Xserve RAID - Number of Users

Hey all
We're encountering a problem with the number of users attached to our Xserve RAID. It seems to be limiting it to 10 users. Is the Xserve RAID licensed itself, or is it limited to the number of users of the server it is attached to? And what if it is attached to a fibre-enabled switch?
Thanks to all.

What do you mean by 'number of users attached to a RAID'?
Are you saying your users directly connect to the RAID? How can you do that without a fiber channel switch?
Or are you saying that your RAID is connected to a single host, and that host is sharing the volumes to network clients, then you may have a 10-user limit depending on the OS version you're running.
If your server is running Mac OS X (client), you can support 10 users. If you're running the 10-user version of Mac OS X Server, you're also limited to 10 users. If you're running the 'unlimited' version then you can run as many as your server can handle (CPU, memory, etc.).

Similar Messages

Serial number of xserver raid

hi list,
how do i get the serial number of the xserver raid. the hardware.
thanks

While that is true - there are cases like mine....I work for a company that refurbishes Apple products - and I have about 20 XServe RAID servers that have no sticker on the back. Is there an internal serial number at all - or am I SOL? Thanks in Advance!

Looking for some ideas for setting up and xServe RAID

Everyone,
Here is what I would to do. I have a new xServe and 7TB RAID. I would like to set all of my end users up with Portable Home Directories. They all have laptops and I would like to use their PHD as my backup source. I would set them to sync in the background a couple of times per day and then write to tape at night.I have about 60 end users. I would also like to use the same xServe and RAID as my Kerio mail server and mail store. What I am looking for is some ideas of how to go about setting up the RAID. I was orginially thinking of setting up as one big RAID 5 using all 14 drives. What I would like to know is what is the number of drives that would need to fail that would render the RAID unrebuildable? I am now thinking about splitting the RAID into two 7 drives in RAID set up as RAID 1+0.
I am not sure if I phrased a lot of this currently, but here is quick recap of what I would like to know. What would be the best way to set up a 7TB RAID to store PHD and my Kerio mail store that provides me the most redudant and fastest acccess.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
Daniel Krajc

Daniel,
I'd suggest a 6 disk RAID 5 plus a hot spare for each side. It will give you about 2.4 TB capacity per side (4.8 total), and it can tolerate 2 drive failures per side without losing data, provided there is sufficient time between failures for the RAID set to automatically rebuild on the hot spare. This window is 8-12 hours.
Note with Xserve RAID the two sides are totally independent in the data path -- it will look like 2 separate LUNs. If you want to combine these at the host level, as RAID 0 or RAID 1 to look like a single volume, you can. But the Xserve RAID will not combine them itself... the RAID controllers are independent... it might as well be two separate RAID volumes in the same chassis.
I assume you'll plug this into an Xserve that is serving as an Open Directory server and a file server?

Reseting my Xserve Raid

Hi
I have an Xserve G5 that provides user accounts with network home directories that are stored on an Xserve raid. When I opened raid admin today it was no longer able to see the Raid's IP address via Bonjour. l have seen a number of threads in which people have had a similar problem that was resolved using the reset button (and a carefully placed paper clip). My question is whether I can safely do this with my setup or will it mean having to re-setup all my home directory sharepoints etc.
Cheers in advance

Hi Lee,
Resetting the RAID controllers won't harm anything. The volume may go offline for a bit, but you won't need to re set up your home directories, etc.
That said, I don't think it should be necessary. Not sure why it's not discovering, but if you have a machine that is connected directly to the RAID, you could open up a terminal and type "ping 255.255.255.255" and you should see a response from the 169.254/16 IP address of the RAID.
Personally, I'd recommend giving the RAID a static IP address after you connect to it the first time. Makes things easier.

Super Slow Performance with Xserve RAID / Promise Fibre

Hey guys,
I am experiencing a strange thing on both 10.5.8 and 10.7.5 servers (yes these are in the process of being retired). They are sharing out either an Xserve RAID or Promise Vtrak with OS X Server.
We have the fibre channel card and the storage attaches to there and they appear mounted on the desktop.
The problem we are having is that whenever OS X's file sharing is enabled these volumes run incredibly slow! I did a clean install of OS X 10.7.5 on an entirely different machine and it was still bad. All of my tests show that when you turn off file sharing, both AFP and SMB, the performance goes back to normal -- so what can we do here??? These are file servers, so that's pretty much the only thing that needs to work.
Thanks,
Andrew

Slow/poor RAID performance can be down to a number of things. Some of which are easier to check than others.
Some easy things to check are:
How much data is stored on the RAIDs?
Performance really drops off alarmingly once the RAID gets to 85% full. For a 1TB RAID this means you need to keep at least 250GB of free disk space at all times otherwise you will get the poor performance you're seeing. Once it gets to 86/87/88% full performance can drop alarmingly. Yes those few percent points can make a big difference.
How is the data stored on the RAIDs?
Having thousands and thousands of single files stored loosely on the RAID or within one single folder is not a good idea. The Finder can be and is fairly inefficient at drawing the icons for those files that are presented to network users accessing the share point(s). This can/and is perceived as very slow performance as you're viewing the files over a network connection. One way to overcome this 'feature' is to organise the data into logical folders/sub-folders and/or shares.
Are there problems with the file/directory structure of the RAIDs themselves?
Use DiskUtility (or better still DiskWarrior) to repair any issues (generally built up over a period of time) with the storage disks you have. You can't repair permissions using DiskUtility or anything else on a non-OS bearing drive. Don't forget to do this also for your System Drive (which can have its permissions repaired) as well. This will mean the server being off-line for a time whilst the system (OS) drive is being repaired. Before doing this step I would make sure you have a current and effective backup of your System/Server OS as well as all data stored on the RAIDs themselves. Hopefully you should be doing this for your data already?
To understand Disk Utility's repair permissions feature please read Apple's support document here:
About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature - Apple Support

XServe RAID firmware upgrade - ASCII identifier

Got called into a situation where files & folders stored on an XServe RAID were disappearing and appearing randomly, not only from the client standpoint, but while looking at the XServe RAID volume on the XServe, as well.
Turned out to be file system corruption that Disk Utility couldn't repair. DiskWarrior seemingly was able to fix it. Ran Disk Utility afterward and it reported no errors. And all the files and folders appear to be there (from the XServe).
However, now the problem is that when a user mounts the main sharepoint, she can only see 15 of the 37 folders. Other sharepoints only show a fraction of the number of "real" folders that should be there. The folders that are missing are at the end of the list alphabetically. Logging in as admin user shows the same behavior.
Redid permissions with Workgroup Manager. No help.
My suspicion is that it may have something to do with the RAID controller firmware. They been running with RAID Admin tools 1.3.2 since it came out, and everything has been fine. However, everywhere I've read emphasizes how important it is it keep the RAID controller firmware updated.
The reason they haven't updated the firmware (to 1.3.2-1.26) is that the Sys Admin there believes that it will mess up the half of the XServe RAID that is serving a Windows 2003 server (his baby). The specific line that terrifies him is:
"- INQUIRY page 0x83 response ASCII Identifier string cleaned up and Identifier EUI-64 replaced with NAA-64"
I just don't have enough server experience to know what that means, nor have my online searches turned up anything.
Can anyone explain what the ramifications of this sentence from the ReadMe are? Is there any reason to suspect that after the firmware upgrade, the Windows server will no longer recognize it's half of the XServe RAID?

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

Copy from xServe RAID to firewire drive is crashing my OS...

Fellow mac users,
I am a relatively new OS X system admin and I am having a hard time copying files from my xServe RAID to a firewire drive to do an intermittent backup. When I try to copy the files over it crashes the OS without fail. I was wondering if anyone has ever heard or seen of this before? It's rather discouraging when all I'm trying to do is get a quick backup of the RAID which is only 300 gb in size currently.
Our hardware is very good, we have a dual 2.3 G5 model with 3 gb of RAM so I know the hardware can handle a simple finder copy. The only idea I have is to do a "ditto" in the terminal. I thought I'd ask for input from the resident apple sages before trying that. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas for me?
Thanks for any help,
Thomas
xServe Dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Be sure you have the external drive connected when you boot from the installer disc. Use the OS X Installer One disc that came with your MacBook. After you boot from the installer and select your language select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
After DU loads select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) for the external drive from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Click on the Options button, select the GUID partition scheme and click on the OK button. Set the Format drop down menu to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the number of partitions from the Partition drop down menu to one (1). Click on the Partition button. Wait for the volume to mount on the Desktop.
Quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with the OS X installation. When you get to the part where you select a destination click on the icon for the external hard drive.

Switching to Xserver/Xserve RAID

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

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

Xserve RAID lost RAID 5 array on right/bottom controller

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

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

AFP and Xserve RAID very SLOOOOW

Recently we have been having problems with AFP pegging the Xserve RAID activity lights. Xserve RAID Disk access is very slow.
Machine Specs:
Dual 2.3 GHZ G5 Xserve
1GB RAM (recently downgraded because of memory problems after a power outage)
1x80GB Xserve drive module
3TB Xserve RAID 5
Xserve RAID has been upgraded to 1.5 FW and has both ethernet connections connected.
The whole story is we had a power outage last week. The servers all came back up fine. Throughout the day we noticed that the file server was acting strange. We checked server monitor and it said that RAM slot 3&4 had problems. We opened up System Profiler and it reported that modules 2&3 were only 256MB! (These are 512MB modules). We brought the machine down and pulled the modules. The machine is now at 1GB of memory with more coming. The next day the machine was incredibly slow and the RAIDs access lights were pegged. Also something was pulling all free memory into inactive memory. After trial and error I've found that if I turn off AFP the RAID is no longer pegged and the memory goes back to normal. I thought AFP was the problem and did a complete rebuild of the server last night. This morning the same thing is happening. Also the logs show nothing is wrong.
All of our Macintosh users are Mobile accounts over AFP. We have around 60 Macintosh users. All of our PC users connect using SMB. We have around 20 PC users. All of our network users work off of the file shares.
Thanks for any and all help,
-dustin

Check so that the Xserve RAID diskcache settings are not reset/off.
I have had to take apart the RAID controllers and putting them back togheter again to alleviate slowness/"malfunction" making a couple of RAIDs operating like normal again.
I use Helios Lantest http://www.helios.de/ and XRG to measure/stress disks locally and over the network to see if they are working correctly.

Volumes folder on my xserve raid

Hey all!
When my network users login, they can see the root level of my xserve raid. Shouldn't this ve hidden?
What if someone decides to trash my Volumes folder or decides to make any folder they want?
When I try to disable sharing on the root level, of course, the subfolders are inacessible?
Any advice, please?

I assume you mean when your network users log into their workstations they mount the XServe RAID volume shared via some host on the network, right?
If that's the case your solution is to just change the sharepoints on the server to share subdirectories on the XServe RAID rather than the entire RAID.
Use Workgroup Manager to designate other sharepoints on the server. You'd need to look at how the clients are mounting the RAID in order to determine what changes you need to make there.
BTW you can't delete the /Volumes directory, so don't worry about that part.

Mapping a network folder stored on an Apple Xserve to a Windows user a/c.

I have a number of domain users who need to get there individual network folder mapped to there profile when they log onto the domain from various MAC in the building.
We use a batch file that maps the users network home folder to there profile when they log onto a PC.
Does anyone know how to do the same process for those same users loggin onto a MAC OS X leopard machine.
Users network folders are stored on a Apple Xserve. Authentication comes first from Windows Server 2003 Active Directory.
(at the moment MAC users accounts are loaded entirely from the Apple Xserve, resulting in the user constantly writing to there profile across the network.
What I would like to do instead is to 'force the local home directory on startup disk', this is an option in directory utility on each mac. This will force the profile to load locally. Then using some sort of script or batch file map the users network home folder to the desktop of the MAC. Therefore reducing traffic across the network as the user profile will be loaded loally and will only be saving to there netowrk folder)
Does this make sense, and advice appreciated...???

Check out the AD-OD Sandbox. I think there may be instructions in there on how to do it:
http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20080304215842264

Maximum size for Xserve RAID modules

What is the maximum storage size for an Xserve RAID module?
Years ago, an Xserve RAID was out of my price range. Now, I'm looking into getting one on eBay and playing around with it.
I have been making Mirrored RAIDS with Western Digital 3 TB My Books.
Can I put 3 TB drives in an Xserve RAID? It probably depends on the controller firmware or something.
Thanks for thinking about this.
Doc

Short answer is no, you can't.
The XServe RAID has IDE drives mounted in a carrier. The maximum size drive shipped by Apple, supported under 1.5.1 firmware on the controllers is 750GB, though finding these on the used market is farily difficult. Aside from that, any IDE drive can be put in the carriers. If your unit has 'blank' slots, these are indeed just blank slots - you will need to get carriers / drive modules if you want disks in the slot if that makes sense.
People on the Internet, myself included, have experimented down the route of using IDE to SATA bridges in the carriers with 2.5" SATA drives which are more freely available. This way you can utilise cheap drives in your drive modules, or even SSDs (which offer little benefit I have found). Some users have had success with 1TB 2.5" SATA drives in this method, but not with anything bigger it seems. Myself, I've had suceess with 500GB SATA and 256GB SSD with this hacky method.
Hope that helps.

AFP Connections More Than Number of Users - Why?

In Server Admin > AFP, why are there more connections listed here than the number of users? For example, I have two users with accounts and both logged in currently. Server Admin > AFP shows four connections, one for the first user (with two different Connected times) and one for the second user.
Am I limited to the number of connections? I have a 10 seat version of Mac OS X server, but am not exactly sure how that applies here (if at all).
Thanks!
Xserve G5 with Mac OS X 10.4.8 Server

If your users are logged in to a network home directory and then subsequently "Connect to Server..." to the same server or otherwise mount a share point other than their home, that will register twice in Server Admin. Each counts against your 10 user limit if I remember correctly.

XServe RAID Sharing

Well, after many hours of heartache I skipped the pre-config options and am doing it the old fashioned way -- much easier.
Question: how come my clients can't see volumes mounted to the server? I have an xServe RAID fibre-channel attached to my xServe, but none of the client can reach the volume. Oddly, they can ping its IP though.
Any thoughts much appreciated

Unless I have missed something - leaving room for a mistake here - I would recommend people NOT upgrade from 10.3.9 server to Tiger server based on our ACL permission problems. If I had read this somewhere, I would have not upgraded. I was also told this "bug" we so enjoy would not be fixed until Leopard is released - circa Oct 2007.
I spent the night Thursday redoing the Tiger server install - from the ground up. Hand coded all users and only used the builtin staff group.
Using all the available tips I proceeded to:
1) turn on ACL for volumes.
2) reboot
3) set POSIX owner to "diradmin" (open directory owner) for all points that will be shared read write
4) set POSIX group ownership to "staff" read write
5) set POSIX everyone to read write
6) dragged staff group into ACL and set to full control
7) propagated each point
8) rebooted
9) enabled sharepoints
10) rebooted
a few hours later I am receiving calls from staff members that are creating documents that can't make changes to their new documents. Of course I am at home asleep because I was up for 24 hours before I went home. Had I been awake, I would be assured I was living a nightmare which really began a few weeks ago, the day we decided to finally use our Tiger server installer.
The most valuable tip I ran across is very poorly highlighted, the fact that you CANNOT propagate root owned files and folders. We all know that root/system owned files and folders are the ideal server side rights. What in the freaking world would posess anyone to change that??????? and not provide adaquate warning. So I will reiterate here because many people are missing this crucial point.
YOU CANNOT PROPAGATE ROOT/SYSTEM OWNED FILES AND FOLDERS PERMISSIONS
Even if you could, you are not guarenteed that ACLs will work. They simply don't work at all here - bug!
No, I'm not erasing 11 terabytes of storage to see if that helps. It didn't work on the internal 200 gb drives.
sincerely, Bugie
XServe G4

Xserve RAID - Number of Users

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