Xserve, G5, Xserve RAID and fibre channel question

hi guys,
I have a Xserve conneted to Xserve RAID right now. Is it possible connect G5 to Xserve RAID thru fibre channel ? thanks

>is it possible to do ?
Not in the way you describe, no.
The XServe RAID's 14 drives are connected to two separate controllers. Drives 1-7 are connected to the upper controller. Drives 8-14 are connected to the lower one.
If your XServe is currently connected to the upper controller it's talking to drives 1-7.
If you connect the G5 to the lower controller it will be talking to drives 8-14.
Therefore you cannot use this setup to backup the data via the G5.
At the very, very least you need a fiber channel switch so that both the XServe and the G5 can connect to the same controller. However, as Tod has already mentioned, it is tricky to get multiple machines talking to the same RAID drives while avoiding corruption (there's no concept of arbitration, or ways of preventing one machine from editing a file that's in use by the other machine).
You have two basic options - one is to implement XSAN, which will handle the arbitration issue, the other is to configure the G5 to mount the RAID read-only. This should prevent the G5 from modifying a file while it's in use by the XServe (which may be sufficient for backup purposes), but you may still run into issues when the G5 tries to backup a file that's actively in use by the XServe.
In all honesty, a better solution would either to get a SCSI card that works with the XServe and do it all there, or use file sharing between the XServe and the G5 and backup over the network - it'll be slower, but a lot more reliable.

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Clarification on how to use Xserve Raid and Fibre Channel without xsan.

First let me apologize for not responding earlier to your response, I tend to get busy and then forget to check back here.
Tod, the answer to your question is No, only one computer is accessing the xserve raid files at any one time and that is via Fibre Channel. However I do have the xserve raids set up as share points via ethernet.
Maybe I should turn that off and only access the files with the one computer that can connect via fibre channel.
I never thought of that. I will try that while I await for your answer, thanks again.
Todd Buhmiller
I have the following setup:
Xserve: 2x2Ghz Dual Core Intel Xeon, 5Gb of Ram, Running 10.5.8 Leopard Server
Xserve Raid with firmware version 1.5.1/1.51c on both controllers, and
Qlogic Sanbox 5600
Apple Fibre Channel Cards in Xserve, and Mac Pro Tower; Apple 2 Port 4Gbs Fibre Channel Card
Mac Pro Tower-Quad Core Intel Xeon 2.8Ghz, 16Gb of Ram, Running Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Here is the problem.
The directory for the xserve raids keep getting corrup, and I use disc warrior to rebuild them. Is there a way to keep the directories from getting corrupt? I am a few pieces of equipment before I can build an Xsan as that is the ultimate goal, but until then, I just need to be able to have the raids funciton as storage without having to rebuild the directories all of the time.
Anybody have any suggestions?
Thanks
Todd Buhmiller
Widescreen Media
Calgary, Alberta Canada
Tod Kuykendall
Posts: 1,237
From: San Diego
Registered: Oct 11, 2000
Re: Xserve Raid Mounts, Corrupt Directory tired of rebuilding directory
Posted: Jun 27, 2010 1:25 PM in response to: Todd Buhmiller
Are multiple computers accessing the same data on the RAID at the same time?
If so then NO. This is the source of your data corruption and I'm surprised if you were able to get all your data back every time if this is how you've been running your system. Each fibre channel assumes it has full and sole control of every volume it has mounted, no data arbitration is practiced and data corruption will occur if this assumption is wrong.
The only way this set-up will work is to use partitions or LUN masks so the volumes are accessed by one computer at any time. As long as one computer relinquishes control before another mounts it you will dodge arbitration issues but this is a dangerous game. If you screw up and mount an already mounted volume - and there is no easy way to tell if a volume is mounted - corruption will then occur. Sharing data simultaneous at fibre speeds is what XSAN does and to do this you need it.
HTH,
=Tod
Intel Xserve, G5 XServes, XRAID, Promise

+The xserve raids will mount automatically to any computer that I connect the qlogic fc switch to+
This is source of the corruption to your data. Any computer that attaches to a drive/partition via fibre channel assumes that it alone is in control of the drive and data corruption is inevitable.
+Is that the issue, should I disconnect the xserve from the fc switch and leave it connected via ethernet?+
Short answer: YES. The ethernet connections are fine because the server is controlling the file arbitration through the sharing protocol. Fibre channel connections assumes complete control over the partition and no arbitration of the file access is performed. It's like two people independently driving trying to drive the same car to different locations.
Depending on your set-up it is possible for the two machines to see and use different parts of the Xserve RAID storage but they cannot access the same areas without SAN doing the arbitration.
Hope that's clear,
=Tod

Catalyst 4500 Ethernet and fibre channel passthru

dear sir,
anyone have any idea / documentation showing that the belows device 1.) & 2.) can support Ethernet and fibre channel passthru ? thanks.
1.) WS-X4424-GB-RJ4 (Catalyst 4500 24-port 10/100/1000 Module (RJ45)
2.) WS-X4306-GB (Catalyst 4500 Gigabit Ethernet Module, 6-Ports (GBIC)

You're welcome. Check below for the module info. And there is description about support of fibre channel passthru.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps4324/products_data_sheet0900aecd802109ea.html
You can also seach Cisco web for more info.
Hope this helps.

Xserve 10.5 RAID and partitions

I am trying to configure my two 750G harddrives to be mirrored RAID and partition them, but am getting no love from Disk Utility.
I have tried partitioning one and then making them RAID. I have tried making them RAID and then partitioning.
If I partition both and then try to RAID the two equal partitions, only the first pair show up.
I'm a bit of a newby, but did the RAID and partitioning before in 10.4.11, but that was a few years ago, and I don't think it works the same in 10.5.8.
Any help will be greatly appreciated

hi,
once I had the partitioning as I wanted (options -> GUID, right?) I chose my volume A1 in disk utility, selected RAID, added A1 (stupid GUI) and B1, adjusted the raid level and let it do its thing. Same for A2 and B2. This worked for me: I have a 10.5 and a 10.6 install and can switch between the two.
Does this help?
cheers,
Michael.

Parallel SCSI, Hardware RAID, SAS, Fibre Channel. - What's included?

If I get the $2500 vanilla (nothing added) Mac Pro...
Do I get any of these?
Parallel SCSI, Hardware RAID, SAS, and/or Fibre Channel?
Just curious. I know what they do, but I'm just wondering if it's included with the Mac Pro with its price tag.

None are included.

Whole root zone and fibre channel hba

I have Solaris 10 x86 loaded up on an IBM blade. I've created a whole root zone on it and have installed Symantec NetBackup 6.5.5 and configured it as Media Server. I have an SL8500 tape library in the environment and all the tape drives are fibre channel. Now, in the global zone, I can run fcinfo hba-port or scli and the global zone finds the hba's with no problem. I've added the /dev/cfg/c1 and /dev/cfg/c2 devices to the zone, but running the commands, it cannot find the hba's at all.
Is there something else that I need to do so that the zone can see the hba's, or is this just not possible in a zone?
Thanks in advance,
Ed Coates

Hi.
Check release notes for Netbackup. As i know Media Server is supported anly at Global zones.
You can add access to /dev/rmt/* and give access to tapes, but stiil problem with robot device and this configuration not supported.
Regards.

Fibre Channel Jumbo Frames - UCS

I was wondering if it's actually possible to have Jumbo Fibre Channel Frames running on a UCS?
I've read these two articles which provide some excellent information on implementing Jumbo Frames and Fibre Channel Jumbo Frames:
http://datacenteroverlords.com/2013/04/01/jumbo-fc-frames/
http://www.ccierants.com/2013/10/ccie-dc-definitive-jumbo-frames.html
Everything within the SAN I'm administrating has the ability to set the MTU up to 9036 except for the UCS. For example on the NetApp gear I can set the MTU per interface, on the Cisco MDS I can set the MTU per vsan. However in the UCS manager when I go to QoS System Class, the option to set the MTU for Fibre Channel is greyed out and it doesnt look like there's anyway to override the preset frame size. I can set the MTU of Best Effort however my understanding is Fibre Channel traffic within the UCS will use the Fibre Channel system class.
Furthermore I noticed I can set the Maximum Data Field Size on the vHBA's within the UCS manager however my understanding is the maximum this can go up to is 2048.

Hi
Did you check
http://datacenteroverlords.com/2013/04/01/jumbo-fc-frames/
Erik Smith says:
April 1, 2013 at 5:52 pm
April fools! I wish I saw this earlier, I would have posted corroborating test results!
In Summary: forget Jumbo Frames for FC !

4 xserves, 1 xserve raid, 4 partitions, fibre channel - possible?

Is it possible to connect 4 xserves to 1 xraid that has 2 partitions for each side of the controller to all connect together using a fibre channel switch?
Thanks!
Tony

Hello Paul,
LUN slices are all equal sized - ie you slice it into two, three or four slices but they will all be equally sized. You can't slice off 1/3 of a RAID side and the leave the other 2/3s alone. (I guess you could slice it into three and then RAID0 the other two slices back together but that seems too tricky to be a good idea.) The advantage is that each LUN has a logical "name" and you can hardwire your fibre card to see only that "name" and there is zero chance of conflicting control of a slice.
If I understand you correctly you want to RAID 50 the entire RAID into a single big volume and the partition it up into smaller logical partitions. You will need to do the RAID0ing of the two sides before anything else because this will destroy the data that already exists on the RAID 5s. As long as you keep this in mind it is doable and you can then use fstab editing to control which Xserves load which volumes on start-up. Note that volume partitioning is not a set-up for a hostile environments because people will be able to do bad things if they are determined to do so - eg Using Disk Utility to force mount a volume they otherwise can't see and then play with it.
My question is "Do you really need a single large volume?" Alot of people do RAID 50 the unit into a single image but unless you need more than 3TB volume sizes for some reason or for HD video capture I personally don't see the attraction. You take RAID 5 which is pretty close to bullet proof but then you build it into a RAID 0. The data on a RAID 0 is susceptible to loss from breaking the RAID while two separate RAID5s (especially with hot spare drives) is about as close as you can get to rock solid in computing. If you're going to then divide it up and redistribute it anyway I'm not sure if the merging of the sides is necessary.
Only you can determine what you need but if you're not going to have a single >3TB volume I would go RAID5s on each side (7drives or 6+1spare ideally) and then either slice or partition up the volumes for the respective computers.
My $.02,
=Tod
G5/2.0x2, Dual XServes x2, XRAID, beige G3 501Mhz

Easiest solution for adding Fibre Channel Tape Backup to Xserve RAID setup

I'm interested in getting a Fibre Channel LTO-3 tape library such as the Exabyte 221L for my Xserve RAID/Xserve G5 setup. I realize there are SCSI LTO-3 solutions that are less expensive than FC, but I'd prefer not to have to add a SCSI card to my Xserve, mainly because I'd have to pull the video card and run the server headless (horrors!). However, I understand that I must get a Fibre Channel switch to allow the LTO library, the Xserve, and the Xserve RAID to communicate... you can't just daisy chain FC devices. The least expensive switch I can find is the new QLogtic SANbox 3050 for about $1800. For my situation, in which these will be the only FC devices I'll probably ever use, does this switch sound appropriate? The specs on the switch can be found here: http://www.qlogic.com/products/sanbox/sanbox_3050.asp.
Xserve RAID & Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

For simple environments like yours, it's trivially easy. You must plug everything in, and you're good to go... as simple as a network switch.
Now if you start adding multiple hosts (i.e. plug in a second Xserve or G5), you need to be careful, because in the default configuration everything is "wide open," so every device can see every storage LUN. This would actually be problematic, as systems could (actually, would) corrupt each other's storage. When you get to this point, you'll need to look at either zoning the ports on the switch, or using LUN masking on the Xserve RAID to allocate specific pieces of storage to specific hosts.
But for now, just get the switch, plug everything in, and you're off.
BTW if you mark "answered" for me, versus for the thread overall, it helps me out a bit in this forum ranking system, whatever it is.
Cheers.

Xserve Raid will not mount - fibre channel link down

I came back from being out of town and my Xserve is running, but will not mount on the G5 tower via fibre channel. It was powered off and up again and still nothing. Apple tech says to reset raid controllers, however, I have sensitive data on the drives and lots of video/FCP projects on there. It has just run out of warranty and now asked to pay $199 per incident to get any help. I will gladly take any help.
Read the boards, ran Disk Utility and still did not show up.
Also, told the fibre cables tend to "burn out" but have yet to spend money if this is not the problem.
Thanks.

Resetting the controllers is non-destructive. However, if you power-cycled the array, that should take care of it.
told the fibre cables tend to "burn out"
I've never experienced (or heard of this) myself, and have never had a problem on any of my arrays, some of which have been running for years with zero problems. Of course, environment (especially heat) could play a part, but it seems a little bit of a stretch to me.
Does RAID Admin have anything to say about the RAID?

Fibre channel lights on Xserve RAID

I have a G4 Xserve 1.33Ghz connected via Apple's Fibre channel card to a Xserve RAID. 3 drives installed, RAID 5 and a hot spare. The drives are installed in bays 1-4, but the fibre channel activity light is off on the left one, but active green for the right one. There are no drives in bays 8-14, the RAID controller is active.
Surely the left light fibre channel light should be active, and the right one off.
Any ideas, thanks

Hmmm.
I recall the lights on the RAID might be the reverse of what's expected? I'm not 100% certain here -- this may be normal behavior.
Can you see the LUNs in Disk Utility? That's where you can usually check. You may also want to try rebooting once -- just in case the LIP message sent when the RAID came online was ignored.
As for the RAID initializing... once you're above 2% or 3% or so it should be visible from the host... the default is to use RAID Now background initialization which means the volume is available for use (and safe to use -- data is protected), though a bit slower while the initialization completes. Initialization takes a long time -- ~30 hours or so.

Xserve RAID Fibre Channel Lights pegged until disk activity

We are having some issues with an Xserve RAID connected to a G5 Xserve running 10.4.8 Server. The Fibre Channel lights on the front are constantly maxed out, but whenever the disk are active the lights die down only to peg again when activity stops. Needless to say, we are having SEVERE access speed issues. Any ideas?

This can happen in a protected RAID set (i.e. RAID 5) if a single raid member drive pops offline and back on again, since the RAID set has to re-build itself from the parity data in that case.
It also happens after creating a RAID 5 volume, as the creation usually takes a few days (assuming you used the 'RAID Now' option), and so you'll see the blue lights.
It also makes sense that the blue light 'spiking' would drop when you do a read/write, as the initialization process has to pause to handle the disk activity.
Are either of these the case?
We are having some issues with an Xserve RAID
connected to a G5 Xserve running 10.4.8 Server. The
Fibre Channel lights on the front are constantly
maxed out, but whenever the disk are active the
lights die down only to peg again when activity
stops. Needless to say, we are having SEVERE access
speed issues. Any ideas?
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Xserve RAID with fibre switch and windows

I have a customer who potentially is looking at an Xserve and RAID using a fibre switch with a couple of G5s with fibre cards for speed. They also have a Windows machine that they need to access files, but speed is not an issue. Will the Windows machine be able to see the RAID if it is shared by OS X Server via ethernet or does it need a fibre card? Thanks in advance for assistance!
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

You can turn on Windows (SMB) sharing, or you can connect it directly via fibre channel. Note, if you connect it to the fibre, you can't have it access the SAME volume at the SAME time as the Macs are accessing (heck, you can't have the Macs access the SAME volume at the SAME time without software either), without Xsan and the StorNext file system.

Simple question about one RAID and 2 XServes

Hey Guys,
I have an old G5 XServe controlling an XServe RAID and want to add another XServe for Final Cut Server.
Is it possible to run one fiber line to one server and the other to the other server?
I'd like a straight shot to the RAID for maximized bandwidth, but maybe it doesn't work that way or wouldn't matter.
Thanks for your expertise.

Is it possible to run one fiber line to one server and the other to the other server?
Yes, this is possible. Each xserve will have access to each half off the xraid. Each xserve can not access the other half! This is due to the design of xraids. Actually the xraids are two sets. Each set has a controller and 7 disks. These two sets are placed in one physical box. There is no data path between the two sets.
If you want to access the same data from 2 machines, this will not work. If you want to have each machine it's own data, you will be comfortable.
Regards
Donald

XServe Raid and QLogic Switch

First off, I have no idea what any of this stuff does.
Okay, now that that's out of the way...
I have an XServe Raid divided into 4 partitions. Three computers connect to it via a QLogic San Switch 5200. Computer1 sees two partitions. Computer2 sees one partition and computer3 sees one partition.
Computer1 still sees both of it's partitions but Computers 2 & 3 cannot see their partitions.
Now, I think the problem is with the switch. The XServe seems to be fine from everything I can tell.
I've tried troubleshooting the switch but can't even connect to it. All of this to just let you guys know what's going on.
At this point I just want to get my video files off of the XServe partitions that can't be seen so... my question is this:
If I remove the switch from the equation and just plug the XServe directly into the back of my G5 will all four partitions show up so I can get this data off?
I just don't know enough about these things to know what would happen if I did that and want to make sure that nothing strange will happen!
Any advice you guys can give would be SO much appreciated.
Kip

Camelot,
This post totally helped me fix the problem. I had no idea what LUN masking was and when I saw that section in the RAID admin I didn't click it because not knowing what it was I didn't want to accidentally mess anything up. So yeah, I plugged the raid straight into the computer using the copper fibre channel cables and only saw two of the 4 partitions or I guess "slices." So, that made me think that your idea of the LUN masking option was probably right!
I went to that area and yes, it was all set up with various ports seeing certain slices etc. I was able to go around to the two new computers and find their World Wide Port Names and assign those to specific slices. I'm so happy and I've learned all kinds of new stuff!
Something I do think is odd...
We replaced two computers that were connected to the XServe Raid and just took the fibre cable from the old and plugged it into the new. This of course is where the problem came in because the cards in the new computers have different WWPNs than the old. The funny thing is, it worked for a while. The drives showed up on the new computers... until we took a power hit and the XServe powered off and then came back up. So, it's like it doesn't look at the port name while it's on.. just when it first turns on. So it didn't seem to notice that the port names had changed until then.
Seems kinda odd to me but.. hey, it all seems to work!
So yeah, thank you so much. I've learned a lot here!
Kip Gordon
Memphis, TN

Xserve, G5, Xserve RAID and fibre channel question

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