RAID 0 or JBOD?

Hi,
I have 2 250Gb internal SATA disks on my macPro and I want my system to see them as one disk... Is it better to choose RAID0 or JBOD?
What's the difference... And what about the risks? (e.g. Is it more dangerous a single 500Gb Drive or 2 striped disks?)
My typical use is DV Video and Motion Graphics and I ususally make backups twoce a week...
Thanks

A JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) takes multiple drives and simply treats them as if they were one large (additive) device. You can use drives of different sizes and speeds. The overall throughput is determined by the slowest drive in the set.
RAIDs (Redundant Array of Inexpensive [or Independent] Disks)
A "Striped" RAID consists of mutliple drives or multiple volumes on multiple drives that are of equal size. If you combine two drives of unequal size the RAID's size will be determined by the smallest drive. For example, if you combine a 500 GB drive with a 250 GB drive in a two-drive striped RAID the total size of the RAID will be 500 GBs (250 GBs of the larger drive combined with the smaller drive.) A striped RAID actually writes a fraction of the data to each drive. This results in a multiple effect on throughput. A four drive striped RAID may actually be close to four times faster than the slowest drive in the set.
Striped RAIDs provide no data redundancy. If one of the drives in the RAID becomes damaged it's possible to lose all the data on the RAID. Hence, backup is essential to provide data redundancy.
A "Mirrored" RAID combines two drives or volumes of equal size. Data written to one drive is instantaneously "mirrored" on the second drive. This type of RAID is slower than a single drive (data must be written twice) but provides data redundancy. Of course any data corruption on one of the drives will be instantly mirrored on the other drive.
In an enterprise or large server setting a striped RAID may be configured to provide large amounts of fast access storage. A second striped RAID of equal configuration would then be used to act as a mirror providing data redundancy.
For most small home and business uses there's little need for RAIDs unless you have unusually large data storage requirements. RAIDs should not be used as startup volumes.
For more on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundantarray_of_independentdisks.
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Similar Messages

Need key to change RAID to JBOD in bios on Qosmio G30

dear,
When I try to change the RAID0 to JBOD it ask me a key which is written in Manuals. But i can't find this key.
Can any one help me
thanks

abaidullah,
I have personally tried it via the F6 key and without touching the BIOS, and it worked fine for me with the Win-XP PRO installation.
One important detail is that it worked only when I provided it the driver files at the root folder of the diskette (aka, A:\ directory), while it didn't worked at all when I provided them within subfolders as they came after extracting the related downloaded zip-file!
Now, I realise that you need to install a Windows Server due to your need to run Oracle and some Oracle-based ERP software.
I haven't tried that, but my wild guess is that the raid driver should work via the F6 key with the Windows Server(s) as well. I might be wrong however, that was only my wild guess.
And another wild guess of mine is that you will probably face more issues with the rest drivers, after you install the Windows Server.
Especially with the Windows Server 2003, while you will might be more lucky with the Windows Server 2000.
Best of luck to you,
Y

Mixing JBOD and Raid 5

Has anyone set up Raid 5 & JBOD volumes on XServe RAID? We have a Raid 5 volume on one controller and would like to set up JBOD on the second controller so that we can fill these disks with backups to the Raid 5 data and take them offsite for disaster recovery. So I have several questions:
1. Can you have Raid 5 & JBOD on the same XServe RAID?
2. If they can be on separate controllers can then also be on the same controller?
3. Is there any problem or special procedure for ejecting these JBOD drives so we can take them offsite?
4. If we have 3 drives to use as JBOD for backup, should we have each one formatted as its own JBOD unit and put them in one at a time for effective offsite backup? Could we put them all in at once and fill them each at a time and remove as they fill? Should they be one volume or three?
Thanks for any thoughts on this. The plan is to use these drives for backup now and down the line convert them to additional Raid space.

Hi David,
1) Yes.
2) Yes.
3) I don't believe so -- but I haven't tested it yet. I'd imagine "ejecting" them from the host and them removing them would be fine -- of course be careful not to remove the wrong disk
4) If you have 3 drives in JBOD, it has to be 3 volumes. Unless you're suggesting mirroring on the RAID (which would not be JBOD, it would be RAID 1), or mirroring on the host (which is a software RAID 1 mirror). JBOD is "just a bunch of disks" -- there is no RAID involved at all.

Qosmio G20 - How to install with one single HDD and without RAID?

I want to set up Qosimo G20 new with Windows XP 32.
I bought a new harddisk and put it into slot 1. I would like to run it without any RAID (so slot 2 is empty)
XP installation CD did not discover the HD
I entered BIOS to see if the HD was there - The HD is recognized normal
then I thought I have to change RAID to JBOD (page 3 BIOS) but this did not work
I confirmed it with the 1234 key - but nothing hapened.
In another task they said to install RAID-drivers (pressing F6... while starting XP installation)
I put the drivers on a USB-stick - but the system will not discover it (and there is no floppy drive)
I have no idea how to install XP on this Laptop.
Any hints?
Chris

>I put the drivers on a USB-stick - but the system will not discover it (and there is no floppy drive)
Win XP does not recognize USB flash memory while setup. This is possible since Vista OS so either you will need a USB floppy drive or you will built a new Win XP CD and will add the RAID driver using the nLite software.
Here is a nice FAQ how to add the RAID (or SATA driver) to using nLite.
http://aps2.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/TSB85017Z0000R01.htm
Note: this describes how to add the SATA drivers you have to add the RAID drivers so dont use SATA driver but RAID driver
Good luck

RAID Option ROM utility unavailable.

The thing is that I cannot access the RAID Option ROM utility during bootup, just because I don't the see the "Press <Ctrl-F> to enter RAID Option ROM utility..." option at all.
I've recently updated the BIOS to 2.0 to install Windows 8. Don't know if that has something to do. As I said, I don't see the "Press <Ctrl-F> to enter RAID Option ROM utility" option at all. The RAID 0 I installed Windows 8 on was setup before updating BIOS to 2.0. As per MSI statement, once the BIOS was updated to 2.0 it cannot be downgraded.
What I want to do is to add a 3rd. disk to my RAID 0 array to expand the capacity. I tried to do it under RAIDXpert utility under Windows, but I don't see any options to add a new device to the existing RAID 0.
Do any of you know if there's another key secuense (but Ctrl + F as the user guide states) to enter the RAID Option ROM utility during bootup?. Any help will really be apreciaed. Thank you very much!.
My sys. specs are:
Mainboard: MSI A75MA-G55 with 2.0 BIOS
Processor: AMD APU A6-3670
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333MHz
HDD: 3 x 320 GB each:
1 x WDC WD3200AAJS-00YZCA0 (Western Digital)
1 x MAXTOR STM3320613AS (Maxtor)
1 x Seagate ST3320413AS (Seagate)
RAID 0 (JBOD) composed by the Western Digital + the Maxtor. The Seagate is the one I want to add to the RAID 0

try >>Clear CMOS Guide<< with power cord removed, if no change, it appear to be bios bug, if the same worked fine with older version.
ask msi at >>How to contact MSI.<<

Set up I guess in raid, need more storage now!

I am new to this, I bought WD Mycloud EX4 along with two WD Red 3 TB drives, set up to run (I am now thinking in Raid 1 / mirroring mode) and then my kids put two of their drives in. They are not recognized at all, and I am now out of storage which is only 3 TBs not the 6 TBs I want. Is there any way to switch to no raid, without reformatting and having to erase everything, I want to have eventually 9 TBs of storage, and one drive bay available to swap out drives. any hope of not erasing all

GuidoS wrote:
I am new to this, I bought WD Mycloud EX4 along with two WD Red 3 TB drives, set up to run (I am now thinking in Raid 1 / mirroring mode) and then my kids put two of their drives in. They are not recognized at all, and I am now out of storage which is only 3 TBs not the 6 TBs I want. Is there any way to switch to no raid, without reformatting and having to erase everything, I want to have eventually 9 TBs of storage, and one drive bay available to swap out drives. any hope of not erasing all Go to Storage - RAID - Chang RAID mode - JBOD See if you have "Downgrade RAID 1 to JBOD You will not lose any data.

What is a RAID card?

I was looking around and saw a MacPro RAID card on the apple store page it says what it does and stuff, but what is it for? Does it improve your computer ?
thanks,
(http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB845Z/A/mac-pro-raid-card?fnode=58)

RAID allows you to set up a team of Disk Drives to act as one. There are configurations that provide additional capacity, additional speed, and additional redundancy, as well as combinations. Many common configurations do not requires any special Hardware.
RAID optimized for speed gets additional speed by overlapping the read of the next block with the data transfer from the previous block. This only provides an improvement in speed when the larger operation is not interrupted by ANY stray reads or writes at other areas of the Disk. Setting up a single RAID for reading and writing data at the same time does NOT provide a measurable speedup.
Some versions of RAID (e.g., RAID 5) calculate and store check blocks that can provide some redundancy across three or more drives. If one drive fails, the remaining data and the check blocks can be combined to recreate the missing data. This requires that check blocks be calculated and checked as data go by, which requires additional Hardware assistance to be adequately speedy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
The Apple RAID card is showing signs of advanced age, and has not been updated in quite a while. Many here consider it a poor investment at this time. It limits you to 2.2TB per drive. Its battery has been a source of major problems.
You can use Disk Utility to create Mirrored RAID, Striped RAID, and JBOD RAID without a need for any card.

ZFS on HW RAID with poor performance. Ideas?

Hi all,
I'm trying to figure out why my RAID performs so poorly using ZFS compared to even UFS. Any thoughts on the following would be helpful.
H/W Config:_
- SunFire v245 w/ 4GB RAM and LSI1064 mirrored 73GB SAS
- QLogic QLE2462
- Fibre Channel 4Gb Hardware RAID w/ 1GB ECC cache
- 16 x 1TB SATA II drives
- Configured 1 volume RAID-6
S/W Config:_
- Solaris 08/07 SPARC - 5.10 Generic_120011-14
- Latest 10_Recommended as of 1/08
- zpool create fileserv /dev/dsk/c3t0d0s6
- zfs set atime=off fileserv
Test Raw:_
To the "RAW" disk or volume I get descent numbers:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c3t0d0s6 bs=1048576 count=16384
# dd if=/dev/rdsk/c3t0d0s6 of=/dev/null bs=1048576 count=16384
Both c3t0d0 and c3t0d0s6 result in similar numbers:
5 x 16GB writes took 475.50 seconds, yielding an average of *172.28 MB/s*.
5 x 16GB reads took 384.68 seconds, yielding an average of *212.97 MB/s*.
Test ZFS:_
Creating and mounting ZFS to the same volume, I modified my scripts to use dd created files from /dev/null instead:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=./16G bs=16777216 count=4096
Then ran:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=./16G bs=1048576 count=16384
# dd if=./16G of=/dev/null bs=1048576
The result for ZFS on a 14.6TB volume is horrible:
5 x 16GB writes took 1013.28 seconds, yielding an average of *80.84 MB/s*.
5 x 16GB reads took 980.36 seconds, yielding an average of *83.56 MB/s*.
What would cause a delta difference of more than half my capable speed from the unit just by running ZFS? Thinking it might just be a dd issue, I ran iozone using the same parameters as "milek's blog" at http://milek.blogspot.com and got the same crappy results:
# iozone -ReM -b iozone-2G.wks -r 128k -s 2g -t 32 -F /test/*
(snippet:)
Output is in Kbytes/sec
Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
Processor cache size set to 1024 Kbytes.
Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
File stride size set to 17 * record size.
Throughput test with 32 processes
Each process writes a 2097152 Kbyte file in 128 Kbyte records
Children see throughput for 32 initial writers = 90584.21 KB/sec
Parent sees throughput for 32 initial writers = 79823.98 KB/sec
Min throughput per process = 2186.76 KB/sec
Max throughput per process = 3225.63 KB/sec
Avg throughput per process = 2830.76 KB/sec
Min xfer = 1427456.00 KB
Children see throughput for 32 rewriters = 88526.23 KB/sec
Parent sees throughput for 32 rewriters = 88380.95 KB/sec
Min throughput per process = 2264.00 KB/sec
Max throughput per process = 3152.58 KB/sec
Avg throughput per process = 2766.44 KB/sec
Min xfer = 1510656.00 KB
I can understand that ZFS wants to have the entire "disk" as in a JBOD, but that's just not a viable option in my Corporate America world. Does presenting a RAID Controller handled LUN Vs. a JBOD presented matrix of drives really make this much of a difference? I'm just at a loss here as to why a unit that is capable of 4Gbit per channel is working as it should via raw, but runs like a single disk in performance as a ZFS filesystem.
I would appreciate some assistance in figuring this one out.
Thanks to all in advance.
--Tom

Robert,
Thanks for the help. Unfortunately, using RAID-Z or Z2 is not an option here as I'd rather rely on my hardware RAID over using software. While doing testing, I set my RAID to pass-thru mode and allowed ZFS to inherit the RAW drives from the RAID Chassis, set up a pool, and did my testing. In all cases, write performance was not much better overall, CPU utilization with compression on was ~30% higher, and my RAM utilization shot up under load. I just don't see that as an option on a heavily hit CVS server where IOPS and CPU/RAM are important for compilations and the like.
Things Hardware RAID gives me that ZFS can't do are:
Ease of use - changing failed drives for example is just different. It's a complicated filesystem once you get into it.
Pre-write buffer performance - This is ZFS's bottleneck afterall.
Fastest I/O - RAID Controllers handle more drives better than ZFS and IOPS are much faster under a H/W RAIDThere's a whole line of reasons why I choose not to use ZFS RAID-Z/Z2. Why else would Sun continue selling both H/W RAID and JBOD? I will check into the Intent Logging though, that's a good idea. I appreciate the link to solarisinternals, I had not thought about using their wiki for this.
Thanks again!
--Tom

Mac Pro 4,1 w/RAID startup disk not showing

Just purchased used a 2009 Mac Pro which came without installation disks. The startup (and only) HD does not show on the desktop. I discovered that an Apple RAID card was installed and had one disk (the startup disk) connected to it. Apparently the startup disk had been part of a RAID from which all other disks had been removed. Can I simply remove the startup disk from the RAID and install it as a regular drive? Since I don't have the installation disks I don't want to experiment with it until I make a clone. As of now there is only the single drive installed in the system. The system seems to be fine as reported by Tech Tool Pro test suite, which indicated no problems with any component.
The battery on the RAID card needs charging but after several hours did not seem to be going anywhere. Can the battery be replaced?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Do either of you guys have an idea as to why the startup HD does not appear on the desktop? The battery no is indicating fully charged in RAID Utility but it's still conditioning, so I strongly suspect It needs replacement. Still, I'd like to solve this before pulling the card since I'm unfamiliar with the Mac Pro and if I can get things functioning nominally through menu operations so much the better.
There seems to be an anomaly in the RAID Utility setup since no "RAID SETS" nor "VOLUMES" are listed, but there is an HD icon labeled "Bay1" listed under "DRIVES" with State=JBOD, SMART=verified, Status=Good, Interface=SATA. It's a Western Digital Caviar. The RAID Utility help says that only a single drive can be RAID mode JBOD, but if this drive's status is JBOD doesn't that imply that a JBOD RAID set had to have been created before adding the drive to the set and thereby giving it JBOD status? IF this is so then the RAID set must have been intentioally deleted, or perhaps was auto deleted when other drives were pulled. I'm thinking that the drive does not show on the desktop because it still has status JBOD but it's RAID set is gone. Possible? If so, can I create a new JBOD RAID set and assign the drive to it without loosing the OS on the drive? Can I install a new drive without assigning it to a RAID set and then reinstall after pulling the card or will things get messed up if a disk that was once on the RAID card is reinstalled after the card is pulled?
Thanks for any insights.

Windows Server 2008 R2 won't boot after replacing hardware (BSOD 0x0000007B)

My problem in a nutshell: I moved, the PC (without the HD) got totalled, I ordered a new machine with the exact same hardware. Meanwhile, I tried to copy some files to another machine by plugging in the HD externally, but all files in the
/User/Documents/ folder are protected/encrypted (I didn't encrypt them). I fiddled around with the rights and ownership of those files but to no avail, and I was later unable to revert the changes I made. So I guess I should probably not have done that. Anyway,
the new machine eventually arrived, I plugged in the HD, and after loading AtiPcie.sys I was greeted by a BSOD that immediately forced a reboot.
Edit: I now know what the BSOD message is, but if I edit it into this post it breaks the formatting for some reason. See my reply further down in this thread for the error message.
Here's a list of things I did in my vain attempts at solving the problem:
Safe mode
No effect at all, except that the (probably same) BSOD occurs after loading CLASSPNP.sys instead.
Various hardware checks including chkdsk
No problems found. To be certain, I plugged in another HD and installed Win2k on it. It boots just fine.
Recovery console: bootrec /rebuildbcd
The operation "completed successfully" (after renaming the old BCD file) but had no effect.
Recovery console: bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot, bootsect /nt60 all
Same as above, except now the list of drivers loaded during startup is replaced by a Windows logo and a loading bar. I preferred the list.
StartRep.exe
After a while, this gave me an error with the following problem signature (from memory, I didn't think I would be unable to replicate it later):
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: (sth long, don't remember)
Problem Signature 05: ExternalMedia
Problem Signature 06: 13 (I think)
Problem Signature 07: BadDriver
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1 (or sth like this)
Locale ID: 1033
The only external devices at that point apart from the monitor were a USB keyboard and a USB mouse. Ever since that scan, StartRep.exe immediately completes with no problems found. Also, BSOD on reboot as usual.
Removed AtiPcie.sys and atikmdag.sys
Didn't seem to do anything.
I'm out of options now, and I'm reluctant to reinstall Windows since it seems this might permanently make the user documents inaccessible. Any suggestions how I might get that machine running again, preferably without losing those protected documents?

Boot the installation media and if it sees the existing install then you can choose to upgrade.
I do have an option to upgrade, but when I select it I get to a screen with this text:
The computer started using the Windows Installation disc. Remove the Installation disc and restart your computer so that Windows Starts normally. Then, Insert the installation disc and restart the upgrade. (Do not select "Custom (advanced)"
to perform an upgrade. "Custom (advanced)" installs a new copy of windows and deletes your programs and settings.)
Since I can't boot Windows, this isn't an option. The line "Custom (advanced)" installs a new copy of windows and deletes your programs and settings.) is exactly what I want to avoid since it would presumably make the
protected user files inaccessible.
Hi
You can check the HDD mode in the BIOS, even if the same hardware, I know the HDD mode can be set on another mode (raid versus jbod). Thus the driver last used will not be the same.
I can find only one such option in the BIOS (Integrated Peripherals -> On-Chip ATA Devices -> RAID Mode) and the current setting is IDE with the alternatives being RAID and AHCI. I don't think that's what you're referring to though.
Other question: Is there any way to find out more about the BSOD from some dumpfiles via the recovery console, or something?

Time Capsule vs. 2TB drive

I'm looking at upgrading my backup drive and using either the 1TB Time capsule or a third party 2TB external drive. I already have a wireless router-is there any advantage to using Time Capsule over a 2TB drive (which costs less and has double the storage capacity)? We do have 3 Macs, but I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

What about something like the Micronet G-Force MegaDisk?
Here's a description:
Fantom Drives G-Force MegaDisk NAS is the latest addition to the G-Force MegaDisk family of storage products, packing a dual core processor, dual SATA300-NCQ enabled disk mechanisms, dual USB expansion ports, and a gigabit ethernet network connection in the same compact, heat dissipating aluminum enclosure.
The G-Force MegaDisk NAS features CIFS/SMB, NFS, and FTP connectivity, USB external disk and printer sharing, iTunes server, and an unattended bittorrent download manager. The G-Force Megadisk NAS supports robust RAID disk configurations including RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD, and SPAN, all monitored and managed via a universal web interface.
Award-winning NTI Shadow offers real-time, continuous backup in addtion to scheduled backup to virtually any storage device. Its powerful yet easy to use interface offers customers the ability to securely backup and safeguard their valuable data files. NTI Shadow also offers custom file type filtering, version control, drag and drop file restoring, and more. NTI Shadow supports Windows XP/2000, Macintosh OS X v 10.2.8+, and U3 Smart Devices.

New Mac Mini Server (Mid 2011) + 12TB Storage = ?

So the goal is kind of simple...I just bought a Mac Mini Server (+ 4GB Ram upgrade to total 8GB) with Lion of course to faciliate a fairly basic concept. The Mac Mini Server will be running all the time and will be the central storage point for all data/apps/etc including serving my Apple TV (2nd Gen) via iTunes. I have 4 x 3TB drives and/or 2 x 2TB drives that I'd like to RAID 0 (or JBOD/Concatenate if necessary) to show up as 1 uber drive for storage in which the mini can access whenever. The thing is that obviously there is only so much disk space available in the mini itself, and outside of that you're looking at either USB 2.0, Firewire, or Thunderbolt as a connection interface to external media. USB 2 is fairly slow, firewire kind of ***** and has limited devices available, and Thunderbolt is retardly expensive (coming from the guy that just spent nearly $1000 on hard drives) not to mention nothing exists for that yet. There's always the option for gigabit ethernet which would work well if we were working with an NAS.
Here's the thing. Being that this is going to be one big uber drive, the first question is how to interface with it. I'm not opposed to Direct Attached Storage except the available connectors are fairly slow or not out there yet. I'm not opposed to NAS either as long as I have the *option* to hook it up locally (perhaps via USB, is that possible?). The bigger issue here is that RAID 0, JBOD, or concatenated is all quite volitile which is just a downside of my needing to have no more than 1 uber drive. So my thought was to back it up with an online service, likely with one that offers unlimited backup like Carbonite and Live Drive. The issue with Carbonite is that it doesn't support anything that isn't a local internal drive (no NAS or DAS). Live Drive's software isn't yet working properly with OS X but does support NAS on paper.
Does anyone have any thoughts any way around any of this? I'm not too sure how to word it more clearly. My latest thought prior to LiveDrive screwing me over software-wise was to grab an 8bay NAS and activate the NAS aspect of LiveDrive which would pretty much solve my problem after paying $160/yr. Again though, this no longer works as they've pretty much shat on the OS X client. I also tried running a virtual machine with Win 7 via Parallels 6 but it wasn't able to view the NAS at all. I don't exactly want to buy an identical box with identical drives either because that's well over another $1000 so something a bit more creative or practical would be nice.
Again in the end, I just need Mac Mini Server OS X Lion to have one (wishful) "internal" 12TB drive (realistically NAS or DAS) that I can have a back up of the whole 12TB over some reasonable speed interface (assuming gigabit ethernet is the way to go).

sounds like you need a DROBO. If all you're doing is serving up audio and video, a USB 2.0 connection is fine. It sounds like you're looking for two different things...local storage and an online backup service. Or, are you talking about uploading all your content somewhere and streaming it down to your mini? If it's #2, then that's going to be way slower than connecting a USB device.
For online backups, I use Crashplan, which is better than Mozy and Carbonite (both of which I've used for at least a year), IMO.

Storage solution and workflow

Right now I have 6 external hard drives of various brands. Four of them are FW800 equipped and the older two only have FW400.
All these are connected to a Nitro® FW800 8 port hub (I daisy chain the FW400 drives when needed)
All drives mentioned above have one thing in common. They're all either SATA II or III inside of FW enclosures.
I'm getting tired of all the mess with the cables plus all the space it takes on my desk. I am wondering if anyone can share or recommend a neater setup. For about 2 years now I have been searching for some sort of multiple bay external enclosure that would allow me to mount and unmount individual hard drives BUT without having to unmount the other mounted drives. I believe this is called a JBOD setup with a hot swap feature.
About a year ago I bought the DataTale RC-M4QJ and loved it's hot swapping feature with the minimalistic Hard Drive handles but I was disappointed by it's performance as I benchmarked it using int the AJA System Test app and on average, it performed ~25 to 35% slower than my other single HDD enclosures. So back it went for a refund.
I'm hoping someone can share their setup which achieves the same goal here. I will soon be purchasing a new MacBook Pro (as soon as Apple brings them to market) so if you know of a thunderbolt enclosure that can allow what I need to do, please let me know.
My dream enclosure would probably be a thunderbolt one which can handle RAID and JBOD and allow individual mount/unmount without screws or expensive brackets.
Thanks in advance for any feedback.

I also have a couple of Burly multi bay enclosures. They are rock solid and can be configured as you wish. The ones I have use sleds for the drives, which also serve as cases for the drives when unmounted and in storage.
While it is possible to do hot swapping of drives, my own policy is to always shut off power to the enclosure when changing drives. I get a little antsy about the tiny pins on the drive sata connector, and having voltage arc across to them while physically mounting the drive and they near the receiving connector.
For a Thunderbolt solution, check out CalDigit - they make really good stuff - and OWC.
MtD

Can I format a single Drive as an Offsite Back up?

I was wondering if on an Xserve Raid if I can format just one drive to function as an offsite backup. I checked into doing enhanced JBOD but it want the whole controller side to be JBOD. Any help appreciated!

With Xserve RAID, a controller can do either RAID or JBOD. It affects the entire controller. If you do RAID mode, then any drives not part of a RAID set will be used as hot spares (and can't function as an offsite backup as there is no access to them from any file system). If you do JBOD mode, you get 7 drives.
So there's no way to do what you want with Xserve RAID, unfortunately. And given the product has been discontinued I would say it's a fair bet there never will be this ability.

Performance to expect from a StorEdge 3510

Hi all,
Really need some advice regarding a 3510FC array. We currently have a dual-controller setup with a RAID array + JBOD expansion. Each array has 10 drives, which we've setup as two RAID5 LD's as 8 data, 1 parity + 1 hotspare. The array firmware is 4.15.
Performance isn't good. We can't seem to get anything better than 65Mb/s, (based upon "mkfile 2g testfile"). Whilst I appreciate this is a far from scientific test, our HDS AMS200 performs this little task in 18secs, as opposed to 32secs on the 3510.
In the real world, Oracle is running like a dog on it :-(
I hoping that it's just our RAID5 setup that is not good, but before I consider the pain of -- backup data, reconfigure LD's, restore data -- I want to know if really the 3510 should be performing better.
If I re-jig the array with RAID1 Luns, + perhaps sequential for redo logs, should I be able to get some decent throughput from this array?
All help appreciated!

Here's our config ...
Sun StorEdge 3000 Family CLI
Copyright 2002-2005 Dot Hill Systems Corporation.
All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms.
sccli version 2.3.0
built 2006.03.15.09.49
build 12 for solaris-sparc
* inquiry-data
Vendor: SUN
Product: StorEdge 3510
Revision: 415F
Peripheral Device Type: 0x0
NVRAM Defaults: 415F 3510 S470F
Bootrecord version: 1.31H
Serial Number: 0A7805
Page 80 Serial Number: 0A78055F4B554305
Page 83 Logical Unit Device ID: 600C0FF0000000000A78055F4B554305
Page 83 Target Device ID: 206000C0FF0A7805
IP Address:
Page D0 Fibre Channel Address: 05 (id 255)
Page D0 Node Name: 206000C0FF0A7805
Page D0 Port Name: 256000C0FFCA7805
Ethernet Address: 00:C0:FF:0A:78:05
Device Type: Primary
unique-identifier: A7805
controller-name: "R2 3510"
* network-parameters
ip-address:
netmask: 255.255.255.224
gateway:
mode: static
* host-parameters
max-luns-per-id: 32
queue-depth: 1024
fibre-connection-mode: point-to-point
inband-management: enabled
* drive-parameters
spin-up: disabled
disk-access-delay: 15s
scsi-io-timeout: 30s
queue-depth: 32
polling-interval: 30s
enclosure-polling-interval: 30s
auto-detect-swap-interval: disabled
smart: detect-clone-replace
auto-global-spare: disabled
* redundant-controller-configuration
Redundant Controller Configuration: primary
Cache Synchronization: enabled
Host Channel Failover Mode: shared
Local/Remote Redundant Mode: local
Write-Through Data Synchronization: disabled
Secondary RS-232 Port Status: disabled
Communication Channel Type: Fibre
* redundancy-mode
Primary controller serial number: 8104488
Primary controller location: Lower
Redundancy mode: Active-Active
Redundancy status: Enabled
Secondary controller serial number: 8103724
* cache-parameters
mode: write-back
optimization: random
sync-period: disabled
current-global-write-policy: write-back
* RS232-configuration
COM1 speed: 9600bps
* channels
Ch Type Media Speed Width PID / SID
0 Host FC(P) 2G Serial 40 / N/A
1 Host FC(P) N/A Serial N/A / 42
2 DRV+RCC FC(L) 2G Serial 14 / 15
3 DRV+RCC FC(L) 2G Serial 14 / 15
4 Host FC(P) 2G Serial 44 / N/A
5 Host FC(P) N/A Serial N/A / 46
6 Host LAN N/A Serial N/A / N/A
* disks
Ch Id Size Speed LD Status IDs Rev
2(3) 0 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38528TGW
WWNN 2000001862363F9C
2(3) 1 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 0751KPTT
WWNN 20000014C38511B6
2(3) 2 279.40GB 200MB GLOBAL STAND-BY SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38528FH8
WWNN 2000001862364997
2(3) 3 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 385263B5
WWNN 20000018623649A3
2(3) 4 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38528TS7
WWNN 20000018623647DD
2(3) 5 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 3852GAAM
WWNN 20000018623644A8
2(3) 6 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38525B67
WWNN 200000186236463E
2(3) 7 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 385293LK
WWNN 20000018623647D4
2(3) 8 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38528E2E
WWNN 2000001862364A4A
2(3) 9 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 3852FPF2
WWNN 2000001862364137
2(3) 10 279.40GB 200MB ld0 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38525BZE
WWNN 200000186236438E
2(3) 11 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 3852F9C1
WWNN 2000001862364519
2(3) 12 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 22526XFP
WWNN 20000014C3D8B5CD
2(3) 13 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 225280ZR
WWNN 20000014C3D8B9F4
2(3) 14 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE SEAGATE ST330000FSUN300G 055A
S/N 38527GP1
WWNN 2000001862364001
2(3) 15 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE FUJITSU MAW3300FCSUN300G 1303
S/N 000629D01NGJ
WWNN 500000E0126502D0
2(3) 16 279.40GB 200MB NONE FRMT FUJITSU MAW3300FCSUN300G 1303
S/N 000629D01NG9
WWNN 500000E0126501A0
2(3) 17 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE FUJITSU MAW3300FCSUN300G 1303
S/N 000629D01NG0
WWNN 500000E0126500F0
2(3) 18 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE FUJITSU MAW3300FCSUN300G 1303
S/N 000629D01NGH
WWNN 500000E0126502B0
2(3) 19 279.40GB 200MB ld1 ONLINE FUJITSU MAW3300FCSUN300G 1303
S/N 000629D01NGE
WWNN 500000E012650210
* logical-drives
LD LD-ID Size Assigned Type Disks Spare Failed Status
ld0 5F4B5543 2.18TB Primary RAID5 9 1 0 Good
Write-Policy Default StripeSize 32KB
ld1 07190DF2 2.18TB Secondary RAID5 9 1 0 Good
Write-Policy Default StripeSize 32KB
* logical-volumes
* partitions
LD/LV ID-Partition Size
ld0-00 5F4B5543-00 5.00GB
ld0-01 5F4B5543-01 5.00GB
ld0-02 5F4B5543-02 5.00GB
ld0-03 5F4B5543-03 45.00GB
ld0-04 5F4B5543-04 45.00GB
ld0-05 5F4B5543-05 300.00GB
ld0-06 5F4B5543-06 1.79TB
ld1-00 07190DF2-00 5.00GB
ld1-01 07190DF2-01 5.00GB
ld1-02 07190DF2-02 5.00GB
ld1-03 07190DF2-03 515.00GB
ld1-04 07190DF2-04 500.00GB
ld1-05 07190DF2-05 180.00GB
ld1-06 07190DF2-06 1023.17GB
* lun-maps
Ch Tgt LUN ld/lv ID-Partition Assigned Filter Map
0 40 0 ld0 5F4B5543-00 Primary 210000E08B929600 {tvlp-node-n01p01}
0 40 0 ld0 5F4B5543-00 Primary 210000E08B92B831 {tvlp-node-n02p01}
0 40 1 ld0 5F4B5543-01 Primary 210000E08B927C31 {tvlp-node-n03p01}
0 40 1 ld0 5F4B5543-01 Primary 210000E08B925A02 {tvlp-node-n04p01}
0 40 2 ld0 5F4B5543-02 Primary 210000E08B927C31 {tvlp-node-n03p01}
0 40 2 ld0 5F4B5543-02 Primary 210000E08B925A02 {tvlp-node-n04p01}
0 40 3 ld0 5F4B5543-03 Primary 210000E08B927C31 {tvlp-node-n03p01}
0 40 3 ld0 5F4B5543-03 Primary 210000E08B925A02 {tvlp-node-n04p01}
0 40 4 ld0 5F4B5543-04 Primary 210000E08B927C31 {tvlp-node-n03p01}
0 40 4 ld0 5F4B5543-04 Primary 210000E08B925A02 {tvlp-node-n04p01}
0 40 5 ld0 5F4B5543-05 Primary 210000E08B927C31 {tvlp-node-n03p01}
0 40 5 ld0 5F4B5543-05 Primary 210000E08B925A02 {tvlp-node-n04p01}
1 42 0 ld1 07190DF2-00 Secondary 210000E08B920100 {tvlp-node-n05p01}
1 42 1 ld1 07190DF2-01 Secondary 210000E08B920100 {tvlp-node-n05p01}
1 42 2 ld1 07190DF2-02 Secondary 210000E08B920100 {tvlp-node-n05p01}
1 42 3 ld1 07190DF2-03 Secondary 210000E08B920100 {tvlp-node-n05p01}
1 42 4 ld1 07190DF2-04 Secondary 210000E08B920100 {tvlp-node-n05p01}
1 42 5 ld1 07190DF2-05 Secondary 210000E08B920100 {tvlp-node-n05p01}
4 44 0 ld0 5F4B5543-00 Primary 210000E08B92BC01 {tvlp-node-n01p02}
4 44 0 ld0 5F4B5543-00 Primary 210000E08B92DB02 {tvlp-node-n02p02}
4 44 1 ld0 5F4B5543-01 Primary 210000E08B91FDFF {tvlp-node-n04p02}
4 44 1 ld0 5F4B5543-01 Primary 210000E08B924A03 {tvlp-node-n03p02}
4 44 2 ld0 5F4B5543-02 Primary 210000E08B924A03 {tvlp-node-n03p02}
4 44 2 ld0 5F4B5543-02 Primary 210000E08B91FDFF {tvlp-node-n04p02}
4 44 3 ld0 5F4B5543-03 Primary 210000E08B924A03 {tvlp-node-n03p02}
4 44 3 ld0 5F4B5543-03 Primary 210000E08B91FDFF {tvlp-node-n04p02}
4 44 4 ld0 5F4B5543-04 Primary 210000E08B924A03 {tvlp-node-n03p02}
4 44 4 ld0 5F4B5543-04 Primary 210000E08B91FDFF {tvlp-node-n04p02}
4 44 5 ld0 5F4B5543-05 Primary 210000E08B924A03 {tvlp-node-n03p02}
4 44 5 ld0 5F4B5543-05 Primary 210000E08B91FDFF {tvlp-node-n04p02}
5 46 0 ld1 07190DF2-00 Secondary 210000E08B91EDFF {tvlp-node-n05p02}
5 46 1 ld1 07190DF2-01 Secondary 210000E08B91EDFF {tvlp-node-n05p02}
5 46 2 ld1 07190DF2-02 Secondary 210000E08B91EDFF {tvlp-node-n05p02}
5 46 3 ld1 07190DF2-03 Secondary 210000E08B91EDFF {tvlp-node-n05p02}
5 46 4 ld1 07190DF2-04 Secondary 210000E08B91EDFF {tvlp-node-n05p02}
5 46 5 ld1 07190DF2-05 Secondary 210000E08B91EDFF {tvlp-node-n05p02}
* protocol
Identifier Status Port Parameters
telnet enabled 23 inactivity-timeout=disabled
http enabled 80 n/a
https disabled n/a n/a
ftp enabled 21 n/a
ssh enabled 22 n/a
priagent enabled 58632 n/a
snmp disabled n/a n/a
dhcp enabled 68 n/a
ping enabled n/a n/a
* auto-write-through-trigger
controller-failure: enabled
battery-backup-failure: enabled
ups-ac-power-loss: disabled
power-supply-failure: enabled
fan-failure: enabled
temperature-exceeded-delay: 30min
* peripheral-device-status
Item Value status
CPU Temp Sensor(primary) 52.50C within safety range
Board1 Temp Sensor(primary) 55.50C within safety range
Board2 Temp Sensor(primary) 64.00C within safety range
+3.3V Value(primary) 3.352V within safety range
+5V Value(primary) 5.019V within safety range
+12V Value(primary) 12.199V within safety range
Battery-Backup Battery(primary) 00 Hardware:OK
CPU Temp Sensor(secondary) 52.50C within safety range
Board1 Temp Sensor(secondary) 57.50C within safety range
Board2 Temp Sensor(secondary) 62.00C within safety range
+3.3V Value(secondary) 3.384V within safety range
+5V Value(secondary) 5.099V within safety range
+12V Value(secondary) 12.381V within safety range
Battery-Backup Battery(secondary) 00 Hardware:OK
* enclosure-status
Ch Id Chassis Vendor/Product ID Rev PLD WWNN WWPN
2 124 0A7805 SUN StorEdge 3510F A 1080 1000 204000C0FF0A7805 214000C0FF0A7805
Topology: loop(a) Status: OK
3 124 0A7805 SUN StorEdge 3510F A 1080 1000 204000C0FF0A7805 224000C0FF0A7805
Topology: loop(b) Status: OK
Enclosure Component Status:
Type Unit Status FRU P/N FRU S/N Add'l Data
Fan 0 OK 371-0108 GK0XC2 --
Fan 1 OK 371-0108 GK0XC2 --
Fan 2 OK 371-0108 GK0XC5 --
Fan 3 OK 371-0108 GK0XC5 --
PS 0 OK 371-0108 GK0XC2 --
PS 1 OK 371-0108 GK0XC5 --
Temp 0 OK 371-0531 0A7805 temp=30
Temp 1 OK 371-0531 0A7805 temp=28
Temp 2 OK 371-0531 0A7805 temp=31
Temp 3 OK 371-0531 0A7805 temp=30
Temp 4 OK 371-0531 0A7805 temp=31
Temp 5 OK 371-0531 0A7805 temp=30
Temp 6 OK 371-0532 HL12LM temp=37
Temp 7 OK 371-0532 HL12LM temp=41
Temp 8 OK 371-0532 HL12QD temp=37
Temp 9 OK 371-0532 HL12QD temp=38
Temp 10 OK 371-0108 GK0XC2 temp=30
Temp 11 OK 371-0108 GK0XC5 temp=25
Voltage 0 OK 371-0108 GK0XC2 voltage=5.110V
Voltage 1 OK 371-0108 GK0XC2 voltage=11.750V
Voltage 2 OK 371-0108 GK0XC5 voltage=5.020V
Voltage 3 OK 371-0108 GK0XC5 voltage=11.520V
Voltage 4 OK 371-0532 HL12LM voltage=2.480V
Voltage 5 OK 371-0532 HL12LM voltage=3.250V
Voltage 6 OK 371-0532 HL12LM voltage=5.000V
Voltage 7 OK 371-0532 HL12LM voltage=12.120V
Voltage 8 OK 371-0532 HL12QD voltage=2.500V
Voltage 9 OK 371-0532 HL12QD voltage=3.300V
Voltage 10 OK 371-0532 HL12QD voltage=5.050V
Voltage 11 OK 371-0532 HL12QD voltage=12.240V
DiskSlot 0 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=0,led=off
DiskSlot 1 Absent 371-0531 0A7805 addr=1,led=off
DiskSlot 2 Absent 371-0531 0A7805 addr=2,led=off
DiskSlot 3 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=3,led=off
DiskSlot 4 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=4,led=off
DiskSlot 5 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=5,led=off
DiskSlot 6 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=6,led=off
DiskSlot 7 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=7,led=off
DiskSlot 8 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=8,led=off
DiskSlot 9 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=9,led=off
DiskSlot 10 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=10,led=off
DiskSlot 11 OK 371-0531 0A7805 addr=11,led=off
* SES
Ch Id Chassis Vendor/Product ID Rev PLD WWNN WWPN
2 124 0A7805 SUN StorEdge 3510F A 1080 1000 204000C0FF0A7805 214000C0FF0A7805
Topology: loop(a)
3 124 0A7805 SUN StorEdge 3510F A 1080 1000 204000C0FF0A7805 224000C0FF0A7805
Topology: loop(b)
* port-WWNs
Ch Id WWPN
0 40 216000C0FF8A7805
1 42 226000C0FFAA7805
4 44 256000C0FFCA7805
5 46 266000C0FFEA7805
* inter-controller-link
inter-controller-link upper channel 0: connected
inter-controller-link lower channel 0: connected
inter-controller-link upper channel 1: connected
inter-controller-link lower channel 1: connected
inter-controller-link upper channel 4: connected
inter-controller-link lower channel 4: connected
inter-controller-link upper channel 5: connected
inter-controller-link lower channel 5: connected
* battery-status
Upper Battery Type: 1
Upper Battery Manufacturing Date: Fri Jun 16 00:00:00 2006
Upper Battery Placed In Service: Tue Aug 8 09:27:53 2006
Upper Battery Expiration Date: Thu Aug 7 09:27:53 2008
Upper Battery Expiration Status: OK
Lower Battery Type: 1
Lower Battery Manufacturing Date: Fri Jun 16 00:00:00 2006
Lower Battery Placed In Service: Tue Aug 8 09:27:52 2006
Lower Battery Expiration Date: Thu Aug 7 09:27:52 2008
Lower Battery Expiration Status: OK
Upper Battery Hardware Status: OK
Lower Battery Hardware Status: OK
* sata-router
no sata routers found
* sata-mux
0 mux boards found
* host-wwn-names
Host-ID/WWN Name
210000E08B91EDFF tvlp-node-n05p02
210000E08B91FDFF tvlp-node-n04p02
210000E08B925A02 tvlp-node-n04p01
210000E08B927C31 tvlp-node-n03p01
210000E08B924A03 tvlp-node-n03p02
210000E08B92DB02 tvlp-node-n02p02
210000E08B92BC01 tvlp-node-n01p02
210000E08B92B831 tvlp-node-n02p01
210000E08B920100 tvlp-node-n05p01
210000E08B929600 tvlp-node-n01p01
* FRUs
7 FRUs found in chassis SN#0A7805 at ch 2 id 124
Name: FC_CHASSIS_BKPLN
Description: SE3510 FC Chassis/backplane
Part Number: 371-0531
Serial Number: 0A7805
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Sun Jul 16 05:25:36 2006
Manufacturing Location: Suzhou,China
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x0301
FRU Location: FC MIDPLANE SLOT
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
Name: FC_RAID_IOM
Description: SE3510 I/O w/SES RAID FC 2U
Part Number: 371-0532
Serial Number: HL12LM
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Wed Jul 5 12:11:49 2006
Manufacturing Location: Suzhou,China
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x0301
FRU Location: UPPER FC RAID IOM SLOT
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
Name: BATTERY_BOARD
Description: SE351X Hot Swap Battery Module
Part Number: 371-0539
Serial Number: GP15BJ
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Thu Jul 6 03:25:30 2006
Manufacturing Location: Suzhou,China
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x0301
FRU Location: UPPER BATTERY BOARD SLOT
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
Name: AC_POWER_SUPPLY
Description: SE3XXX AC PWR SUPPLY/FAN, 2U
Part Number: 371-0108
Serial Number: GK0XC5
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Mon May 22 08:45:16 2006
Manufacturing Location: Irvine California, USA
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x048F
FRU Location: RIGHT AC PSU SLOT #1 (RIGHT)
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
Name: AC_POWER_SUPPLY
Description: SE3XXX AC PWR SUPPLY/FAN, 2U
Part Number: 371-0108
Serial Number: GK0XC2
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Mon May 22 08:53:42 2006
Manufacturing Location: Irvine California, USA
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x048F
FRU Location: AC PSU SLOT #0 (LEFT)
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
Name: FC_RAID_IOM
Description: SE3510 I/O w/SES RAID FC 2U
Part Number: 371-0532
Serial Number: HL12QD
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Wed Jul 5 15:16:42 2006
Manufacturing Location: Suzhou,China
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x0301
FRU Location: LOWER FC RAID IOM SLOT
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
Name: BATTERY_BOARD
Description: SE351X Hot Swap Battery Module
Part Number: 371-0539
Serial Number: GP15GW
Revision: 01
Initial Hardware Dash Level: 01
FRU Shortname:
Manufacturing Date: Thu Jul 6 05:26:03 2006
Manufacturing Location: Suzhou,China
Manufacturer JEDEC ID: 0x0301
FRU Location: LOWER BATTERY BOARD SLOT
Chassis Serial Number: 0A7805
FRU Status: OK
* access-mode
access-mode: inband
* controller-date
Boot time : Fri Jan 5 10:20:15 2007
Current time : Thu Feb 8 10:25:36 2007
Time Zone : GMT
* disk-array
init-verify: disabled
rebuild-verify: disabled
normal-verify: disabled
rebuild-priority: normal

Brand new molassas - log jam

MIddle School
600 users
Average 60-90 logon per period
3 home folder locations Faculty, 6+8, 7th grade
2x3ghz Quad Core Xserve - totally upgraded
16GB RAM on server
GIG network
I had some issues with our database so Apple suggested I start over. Did that last fall, totally rebuilt the server. Since then it has been working wonderfully. Over 400 kids a day logon to home folders, everything has been great. Average 60 per period.
Last Monday, 2 8th grade classes came in an logged on within 5-10 minutes of each other. It was awful. Took about 15-20 minutes to get everyone to connect. If a student launched MS Word, that took another 5 minutes. You could visibly see the server straining to accomodate all the users. We checked activity monitor and saw nothing that looked horrendous. This is new, we have been functioning for months without anything as serious as this. We constantly have 6th grade classes, 2 at a time, log on within minutes of each other.
So, I thought maybe there was an issue with the 8th grade home folders. NOT, had the same problem today when 2 7th grade classes came in, their home folders are on a different drive. Interesting, if one class (30 students) come in they can log on without issues. If another class comes in 5-10 minutes later, it seems that they have no issues. I had 6th and 7th grade classes in today, logging in staggered and it worked ok. It has something to do with the server just shutting down when too many people make requests in a short period of time. As I said earlier, this is new, we have not had this issue. Trying to think of something we did to provoke this, but can't come up with anything.
I started to the install CD, repaired each bay using Disk Utility, no errors, ran permissions, a couple of times. Checked the activity monitor, upgraded the RAM from 8 to 16 GB.
So I am lost. We doubled the RAM and will see if that makes a difference, but I don't think it will as we didn't have this problem a month ago with 8 gb of RAM. This is a GIG network, we swapped server CAT6 cables, I am lost.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Something is obviously corrupted or set wrong, as this server has worked fine.
Thanks in advance.
Jeff

foilpan wrote:
i'm assuming these are all network homes, correct?
Yes, all our users have network homes, located on 1 of 3 different drives.
and if so, do you redirect some folders locally on login?
No, not aware of this. Have tried to redirect cache but it never works, when tried it makes other applications unable to save or have other issues.
check the link here if you haven't yet: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2740715
checking/repairing permissions won't do anything to resolve your problem (or most problems, for that matter).
what does network throughput look like on the server when a problem group logs in?
On last check it spikes on initial login but then seems to settle.
you say these classes have homedirs stored on separate drives. are they actually physically separate drives or just partitions of an existing drive or volume? are these homedirs stored on JBOD or RAID disks?
We have 2 xserves. Each one has three bays. The student directories are on two bays on our main server. 6th and 8th grade on one bay (1 Terabyte) and 7th grade on a separate 1 Terabyte bay. They are not RAID not JBOD. (Not sure about the JBOD) They are just standard drive bays inserted into the Xserve.

RAID 0 or JBOD?

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