No Time For Narrative – Solaris 11 Express ZFS and NFS share to VMWare ESXi 4.1u1
Welcome to my scratchpad. See links for some excellent write ups.
This article is based on Solaris 11 Express and VMWare ESXi 4.1.
Step 0: Build your hardware and install Solaris.
HCL: http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/hcl/index.html
Step 1: Mirror the rpool
zpool status #figure out what’s already allocated
cfgadm -s "select=type(disk)" #list disks
fdisk -W - [rootdisk2] #check
fdisk -B [rootdisk2] #apply a default Solaris partition to the disk
fdisk -W - [rootdisk2] #check again
prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/[rootdisk1] | fmthard -s - /dev/rdsk/[rootdisk2] #slice and dice! You must define slices for rpools, so this step mirrors the original disk’s slice-age to the second root disk
zpool attach -f rpool [rootdisk1] [rootdisk2] #attach, not add. Attach = mirror. Add = stripe.
zpool status #check
installgrub /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/[rootdisk2] #install grub onto second boot disk
zpool status #check again
see: http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/03/how-set-zfs-root-pool-mirror-oracle-solaris-11-express
For more on rpool manipulation, namely on how to shrink an rpool, see: http://blogs.oracle.com/mock/entry/how_to_shrink_a_mirrored
Step 2: Configure networking
ifconfig -a #cheat and take advantage of nwam’s device lists
svcadm disable network/physical:nwam #disable nwam
svcadm enable network/physical:default #then enable the default config tools
ipadm create-if e1000g0 #or whatever your nic is
ipadm show-if #check
ipadm create-addr -T static -a mg.mt.ip.addy/prefix e1000g0/v4 #create the address
ipadm show-addr #confirm
#link aggregate group (LACP)
dladm create-aggr -l [nic2] -l [nic 3] #create link aggregate group:
Then the same ipadm commands
ipadm create-if aggr1 #configure aggr1 for persistence
ipadm show-if #confirm it was added, should show down.
ipadm create-addr -T static -a 1.2.3.4/24 aggr1/v4 #create the address
ipadm show-addr #confirm it was added, show-if should now show “OK”
netstat -rn #check routing tables
route -p add default 1.2.3.1 #add persistent default route
vi /etc/resolv.conf #configure nameservers
vi /etc/hosts #configure name
vi /etc/nsswitch.conf #enable dns lookups for “hosts” line
svcsadm restart ssh #restart ssh after modifying networking
ping 4.2.2.1 #ping Level3′s DNS resolvers to confirm routing
reboot #reboot to confirm persistency
Step 3: Do your AD thing. I know you love it.
read this: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2006/08/15/solaris-10-and-active-directory-integration/
also: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19963-01/html/821-1449/index.html
Step 4: Configure ZFS
format #to present list of disks. exit out, leaving the list in screen buffer
or: cfgadm -s "select=type(disk)"
zpool create tank mirror c7t0d0 c7t1d0 mirror c7t2d0 c7t3d0 cache c7t4d0 #create your main zpool. This is 4 drives in raid 10 and a read cache. use “log c#t#d#” to add a ZIL device
zfs set dedup=on tank #enable dedup
zfs set compression=on tank #enable compression.
Note that changes made to the pool will apply to its children when they are created.
zfs create tank/VMOS #create your ESXi share
zfs set sharenfs=none,nosuid,root=1.2.3.xx:1.2.3.xy tank/VMOS #share with 1.2.3.xx and 1.2.3.xy
From esxi 4.1:
esxcfg-nas -a -o IP.Or.Host.Name -s /tank/VMOS [esxiDatastoreName]# http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005057
ZFS /Solaris links
http://lildude.co.uk/zfs-cheatsheet
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19963-01/index.html
iSCSI - Solaris 11 = use COMSTAR.
Dropbox for Teams
WHAT?! https://www.dropbox.com/teams. Just click on it.
This is Awesome-Sauce in response to user requests for enterprise ready dropbox, Dropbox for Teams allows IT organizations to deploy dropbox to end users in SAAS fashion.
That being said, I’ve been short on posts lately on account of some severe workload. Will post more soon.
dropbox.com
I wanted to bring up Dropbox.com to your attention. I wanted to share what I thought was a fantastic company that’s basically taken the concept of JungleDisk and moved it one step further. How? Instead of really cheap (Jungledisk), dropbox is free for the first 2 gigs. This, combined with the below usability features, results in rapid growth in user adoption. As of January, the company has over 4 million users. That’s over 8 Petabytes of potential disk space usage if every user was a free 2GB plan.
All of the public infrastructure is hosted at AWS, and can thus scale with the userbase. As Amazon charges anywhere from $0.055 to $0.150 per GB (pricing structure), each free user consumes from $0.11 to $0.30 per month. Even with 6.25% utilization of 8 Petabytes, Dropbox.com pays the $0.105 per GB rate, Given their next paid upgrade is for 50 GB and costs $9.99/month, one paid customer can support the storage fees for up to ($9.99 − 50 clients × $0.105) ÷ $0.21 = 22 clients covered in the cost of a single paid user, at full utilization of each user. However, most users won’t be using their full utilization (think Google mail), and their business model becomes more lucrative.
Starting with dropbox is simple. Download the client, register your account, and a folder is created where you can drag and drop your data. All data in this folder is replicated to dropbox servers, and to all dropbox client nodes that you link to your account.
The application ships with an intuitive user interface (no S3 accounts to configure, as this is done for you), and a rich feature set that includes automatic versioning, automatic syncing, cross-platform compatibility, intuitive web publishing, and a simple pricing model.
The one feature that really stood out however, was how they garner feedback for this actively developed product. Users can navigate to https://www.dropbox.com/votebox, where they can submit suggestions that get voted on and commented upon. This popularity contest likely helps the company focus on what projects need developing next.
All in all, this is an exciting company to be a customer of, and I would recommend y’all take a look at it too, as this appears to be what proper execution of a good idea looks like.
Kudos dropbox.com on a product well done.
Data Fail: Sidekick Phones
The Microsoft data store where T-Mobile Sidekick phones save their user data, such as contact info and pictures, has been reported to have been lost beyond repair.
On October 3, T-Mobile Chief Operations Officer, Jim Alling wrote the following post on the T-Mobile forum site:
Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:
I realize that for many of you, your T-Mobile Sidekick is how you stay in touch with your friends, family and others. I sincerely apologize for the impact the current disruption of data services may be having on you. I assure you that T-Mobile is working very closely with Danger/Microsoft to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. T-Mobile-supported services, such as voice calls and SMS/MMS, have not been affected and continue to be operational. Danger/Microsoft has been working, and will continue working through the week, to restore data functionality and other features.
I understand that this data service disruption is very frustrating to our valued Sidekick customers. For many years, the Sidekick has been, and continues to be, a cornerstone device for T-Mobile. And we believe Sidekick customers are among the most loyal customers anywhere. Recognizing that, and to address any inconvenience Sidekick data customers are experiencing, T-Mobile will automatically credit one month of data service to customers who subscribe to T-Mobile Sidekick data plans. There is nothing you need to do to get this credit – T-Mobile will post the credit to these accounts in the coming days.
We will continue to post the latest information and FAQs to these Forums. I appreciate you being a loyal T-Mobile customer, and appreciate your patience as everyone works hard to resolve the current issues. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jim Alling, Chief Operations Officer, T-Mobile USA
Then, after a torrent of discussion on the forum site, the following update was provided earlier today:
Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:
We are thankful for your continued patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on preserving platform stability and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers. We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer. Microsoft/Danger has teams of experts in place who are working around-the-clock to ensure this stability is maintained.
Regarding those of you who have lost personal content, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger continue to do all we can to recover and return any lost information. Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible. We will continue to keep you updated on this front; we know how important this is to you.
In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card. This will be in addition to the free month of data service that already went to Sidekick data customers. This card can be used towards T-Mobile products and services, or a customer’s T-Mobile bill. For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days – there is no action needed on the part of these customers. We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered.
===
Dan
Moderator, T-Mobile Forums
At this time, neither Microsoft nor T-Mobile have confirmed conjecture that a SAN update caused the failure:
So yeah..
I would like to know what discounts are T-mobile going to give on a new Phone. I am probably going to move to the Moto Cliq, But I and other sidekick users should get a full phone discount not just a % of it.. (Microsoft should pay for it)
hmm Roz Ho haven’t you her of BACKUP…?
Quoting Hiptop3
“Currently the rumor with the most weight is as follows:
Microsoft was upgrading their SAN (Storage Area Network aka the thing that stores all your data) and had hired Hitachi to come in and do it for them. Typically in an upgrade like this, you are expected to make backups of your SAN before the upgrade happens. Microsoft failed to make these backups for some reason. We’re not sure if it was because of the amount of data that would be required, if they didn’t have time to do it, or if they simply forgot. Regardless of why, Microsoft should know better. So Hitachi worked on upgrading the SAN and something went wrong, resulting in it’s destruction. Currently the plan is to try to get the devices that still have personal data on them to sync back to the servers and at least keep the data that users have on their device saved. “
WOW.
Microsoft Do you understand that you are making yourself and T-mobile loose MONEY????
Also with me being a Sidekick owner I feel betrayed by Microsoft not T-mobile.
This outage I was all fine about at first but now it is just to much. We sidekick owners rely on Danger witch is now owned by Micro to keep are data stored on a secure server and that is why us users never backed up are data. I mean the sidekick does not even have a mass contact save Option. The user has to save them one by one. If I do stay with the sidekick I would like to see Options to save all on SD becuase a SIM can only hold around 250..
I have lost business and meetings from this outage and I am not happy.
So to everyone
It is not T-mobiles Fault so do not blame them. There customer service has been AWESOME
Also Danger and Microsoft do not comunicate with T-mobile as much that is why there is not much info.
“I wonder if we call Microsoft and bug them will they give us any info, they will probably say u have to call t-mobile. Well T-mobile is not the one who messed up,.they do not UPDATE THE SAN…..”
After a week of attempting to salvage the data, it would appear as though Microsoft was unsuccessful in doing so. If the SAN speculation is correct, then it was simply a failure of the data’s underlying SAN. The question is, why should a failing SAN bring with it the data of an entire customer base? I severely doubt that this would have occurred had this been a normal hardware breakdown. Well-designed storage solutions are built with the precondition of being able to survive a head failure, network failure, any sort of failure, really, without losing data. One would thus speculate that gross human error was at fault, and frankly, that means that management was not doing their job. Not enough layers of redundancy were built into this system, and not enough protective layers were written into policy to prevent this human error, or whatever it was, from cascading into a data-lost scenario. Data management is a big responsibility, and not enough resources go into its upkeep in many firms. It would thus appear that Microsoft appears to be one of the latter.
Seagate HDD FAIL
Ran across these tidbits while scrubbing the Interweb. It’s a bit dated, but these drives are out there…
Not all of them are affected, and mostly the high capacity drives, but a couple of Seagate HDD’s have some sort of firmware bug. If you have any of thebelow models, you might want to update them.
##From http://fora.demonoid.com/index.php?topic=45223.0: ##########
To see the list of models touched by this bug:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/news.jsp?DocId=207931
To check your hard disk to determine its model, serial number, and
firmware version download Seagate’s Drive Detector (DriveDetect.exe)
from this web page:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/news.jsp?DocId=207931
or use SeaTools for Windows that also can be downloaded from the Seagate
site, if you don’t have the Seagate CD.
The Seagate bug: hard disks with the bug will no longer be in working
order (bricked) when the hard drive has been powered “on” 320 times.
Patches will only work on Seagate hard drives that have not yet attained
the 320 “start” limit. Bricked Seagate hard drives by this bug will
require you to ask for an exchange.
Patches are specific to the models and associated firmware version. Do
not make an error in applying a patch that does not correspond to your
model and firmware version or the result will kill your Seagate hard
disk.
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From http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=8968 ###################################################################
-See here for a general rundown of current firmware issues
-Firmware Update for ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST3640330AS,
ST3640530AS, ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, ST31000340AS
-Firmware Update for ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS,
ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS
-Firmware Update for STM3500320AS, STM3750330AS, STM31000340AS
-Firmware Update for STM31000334AS, STM3640323AS, STM3320614AS,
STM3160813AS
-Firmware Update for ST3250310NS, ST3500320NS, ST3750330NS,
ST31000340NS
-For all other firmware questions, please see here – Does my drive need
a firmware update?
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