Need second Xserve RAID, need advice

We have 1 Xserve RAID with 14 x 400Gb Drives, It is RAID 50
we are rapidly using up the space and need to know the easiest method for adding capacity.
We want the two RAIDs to show up as a single volume, so when we buy the second Xserve RAID will it need to be the same capacity as the first i.e 14 x 400Gb drives?
Also what is the procedure for adding this second RAID, will it involve backing up the data, wiping and rebuilding both RAIDs as RAID 50. or is there a way to do this without wiping data?
Anyone who has been in this position I would be grateful of their advice

First off, ideally the arrays should be the same size. Mixing drive sizes in an array is never a good idea. Usually the RAID controller will base the array on the smallest volume in the set and just use whatever it needs from the others, leaving the rest of the space unused (and inaccessible). e.g. if you try to RAID a 500GB volume and a 750GB volume, the 750GB volume will be treated like a 500GB volume and you lose the extra 250GB.
By far the safest option is to do as you describe - backup the data, rebuild the array and restore the data.
There is one other option, though, that might work, but I'd still backup the data before trying it.
diskutil has an addToRAID option which allows the addition of an extra drive to a RAID set. I've only ever used it on RAID 1 mirrors, never on a RAID 0 stripe, so I don't know if it'll work, but it might be worth trying. You don't have anything to lose.
Note that this kind of expansion isn't really viable long-term. If you expect to do this frequently you might consider alternative options like XSAN which can add any sized volume to a virtual pool of storage, growing organically.

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

2nd Xserve RAID + Xsan = ?

So here's the situation...
There's an existing Xserve RAID shared via Xsan... Works great, except we're running out of storage space.
So we've purchased a second Xserve RAID, I've set it up in the RAID Admin and it seems to be all happy and good...
I then go to Xsan Admin and to the Luns tab, but the raid is no where to be found...
What do I need to do to make sure the new RAID can be added to the Xsan.
Thanks Much
Tommy

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.
This also means you need to broaden the zone and add 2 more ports when you add the second Xserve RAID, of course.

Xserve Raid - use it as standalone storage?

hi there!
i have a small network with some pcs (3 running winxp, 1 win2000), 2 os9 macs and 2 g5s. i need big data storage in the size of 7-10TB. can i use the Xserve Raid as standalone storage in the network, or does it need the xserve as server?
do i need soomething else apart from the Xserve Raid to setup the storage bank?
is it a good idea to connect the pcs via ethernet and the g5s via fibrelink? (because our files we are working on are very big and need to have fast access on the storage drives)
thx for ur help
manuel

The XServe RAID needs a host system. That host system doesn't need to be an XServe, or even a Mac - people are using them quite happily on Solaris servers, Linux servers and even Windows servers.
However, it does need a system that had Fiber channel.
ALL disk activity happens over the fiber channel connection. The ethernet ports are not used for file activity, only for administering and monitoring the box.
If you hook the XServe RAID to a single host via fiber channel, that host can share the volume over the network to other clients so they get indirect access. Alternatively you can use a fiber channel switch to connect multiple systems, but care needs to be taken with regards to multiple clients reading/writing the same file at the same time (which is typically why you need SAN software to manage this kind of setup).

Are long video clips harder on Xserve Raid

I am considering capturing entire 30 min. tapes instead of shorter clips. Does length of captured video clips make any difference on how hard an xserve raid needs to work?

No. None whatsoever. You can capture to an Xserve RAID as fast as it will write until it gets about 80-85% full, and then it will start to slow because of physics (track density on the inside of the spindles is less than on the outside).

Suggested methods for full backup of XServe RAID data

I know this is only peripherally related to the discussion topic, but since every other suggestion posted here is followed by the disclaimer that you should make a full backup of your data before proceeding with any major operations on your RAID arrays, I'd like to know what more experienced admins do in order to create a full backup for reasonably fast recovery in case of substantial data loss during maintenance/repair.
Our current "backup" availability is incremental optical disc archival (our data is mostly "write-once"), but this isn't entirely practical for recovery since it's over a terabyte of data. Since the connected server has a free hot-swappable SCSI drive bay as well as an interface for external SCSI devices, not to mention the fiber channel and ethernet interfaces, the options that I'd consider in order would be:
1. A handful of 150-500 Gb SCSI hard drives, rotated out of the hot-swappable bay
2. An external tape drive attached to the SCI interface (with appropriate tape size, maybe the LTO-2 with 200Gb native capacity?)
3. Some other external SCSI storage device
4. Larger optical disc archival (I hear there are technologies arriving in the near future)
5. Network-based option; remote seems impractical due to sheer size, but perhaps local?
The idea is to make a full backup (long-term solutions are superior of course) of 1-2 Tb of data on the XServe RAID before attempting major surgery. Suggestions for common, accepted, tested, efficient methods for accomplishing this would be greatly appreciated. I apologize if this thread isn't on-topic enough for some of you.
-Brian

Brian,
Tape IMO is kinda yucky (to steal a term from your average 3 year old). It's fairly slow to back up to, it's very slow to restore, and it's actually not that reliable by itself (I worked with a large enterprise customer who said their backups were successful about 70% of the time (!!!)).
That said, tape has the advantage that you can offsite it and archive it very cheaply, and the media are fairly cheap, so you can make lots of backups, so if one fails, you probably can restore the data from another tape.
Disks are more expensive initially, but end up being pretty reliable, and you get a lot more flexibility (plus, they're fast).
An emerging "best of both worlds" backup strategy is what's called disk to disk to tape, where you typically back up to another large "disk," for example a second Xserve RAID. Data is then backed up from the second disk to tape, which is taken offsite... thus tape is used for what it's best at (offsite archival). Restore can be from disk in most cases, which is 10-20x faster than restoring from tape. People use software packages like Netvault's Bakbone or Atempo's Time Navigator, which can handle the whole process, and it works quite well. The backup disks (e.g. the RAID) can be onsite, or can be at a backup site a couple KM away, attached via optical (this is preferable, for DR reasons).
For cases where a second Xserve RAID is prohibitively expensive, cheaper (and slower) RAID 5 enclosures like Wiebetech's RAIDtech can provide a large (say, 1.6 TB) RAID 5 volume, accessible over FW800 or SATA (not sure if they have a SATA-based one yet).

What to do with our Xserve RAID, moving forward - Need Advice.

We have an 3.5 TB Xserve RAID (14 drives - 250 GB each, split into two 7-drive volumes). As many others have, we've moved into more HD and tapeless workflow. The Xserver RAID was purchased really for one HD project with DVCPRO HD back in 2004 and hasn't really been used since except for backup storage.
I'd really like to move us into a SAN system, but am curious about others' perspectives on populating our Xserve RAID with 1 TB or greater drives now or get a different RAID setup. We've moved to Mac Pros, but the Xserve RAID is still dedicated to just one G5. I am doing some reading on setups such as the EVO and CalDigit, but haven't setup a SAN. It's time though.
We have three post machines - two editorial and one sound station. I could really use some insight on how to use our setup in a SAN scenario or what's the cheapest way we can get into a SAN workflow. Granted, drives are cheap these days, but it's so inefficient copying data between two machines to make sure we have a copy of the same media.
Thanks for any input folks.

+I'd really like to move us into a SAN system, but am curious about others' perspectives on populating our Xserve RAID with 1 TB or greater drives now or get a different RAID setup.+
I'll start with the fact that 750GB are the absolute max you'll be able to put into the Xserve RAID. Compatible 750 PATAs are really hard to find (and are expensive when you can find them) so that avenue makes little sense. I think you should really be thinking in terms of new hardware at this point. I know several people who run XSAN and are much happier with the Promise RAIDs they have now over the older Xserve RAIDs.
Which hardware and SAN software you should be looking at I'll leave up to someone with more modern experience in the video editing realm- I've been out of it for too many years now.
My $.02,
=Tod

Newbie lesson - xServe RAID boxes need 2 Controller modules to work well!

So I thought I'd share my experience with my xServe RAID box, because I built it from parts (via eBay) I thought I could run it with a single controller with up to 7 drives until I needed to expand it later, I had all sorts of strange problems:
- Could't build new RAID arrays
- Couldn't update firmware
- Restarting box often led to the array disappearing
- Existing array sometimes didn't show up in Disk Util.
I tried replacing cables and Fibre cards but no change until I added a second RAID controller and then suddenly everything worked great!
Thanks to everyone here for trying to help me out with my problems, the box now runs great
So the lesson here is that an xServe RAID box needs 2 controllers to function properly, with only 1 it runs in some kind of undocumented failsafe mode.

See my response to your crosspost in the Xserve RAID group.

Xserve Newbie needs advice

Hi Guys,
I own a Graphic Design studio here in sunny London Right now I am looking into backup and server solutions. As all the machines here are macs I want to look into the Xserve and Xserve RAID solution. But I do not know where to start!! Can you guys offer your help as to what solution would be best for a 4 workstation group that deal with a lot of high-res images and assests? Do I need the Xserve or can I just get Xserve RAID and plug it into one of the PowerMacs?Your advice will be very much appreciated
James
PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3ghz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hmm, I thought I already said...
You need to look at the types and sizes of files you're moving across the network - small? large? hundreds of KB a day? hundreds of GB a day?
You also need to look at when you're doing it. Do all the users download files in the morning, work on them locally, then upload them back to the server at night? or are people continually uploading and downloading files throughout the day.
Then you need to look at the workload on the machine that would act as the server.
Bearing in mind that large file transfers consume more resources on the server than small ones, and that the overhead of running a server is negligible if no one is actively using the shares you can now determine whether or not the file sharing load is going to impact the user of that machine.
For example, if that machine is used by the boss, it's not likely to be very busy therefore it may well be a viable file server.
But if all the machines are used 24/7 by high-output graphic designers you're only going to set in someone's way by slowing down their machines every time someone else pulls their project off the server.
These are the kinds of questions that only you can answer.
The other option, of course, is to do it on one machine and see how it goes. it isn't hard to switch over to a dedicated server afterwards if the load is too great, or leave the server as-is and buy a new machine for the user whose system you usurped.

Multiple Xserve config- help/advice needed...

We have just purchased a second xserve (quadcore) to go along with our current xserve (G5 dual-core). We run FTP, web(wikis, blogs, etc that use the LDAP for authentication), LDAP, Open Directory, softwareupdate, DNS, NetInstall (occasionally) and AFP services.
I would like to share the services across the two servers- using the new, more powerful machine to host the home directories, AFP, FTP, etc; and the older machine to handle web, etc. My concern is that I would like to have both use the same LDAP so that I only have to enter in users once, and so that everyone can access their files via FTP at one IP.
Is this even the best way to be thinking about implementing this? Will assigning one server as the OD master, and the other as the OD replica provide both servers with the same LDAP directory? I have clearly never done this before, and I am very excited to be able to use two servers to increase the efficiency. Thanks for any help/advice.

Hi
+Is this even the best way to be thinking about implementing this?+
Yes
+Will assigning one server as the OD master, and the other as the OD replica provide both servers with the same LDAP directory?+
Yes
I've done this myself many times. The relevant Admin Manuals do have enough information outlining what needs to be done:
http://www.apple.com/server/resources/
Steve's link is something you should definitely look at. There are some minor differences but nothing to get worried about. Both Servers have to be exactly the same OS and SSH needs to be enabled.
Tony

Newbie here...Need help for XServe RAID w/ XSAN in Vid Editing environment

We're establishing an XSAN environment for video editing work flow. We're not new to SAN technology or video editing, but we are new to Xserve RAIDs, XSAN technology, and marrying them together in a production environment.
We have an XServe RAID at 14x750GB configuration. 1 Xserve metadata server, 1 Xserve Quicktime server, and 4 editing stations (2 MacPro's, 2 G5's) that are in the fiber channel fabric. Each machine has dual channel 4GB cards.
My PLEA for help concerns any advice this community can offer on RAID configuration, and XSAN configuration to achieve maximum performance. Settings, configurations, etc.
XServe, XServe RAID, XSAN, MacPro, G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Were on the same boat but more like a life jacket
We only need the Fibre for back-up.
We have a single Avid Adrenaline on MacPro.
One Xserve that basically acts as a server for fonts, audioclips, photocatalog and minor back-up via gigabit ethernet.
Three G5s/MacPro/PC with 2/4GB FC installed.
One 10.5 TB Xserve RAID.
Last but not least a QLogic 1400 SAN box for Fibre.
Nothing is installed yet as were waiting on our Apple rep for some answers with Xsan.
Were not serving anything as far as external network and everything stays within the confines of our studio.
My question is that are we missing anything other than maybe getting more ports on the SAN.
We can live with a few workstations in the fabric.
Thanks in advance
XServe Mac OS X (10.4.6) OSX Server

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.

Need to find Xserve RAID version

This is a pretty simple question, I know, but we are having trouble finding out what version of Xserve RAID we have here. It was seemingly purchased in late 2005 or early 2006, and we have only been using one side of the RAID and now want to populate the other with as much space as it will allow. I found a compatibility list at this link (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1219), but we are not sure what column our equipment falls under.

There are several threads discussing which drives work out of the box - search the forums for the multiple threads about which drives work. The Seagate ST3750640A were the well documented 750s of choice but Seagate stopped making them a while (year and half?) ago and the competition for the remaining ones got fierce and the prices when very high if you could find them.
Last I heard drives were still available through Apple service but I have no idea what the requirements are - eg Do they need to be replacement drives? - or prices.
Sadly the death of PATA as a technology has severely hampered long term viability of the Xserve RAID. If you do find replacement drives be sure to balance the cost against the cost of a more modern system.
Sorry - wish I had better news,
=Tod

Need to expand Original Xserve Raid

Greetings
since my model M9721LL/A is no longer available. What should I do about expanding my current system?
Will the new VTrak system work with my current array ? or am I going to have to frog it all out ?
-j

I'm not sure what you're asking.
The XServe RAID isn't expandable past 14 drives, so if you were looking to add another array it would appear as a separate entity (e.g. new volumes on your desktop).
Sure, you could create a software RAID (e.g. RAID 0) that combined the old and the new array, but you can do that anyway - it doesn't require anything specific about the XServe RAID. Therefore you could combine a Promise RAID and an XServe RAID quite easily.

Xserve Raid Crash Course Help Needed

We received two Xserve Raids loaded with 250 gig hard drives, fiber Channel Cards, all cables etc. We are a very small animation company. Is there any manuals or web pages to help us get started and learn how to set this equipment up? Apple manuals do not tell much, Thanks

Hi
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/XserveRAID_UserGuide.PDF
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2760?viewlocale=en_US
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2758?viewlocale=en_US
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=51795
http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/RAIDAdmin1.2121406.pdf
http://www.apple.com/support/xserveraid/
I can only speak for myself but all of the above is what I've used and I've not had too many problems. It's advisable to purchase a UPS if you haven't already got one.
The host machine does not have to be an XServe.
Tony

Need second Xserve RAID, need advice

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