NetApp Simulator 8.0.1 image with 56 disks of 1GB

by jcosta Netapp Alumni on ‎2011-09-24 09:38 AM

The simulator available on the NOW website allows for 56 disks of 1GB in size, however the freebsd UFS filesystem where the simulator files are located is not large enough to accomodate those 56GB of data. If one tries to write more than 30GB the simulator will crash and won't you won't be able to restart it again without extending the underlying partition.

I've hacked the SIM vmware images available from NOW by extending the vmdk disk, the freebsd slices, and the UFS filesystem, the number of disks have also been increased to 56.

Notice that aggr0 is 32bits, if you plan to use features such as compression you can either create a new aggregate with the remaining 53 disks or migrate aggr0 into 64bits.

While the simulator is not suitable for serving data, it is quite usable for testing netapp software or custom made scripts that require snapshots, it can be used for lab testing of different applications: oracle, sqlserver, exchange, ESX.

You can find procedures on the web to install ESX on vmware workstation, and then use NFS datastores served from the simulator. It is then possible to use this setup to test SnapManager applications such as SMVI, SDW/U by building a light VM into the virtualized ESX server.

(*) don't expect it to run at neutrino speeds! the experience will be more like taking a 2am night bus on a saturday night from central london to brixton.

and note that this image is only available to NetApp staff:

http://web.netapp.com/~jcosta/AH45-ONTAP-Simulator-8.0.1-56disks-of-1GB-on-bsdslice-with-72GB.tgz

0 Kudos
2 of 2 people found this article helpful.
Did you find this article helpful? Yes No
4 Comments (4 New)
Hide Comments
Comments
reide
reide Netapp Alumni
on ‎2011-11-29 06:02 PM

How about for the 8.1 7-mode simulator?  Does it suffer from the same 30 GB limitation on the UFS file system?  If so, will a hacked version of the 8.1 7-mode sim be created?

jcosta
jcosta Netapp Alumni
on ‎2011-11-30 02:28 AM

Don't know, I haven't tried the 8.1 yet.

paulhar
paulhar Netapp Alumni
on ‎2012-05-08 08:36 AM

I've contacted the dev team; this is problem with the image that was created. They are planning on re-creating the 8.1 image with the correct parameters so that it can scale to the full size of the simulator but haven't got a date for doing it yet.

jshelton
NetApp
on ‎2012-06-07 05:24 PM

Any word as to whether the 8.1 image got updated or not?

Warning!

This NetApp Community is public and open website that is indexed by search engines such as Google. Participation in the NetApp Community is voluntary. All content posted on the NetApp Community is publicly viewable and available. This includes the rich text editor which is not encrypted for https.

In accordance to our Code of Conduct and Community Terms of Use DO NOT post or attach the following:

  • Software files (compressed or uncompressed)
  • Files that require an End User License Agreement (EULA)
  • Confidential information
  • Personal data you do not want publicly available
  • Another’s personally identifiable information
  • Copyrighted materials without the permission of the copyright owner

Files and content that do not abide by the Community Terms of Use or Code of Conduct will be removed. Continued non-compliance may result in NetApp Community account restrictions or termination.