2 Xserves, 1 XRaid, no Xsan or Masked LUN - Options?

Hello, we've got an original Xserve hooked up to an XRaid. The setup works great, but we're going to buy another Xserve and I'd like to set something for failover.
I thought we would just get a fiber switch, hook up the XRaid and both Xserves and we'd be able to configure it with software. I think the masked LUNs would have worked (maybe), but it sounds like that isn't supported anymore.
I've read about Xsan, but it's too expensive for us right now. I will definately put that on the budget for 2009, but not now. As I read it we'd have to buy 2 additional Xserves so we had 2 for meta data and 2 for file services, plus 4 Xsan licenses. That's a lot of money (but really cool).
So, my current low-cost plan is to set up the new Xserve as the primary LDAP/file server and the old one as the backup (clone?). The XRaid would be hooked directly to the primary Xserve. If the primary Xserve went down, the backup would provide LDAP services, etc, but the XRaid would go offline. The plan would then be to power everything down, move the XRaid fiber connections to the backup server, then power everything up. Obviously, this presents 15 minutes of downtime even if all goes well, but my question is +will the backup Xserve (if it is configured as a clone or replica of the primary) immendiately recognize the XRaid and be able to host the sharepoints?+
Is there a different approach we should consider? Is there a way to have the 2 Xserves configured as above, but plug one XRaid controller into each Xserve? Theoretically this might give allow better throughput if I could split demand between the two Xserves. Then if one failed, I could move the fiber connection to the other Xserve? Another issue is that I'm not sure if the back up Xserve could independently host files. This would probably mean it wasn't truly a replica anymore. Perhaps it would work if it was only an LDAP backup server?
Any suggestions or clarifications would be appreciated. Thanks.

will the backup Xserve (if it is configured as a clone or replica of the primary) immendiately recognize the XRaid and be able to host the sharepoints?
Automatically? not at all. In order to do that it would have to be already configured to share those paths, even though those paths would be empty or non-existent.
However, it wouldn't be impossible to write a script that configured the shares. That way when you connect the fiber channel, you run the script and the sharing comes up.
There might be easier paths, though, or at least faster ones. Mac OS X Server has a failover daemon that allows one machine to monitor the health of another machine and then automatically reconfigure itself to take over that machine's tasks should it fail.
In this scenario you might want to consider connecting both machines to the RAID via a fiber channel switch, but have the second machine either not mount the array, or mount it read-only (you do not want two machines writing to the same array at the same time).
Now, then the failover daemon detects the primary machine is down, it can mount (or re-mount) the array as read-write, reconfigure the network (to take over the primary machine's IP address) and start up the file sharing services.
This can all happen automatically, with minimal disruption to users, and in a lot less time than 15 minutes.

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I have 2 XRaids and 2 XServes Systems. Each XRaid have 2 Arrays 7x500GB Raid5 and 7x 750GB Raid5.
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I am trying to find out what the airflow to the rack will need to be.
Is there anyone out there that could tell me the cfm of an intel xserve and the xraid fan systems at FULL tilt?
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Hi all, first time post im hoping that you guys can lead me in the right direction with the issue that im having. Seems like I have tried everything.
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changeip - checkhostname gives?
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There's nothing in your post that implies XSAN is needed.
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I then go to Xsan Admin and to the Luns tab, but the raid is no where to be found...
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Definitely check the zoning on the fibre channel switch. In general it's a good idea to create a zone that has ONLY the computers and the storage you care about included. Which would mean if you add additional computers they can't see your SAN storage if you don't want them to.
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* Removed the client from the XSan Admin, and readded it, made sure to enter valid serial number, etc..
* Verified that all fibers are working, all link lights look good, and you can ping across the MD network.
When you use the XSan admin from either FCP08 (edit bay 08) or from the server, and you add both MD XSans to it, you see the client, and you click on the client and click either Mount (read-only) or Mount (Read/write).
It will show "Mounting..." and then it will flip back to "not mounted". The only feedback we have received so far is "ACCESS DENIED". All affinity setting are set to rwxrwxrwx (wide open), and all the volumes and workstation logins all have the same access to the volumes. I can not find any restrictive permissions anywhere.
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ANY IDEAS what is wrong with this workstation? With the setup?
I have had extreme ideas from some who have said that we need to blitz the entire client, and reinstall the operating system. I am not willing to go down that route, since each edit bay was built manually without an image (another aspect I will remedying soon). It will take sometime to rebuild this edit bay client if I that is the only solution.
The only this question I have if that is the popular opinion, is what is different from a client OS install and the existing one regarding the XSan? This are edit bays, not private workstations, and no one installs any extra software or surfs the net, etc.. They are used for ingest and editing only.
HELP!
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Hi,
You could check if it is Fibre Channel related:
from a terminal do a cvlabel -l
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When this tool does not show luns, you might have a zoning issue.
Regards
Donald

No LUNs in Xsan admin

I'm using Xsan 1.1 on OSX 10.4.7 and I added an new Xserve RAID into the mix. But the trouble is that the LUNs are not showing up in Xsan Admin (v.1.3).
`cvlabel -l` shows the two LUNs, labeled "unknown". so does `diskutil list`.
All Xserve RAIDs have the same firmware, no LUN masking is on, and all the ports on the fibre switches are in the same zone.
Disk Utility.app can see the LUNs and will let me make a software RAID combo of them , but that's what I want. What I would like is to expand two of my data-only storage pools, if they'd show up in Xsan admin.
I've looked the manuals,man pages, discussions and so forth.
Any ideas?
Thx.

I reveiwed the following documentation for adding LUNs to storage pools:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303571
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303570
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301911
And it worked. Sort of.
I shutdown all the clients, except 2 or 3 (mdc, md backup and my admin Mac). Then I unmounted the volume from last remaining clients, and I stopped the volume. Then I proceeded to backup the cfg, check the volume, and add the luns to an existing storage pool. All went well, until it failed to update the volume with the new cfg. I reverted to the old cfg and added the LUNs to a new storage pool. That worked.
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2 Xserves, 1 XRaid, no Xsan or Masked LUN - Options?

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