VMWare over NFS on a NetApp - ASIS (deduplication) WOW

I have a NetApp 3040c cluster that I'm using for NFS, iSCSI and FC connectivity to my VMWare ESX Servers. NFS has proven to be fast and reliable. I'm running the following system on NFS without any problems:

• Active Directory Domain Controller (Server 2008) - (16,000 users)
  
• Exchange 2007 (CAS) Client Access Server on Server 2008
• Exchange 2007 HUB on Server 2008
• ILM / MIIS on Server 2003
• IIS on Server 2003 with over 800 websites
• IIS on Server 2008
• Full Exchange 2007 Test enviorment (3 servers Mailbox, HUB, CAS and 1 DC)
• Blackberry Access Server
• Wireless Raidus Server

These Virtual Machines take up 462 GB of disk space... but the really cool part is that because I'm running these all on my NetApps over NFS with DeDuplication turned on I'm seeing a 77% storage savings... so they are only taking up 105 GB of disk space on the storage system.

sanb> df -s -g /vol/esxNFS
Filesystem used saved %saved
/vol/esxNFS/ 105GB 357GB 77%

I'll I can say is wow.

Filer Panic - NetApp 3050c - DataOnTap 7.2.3

I was surprised to find an email this morning from my Filers and NetApp support telling me one of my filers had a little panic over the night.

RPANIC:Saving 674M to /etc/crash/core.101185944.2008-03-05.06_16_18.nz ("Protection Fault accessing address 0x0000008c from EIP 0x1426f54 in process FTPPool03 on release NetApp Release 7.2.3") via sparecore

According to the logs and the auto support message it appears that an FTP Error occurred from a poorly written FTP Client that caused the filer to PANIC. This is disturbing. It's saying I can write crappy FTP Software and cause the NetApp Filers to panic. I run my filers in a cluster so during the panic the filer that didn't panic took over the one that did and life went on normally. Now I need to wait until after hours to perform the giveback because already this morning there are over 100 connections via CIFS to the filer and bringing it out of cluster takeover mode requires the cifs service be shutdown and restarted on the partner system.

The Command is easy though: > cf giveback

Panic Message:Protection Fault accessing address 0x0000008c from EIP 0x1426f54 in process FTPPool03 on release NetApp Release 7.2.3

Bug: 264711

Title: disconnecting FTP session during the "LIST" command may panic filer

Description: During a session from an external FTP client to the FTP service running on the storage appliance itself (a service of the Data ONTAP kernel), if the FTP control connection unexpectedly disconnects at the same time the appliance is processing an Passive FTP "LIST" command (or equivalent operation), the appliance may suffer an interruption of service.


Workaround: Correctly written FTP clients on a healthy network are less likely to provoke an abrupt disconnection.

NetApp 3050c upgrade of DataOnTap 7.0.5 to DataOnTap 7.2.3

Performing a non-disruptive upgrade of our Network Appliance FAS 3050c (clustered filer configuration)

One of the benefits of having the clustered filers (FAS3050c) is that I can, in most cases, perform a system upgrade without having to disrupt services running on either system. The process is a little complex but well worth the payoff as in our environment I literally have thousands of students connecting to the storage at a time. Below is a slightly modified version of my notes from the upgrade (use at your own risk). I followed the directions from NetApp's upgrade guide. Although, I will note that their directions were not exact. I had differing outputs from commands at times which made me a little nervous. All in all the upgrade went pretty smooth and the systems have been running solid since.

Download from now.netapp.com under Download Software – DataOnTap – FAS 3050c

• new Shelf Firmware from now.netapp.com (all shelf firmware updates)
• new Disk Firmware from now.netapp.com (all disk firmware updates)
• newest release of Filer Firmware CFE 3.1
• newest GA Release of DataOnTap 7.2.3
• docs for DataOnTap 7.2.3

Copied and Made backups of files

• Mounted \\filerA\c$
• Mounted \\filerB\c$
• Made of backup of c$\etc\ folder on both systems (minus log files)
  - Copy to c$\backup\etc_8-24-2007
• From shelf zip file to the etc\shelf_fw on the both filerA and filerB
• From shelf zip file to the etc\shelf_fw on the both filerA and filerA
• From disk zip file to the etc\disk_fw on the both filerA and filerB
• From disk zip file to the etc\disk_fw on the both filerA and filerA

Shelf Firmware

• Login to the appliance console.
• Check current shelf firmware version ( > sysconfig -v )
  
• Enter Advanced privileges ( > priv set advanced )
  
• Start the update ( > storage download shelf )
  - This will upgrade the shelf firmware on all the disk shelves in the system. (If you wish to only update the disk shelves attached to a specific adapter, enter storage download shelf adapter_number instead).
• Accept the update, Press y for yes and hit enter.
• To verify the new shelf firmware, ( > sysconfig -v )
  
• Exit Advanced privlieges ( > priv set admin )

Disk Firmware

Disk firmware is automatically updated on reboot if there are updated files in the disk_fw folder. To keep the system from updating too many disks at once set or verify the following option.

• ( > options raid.background_disk_fw_update.enable)
  - if it is set to off, I recommend you change it to on
  

DataOnTap Update

1. Downloaded the newest General Deployment Release, in this case it was Data ONTAP 7.2.3.
2. Verified our system met all requirements for running the downloaded release, updates were required for Disk firmware and shelf firmware (which was done above)
3. Checked known problems and limitations of the new release to see if any would affect our environment. No potential problems found.
4. Compared bug fixes from current version of OnTap 7.0.5 to new version of 7.2.3. There were many bug fixes that could potentially effect our environment which makes the upgrade needed.
5. Downloaded newest documentation for 7.2.3

Update Procedure

With C$ mapped on both filers I ran the downloaded OS install (self extracting zip files) to the respective \etc directories. This is the first step and copies all the needed files over to the filers. Once completed, we preforme the procedure below from the NOW upgrade guide for Windows Clients.

1. start the install on both systems ( > download )
   
2. Checked the cluster status ( > cf status ) to make sure cluster failover was enabled
3. Had filerB takeover services for filerA ( > cf takeover )
   - This causes filerA to reboot
   
4. During reboot of filerA hit ( ctrl-c ) to enter into maintenance mode
5. From maintenance mode type ( > halt ) to do a full reboot
6. Hit ( del ) during memory test to get to the CFE prompt
7. start the firmware update of the filer from the CFE> prompt using ( CFE> update_flash )
   
8. Now reboot, type ( bye ) at console after update was finished to reboot filerA
9. filerA is now in a …waiting for giveback state
10. Now to give services back to filerA we have to force it using ( > cf giveback –f ) from filerB
    - This is required since we are now on different version of DataOnTap between systems in the cluster.
    
11. Giveback successful, checked firmeware and os version on filerA using ( > sysconfig –v )
12. After checking services on both systems it's time to upgrade filerB
    
13. Have filerA take over the services of filerB ( > cf takeover –n )
    
14. Type ( > halt ) from filerB to reboot it
    
15. During reboot of filerB hit ( ctrl-c ) to enter into maintenance mode
16. From maintenance mode type ( > halt ) to do a full reboot
17. Hit ( del ) during memory test to get to the CFE prompt
18. start the firmware update of the filer from the CFE> prompt using ( CFE> update_flash )
    
19. Typed ( bye ) at console after update was finished to reboot filerB
20. filerB is now in a …waiting for giveback state
21. Now to give services back to filerB we have to force it using ( > cf giveback –f ) from filerA
    - This is required since we are now on different version of DataOnTap between systems in the cluster.
22. Giveback successful, checked firmeware and os version on filerB using ( > sysconfig –v )
1. Both systems should now show the updated firmware and OnTap version 7.2.3


23. You should also notice that any out of date disk firmware is automatically updated. In my case I went from NA07 to NA08 on many of the disks.

My final steps were to test system connections

1. We use the following NetApp services: CIFS, FTP, HTTP, FCP via VMWARE. All worked fine. I Also checked our student websites and our web based FTP software that connects to the filer.
2. Checked Domain connection using cifs testdc ( filerA> cifs testdc )
   - appeared fine