Hi,
I'd like to spec out two Sun boxes, one for use as a replacement for our
primary server and the other to replace our current storage node server.
We're running 6.1.1 on both servers. Kinda old, I know, but we've not
had time to upgrade and at the time, there were problems with the newer
releases, so we didn't want to drop what seemed to be a reasonably
stable release only to get bogged down in a lot more problems.
Our current setup:
Our primary server is an old Sun Ultra 1 running Solaris 2.8 with 512 MB
of memory and two external drives, both of which hold all the nsr stuff.
The drives are 8 and 17 GB respectively but are only at 68% and 37%
usage respectively. The disk usage has not increased much over the last
year so I would say anything with 40 GB would be more than adequate for
our near future needs. We're running one older library on the main
server: An ATL P1000 with 3 DLT 7000 drives. This machine is long in the
teeth to be sure but it seems to work happily for our needs although it
can be quite slow to respond when there are a lot of clients running.
Our storage node server is a Redhat Linux Dell PowerEdge PC with 2 GB of
memory and roughly 50 GB of internal disk space which we never touch.
The storage node server is running two libraries: a Storagetek L80 with
4 LTO drives and an ATL P1000 with 2 SDLT drives. Both are running on
their own separate LVD dual-channel Adaptec SCSI cards. In the case of
the L80, two drives are running on one channel, and the picker and other
2 drives are running on the other channel.
We've been running with a drive parallelism of 5 on all drives and a
server parallelism of 30. We're backing up roughly 70 clients across
ethernet. Things have worked rather nicely as long as the problem
mentioned below does not occur.
Problem:
We started out on Sun a long time ago, and that's why we have the server
on such an old box. We had considered moving everything to Linux, but we
decided to try Linux out first on a storagenode and see how stable it
was before we moved the primary server, too. We though Linux would be a
good and cheap route to take. We've had nothing but problems running
these libraries under the Linux storagenode. The server will suddenly
loose all communication with the picker/drivers on the libraries
(/etc/LGTOuscsi/inquire fails to report the pickers) and we have to
reboot the host. This has been happening for a long time and happens
sporadically. We might go a week or more before it happens again. We've
patched the kernel a bunch of times, we've installed new versions of the
kernel so as to get the latest version of the driver, we've installed a
later version of the driver, we've swapped SCSI cards, cables, you name
it. We even had Storagetek come out and replace all the cables and
terminators and check everything. Same problems. We just don't have time
to screw around with this any more, so I'd like to try running these
guys on a Sun since our primary server has been so faithful. I know that
there are a lot of people who've had great success with Linux, but we
just can't suffer any more. I'm thinking, though, that if we get a Sun
to manage these libraries then it would seem kind of weird having such a
crummy machine still as the primary server and such a newer one as the
storage node, so I'm thinking to spec out two Suns to replace the whole
thing. Having an extra one would not be a bad thing. I just want relief
so I can get other work done!
Additional needs:
We will need enough SCSI slots for at least 2-3 SCSI cards, and we will
also need to be able to run 2 ethernet cards in each Sun.
Can anyone offer any recommendations or advice on a suitable Sun? I'm
looking to save money where I can (gee, shoulda bought a PC. LOL!), but
I just need a recommended model(s), so I can work up a price quote to my
boss real quick.
Thanks.
George
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