Initial Xserve RAID configuration

Can someone clarify the statement "If no DHCP
server is available, the system will automatically use a link local address of 169.254.x.x.". What exactly determines the value of "x"?

It's random, per the Zeroconf specification (once it's chosen, the server will issue an ARP to ensure it doesn't conflict with another device in the subnet). Don't worry, the default subnet mask is 255.255.0.0, so ANY address in there should be visible via Bonjour.

Similar Messages

Two Xserve and Xserve RAID configuration advice

I'm configuring a brand new set-up and I'm looking for input in RAID configuration.
Basically I have two essentially identical Xserves: 2.3x2, 80x2, 500 and a fully loaded XRAID running 6 drive RAID 5 with a hot spare on each side all running through a fibre channel switch. One Xserve is slated to be a pure fileserver and the primary XRAID access box and the other will handle web/email/database serving etc.
I'm going to use the first 80 as a system drive (mirrored to the other 80 for redundancy) and I wanted to carve out about a 500gig partition of one of the RAIDs for the webmail server to use as its data drive so it would have the RAID 5 protection. Unfortunately to properly get this configuration I think I'd need to heavily slice one of the RAIDs and then use LUN masking to hide the drives from the respective machines. I guess I could then use Disk Utility to to concatenate the remaining slices back into a single volume - but this seems like adding layers of complexity to what seems like it should be a simple task.
Another thought I had was to re-create the RAID of one side as a 5 disk array, use the extra 500 gig drive as a mirroring drive for the internal Xserve 500 and while I couldn't swap them out directly I could replace a 500 (if it went bad) and use the mirror to bring it back to an immediate pre-failure state relatively quickly.
At this point I'd settle for mirroring one Xserve 500 to the other Xserve 500 which would give me a direct swap-out replacement - but I don't know if that's even technically possible. It has gotten complicated enough that I'm considering simply using the internal 500 as the data drive and depending on heavy back-ups for protection.
I'm looking for any advice, thoughts or technical tips eveyone might have to offer.
TIA,
=Tod

I must not have explained what I want to do clearly enough. The complication is that I want Xserve 1 to see Array 1 and 80% of Array 2 and Xserve 2 to see the remaining 20% of Array 2, but neither must be able to see the same section at the same time or very bad things can happen.
The only way I'm aware of to do this is to slice all of Array 2 into 20% slices and use LUN masking to make 4 slices visible to Xserve 1 and the 5th slice visible only to Xserve 2. I could partition Array 2 into 80% and 20% partitions and then unmount the 80 partition from the Xserve 2 and unmount the 20 from the Xserve 1 using disk utility. But the potential for something bad happening down the road exists unless I can find a way to suppress volumes from mounting. (I saw this hack: http://www.macgeekery.com/gspot/2005-12/hiding_partitions but need to investigate much further before actually trying it.)
Also the back-up unit is tied into the switch and therefore everything needs to run through the switch.
Thanks,
=Tod

XServe and XServe Raid Configuration

Hello Community,
I have taken over IT for a photography company. We deal with huge amount of data (3 GB files) on a daily basis. We are running a FMP database too.
We are trying to upgrade some of the computers to Snow Leopard since we are running old software (hopefully Lion by the end of the year). We have to upgrade in stages since we are still running G5 servers with Tiger and FMP 6.
We have:
* G5 Server and 1 Node
* Intel Server (2008) and Intel Server (2009) (NEW)
* 3 Xserve RAID (1-NEW)
Just found out that Xserve RAID only uses Ethernet for admin and that the extra port is redundant. This frees up ports on our switch since we have been plugging them all in on the same network.
Currently
* Server 1 plugs into RAID 1 using fiber cable (both ports) also runs FMP server and our FTP
* Node plugs into RAID 2 using fiber cable (both ports)
NEW
* Intel server 1 plugs into RAID 3 using fiber cable (both ports) (Not turned on yet)
We know XServe RAID only supports 2Gb/s fiber channel. Is that 1Gb/s per cable?
Does anyone know of a better way of configuring this server layout?

To join, or bond your ethernet ports, you need to delete your separate network interfaces in System Preference and create a new link aggregate interface. This article is for 10.6 but the theory is the same in other versions of Mac OS X and Server:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.6/en/asa7873dc0.html
You will need to configure your switch with a LACP port bond as well. As dawendt has mentioned - if your network is based on 10/100 switches then making a 2Gbps link aggregate on your XServe won't help.

Xserve raid configuration

All,
I have 10-12 users for file sharing on an open directory PowerMac G4 and jsp websites on an Xserve G5. I want to use RAID for storing the home directories as well as other shared folders and quickime movies that need to be accessed by the Xserve G5. Do I need to have Xsan? What for? Will I also need another machine as a Meta Data Controller?
Thanks!

To join, or bond your ethernet ports, you need to delete your separate network interfaces in System Preference and create a new link aggregate interface. This article is for 10.6 but the theory is the same in other versions of Mac OS X and Server:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.6/en/asa7873dc0.html
You will need to configure your switch with a LACP port bond as well. As dawendt has mentioned - if your network is based on 10/100 switches then making a 2Gbps link aggregate on your XServe won't help.

Mac Pro + XServer RAID + FCP2 + Configuration

Hello all. This is my first post here.
I will soon buy a MacPro por video editing on Final Cut Pro 2 and I was wondering if you could help sort out if the configuration I've chosen is the best.
I'll show you the configurations I thought first:
*Mac Pro*
- Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
- 4GB (4 x 1GB)
- Mac Pro RAID Card
- 2 x 500gb HDD
- ATI Radeon X1900 XT
- 20" Apple Cinema Display + 23" Apple Cinema HD Display
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
*XServer RAID*
- 2000GB ADM (4x500GB Ultra ATA)
- Cache Battery Back-up Modules
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
My idea:
A) The MAC Pro I'll be used for 3D rendering and video editing. I'll configure the 2x500GB with RAID1 (mirroring) for a fail safe env, leaving my with 500GB of available space
B) XServer RAID will be connected directly to the Mac Pro (for now) via the fiber optic cards and we'll provided additional storage.
C) For projects stored on the XServer RAID (videos for example) I must be able to access and edit directly with FCP2 without having to pass it to the Mac Pro
D) I was thinking of using RAID5 for XServer RAID configuration leaving me with 2.64 x 500GB (as described on support faqs) = 1.3 TB of disk space with a reasonable fail safe environment (RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and offers a good recovery rate).
OK. My questions:
1) Is my MacPro config enough for FCP2 + 3D Rendering ?
2) Can I use the XServer RAID directly with Mac Pro or do I need aditional software / hardware?
3) Can I connect the fiber optic from one board to the other without using the router? (on google the answers I found were very vague...)
4) Is the RAID5 the best choice (in terms of performance vs data recovery) for video editing. The RAID5 specs states that random writes to disk are slower that other RAID configs. Is RAID 50 (5+0) a better choice?
5) I opted for the 4 HDD config on XServer but I could change to a 7 HDD config for a similar total space.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I can't find anywhere suitable information about this questions.
Hope to hear from you.
Thanks in advance!

We have a ton of Xserve's and Xserve RAID's at my work. As of right now they're all directly connected to our servers with Fibre Channel cables (NOT fiber optic, totally different animal.) We finally just bought our first Fibre Channel switch to hookup five 10.5TB RAIDS and a huge tape loader for backups. The RAID's work perfectly when directly connected and are very fast. The only reason that you would need a Fibre Channel switch is if you want multiple machines to be able to access the array without using network shares.
I really don't think that just four drives will give you the performance that you're looking for. In order to get good performance out of a RAID5 you NEED as many spindles as you can get. If you're stuck to a budget if would probably go to smaller drives but get more of them. I think you've already discovered this but if you want to do a RAID5+0, you'll need to populate drives on both sides of the RAID as they are physically seperated.
As far as I know, you can only get Xserve RAID Drive Modules from Apple as they do some pretty intensive testing on every drive before they ship. You can't even buy empty modules, you can buy blanks but they don't include the required electronics.

PT8 Neo SATA Raid Configuration Utility

I recently upgraded my system which was running a AMD athlon 1.2GHZ processor and only 128mb SDRAM. The system was stable and running windows XP home edition.
I upgraded to the PT8 Neo motherboard which supports SATA hard drives. I was expecting a dramatic increase when I upgraded my system to the new P4 800mhz FSB 3.0GB processor and 512MB DDR 400mhz ram.
I was still using my WD 60GB EIDE Hard Drive when I upgraded the Motherboard, Ram, & Processor. The upgrade went smoothly and system worked without glitches.
Unsatisfied with the increase in performance, I also purchased a Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000 RPM hard drive using the SATA interface cable.
I have updated the bios of the motherboard and updated the driver for the SATA raid controller using Live Bios Update 3.
I am having 2 problems:
Problem 1. When I enter the bios for the SATA Raid configuration utility after the initial post by pressing , none of the selections are available. I move my arrows down but nothing highlights and I can't select anything in the configuration utility except ESC key to exit.
The SATA controller is enabled in the BIOS.
The initial SATA Raid Configuration displayed immediately after the post, does show the hard drive.
I want to be able to boot from the new WD Raptor Hard Drive and transfer all the existing files from the IDE Drive to the SATA drive, but I can't seem to get the drive to initialize, format, fdisk, etc.
Problem 2. Windows XP doesn't have enough resources available to activate the VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller in Device Manager. It shows a Yellow ! and returns a code 12 (This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use). I have tried disabling several items in the bios including LAN support, On board Sound but nothing seems to work.
Keep in mind, I have downloaded the latest bios, latest drivers, etc.
The rest of the components on my machine are as follows:
1. Custom Built Computer (Non-Branded)
2. 60GB Western Digital 7200 RPM IDE Hard Drive on IDE0 (Master)
3. DVD Rom on IDE0 (Slave)
4. MSI 52x32x52x CDRW on IDE1 (Master)
5. Zip 100 IDE Drive (Slave)
6. Floppy Drive
7. Pentium 4 3.0GZ 800mhz FSB
8. 512mb DDR 400mhz Memory
9. ATI All-In-Wonder PCI Video Card
10. SIIG Firewire controller
I have already tried removing the SIIG firewire controller thinking that it was getting in the way of available resources. That did not work.
I have invested alot of money on this system, I wanted the best and have always used MSI motherboards because of their stability and reliability.
Please help as soon as possible.
Thanks

first off you are only using one SATA so no option are avalible in Raid Bios
in order to install windows the safe way detach your 60ata hrad drive plug in the raptor and install windows then Press F6 at the begining the you will have to the SATA diskett in the floppy drive in stall SATA windows drivers continue with install.
once you are fished Windows, drivers then shut down and plug in your ATA hard drive turn on your PC enter the bios navagate to the Advanceed BIOS Features/Boot Sequency selected your SATA raid drive as First boot then CD roms as second. then your done boot in to windows

Configure Xserve RAID as a single RAID 5 array?

We just picked up a used Xserve RAID with 14x750GB drives, and we want to configure the entire unit as a single RAID5 array. RAID Utility will let us configure each side as a separate array, but not both sides in a single array. Is this not possible or are we just missing something simple?

No, each side of the RAID is logically separate so while you can create a RAID 5 on either side there is no way to create a single RAID5 of the unit. You can create a RAID 50 and make the 2 RAID5s into a single volume software RAID 0 by using Disk Utility to join the two 5s into a single volume but that's as close as it comes.
HTH,
=Tod

How to configure the monitoring computer to see the Xserve Raid

Finally I got My Xserve RAID.
I mounted It using disk utility as a single big disk.
But i don't know how to use RAID Admin since no List of System on subnet is present.
How do i change these setting on the monitoring computer?
I can write to the Xserve and i can read from it but I cannot use RAID Admin.
The fibre Channel utility is working well, do I have to change the setting of the PCI card?
I'd like to leave It as a single 2.7 Tb disk RAID 5, but sliced in smaller disk (Lun ?)
Please Help.
Thank you in advance
umberto

Now IT is Buidilng the Raid 5 across all the 7 disk. I unmount it from the desktop and shut It down via Raid Admin
Building a RAID 5 array takes hours. You can't shut the RAID down while it's doing this, otherwise you will lose the array settings.
I removed the older system and I added a new one that It has a different IP.
Once you connect with RAID Admin you should change the XServe RAID's configuration so that it has an IP address you can remember. If you leave it set to DHCP then it will probably change addresses every time you start it up.

2x 10.5.2 xServe + raid backup solutions - Suggestions please!

Hello,
I'll give a brief overview of what I'm rolling out. *Limited budget* So keep that in mind
Basically I'm just looking for suggestions on backup solutions for this particular setup. I have been hearing mixed reviews of most backup solutions under 10.5.x... (In 10.4.x server I was relatively confident with Retrospect and had performed restores before).
--2 xServes, One web server, one for local services like mail, OD, AFP, Cal, etc. each has 2x 80gb drive (boot volume + mirror). Advanced server config.
--1x raid configured as raid6 with 4TB useable after formatting and parity. Data (user directory, mail store, calendar, web sites and database, etc) will be on the raid volumes, the 80 gb drives in xserves are only for OS and log files.
--All clients are using MacBook Pro's and most users have minimal data. Most data will be mail and quicktime videos (compressed for web, originals on mini dv tapes).
--MacBook Pro's already live, current server is SBS 2003 and it handles backups via Retrospect.
--Backups will have to be D2D, tape is not an option in this case. This means two external drives for backup (one on site and one off site, cycle on friday). Probably 2TB FW800 for each drive as entire raid isn't being backed up, some of it is scratch storage so 2 TB is plenty for now).
Naturally I want to use time machine but I am hearing of horror stories using time machine to backup advanced server in 10.5. Also seeing issues with cyrus (mail) and time machine (I will be running mail services). In addition, I don't think I could do any sort of cycle with the two external drives using time machine? The lack of configurability in time machine worries me. And finally, I don't know how time machine does with active database' (Ie: sql database for web server, I just don't know if time machine will cause problems when trying to back live database up). If someone has experience with time machine in a similar setup I'd love to hear your thoughts / suggestions.
Alternatively there is retrospect. We already own a license and I am familiar with administering it on 10.4.x. How reliable is it for backing up 10.5.2 clients and 10.5.2 server? Including active databses (Again the web server sql databases, etc? Kind of a pain restoring anything from retrospect (Especially entire server if / when it has to be done) but it was tried and true for me in 10.4.x server installations.
These MacBook pro's will also likely become mobile homes once all is said and done (But currently are not as the xServes are not installed yet). Time machine + mobile home directory seems like a lot of data being backed up that is probably redundant?
To top it all off, until new office is ready (All gigabit when that happens in ~1 year) network is as follows:
Servers have 100 mbit full duplex connection
Clients have 10mbit half duplex (This is where time machine really frightens me with hourly client backup).
Considering above, I can either:
A: Run proactive backup script from retrospect for all clients and then nightly backup for select raid volume contents + server boot volumes.
B: Not backup clients directly via retrospect and only backup contents of the raid volume (Which is where the mobile homes will be stored). Mobile home sync would be set to occur on login / logout only (Considering 10mbit client connections, I don't want active or user initiated sync heh).
Thoughts / suggestions? Thanks in advance, any suggestions are much appreciated. Hardware is set in stone but backup solution is not so most aspects of backup solution can be changed =)

First of all, thanks for your reply!
Well I should clarify in that I wasn't going to operate "network" homes and that they were just going to be the mobile homes with sync only occurring at login / logout. Even then, I think I'd run in to issues with the 10base-T for the client systems. The servers are on 100base-T full duplex. Currently All of the Windows systems do the same and logging in / out isn't too terrible but I couldn't imagine actually running the home directories off the server on 10base-T.
Do you still think mobile homes would be too much with just the login / logout sync? If so, I'll simply avoid this option until we get our new building and gigabit networking all around in the next year.
You're correct in that all clients will be running 10.5.2.
If I am not running mobile homes, I suppose the easiest way then is to in fact backup clients via time machine to the raid volume and then backup the entire raid volume (Hence all of our sites, compressed video files and databases to a large external drive (Maybe I'll get a couple 3 or 4 TB raid drives instead... lol). Naturaly I'd select the scratch disk directories and tell time machine to ignore them. Only issue there being that I may run in to space concerns like you say. If it becomes a huge problem and apple still hasn't made TM more configurable by then, I could use the time machine editor app or modify the intervals myself. I'd rather not and will only do this if it becomes an issue
From what I can gather, time machine is not making complete duplicates of an active database (MS Entourage in this case) and is only backing up the changes. I was worried about how it handled this and whether it would detect a change and just backup the entire database again (Which would be a nightmare if it did this for our web directories as they have active databases running).
Do you know of time machine will wreak havoc with active databases (Like the ones our websites use, a couple small sql databases and one larger one).
I think time machine would work well with the method you suggested. So I can just set it to backup all clients to the raid volume and then setup time machine to backup the raid volume to the external disk? For my off site... I suppose I could just bring in the second identical external drive every Friday and copy the time machine backup database from the on site backup drive on to it and then get it out of there each evening.
As for backing up the servers themselves, they will not be storing much of anything and most everything will be pointed to the raid volume (Hence the 80GB drives). Because of this, the data on the servers themselves will not change THAT much compared to the raid volume which will change drastically every day so full backups of the servers is fine. Perhaps just setting psyncX (assuming it works in 10.5) to backup the 80GB boot volume for each server would be best? I could just set psyncX to backup each server boot volume to the same external drive the raid volume is backing up to and then each friday just copy the data from the on site drive to the external, killing two birds with one stone. (Tape would make this all easier but it isn't gonna happen in this case sigh).
I worry about the cyrus / mail issues I'm reading about on servers running time machine though.

Xserve raid brocade switch, do I need xsan for multiple xserve raid with one gbic hba?

So I have 3 xserve raids. I would like to mount all 6 volumes on a single server with a 2 port hba. I have a brocade silkworm 3200, however the raid volumes will not mount. The only thing I can think of is do i need xsan to accomplish this? Initially I gathered it would be like additional resources on a normally data switch bu that does not seem to be the case.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

No, you don't need XSAN for this. XSAN is for connecting one or more RAID units to more than one host. Since you only have one host, XSAN isn't an issue.
You may need to look more closely at the switch configuration. Mac OS X doesn't support multipath (at least last time I checked), so you'll need to make sure that you're either using just one link from the server, or that you've setup zoning in the switch so that each link from the server sees a subset of the RAID volumes (e.g. three RAID volumes mapped to each link to the server).
You may also need to check the RAID configurations to make sure you're not using LUN masking (a feature of earlier firmware versions).
One test here would be to connect the server directly to each RAID controller in turn and see if you see the appropriate volumes. The chances are you do, which points back to the switch configuration being the issue.

Basic Xserve Raid Set Up Help

Please excuse the newbie question I have looked on the forum and cant quite find the info I need.
Can someone give me a step by step guide to setting up an Xserve raid please.
We have 2 G5s each running Final Cut Pro. We have just purchased a 7TB Xserve raid from Apple Refurb.
We would like a very simple set up where each G5 uses half of the Xserve. We do not have a fibre switch at this point - we do not need to share media however we will add this later.
So our initial requirement is a very basic 2xG5 each with a single fibre connection to each half of the Xserve. Sounds easy but . . .
We connected one of the G5s to both fibre ports in order to just set up the drives, once done we will simply disconnect one fibre cable and connect to the other G5.
We thought that the Xserve would be pre-configured to raid 5, which is what we would like to use. However upon connection there was a message that the drives were not readable and needed to be initialised. (the standard apple message if drive is not formatted)
We ignored this message and went to the drive utility to see if we could mount the drives and although it sees two drives, (each just under 3TB) as you would expect, it seems they are not mountable. (Since the drive utility saw 2 drives I assume that they are preconfigured to a raid)
So I looked in the raid utility and the only option is to 'add system'. If I click this I get a dialogue box asking for address and password. I understand the 'private' 'public' password and used the host computers IP address as there is no network.
I thought that this would take us through to the set up that allows you to create arrays and raid types etc.
So I am a bit stuck.
If the drives are preconfigured to raid 5 how can I mount them ? as that would be the simple config we need.
Or do I need to start from scratch ? Hence my request for a step by step guide.
best wishes and thanks for your help in advance
Neil

I can't speak to exactly how the Xserve RAID comes from refurb but in general there are two steps to using the RAID.
1) Create the RAIDs on the machines. (This takes some 30+ hours.)
2) Format the new volumes. (This takes 2 minutes.)
Assuming the RAID came configured RAID 5 on each side and *you didn't shuffle the drive order* then they should still be configured and available that way. Apple doesn't assume that you are going to use the Xserve RAID with HFS+ formatting - they don't even assume you're going to use it with a Mac so I think the volumes are probably unformatted. My guess is that you are between steps 1 and 2 and you will need to choose the volumes in Disk Utility and format them to HFS+ (but probably not journalled if you are doing video work) and partition them.
You can get and set the actual RAID information using the Java tool RAID Admin.
You can (and should) connect to one of the ethernet ports on RAID unit, but the computer you connect will need to be in the same IP range (probably 169.254..) to get to the first time and run RAID Admin. This is how you can set-up, tweak and check the status of your RAID through software. This is also where you can set the IP of the RAID to be more in-line with your computers local network if you're using something different.
HTH,
=Tod

Xserve RAID Admin Tool 1.5.1 not quite working

I have an Xserve RAID that's currently at firmware 1.3.2/1.26a according to Xserve RAID Admin Tool 1.5.1. However, when I try to upgrade the firmware to 1.5.1 via the RAID Admin Tool 1.5.1, it just doesn't do anything--it accepts the .xfb file and then...nothing. Quitting out of the the Admin Tool and restarting still shows the firmware at 1.3.2/1.26a. Same thing if I shut down and restart the Xserve RAID from the RAID Admin tool. Any tips? There's nothing stored on the RAID system yet (the array hasn't even been created--it's a blank system) and nothing is attached to it either (I've just plugged in the ethernet links to format it first before I start attaching an Xserve G5 to it). Also, even though the lower controller is showing green and I have an ethernet cable plugged into it, I can't get any info out of it nor can I configure it with an IP address. Only the top controller seems to allow some configuration such as IP address.

Okay, I've solved the problem.
Basically, the issue was that the lower controller wasn't seated right despite it showing a green light in RAID Admin. When I went to visually inspect it, I noticed that despite what RAID Admin 1.5.1 claimed, its light wasn't even on, let alone green. And since the lower controller handles slots 8-14 of an Xserve RAID and my slots 8-14 are totally unpopulated (empty) at the moment, it was never noticed. Now that I've reseated the lower controller, everything is visually showing green across the board and the firmware upgrade is proceeding as expected and it has upgraded the firmware from 1.3.2/1.26a to 1.5.1/1.5.1c complete with autorestart of both upper and lower controller modules.
Basic lesson learned: RAID Admin lies. If possible, visually inspect the box itself!
Thanks to all who responded.

Switching to Xserver/Xserve RAID

Hi boys and girls...
I was looking for a little assistance in switching over to Xserve. Let me give you some background info first.
Were a small studio in London, with only 11 people in-house and the majority working externally whether free-lance, from home or from another country etc. Were mostly Mac based, though 4 machines are those little beige pc things all running XP 2002. At the minute its 1 G5 and a collection of G4 tower's and G4 power book's, G4 cube's and so on. Were all connected to a G4 server running Mac OS X Server 10.2.8 with a very small dual 120GB HD raid thing running Retrospect.
Our problem is, this system was set up some time ago and were starting to outgrow it.
What were looking for is a way to backup all of our current work and archive all of our old work. Most users like to work directly off the server as theres so much file sharing between the macs and pc's, directly updating files so there isnt any duplication etc.
First question, is it possible (and a good/bad idea ?) to have 10-15 users working directly from a Mac server, that stores the archived work for users to reference and also current work which is backed up to tape and duplicated (as we currently have) to another HD?
Secondly, Is the ideal way to be running things? Is there a more efficent way?
Finally, what kind of spec should we be looking at? There's such a huge difference between servers, while were willing to invest, we dont want to go crazy (maybe a little) on costs.
I look forward to your responses and thank you in advance
Marcus

There are certainly some drawbacks with your current setup that mean you should make some changes.
In general, there's nothing wrong with working with files directly off the server, however, 10.2.8 has some issues with multiple users accessing the same files at the same time, so you should look to move to 10.4 ASAP to address that issue, regardless of any other changes you make.
I am assuming that the remote users don't work this way - uploading/download files as appropriate - it would be painful to work off the server remotely.
The only real disadvantage with working with files directly off the server is that if a file is changed erroneously and saved, there's no easy backup.
If the file was copied to the local drive and saved, it's easy to roll back to the previous version by re-copying it from the server, but if that change is saved directly to the server the only rollback involves pulling out Retrospect.
The other change that would make a difference is installing a gigabit switch and connecting the server to it. Even if all the host systems don't have gigabit ethernet, the extra bandwidth to the server will definitely help.
As for a new server, 10-15 file sharing users are not likely to stress the server, do you don't need a top-of-the-line configuration.
You should first decide how much disk space you need. With 500GB drives, the XServe can handle up to 1.5TB on its own, without any additional XServe RAID. However, you might want to consider RAID (using RAID you're limited to 1TB of RAID 5 storage, or 500GB of mirrored storage in the box).
In addition to your current data usage, consider using an online disk backup where multiple copies of the data is stored on the server itself before (or in addition to) backing up to tape.
While tapes offer several long-term archive advantages, they really don't work so well for quick restores of a file or two. Having a snapshot of the last couple of days data online makes it trivial to step back a day or so without having to resort to tapes. This may mean, though, that your 100GB of data requires 200 or 300GB of disk space.
If you do decide than an XServe RAID is the right solution, consider getting it right-sized from the get-go rather than buying it small (e.g. 4 drives) and adding later. While it can be done, adding drives to an existing array is a PITA.
If you do opt for an XServe RAID, and you don't currently have any rack-mounted equipment, consider using a PowerMac G5 as your server rather than an XServe. While similar in terms of performance, the PowerMac can work out cheaper depending on configuration.

Xserve RAID lost RAID 5 array on right/bottom controller

I cleanly shut down an Xserve G5 with an Xserve RAID attached and then powered off the Xserve RAID this morning. I replaced a failing memory module in the Xserve and moved the rack 6". I then powered on the Xserve RAID, waited for a couple minutes until it was fully booted, and then booted the Xserve. When it came up, my RAID 50 volume failed to mount. Upon further investigation, it appears that the RAID 5 array on the right hand disks is "gone". In RAID Admin (Disks and Drives tab), the left side array is visible, but all disks on the right side list status as "OK" and Type: as "Spare".
Configuration: Xserve RAID with 14 250 GB disks. Each side was configured with 6 disks in a RAID 5 array and one spare. These were striped using Software RAID on the Xserve into RAID 50 and mounted as a single volume. The RAID firmware is currently 1.5 and the Xserve is running OS X Server 10.4.3.
To summarize today's activities: under Apple's guidance (as this entire system is covered under a Premium Support contract), I swapped the (bottom) controller for the right side, updated firmware (from v1.3/1.20a to 1.5/1.50), multiple resets of both controllers, repeated forced firmware updates, etc.
Also, I swapped the left set of disks for the right set, and the array from the left set now shows up on the right side, and the missing array from the right is still missing with the disks on the left side. I replaced the disks to their original positions with the same results.
RAID Admin's Utility "Recognize Array" will not perform any operations on the rigth side disks and Apple tells me that there's nothing further that I can do with it.
None of this has solved the problem or substantially changed the issue, and the disks on the right side are still missing their associated array. Apple is unable/unwilling to offer any further help except to refer me to 3rd party data recovery services.
Does anyone have any suggestion at all that might possibly recover the missing array? Is anyone aware of any tools that I might use to recreate the RAID 5 array on the right controller? I was hoping that there might exist some low-level tools with which the disks could be recreated into an array by hand? Are there any commercial products that would work on this? Any other ideas?
Many thanks for any suggestions.
- Martin
Xserve RAID (14 250GB disks) on Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Not sure why you swapped the controllers back and forth
William, I don't think I was clear on this. I swapped the controller with a new controller that I had in a spare parts kit. This was at Apple's request.
really, RAID is not a backup...
I'm well aware, but despite my incessant warnings, users will become lulled in to a false sense of security when something "just works" for a very long time. This array wasn't intended to store valuable data that couldn't be lost, but...
It may be possible for Apple to re-create the RAID set, did you ask AppleCare about the possibility?
Apple has told me more than once that there's nothing else that they can do for me...and yet I keep calling back.
I was surprised that this array was lost when there were absolutely no prior signs of a problem and the system was merely shutdown and restarted cleanly. I'm more surprised and quite disappointed to learn that Apple will do nothing else for me (under a Premium Support contract) to attempt to repair a damaged array. When I asked questions about where the RAID information is stored, I received the answers: "I can't tell you that" and "Apple doesn't release that information". I did not get the feeling that they were working with me, but rather holding my hand while they walked me through published documentation.
I expected that there would be utilities (analagous to filesystem repair utilities) such as RAID Admin's "Recognize Array" that could help repair and recover damaged array data. I think that the lesson that I've leanred today is that I was naive to have expected such a thing without actually having investigated it ahead of time.
Anyway, thanks for your input, William.

VM Server installer does not recognize RAID configuration in Intel ESRT2

Hello,
I'm having a big issue here trying to deploy my third Oracle VM Server.
I have:
- A Intel Server Board S3420GPLC
- A Intel Xeon X3440 processor
- 16GB DDR3 ECC Memory
- Six 1TB Hard Drives
What I'm trying to do:
- Create a RAID array using Intel ESRT2 (Embedded Server RAID Technology II) using all the discs (done)
- Install Oracle VM Server into the array
- Install some VMs....
The problems:
- When I boot the VM Server installer from USB stick I got an error saying that there is not enought memory. This issue is solved by typing "linux mem=15GB"
- I got a screen per disk warning me about that the discs need to be initialized and all the data will be lost
- When I go to the disk partitioning screen all the disks are listed separated, the installer simply don't recognize the RAID configured before.
What I already tryied:
- Change the RAID controller from ESRT2 to Intel Matrix
-> Didn't solve.
- Create a Driver Disk with the disk images supplied by Intel here
-> I launch the installer using "linux mem=15GB noprobe=ata1 noprobe=ata2 ....". When Im asked by the installer to load the drivers it doesn't recognize the disk, so i couldn't load the drivers.
Now, the questions:
- Is there another driver I can use do make the vm server installer recognize the RAId configured?
- Is there a better way to setup this server, considering that it needs to be "self contanied" (store and run vms)?
Edited by: xyp on 14/10/2010 11:37

So...
- I have installed VM Server into ordinary linux partitions on the first disk.
- I have created a big partition in the first disc with the space not used for the VM Server
- I have created five equal partitions on the other discs
- I have configured software raid 10 using mdadm
Now the problem seems to be solved, i have a storage repository with almost 3TB and can deploy my VMs.
Unfortunatelly only my windows 2008 r2 hardware virtualized vm is working, the linux paravitualized guests not. but this new issue will be a subject for another topic.

Initial Xserve RAID configuration

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for