered an issue which research does not seem to document a solution for... I have two servers (older DL580G5 and DL380G5), each with a HP NC522SFP 10Gbe dual sfp+ port adapter. I have purchased copper "passive" direct connect adapter cables (which look like twinax), which seem to work well when I connect them to the sfp+ ports on my Dell 5524 switch. However, if I directly connect the two servers with the same cable, the link doesn't come up. I am running WS2012 standard on each server. My intention is to use one of these servers as a home brew SAN and I would like to enable mutiple 10Gbe paths for iSCSI traffic. My question(s): Can I connect the two adapters to each other, such as I would with other less speedy generations of ethernet? If I can, do I require a crossover cable, or some type of other sfp+ cable solution to do this? My 10Gbe sfp+ switch ports are premium, but server to server connections are doable in small numbers for me and I would really like the multiple paths this would give me. Is there a simple solution?

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• Server 2012, Jumbo Frames - should I expect problems?

  - by TomTom

  Ok, this sound might stupid - but is there any negative on just enabling jumbo frames in practice? From what I understand: Any switch or ethernet adapter that sees a jumbo frame it can not handle will just drop it. TCP is not a problem as max frame size is negotiated in the setinuo phase. UCP is a theoretical problem as a server may just send a LARGE UDP packet that gets dropped on the way. Practically though, as UDP is packet based, I do not really think any software WOULD send a UDP packet larger than 1500 bytes net without app level configuration changes - at least this is how I do my programming, as it is quite hard to get a decent MTU size for that without testing yourself, so you fall back in programming to max 1500 packets. The network in question is a standard small business network - we upgraded now from a non managed 24 port switch to a 52 port switch with 4 10g ports (netgear - quite cheap) and will mov a file server to 10g for also ISCSI serving. All my equipment on the Ethernet level can handle minimum 9000 bytes and due to local firewalls I really want to get packets larger (less firewall processing), but the network is also NAT'ed to the internet. On top, different machines move around (download) large files (multi gigabyte area) quite often for processing. The question is - can I expect problems when I just enable jumbo frames? Again, this is not totally ignorance - I just don't see programs sending more than 1500 byte UDP packets (if that is a practical problem please tell me) and for TCP the MTU is negotiated anyway. if there is a problem I can move to a dedicated VLAN, but this has it's own shares of problems as basically most workstations must then be on both VLAN's.

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• Raid-z unaccessible after putting one disk offline

  - by varesa

  I have installed FreeNAS on a test server, with 3x 1Tb drives. They are setup in raidz. I tried to offline one of the disks (from the FreeNAS web-ui), and the array became degraded, as I think it should. The problem is with the array becoming unaccessible after that. I thought a raid like that should be able to run fine with one of the disks missing. Atleast very soon after I offline'd and pulled out the disk, the iSCSI share disappeared from a ESXi host's datastores. I also ssh'd into the FreeNAS server, and tried just executing ls /mnt/raid (/mnt/raid/ being the mount point). The whole terminal froze, not accepting ^C or anything. # zpool status -v pool: raid state: DEGRADED status: One or more devices are faulted in response to IO failures. action: Make sure the affected devices are connected, then run 'zpool clear'. see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-HC scrub: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM raid DEGRADED 1 30 0 raidz1 DEGRADED 4 56 0 gptid/c8c9e44c-08e1-11e2-9ba6-001b212a83ea ONLINE 3 60 0 gptid/c96f32d5-08e1-11e2-9ba6-001b212a83ea ONLINE 3 63 0 gptid/ca208205-08e1-11e2-9ba6-001b212a83ea OFFLINE 0 0 0 errors: Permanent errors have been detected in the following files: /mnt/raid/ raid/iscsivol:<0x0> raid/iscsivol:<0x1> Have I understood the workings of a raidz wrong, or is there something else going on? It would not be nice to have the same thing happen on a production system...

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• Enterprise class storage best practices

  - by churnd

  One thing that has always perplexed me is storage best practices. Filesystems brag about how they can be petabytes or exabytes in size. Yet, I do not know many sysadmins who are willing to let a single volume grow over several terrabytes. I do know the primary reason behind this is how long it would take to rebuild the array should a drive fail. The more drives in a single LUN, the longer this takes and the greater your risk of losing another drive while the rebuild is taking place. Then there's usage reasons. Admins will carve out a LUN based on how much space they think needs to be allocated to the project. It seems more practical to me for the LUN to be one large array and to use quotas. I understand this wouldn't satisfy every requirement (iSCSI), but I see a lot of NAS systems (NFS) managed this way. I also understand that the underlying volumes can be grown/shrunk as needed quite easily, but wouldn't it be less "risky" to use quotas rather than manipulating volumes and bringing possible data loss into the equation? There may be some other reasons I'm missing, so please enlighten me. Can we not expect filesystems to ever be so large? Are we waiting for the hardware to get faster to cut down on rebuild times?

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• SQL Server performance on VSphere 4.0

  - by Charles

  We are having a performance issue that we cannot explain with our VMWare environment and I am hoping someone here may be able to help. We have a web application that uses a databases backend. We have an SQL 2005 Cluster setup on Windows 2003 R2 between a physical node and a virtual node. Both physical servers are identical 2950's with 2x Xeaon x5460 Quad Core CPUs and 64GB of memory, 16GB allocated to the OS. We are utilizing an iSCSI San for all cluster disks. The problem is this, when utilizing the application under a repeated stress testing that adds CPUs to the cluster nodes, the Physical node scales from 1 pCPU to 8 pCPUs, meaning we see continued performance increases. When testing the node running Vsphere, we have the expected 12% performance hit for being virtual but we still scale from 1 vCPU to 4 vCPUs like the physical but beyond this performance drops off, by the time we get to 8 vCPUs we are seeing performance numbers worse than at 4 vCPUs. Again, both nodes are configured identically in terms of hardware, Guest OS, SQL Configurations etc and there is no traffic other than the testing on the system. There are no other VMs on the virtual server so there should be no competition for resources. We have contacted VMWare for help but they have not really been any suggesting things like setting SQL Processor Affinity which, while being helpful would have the same net effect on each box and should not change our results in the least. We have looked at all of VMWare's SQL Tuning guides with regards to VSphere with no benefit, please help!

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• Generalized strategy for file server virtualization in Xenserver

  - by Jamie

  I'm not shopping as much as I'm looking for some guidance on good idea / bad idea strategies. I'm sure I'm not in the "best practices" budget range. Currently, I have 3 dell poweredges running xenserver in a pool. Each node has a ubuntu file server, serving about 6TB. One is the primary, the other two are rsync targets for backup. The 6TB is stored on their respective local storage disks as an LVM of 3x2tb virtual disks. The fileserver VM disks are also stored on the node local disks. Each node also runs a smattering of light-weight VMs for web, development, windows VMs, and stuff like that. Several of those VM's disks reside on a QNAP NAS to play with live migration. These VM's are often clients of the primary file server (like all the mail, web content, user files are stored on the file server, not on the mail, web, and samba VMs). This all works fine, and is a major step up for us. The downside is that the QNAP is a single point of failure. And the only thing the QNAP is doing is serving migratable VM images, not client data. Someday the poweredge local arrays will be full, and we will have to reinvent ourselves again. Is it wise to have heavywieght vms (like the fileserver, with its 6+ TB disks) on a SAN or NAS? Would it be better to keep the VMs lightweight, have the VM images on a SAN or NAS, and use 2 or more NAS act as NFS-serving file appliances? A hybrid SAN/NAS that can serve iscsi for images and NFS for the client vms? It seems like live-magration would be a misnomer if you have to migrate a fileserver with its entire 6+ TB disk. I recognize there are plenty of ways to skin the cat. We've already skinned it a few ways. What makes sense?

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• Poor write performance on Debian server running NFS with 22TB exported JFS filesystem

  - by user143546

  I am currently running a debian server that is exporting a large JFS filesystem (22TB) over NFS (nfs-kernel-server.) When attempting to write to the NFS share, the performance is very poor. The 22TB disk is sitting on a NAS mounted using iSCSI. It will bust for a moment near expected line speed, and then sit idle for several seconds. Very little traffic measured in the low kb/sec. The wait peeks on write. When reading from the NFS mount, the system operates at expected speeds (11MB/sec). The issue does not occur when using SFTP, rsync, or local coping (non-nfs). The issue persists between stable and testing releases. On the same machine I have a 14TB ext4 filesystem using the exact same export configuration that does not share the issue. This share is not in regular use and thus not consuming resources. NFS Server: cat /etc/exports /data2 10.1.20.86(rw,no_subtree_check,async,all_squash) cat /sys/block/sdb/queue/scheduler noop [deadline] cfq cat /etc/default/nfs-kernel-server RPCNFSDCOUNT=8 RPCNFSDPRIORITY=0 RPCMOUNTDOPTS=--manage-gids NEED_SVCGSSD= RPCSVCGSSDOPTS= NFS Client: cat /etc/fstab 10.1.20.100:/data2 /root/incoming nfs rw,noatime,soft,intr,noacl 0 2 cat /sys/block/sdb/queue/scheduler noop [deadline] cfq cat /proc/mounts 10.1.20.100:/data2/ /root/incoming nfs4 rw,noatime,vers=4,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,namlen=255,soft,proto=tcp,port=0,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,clientaddr=10.1.20.86,minorversion=0,addr=10.1.20.100 0 0 This problem has me pretty stumped. Any help would be greatly welcomed. Thanks.

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• Doesn't VirtualBox 4.0 support drag-drop file copy yet?

  - by Benjamin

  Version 4.0.0 will be new major release. The following major new features were added: -New settings/disk file layout for VM portability; see the manual for more information. -Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) support; see the manual for more information. -VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts -Language bindings: uniform Java bindings for both local (COM/XPCOM) and remote (SOAP) -invocation APIs -Chipset: added support for the Intel ICH9 chipset with 3 PCI buses, PCI express and -Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) -Audio: Intel HD Audio is now available as guest hardware, for better support with modern -guest operating systems (e.g. 64-bit Windows; bug #2785). -GUI: redesigned user interface with guest window preview -GUI: new display mode with downscaled guest display -Resource control: added support for limiting a VM's CPU time and IO bandwidth. -Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images -Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images -Windows Additions: support for automatically updating the Guest Additions (requires -installed Windows Guest Additions 4.0 or later) -Guest Additions: support for copying files into the guest file system What does the last line mean? I thought this is a drag-drop file copy feature like VMWare. I tried that. But I couldn't copy by drag-drop, ctrl-c ctrl-v either. Edit: I mean VBox 4.0 beta, not 3.x The release note is here. Download link is here.

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• SRM 4 Test Fails with message for some VM : Error: A specified parameter was not correct.

  - by Setesh

  Here are my architecture : For the protected site 4 Host VSphere Enterprise Plus, each one with 2 HBAs FC connected to the switch fabric, connected to an EMC CX4-120 1 VCenter 1 SRM For the recovery site 2 Hosts Vsphere 4 1 Vcenter 1 SRM 1 CX-4-120 The CX4-120 is connected to the second CX4-120 with ISCSI and the MirrorView / Asynchronous. I synchronise for the time 6 Lun on a FC DAE, 2 on a S-ATA DAE I have allocated 30% of the amount synchronised LUN for the SNAPSHOT us, but I have allocated them only on my S-ATA II DAE. It does not make a problem, my snapshot are correctly active. All the installation is new (hardware and software), installed in January with the last files available in download. I have a strange problem, and it's random, sometimes when I run a test on my RP, some VMs have this error : Error: A specified parameter was not correct. I don't know where to look. Any help is appreciated... PS : I have checked on all the VMs, no Floppy disk or CD attached. PS2 : There is severals VMs with RDM and OCFS2 filesystems on it.

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• How do I speed up and cache mmap file access over NFS on Linux?

  - by Zan Lynx

  The server and client are both 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. The application in question is a custom app that uses mmap() for fast random file access. Its ideal state is when the entire file is cached in RAM. The network connections are really fast 10Gb Ethernet. It is a virtual server blade setup. It isn't the network connections slowing things down because everything performs superbly when using a virtual disk (iSCSI to the SAN). But when we run the application on a NFS home directory mount, performance goes to the dogs. It appears that the Linux kernel isn't caching anything. So it is reading every single disk block needed by mmap() accesses over and over and over again. The NFS mount is done through autofs, which has only default settings. /proc/mounts shows the NFS mount is done with the following options: rw,relatime,vers=3,rsize=131072,wsize=131072,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=192.168.11.52,mountvers=3,mountproto=tcp,addr=192.168.11.52 How can I make Ubuntu 10.04 cache the file instead of reloading it all the time?

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• thought about shared storage (NFS, Lustre) [closed]

  - by user134880

  Possible Duplicate: Can you help me with my capacity planning? Now I habe small cluster with total of 8 nodes. 6 of them are computing nodes (apache and vmware) and 2 nodes are for storage. 2 storage nodes are identical. Each storage server is linux box with 8 x 1Tb WD RE4 in soft raid 10. 1st box is master and 2nd is slave. Data is mirrored with DRDB. We export NFSv4 shares to Apache (for document root) and iSCSI to Vmware. Now all is working pretty good and stable. But it will be soon time to upgrade our system. I have been thinking of Lustre. Does some one has any real experience with Lustre or NFS medium clusters? Will it be good idea just to upgrade server and change hdd's to 3Tb ? With NFS we will always have only 2 servers to maintain (one primary and one slave). Thanks. QUESTIONS: 1) Does some one used Lustre? In production? I have seen a lot of info about how it is hard to setup Lustre because you need to compile own kernel and patches. It's answers from newbies. Is there some one who has used Lustre for some period of time? 2) About disk upgrades - it's only description of strategy. I'm not asking if it is enough 3Tb or not. I just ask if it is right just to replace hdds instead of adding new server (like with Lustre) Thanks again.

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• Sizing Switches for Storage and Production

  - by Untalented

  Couple questions. Should you always completely separate the storage network switches from production switches or are VLANs fine to segment this traffic? Is there a golden rule here? How do you properly size a switch for your environment based on the specifications the manufacturer provide (Throughput, Forwarding Throughput, Stacking Throughput, Max Mac)? If you have two switch options and one has a maximum Mac address of 8,000 vs. another with 16,0000. What does this really mean to me? How do make sure one vs. another is sized properly for me? Besides VLAN and Jumbo Frame support, is there any other "Must" haves for a virtual environments production or storage networks? There is a wealth of knowledge on sizing SANs and such, but this seems equally important and it's quite challenging to find as much information. -- Just to add some tidbits of information for the environment. This setup above is referring to the data centers which supports two different locations which have about 100 users between the two in total. The storage traffic will be iSCSI and will be 3 ESXi Hosts and one SAN housing about 2.7TB of data. Since there is currently no storage network in place (no SAN), I'm having a hard time regarding #2 to really determine what backplane throughput and switch specifications will be sufficient.

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• Inexpensive (used) hardware for Xen virtualization test?

  - by Jason Antman

  Virtualization is one of the areas where I could really use some experience. I also run quite a few services (web, mail, dns, etc.) out of my home. Since most of my hardware is getting a bit old (I'm running on stuff that was surplused years ago...) I decided that it's about time I start renewing some things, and also play around with virtualization a bit more. My plan is to setup a SAN box (simple iSCSI target, relatively inexpensive gigE switch), get a pair (for starters) of new servers, and start building some new stuff with Xen, specifically planning on playing with live migration and full virtualization. Does anyone have recommendations for used, older "servers" (really anything in a rack-mount form factor, I'm not too worried about things like iLO/iLOM for the test nodes) that support VT-x/AMD-V? I'm biased to HP, but it looks like they didn't make Proliants with VT-x/Vanderpool processors until G6 (for the DL360) or so, which is way out of my price range. I'm looking in the sub-$300 range (or less, if possible), used, probably Ebay. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Edit:And, to catch this before the comments start coming - these are personal systems. I have first-generation Proliants still in use (I got them as corporate surplus in 05, they've been running since then, and probably were running since 01 or 02 prior to being sold). I don't need anything shiny and new - I've got a bunch of old boxes, at least one complete replacement for every model in use, and that's fine for me (and easy on the wallet).

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• MacGyver Moments

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Denny Cherry tagged me to write about my best MacGyver Moment.  Usually I ignore blogosphere fluff and just use this space to write what I think is important.  However, #MVP10 just ended and I have a stronger sense of community.  Besides, where else would I mention my second best Macgyver moment was making a BIOS jumper out of a soda can.  Aluminum is conductive and I didn't have any real jumpers lying around. My best moment is probably my entire home computer network.  Every system but one is hand-built, usually cobbled together out of spare parts and 'adapted' from its original purpose. My Primary Domain Controller is a Dell 2300.   The Service Tag indicates it was shipped to the original owner in 1999.  Box has a PERC/1 RAID controller.  I acquired this from a previous employer for $50.  It runs Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.  Does DNS, DHCP, and RADIUS services as a bonus.  RADIUS authentication is used for VPN and Wireless access.  It is nice to sign in once and be done with it. The Secondary Domain Controller is an old desktop.  Dual P-III 933 with some extra drives. My VPN box is a P-II 250 with 384MB of RAM and a 21 GB hard drive.  I did a P-to-V to my Hyper-V box a year or so ago and retired the hardware again.  Dynamic DNS lets me connect no matter how often Comcast shuffles my IP. The Hyper-V box is a desktop system with 8GB RAM and an AMD Athlon 5000+ processor.  Cost me less than $500 to put together nearly two years ago.  I reasoned that if Vista and Windows 2008 were the same code then Vista 64-bit certified meant the drivers for Vista would load into Windows 2008.  Turns out I was right. Later I added three 1TB drives but wasn't too happy with how that turned out.  I recovered two of the drives yesterday and am building an iSCSI storage unit. (Much thanks to Starwind.  Great product).  I am using an old AMD 1.1GhZ box with 1.5 GB RAM (cobbled together from three old PCs) as my storave server.  The Hyper-V box is slated for an OS rebuild to 2008 R2 once I get the storage system worked out.  maybe in a week or two. A couple of DLink Gigabit switches ties everything together. Add in the Vonage box, the three PCs, the Wireless-N Access Point, the two notebooks and the XBox and you have gone from MacGyver to darn near Rube Goldberg. The only thing I really spend money on is power supplies and fans.  I buy top-of-the-line for both. I even pull and crimp my own cables. Oh, and if my kids hose up a PC, I have all of their data on a server elsewhere.  Every PC and laptop is pretty much interchangable for email and basic workstation tasks.  That helps a lot too. Of course I will tag SQLVariant.

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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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• Alternative or succesor to GDBM

  - by Anon Guy

  We a have a GDBM key-value database as the backend to a load-balanced web-facing application that is in implemented in C++. The data served by the application has grown very large, so our admins have moved the GDBM files from "local" storage (on the webservers, or very close by) to a large, shared, remote, NFS-mounted filesystem. This has affected performance. Our performance tests (in a test environment) show page load times jumping from hundreds of milliseconds (for local disk) to several seconds (over NFS, local network), and sometimes getting as high as 30 seconds. I believe a large part of the problem is that the application makes lots of random reads from the GDBM files, and that these are slow over NFS, and this will be even worse in production (where the front-end and back-end have even more network hardware between them) and as our database gets even bigger. While this is not a critical application, I would like to improve performance, and have some resources available, including the application developer time and Unix admins. My main constraint is time only have the resources for a few weeks. As I see it, my options are: Improve NFS performance by tuning parameters. My instinct is we wont get much out of this, but I have been wrong before, and I don't really know very much about NFS tuning. Move to a different key-value database, such as memcachedb or Tokyo Cabinet. Replace NFS with some other protocol (iSCSI has been mentioned, but i am not familiar with it). How should I approach this problem?

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• Setting up a NAS with Citrix XenServer

  - by JasonBrown

  Just a quick query on anyone whos worked with XenServer, I want to setup a NAS at home but with virtualization (I've looked into VMWare Server and KVM, I quite like KVM!) but I was told about XenServer 5.5. I have comomodity hardware (ASUS board, dual core 2.66Ghz CPU with 8Gb RAM), I need to setup a fileserver to house about 2-3Tb worth of data (big chunky video - not porn!). Need to run Linux (preferably CentOS) but also run Windows virtualised for testing. I was thinking of going the XenServer route, however I want to be able to offer a VM access to the 2-3Tb of HDDs (5 HDD drives) directly so it can do its thing (maybe using FreeNAS). Would this be possible with XenServer? Or will I have to do more work - and another box - to offer this? My goals are to use FreeNAS (ZFS!) for the filesserver, CentOS for SVN and aother bits we need to use (LAMP Stack), Windows for our win32 testing all on one box. I see this iSCSI target bits and get scared.

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• Linux HA cluster w/Xen, Heartbeat, Pacemaker. domU does not failover to secondary node

  - by Kendall

  I am having the followig problem with an OenSuSE + Heartbeat + Pacemaker + Xen HA cluster: when the node a Xen domU is running on is "dead" the Xen domU running on it is not restarted on the second node. The cluster is setup with two nodes, each running OpenSuSE-11.3, Heartbeat 3.0, and Pacemaker 1.0 in CRM mode. For storage I am using a LUN on an iSCSI SAN device; the LUN is formatted with OCFS2 and managed with LVM. The Xen domU has two logical volumes; one for root and the other for swap. I am using IPMI cards for STONITH devices, and a dedicated ethernet link for heartbeat communications. The ha.cf file is as follows: keepalive 1 deadtime 10 warntime 5 udpport 694 ucast eth1 auto_failback off node dhcp-166 node stage use_logd yes crm yes My resources look as follows: shocrm(live)configure# show node $id="5c1aa924-bba4-4f95-a367-6c9a58ac4a38" dhcp-166 node $id="cebc92eb-af24-4833-aaf0-672adf80b58e" stage primitive Xen-Util ocf:heartbeat:Xen \ meta target-role="Started" \ operations $id="Xen-Util-operations" \ op start interval="0" timeout="60" start-delay="0" \ op stop interval="0" timeout="120" \ params xmfile="/etc/xen/vm/xen-util" primitive my-stonith stonith:external/ipmi \ params hostname="dhcp-166" ipaddr="192.168.3.106" userid="ADMIN" passwd="xxx" \ op monitor interval="2m" timeout="60s" primitive my-stonith2 stonith:external/ipmi \ params hostname="stage" ipaddr="192.168.3.105" userid="ADMIN" passwd="xxx" \ op monitor interval="2m" timeout="60s" property $id="cib-bootstrap-options" \ dc-version="1.0.9-89bd754939df5150de7cd76835f98fe90851b677" \ cluster-infrastructure="Heartbeat" The Xen domU config file is as follows: name = "xen-util" bootloader = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/domUloader.py" #bootargs = "xvda1:/vmlinuz-xen,/initrd-xen" bootargs = "--entry=xvda1:/boot/vmlinuz-xen,/boot/initrd-xen" memory = 4096 disk = [ 'phy:vg_xen/xen-util-root,xvda1,w', 'phy:vg_xen/xen-util-swap,xvda2,w', ] root = "/dev/xvda1" vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:42:42:06' ] #vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vncunused=0,vnclisten=192.168.3.172' ] extra = "" Say domU "Xen-Util" is running on node "stage"; if "stage" goes down, "Xen-Util" does not restart on node "dhcp-166". It seems to want to try as an "xm list" will show it for a few seconds and if you "xm console xen-util" it will give a message like "copying /boot/kernel.gz from xvda1 to /var/lib/xen/tmp/kernel.a53gs for booting". However, it never gets past that, eventually gives up, and no longer appears in "xm list". Now, when node "stage" comes back online after being power cycled, it detects that "Xen-Util" isn't running, and starts it (on stage). I've tried starting "Xen-Util" on node "dhcp-166" without the cluster running, and it works fine. No problems. So, I know it works in that respect. Any ideas? Thanks!

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• Issue with Netgear GS108T Managed Switch and Jumbo Frames

  - by Richie086

  I recently purchased a Netgear GS108T managed switch and I am trying to configure jumbo packets between my NAS (Thecus N4100Pro), PC and managed switch. I should mention the fact that I was able to use jumbo frames between my PC and NAS before I purchased the switch without issue. My Desktop has a wired gigabit NIC (Intel 82579V Gigabit) and has the ability to configure jumbo frames (see pic) that are either 9014 bytes or 4088 bytes. I choose 9014 bytes for the jumbo frame size My NAS supports jumbo frames as well, and is configured to use 9014 as the frame size. When I go into my Netgear managed switch and set the frame size to 9014 on the ports I am using for my PC and NAS. See image As soon as I hit apply in the web interface, I loose my connection to the SMB shares on my NAS and I can no longer connect to the web admin interface for my NAS. The really strange thing is I can ping my NAS via the ping command, but when I try to connect to the web interface on port 80 or port 443 the page never loads. I did a scan from my PC to my NAS using nmap and I can see the following ports open PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 80/tcp open http 111/tcp open rpcbind 139/tcp open netbios-ssn 443/tcp open https 445/tcp open microsoft-ds 631/tcp open ipp 2000/tcp open cisco-sccp 2049/tcp open nfs 3260/tcp open iscsi 49152/tcp open unknown MAC Address: 00:14:FD:15:00:44 (Thecus Technology) Read data files from: C:\Program Files (x86)\Nmap Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 211.97 seconds Raw packets sent: 1 (28B) | Rcvd: 1 (28B) Anyone have any idea what is going on here? Why is nmap able to detect the ports are open and listening for http, https and file sharing but I cant connect when all devices have jumbo packets enabled? Stranger still - I did a packet capture using wireshark while the nmap scan was running and filtered so I only saw converstations between my PC and my NAS. Here are the packet details from my scan Only 4 packets over 5k bytes? What is going on here? Do I not need to configure jumbo frame sizes on the switch? I have an internet connection from my pc to the switch to my router - I just cannot connect to my NAS. I just checked on my iPhone and I am able to open my NAS web admin interface without issue on my iPhone! WTF!!!!!! Let me know if you need more details..

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• Linux Fiber Channel Host Setup Basic

  - by Jim

  I've been googling for about 4 hours now with no luck. I am trying to setup a Linux server running Oracle Server 6.3 as a Fiber Channel host. And then connect it to a Dell Compellent Fibre Channel Host contain a 500GB Volume. The Oracle server itself contains two Brocade 815 FC HBAs. I've discovered their WWN(I think) via cat /sys/class/fc_host/host1/port_name 0x100000051efc3d85 cat /sys/class/fc_host/host2/port_name 0x100000051efc3d9f The next part is where I am at a loss. I've used iSCSI before...is FC the same deal where you have an initiator and a target? If so where do I specific that in linux? I'm also new to Fiber Channel as a protocol, so i am unsure what is needed to make a transaction? WWN and port ID? Similar to IP:Port combination in the Ethernet world. I've read alot regarding using systool, multipath, fc_transport commands, however none of these is recognized as a valid command from Oracle Server 6.3 Appreciate the guidance and assistance. I installed sccsi-target-utils and can now run rescan-scsi-bus and sg_map -x. rescan-scsi-bus.sh -l -w -r Host adapter 0 (megaraid_sas) found. Host adapter 1 ((null)) found. Host adapter 2 ((null)) found. Host adapter 3 (ata_piix) found. Host adapter 4 (ata_piix) found. Scanning SCSI subsystem for new devices and remove devices that have disappeared Scanning host 0 for SCSI target IDs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15, LUNs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Scanning for device 0 2 0 0 .... OLD: Host: scsi0 Channel: 02 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: DELL Model: PERC H700 Rev: 2.30 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Scanning for device 0 2 1 0 ... OLD: Host: scsi0 Channel: 02 Id: 01 Lun: 00 Vendor: DELL Model: PERC H700 Rev: 2.30 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Scanning host 1 for all SCSI target IDs, LUNs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Scanning for device 1 0 3 1 ... OLD: Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 03 Lun: 01 Vendor: COMPELNT Model: Compellent Vol Rev: 0505 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Scanning host 2 for all SCSI target IDs, LUNs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Scanning host 3 for all SCSI target IDs, LUNs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Scanning for device 3 0 0 0 ... REM: Host: scsi3 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 DEL: Vendor: TEAC Model: DVD-ROM DV-28SW Rev: R.2A Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Scanning host 4 channels 0 for SCSI target IDs 0, LUNs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 new device(s) found. 1 device(s) removed. and sg_map -x /dev/sg0 0 0 32 0 13 /dev/sg1 0 2 0 0 0 /dev/sda /dev/sg2 0 2 1 0 0 /dev/sdb /dev/sg4 1 0 3 1 0 /dev/sdc I'm not sure what this all means...

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