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MarkSRasmussen
15 Posts
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6908
March 19th, 2009 08:00
Setting up storage, newbie questions
Hi,
I'm beginning to fear I was fed kool-aid while comparing a NetApp and EMC solution we were offered. Basically we were told that it would be a 20 minute installation of our NX4, and that we would be able to setup disks etc. as needed ourselves.
Our NX4 came with 6xSATA drives for the 4+1 with HS system drives, as well as 6 x SAS that are to be used for our databases (MSSQL). I wanted to have them setup as two RAID1 arrays with two HS's, but they had been setup as a single RAID10 array with two HSs from the factory.
Confident about the promise that we could change the factory setup (as long as we stayed away from the system drives), I destroyed the second storage pool with the RAID10 setup. I recreted two new RAID10 storage pools with two disks each, and setup the remaining two as HS. All of this was done from Navisphere as they couldn't be modified in the Celerra Manager interface (Volumes & Pools are greyed out?).
Now, although the pools have been made & initialized, they don't show up in the Celerra Manager. If I instead leave the 6 SAS disks unused in Navisphere and go to Storage -> Systems -> Configure in the Celerra Manager, I have three predefined templates I can choose from, NX4_4+1R5_HS_5+1R5, NX4_4+1R5_HS_R10_R10_R10 & NX4_4+1R5_HS_4+2R6. So basically I can choose between a 5+1R5, R10 or a 4+2R6 for our SAS disks. First of all, I need a spare SAS disk, so all options are out on this issue alone. Second - and this might be me not understanding the virtualization of the whole storage aspect - I really want two separate RAID1 volumes over a single R10 volume so we can separate our log and normal data since the usage patterns are completely different (sequential writes vs. random reads). If I just make one RAID10 volume and make a filesystem, the data will basically be striped over the RAID10 array - or am I not understanding this correctly?
Is it not possible for me to make a custom disk group, or perhaps create a custom template that fits my needs? Am I supposed to contact support each time we need to change disk configs?
I'm beginning to fear I was fed kool-aid while comparing a NetApp and EMC solution we were offered. Basically we were told that it would be a 20 minute installation of our NX4, and that we would be able to setup disks etc. as needed ourselves.
Our NX4 came with 6xSATA drives for the 4+1 with HS system drives, as well as 6 x SAS that are to be used for our databases (MSSQL). I wanted to have them setup as two RAID1 arrays with two HS's, but they had been setup as a single RAID10 array with two HSs from the factory.
Confident about the promise that we could change the factory setup (as long as we stayed away from the system drives), I destroyed the second storage pool with the RAID10 setup. I recreted two new RAID10 storage pools with two disks each, and setup the remaining two as HS. All of this was done from Navisphere as they couldn't be modified in the Celerra Manager interface (Volumes & Pools are greyed out?).
Now, although the pools have been made & initialized, they don't show up in the Celerra Manager. If I instead leave the 6 SAS disks unused in Navisphere and go to Storage -> Systems -> Configure in the Celerra Manager, I have three predefined templates I can choose from, NX4_4+1R5_HS_5+1R5, NX4_4+1R5_HS_R10_R10_R10 & NX4_4+1R5_HS_4+2R6. So basically I can choose between a 5+1R5, R10 or a 4+2R6 for our SAS disks. First of all, I need a spare SAS disk, so all options are out on this issue alone. Second - and this might be me not understanding the virtualization of the whole storage aspect - I really want two separate RAID1 volumes over a single R10 volume so we can separate our log and normal data since the usage patterns are completely different (sequential writes vs. random reads). If I just make one RAID10 volume and make a filesystem, the data will basically be striped over the RAID10 array - or am I not understanding this correctly?
Is it not possible for me to make a custom disk group, or perhaps create a custom template that fits my needs? Am I supposed to contact support each time we need to change disk configs?
