Networker

Re: [Networker] ANALYSIS: Networker server price/performance

2006-02-07 02:48:14
Subject: Re: [Networker] ANALYSIS: Networker server price/performance
From: Oscar Olsson <spam1 AT QBRANCH DOT SE>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 08:46:56 +0100
On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, Robert Maiello wrote:

RM> In a nutshell, the HBA, and NIC card placement become critical. Also, how
RM> are you distributing your clients across the NICS?   Are you using the 
RM> built-in ce's on the V480?  We found the gigabit card wanting an entire
RM> 66Mhz bus to itself with the HBAs on a seperate bus.

We decided to go with cheaper hardware instead, running linux, using HP 
DL385 servers as storage nodes. Except for two unsolved annoying bugs, 
this works really well for us. Its cheaper to build it this way than scale 
out an existing sparc system.

The problem we have are:

1. When using CDI, the qlogic qla2000 HBA driver oopses, rendering the 
SCSI tape functionality in the library useless until the server is 
rebooted.

2. When the library has been restarted, drives revert to a fixed 512 byte 
block size. We can't change this from Linux, unless there is a tape in the 
drive, which is not always the case obviously. When using mt -f /dev/nst0 
setblk 0 the command returns an error, complaining that no tape is loaded, 
and the setting remains the same. Running stinit when loading the st 
module doesn't change anything. I haven't been able to find how to change 
this from within networker, so that networker automatically changes this. 
Setting a block size on the device in networker has no effect if the 
device hasn't been set to variable block size to begin with. How does this 
work for everyone else that runs linux kernel 2.6?

//Oscar

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