Xraid sharing

Finally got my Xraid running. This might not be the correct place for this, it might be more of a workgroup manager thing... but here goes.
my xraid is connected to a x serve (10.5) via fiber. And at the moment there are two client workstations (both PowerMac G5's) that authencate via the server (home / group folders are all setup on the server). What is the best way to connect the x raid to the clients? so no matter who logs in they will always get the X raid on their desktop.
Is there some way i can mount the x raid / shared areas to the local machine? so all users would have access to it. Could it be done with scripts (i.e. net use in the Microsoft universe.) or through polices.
any thoughts would be useful
thanks
cj

What is the best way to connect the x raid to the clients?
In this setup, set each account on the server to have a AFP-mounted home directory.
Then, on the client machines, assuming they are authenticating with a server-based account, the client system will automatically mount their home directory over the network when they log in.
All traffic will flow through the XServe, but it's a trivial setup.
If you want direct connections, you'll need fiber channel cards in each client and a fiber channel switch to connect them altogether.
You'll also need something to arbitrate traffic if you're trying to have both machines access the same data - you can't have two machines directly access the same volume over fiber channel. This gets a whole lot more complex than simple file sharing.

Similar Messages

Raid shows up in /Volumes/ and can be shared, doesn't show in Finder

The left side of this raid is fine, but the right side is doing something odd.
This is running on a G4 Xserve with 10.4.11 Server, and has been running fine for a year or so. 1.33 Firmware hooked up with fibre channel directly to server.
A few days ago, we stopped being able to mount the 2 shared folders on the right side of this Xraid, I looked at the desktop and the icons were gone so I rebooted the server. When it came back up, users could mount the drive using afp just fine, but for some reason the drives don't appear on the desktop now or the sidebar. Finder just doesn't see it at all. I checked the prefs and even deleted the Finder and Desktop .plists but it didn't change anything.
It shares fine, and in Workgroup Manger you can go to sharing and even browse the contents of the drives. I can see it in terminal when I do a diskutil list and it's in /Volumes/ correctly.
In Disk Utility it shows up, but it doesn't look right. The icon for the set is broken and looks like a piece of paper, and it can't read the drive space available/used and says there are 0 files. It does see the correct Capactiy however. If you Unmount the drive, the icon changes back to a little Xraid but as soon as you Mount it it goes back to that paper icon.
It does the same thing when I hook it up to other servers, always shows up in /Volumes but never in finder.
I've restarted the controller and the processor with no luck. Disk Repair repaired one thing, but didn't fix the problem.

SafeMode won't work for that and holding the trackpad button down before and during the boot cycle is supposed to work.
Jep de Goede wrote:
rebooting pressing the option-button also didnt work.
Not by itself, when you reach Startup Manager (row of bootable icons) you supposed to press the eject key there.
Note your supposded to use the built in keyboard (or wired if desktop model) for the at boot key commmands

Xraid + Oracle = Database hang?

Heya all.
Oracle 9i (9.2.0.8), Solaris 10.
I had a queer problem yesterday. I needed to recover a tablespace, and the only thing we had around with enough diskspace was an xraid. Apparently these are ok to use, so we mounted it up over nfs, jumbo frames on both sides, and copied a backup of my database onto it.
Problem was, starting up oracle, when attempting to mount the database, it would just hang.
It looked like ckpt was getting stuck trying to access the control file.
# ps -ef | grep BACK | grep ckpt
oracle 4721 1 0 16:20:52 ? 0:00 ora_ckpt_BACK
# truss -p 4721
*** SUID: ruid/euid/suid = 101 / 5011 / 5011 ***
*** SGID: rgid/egid/sgid = 1 / 7002 / 7002 ***
semtimedop(32, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1DC, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1C8) Err#11 EAGAIN
semtimedop(32, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1DC, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1C8) (sleeping...)
semtimedop(32, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1DC, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1C8) Err#11 EAGAIN
semtimedop(32, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1DC, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1C8) (sleeping...)
semtimedop(32, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1DC, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1C8) Err#11 EAGAIN
semtimedop(32, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1DC, 1, 0xFFFFFFFF7FFFE1C8) (sleeping...)
eventually an error would be generated by oracle,
ksedmp: internal or fatal error
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [2116], [900], [], [], [], [], [], []
but the sqlplus session mounting the database would just hang.
I moved the control files off the xraid onto local disks, and the database would then mount, proving that its something weird with the xraid, but then it would get stuck on the datafiles, moved them off (had to dump alot of tablespaces to get it to fit onto local disks), then it would get stuck on redo.. moved redo off onto local disks, and it all worked..
Oracle support seemed to think it was an issue with resources, and suggested adding more swap.
The oracle user could create files fine. I /think/ it was just having problems locking them. I tried restarting lockd, restarting the server, adjusting (solaris) shared memory settings, shutting down other oracle instances on the machine, adding swap. nothing seemed to work, expect getting the files off that nfs mount.
Has anyone see this kind of behavior with nfs mounted disks, specifically from an xraid? Due to the cost, I'd really like to start using xraids for some cheap oracle disks, but this experiment doesn't make it look good.
thanks.

it was a temporary mount, in what way doesn't it work? As I described?
I'm not too worried about working through it with support at the moment ( time is not something I have alot of at the moment ), I accomplished what I needed to do at the time, but in the long run, being able to use xraids would be very nice.
Message was edited by:
nib000

Cannot access shared folders anymore....

Hi,
We have a naughty problem at the office for accessing shared folders .
We use G5 Xserve + Xraid serving home access to 12 macs.
Our problem started when we updated all machines to 10.5.2 (nor did we have a problem with 10.5.1 or with 10.5.0).
All machines login correctly, fetch their folders with their home accesses located in the Xserve, as allways did, BUT :
·Almost all the machines running Leopard (except two) CANNOT access shared items. They get Error -5002
·The old machines running Tiger (G3 Imac's) acess shared items without problem.
So after many weeks doing multiple tests, we got the following conclusions:
·Problem is not server related.
·Problem si related to Leopard clients , although not in all
·Problem is not related to the machine, but with the account (accounts that can access shared items do it on any machine, and accounts that can't, don't do it on any machine)
·It seems that the trouble is related somewhat with Kerberos authentication, but it's not related to tickets (renewing them is no use)
·If we create new account with new name, it can access shared items
·If we create new account with same name that of the faulty one (renaming the later), it CANNOT access shared items.
We have got a problem in the office, and no clue of solving it.... Have read all over apple discussions over the internet, and although some people have similar issues, they are not as close as ours....
And none of the solutions proposed have solved the problem.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, cause we are starting to get desperate
Thanks everyone.

new update:
we are able to connect to remote shared folders with a different remote server (dual G4) from every machine
machines who can connect to local server are INTELs, the one who can't are PPCs
makes any sense to anyone?¿

3 Xraids with 2 windows servers config dilemma

I have two windows 2003 R2 servers going to a ATTO 3500 Fibre switch and they are connected to 3 xraids in a 8 port switch. Both servers see all the shares, but everytime I reboot a server each one wants to run a scandisk. If I have each one, hooked into one server and one server alone, it works great. But they both cant use them at the same time.
I am trying to setup a clustered exchange environment, thats my goal eventually and this is buggering up the mix.
my questions are:
1. Do I need some kind of special software on the servers?
2. Do I have to have a mac involved to use them?
Thanks so much in advance!

Hello TDCMemphis, and welcome to the Apple Boards,
Are you saying that you're sharing all storage to both servers simultaneously? If so do NOT do this. Fibre channel offers no arbitration and both computers think they are in charge and data corruption will result. This is equivalent to attaching two computers to the same hard drive without either being aware of the other one.
The solution to this is called SAN which adds a layer of arbitration to the fibre channel sharing system and prevents these kinds of conflicts. Apple does offer a product called XSAN that is commonly used with Xserve RAIDs but it is a Mac only product. I doubt XSAN is the solution you are looking for in a Windows environment but I can't offer a good Windows alternative using Xserve RAIDs. (That doesn't mean there isn't one.)
The website: http://alienraid.org/ does have information about using the Xserve RAID on non-Apple systems.
Hope that helps,
=Tod

Applescript help (wiping a shared drive)

I was wondering if I could get some help with an applescript I want to aquire or create.
Currently I have an xRaid as my file server. I would like to aquire or write a script and using Cron, unless there is a better way, to have it execute every Friday. This script is to completly wipe all of the data on the share drive.
thank you in advance for your help,
Robert
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

try this tip by *Chris CA*:
Point iTunes prefs -Advanced - iTunes media folder location to the shared drive.
Don't uncheck anything or delete anything from iTunes.
In iTunes, select all the files you want to copy to the NAS.
Then right click - Consolidate selected files.
This copies the selected items to the location on the NAS.
You can then delete these from the iTunes media folder (\Music\iTunes\iTunes media\Movies)
when done, point +Tines media folder location+ back to the original location.
if you want to play content of off the shared drive, be sure it is mounted before you launch iTunes.
JGG

XRAID Upgrade - added drives

In looking around for answers on "how to copy or move data from one RAID Array to another while preserving ACL's and metadata" most answers I found were a bit vague. I'm hoping my experience will be of help to someone when they go looking for the same information.
There are many methods to copying data from RAID to RAID - this post has some good ideas:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2434030&#2434030
This is how I ended up moving my set of data for an XRAID attached to a G5 xserve running 10.4.7
I have previously used ditto on other servers to move the data but ended up having to re-enable all my sharepoints afterwards which was a huge pain. This time I tried rsync (failed) and then asr.
I first ran rsync -aEv from the first volume over to the next volume but got a lot of "file has vanished" errors - I found this explanation:
http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0607&L=macenterprise&T=0&O=A&P=256 15
I thought I'd give ASR a try before going through ditto which I know will work (problem being having to re-share everything). Don't get me wrong, ditto keeps all the file sharing settings but you have to go into the workgroup manager and click the share boxes to get them to be shared again (maybe I missed something when doing it but that's what happened to me last time I had to do this).
I had read that ASR didn't work properly in 10.4.6 here:
http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/asr-broken-in-1046/
but seeing as 10.4.7 had not really been discussed I figured I'd give it a whirl.
I had roughly 700GB of data to move from a RAID 5 over 250GB drives onto a RAID5 on 500GB drives. First I disabled Filesharing. Then I used asr from the command line:
#asr -source /XRAID1 -target /NewXRAID -erase
I chose to erase the target so I could get block copy going to allow the fastest copy possible. It took about 5 hours - give or take - I wasn't paying much attention to it...
I came back to the finished copy, ejected the smaller volume and re-enabled filesharing. To my dismay nothing appeared to be shared. Workgroup manager was asking me to remove sharepoints and re-add them saying they couldn't be found. I decided not to do that. Instead, I stopped filesharing services and restarted the server. This time I ejected both volumes - opened Disk Utility and mounted the larger XRAID volume by itself. I then started filesharing and IT WORKED! All my sharepoints were there and all the ACL's appeared to be functioning correctly. I've logged in as several different users and everything seems as it should. I also checked alias's I made on a remote desktop machine previous to starting to see if they worked and they do.
Now, having two volumes with identical names can be a problem so to be safe I stopped Filesharing and mounted the smaller drive and re-named it (I'm keeping it as a backup just in case things go to pot when it goes live on Tuesday..). I then restarted the server again, left all drives mounted and started Filesharing again. The correct volume is shared and everything looks good.
So if you need to move all your files from a smaller RAID to a larger one ASR in 10.4.7 seems to do the trick.
Cheers,
Simon

Problem:
Today we have reports that files are missing from the new RAID. Sure enough there are some files that ought to be there that aren't so I'm going to scrap this and go back to the original volume and do a ditto either tonight or on Friday night when I have more time to set the shares straight.
Oh well so much for that.
Simon
The RAID is running the latest firmware and the server is running 10.4.7 on a Dual G5 XSERVE 4gb ram.

Permission denied when saving from applications on shared volume

We have an AFP shared volume on Xraid attached to an Xserve running 10.5.8. The OS is kept up to date.
Users started to get a "permission denied" message when trying to save open files on the shared volume, which is using POSIX permissions only. This seems to happen to Snow Leopard clients using Pages and Numbers (iLife 09). No errors appear in the server logs.
At the moment they can circumvent the problem by saving locally and then copying the file onto the server.
Has anyone got any pointer to a solution?
Thanks.

Lucazade wrote:
This seems to happen to Snow Leopard clients using Pages and Numbers (iLife 09).
Of course I meant iWork, not iLife.

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

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

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

Swapping Xraid

Hi
I have an old Xserve PPC with Mac os server 10.5.8 (Master Ldap) and an Xraid connected to it. Now i have received an Xserve 2x3 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with Mac os 10.7.5, I wanted to know if the xraid is hotswappable. I have already created a new ldap on the new server.
Can i just remove the cable and plug it in the new xserve and get it working as it was ?
Thanks helping me.
Abhi

Can i just remove the cable and plug it in the new xserve and get it working as it was ?
That;s a highly subjective question...
One one level, yes, you can disconnect the XServe RAID from the PPC server, connect it to a fiber channel card in the Intel server and the disks will (should) mount.
ALl your data will be accessible.
Whether that constitutes '... working as it was' is a whole different issue. That depends on what data was on the drive and how you were utilizing it.
For example, if the PPC server was sharing the XServe RAID volumes (e.g. via AFP, NFS, SMB, etc.) then it won't automatically be re-shared when you connect to the Intel server - you'll need to configure the file sharing service on the Intel server to identify and publish the sharepoints.
Likewise, if the user's home directories are on the RAID, they won't automatically come available on the Intel server - you'll need to configure file sharing and (potentially) Open Directory to setup the network home directories.
Similarly for any other service - just having the disk/data attached in no way configures the corresponding service to use it - if your MySQL databases are on the RAID, attaching the RAID isn't going to make any difference to MySQL running on the Intel Server.
Now, the above may be obvious and expected, but the specific way you asked your question means I needed to be clear.

Probleme with sharing, acl and posix

i have xserve and xraid on 10.5.6
all datas are on xraid volume
but all rules are ignored
sharing is ok but acl & posix are ignored for all sharing in xraid volume but ok in internal HD
in terminal
sudo fsaclctl -a /Volumes/XRAID/
return
ProcessVolume: processing /Volumes/XRAID
Access control lists are supported on /Volumes/XRAID.
ProcessVolume: processing
error (-1) from . (Unknown error: -1). Support for access control lists is unknown.
ProcessVolume: processing
error (-1) from . (Unknown error: -1). Support for access control lists is unknown.
any idea??

Hi Tony,
I've already had a look at Gerrit's explanation and it certainly clears things up. The way it is currently configured does actually work (I did some testing with regard to the 4th user creating folders) due to the ACLs being inherited.
Basically, everything is working as it is, but it's just a bit of a bodge job (I think) having people using the same log-in account (albeit different short names, creating a pseudo-group).
If Finder Comments were editable by users with RW access, rather than only the file owner, it would all work delightfully. I'm really surprised that this issue hasn't been raised before, which is leading me to believe that something in the way our permissions are set up is causing the problem. I even tried giving explicit write permissions to the .DS_Store file, but it still doesn't allow people to write comments.
I did read somewhere that someone reckons that people with RW permissions (and not the file owner) can write Finder comments. Can anyone verify/de-verify (is that a word?!) this?
Thanks,
Tom

XRaid Setup for Facility-Questions

We are a small production facility and I'm moving towards shared storage. Here is the system I was thinking of getting, so if anyone wants to give any advice, I'd be happy to accept and very appreciative.
-We currently have 3 rooms: 2 G5's and 1 Intel 3.0 Quad all running Final Cut Pro regularly editing DVCPro HD and SD Uncompressed and DV.
I'm going to lease:
-XRaid fully populated with either 500 or 750gig drives (advice?)
-3 Dual Channel 2Gig Fibre cards
-Qlogic SANbox Express 1403 Fibre Switch
-Cables-Need 2 runs of over 25 feet to rooms
-MetaSAN software
-Placement: Can the XRaid live in our edit suite in our rack? Is it too loud to have in a suite? (We don't have a dedicated machine room.)
-Cable? Fiber optic or copper? Our rooms are all next to each other, but obviously, just to get cable up the wall, over the ceiling, etc, we will definitely be more than the 3 meters limit of copper. Am I correct on this that we have to go optical with these transceiver units??
-Size:750 versus 500's? Anyone have any negative experiences with the 750's? Greater chance of problems with them? Run much hotter? It seems way cost effective to go 750's for only an additional $1400 to get an extra several TB's...
-RAID: Best setup? I've only started researching, but it sounds like I should Raid 0 both sides individually and then stripe them Raid 50 together. How much drive space will I lose doing it this way for safety? Is this correct?
Thanks a lot for any help. This stuff is a little out of my techy comfort zone...
Kevin

Your setup sounds fine. As for specific questions:
>-Placement: Can the XRaid live in our edit suite in our rack? Is it too loud to have in a suite? (We don't have a dedicated machine room.)
To be honest, I'm not certain about the noise since all my RAIDs are surrounded by XServes, CRAC units/air handers, etc., etc. Anecdotal evidence says they're noisy, If it's too noisy for you, something like the XRack Pro might be an idea solution.
>-Cable? Fiber optic or copper? Our rooms are all next to each other, but obviously, just to get cable up the wall, over the ceiling, etc, we will definitely be more than the 3 meters limit of copper. Am I correct on this that we have to go optical with these transceiver units??
Copper cables can run up to 50 meters, so the choice is yours.
I've purchased long copper cables from CS Electronics before and have been very happy with them. They'll even make custom length if you want/need that.
>Size:750 versus 500's?
750's. No question. As you note, the price difference is small compared to what you get.
>-RAID: Best setup? I've only started researching, but it sounds like I should Raid 0 both sides individually and then stripe them Raid 50 together. How much drive space will I lose doing it this way for safety? Is this correct?
Ordinarily I'd say RAID 50, as you hint (although this is a striped (RAID 0) array of RAID 5 volumes, I'm guessing your 'RAID 0' comment was a typo.
However, if you're using a SAN product you should check with the vendors. Presumably the SAN is going to virtualize the storage and therefore it might not matter how the RAID is configured. In most cases I'd recommend RAID 5 on the XServe RAID itself, so it's the RAID 0 element that's most questionable.
You might also need to take performance into account. Ordinarily RAID 50 gives best performance, but only for a single host. If you have multiple hosts contending for disk access you might find that separate volumes, with individual servers weighted towards one array or another gives you a better solution since each machine is unaffected (or, at least, less affected) by what the other is doing.

Sharing a Raid and Propagating Permissions

I have an Xserve running 10.4.11. I just recently upgraded my Storage to a 24bay Infortrend drive from my old XRaid. Everything works great except permissions at times. A shared folder will at any moment not let anyone read or write to it. So i have to go into my Work Group Manager and propagate the permissions. Seems like the folder times out or something. What do i need to do to make this be a permanent fix? Thanks in advance!
-Ryan

Agreed.
But, it gets more complex on servers if you've got ACL's with different groups, etc.
I'm trying to get up to speed using the terminal when the GUI fails on propagating big directories.
Such and odd thing really - you'd think this would be pretty easy to fix, but even on the latest tools, still happens.
Scott

Connecting an XRaid in our network

Hi All,
We have a network build around two XServes and Linux servers, where the one of our XServ is managing our work group. All clients are connected through 3Com 1G switch to the Xservs and their internal disks.
We want to upgrade our system to hold 3.5TB using an XRaid. The XRaid should hold all home directories and some share points.
1. Is it possible to connect the XRaid to our 1G switch or do we have to buy a fiber channel switch?
2. If we need a fiber channel switch, which should we buy? How can we connect the fiber channel switch to our 1G network?
Thanks,
Ziv

Ziv,
To access the RAID a computer either needs to have a fibre channel card and be connected to the switch or connected over ethernet to a computer connected through fibre to the RAID. The Apple Xserve RAID deployment page does a decent job of illustrating the basics of fibre channel connections.
As a drop in replacement for you current set-up you would connect the RAID to the Workgroup Xserve via fibre channel. The RAID would mount on the Xserve and you would then migrate your shares to the new "drive" and people would continue to access them as they always have. From the Xserve's point of view the RAID is just a really big really fast disk that it will use like any other disk. The magic of the RAID is that it overcomes the speed/size limitations of a single drive by ganging drives but it is still essentially just another harddrive at the system level.
It sounds like you might be expecting the Xserve RAID to do more than it does - it is simply a mass storage device and needs some kind of intelligent interface for other computers to "talk to" for sharing. The exception to this would be to slice the RAID into discrete shares and hook everyone to the switch and have them see only their share. For more than a couple computers (usually servers) this is awkward and prohibitively expensive and should probably be re-thought.
If you think of the Xserve RAID as buying a 3.5TB external drive with a fancy interface you'll be on the right track. Just like an external firewire drive you need to hook it up to computer and share it out for people to see it. Let me know if this is still unclear.
HTH,
=Tod
G5/2.0x2, Dual XServes x2, XRAID, beige G3 501Mhz

Share XRaid between 2 G5

Is possible, share same XRaid volume between 2 G5 with no Fibre Channel switch, just connecting each controler from XRaid in both G5
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

To share the same volume? No. The two halves of the Xserve RAID are independent -- each makes 1/2 the RAID available. You could connect each half to a G5 machine, but each machine would only see its "half" of the Xserve RAID.
Even if you had a fibre channel switch, you would need special software like Xsan to actually share the same volume on two machines, without corrupting it (the fibre channel protocol does not support shared block-level access natively).

Xraid sharing

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