[CentOS] Dell Equallogic

Wed Oct 14 17:36:01 UTC 2009
James A. Peltier <jpeltier at fas.sfu.ca>

On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

>
> Hmm.. what kind of problems do you have with snapshots?

Let's see

They take up 16MB  of space regardless of the amount of data that changes. 
A single bit changes and 16MB is taken up.  This is not tunable.

Mounting a snapshot requires the generation of a new UUID for the file 
system in order to be able to use it.  Perhaps this is a XFS limitation, 
but unlike ZFS they aren't immediately available.  We need to perform this 
action extensively to backup file systems and allow for quick data 
recovery.

There is no GNU/Linux interface to automating the snapshot process. Sure 
there is a telnet interface but it changes from version to version.  I 
know because I've spoken with engineers to discuss this issue.  I wrote 
software to talk to the EQL using the interface.  There are talks of an 
SDK for developers but nothing has materialized.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great device for cheap storage compared to 
competitors but there are obvious limitations that you need to address in 
your requirements if you intend to deploy it.

-- 
James A. Peltier
Systems Analyst (FASNet), VIVARIUM Technical Director
HPC Coordinator
Simon Fraser University - Burnaby Campus
Phone   : 778-782-6573
Fax     : 778-782-3045
E-Mail  : jpeltier at sfu.ca
Website : http://www.fas.sfu.ca | http://vivarium.cs.sfu.ca
           http://blogs.sfu.ca/people/jpeltier
MSN     : subatomic_spam at hotmail.com

Does your OS has a man 8 lart?
http://www.xinu.nl/unix/humour/asr-manpages/lart.html