Athreya - Any snapshots older than the last common snapshot for any given qtrees on the destination may be deleted without breaking the snapvault relationship... I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Derek - You can log in to the filer using 'Computer Management' and administer localy to edit the share level permissions. Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management Rt click on 'Computer Management(Local)' and select 'Connect to another computer' from the menu. You can administer the NetApp as you would any Windows file server ... I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Julio - Primary system - The filer with the data you're backing up with SnapVault. Primary Path - The Qtree or directory you're backing up - /vol/myvolume/myqtree. Secondary Path - The Qtree you want to use for your SnapVault backups. Example (On the secondary): snapvault start -r -S primary:/vol/myvolume/myqtree /vol/svvolume/myqtree See the man page for snapvault: http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/ontap/rel734/html/ontap/cmdref/man1/na_snapvault.1.htm I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

John - a. Correct. With single_image cfmode the LUNs will be visible from both controllers all the time. Connection to the primary controller will be the primary (optimized) path and the second (failover) controler will be the secondary (non-optimized) path. Multi-pathing software is needed for cluster failover. b. Correct - You won't have another initiator port (or set of ports) left to connect the tape drive with FC. c. No, the tape drive would need to have connectivity to an initiator port. d. Yes, you should be able to access the tape drive attached to the backup server through a network connection. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

SnapVault will work with many applications, but the 'snapmirror store' and 'snapmirror retrieve' commands are specific to initializing a SnapMirror destination. Some SNMP DMAs are able to trigger the Snapmirror initialization, but it is only to perform the NetApp to NetApp baseline transfer. These tapes can be used for long term retention, but can only be restored back to a NetApp as a whole volume image. I hope this response has been more helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

POSIX will work well for most environments. It's only when foreign characters in filenames cause you problems that you might change the language for a volume. Language settings will not affect your Snapmirror transfers. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

No, it wouldn't work with EMC Networker. Snapmirror to tape is only for initializing a Snapmirror destination. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

With Data ONTAP 7.3.4 Solaris EFI is a supported LUN type: Multiprotocol type of LUN     (solaris/windows/hpux/aix/linux/netware/vmware/windows_gpt/windows_2008/xen/hyper_v/solaris_efi)     [linux]: With earlier versions the documentation sez you can use windows_gpt and get correct allignment. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Hmmm, source doesn't give you prompt. Interesting problem! Playing with this on my simulator now ... - Eugene ... View more

Create a simple script to place in /etc of the vfiler. Call it  /etc/whichfiler Script could read: hostname hostname Then, from your admin host: rsh vfiler 'source /etc/whichfiler' the command prompt should be part of the output, which you can then parse to get the hosting filer name. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

I'm not sure I understand the context of your question. When logged on to the vfiler itself you get the hosting filer name as part of your prompt: sim1vf1@sim1> From a remote host ? Use rsh to 'source'  two line script on the vfiler so you see the prompt ? I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

I agree, wholeheartedly ! I've been a big fan of proper grounding for a long time. I tell stories on the first day of DOTF class when I teach - the second slide in the class has bullet points on 'Electrical Safety' and 'ESD Procedures'. ( I'm pretty sure I discharged static on a Sun E6000 dual proc board once back at Mail.com, and blew it. Had the server room guys buy a case of ground wrist straps and install them on every rack ASAP! ) I have memories from long ago of ground loop interference in power supplies (c 1982). : ) Given that the communication to the shelves is fibre, there shouldn't be differential ground problems with IO to the chasis, but a good earth ground on any chasis has always been a good idea. Take the ohm meter 'round and check for chasis ground resistance ? My two cents, and the documentation referenced. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Use the solaris 'format' command partition>modify sub-command, as it sez in the appendix (pg 15) of the Oracle performance paper referenced:   format -e Specify disk (enter its number): enter the number corresponding to the disk you wish to partition [disk formatted] Disk not labeled. Label it now? no format> partition partition> modify Select partitioning base: 0. Current partition table (original) 1. All Free Hog Choose base (enter number) [0]? 1 Do you wish to continue creating a new partition table based on above table[yes]? yes Free Hog partition[6]? 6 Enter size of partition 0 [0b, 33e, 0mb, 0gb, 0tb]: 39e   I hope this response has been helpful to you.   At your service,   Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Andrew - You didn't mention what apps/environments you are cloning, but ... Even with SnapManager and ProtectionManager there's no scheduled re-clone option that I've seen, just scheduled snap/vault/mirror. SnapManager for Oracle will do remote cloning for you, including mounting the clone. There shouldn't be much scripting to it, you just need to schedule the job. The other SnapManager products have like capabilities. You might want to take advantage of using those scheduled snaps for your clone. Given that re-cloning off of a mirror is a very standard practice in Oracle and other environs, it would probably be a neat feature for the SnapManager folks to add to the family of products. If you're not using SnapManager, then it's time to roll up your sleeves and script ... I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Matt - You're very welcome. Found the document: http://now.netapp.com/NOW/public/knowledge/docs/hardware/filer/210-03951.pdf "Note - You do not need to ground your system" Rack screws will generaly ground on the threads when they have paint or coatings on them. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

You're very welcome. Yes, we all say avoid MIXED security. I think it's a legacy of the early multi-protocol days. Best practice - Decide the data is Unix OR Windows, then map any users you need to. Easiest implementation is when you keep all your Unix and Windows user names the same on both sides. (ekashp - ekashp) Data ONTAP will try this as the default mapping. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Interfaces can not be added to a VIF if they are configured in an UP state. It seems controller 2 had already been configured at some point. You need to connect via the console interface and 'ifconfig e0A/B down', then run through setup again to configure the VIF for the second unit. Ensure that there is a correct ''partner' ifconfig parameter for the VIFs on each controller in the /etc/rc startup file. Test your configuration with reboot and 'cf takeover' from each side before putting these units into production. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Fabian - I'd put my money on the two single interfaces over the VIFs, but I'm not a betting man. I prefer hard data. To me the overwhelming issue here would be manageability and failover. Do you realy want to configure alternate hosts to use different IPs ? I'd go with active-active VIFs (ifgrps) any day over the single interface configuration. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

I'll take I stab in the dark at an answer ! : ) Use any of the screws on the 2050 chasis you can reach to attach the grounding straps. Use two straps, for redundancy, if you have them. You should already be grounded to rack with the mounting screws. I did not go look at the hardware installation guides for these answers, but there probably is documentation on this. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Babar - Two very interesting questions - and they are inter related. It's a complicated set of subjects, and the answers pertain to all virtualized environments. Fractional reserve and snap reserve. In most cases for a SAN environment snap reserve is set to zero, given that fractional reserve is a seperate mechanism for doing the same thing. The default fractional reserve of 100% is over kill. A 100% rate of change is rare in most day to day environments. This is most often true of data stores holding an OS, which does not change very much once it has been set up. When fractional reserve or snap reserve are to be adjusted I measure the rate of change with 'snap list' and 'snap delta' and adjust accordingly. There are many strategies for implementing thin provisioning of LUNs in a SAN environment. I'm fond of turning off all space reservations - set the space guarantee of the volume containing the LUNs to 'none'. I turn on auto grow and snap auto delete with try-first set for auto grow. (I prefer not to delete snapshots - they're taken for a reason!) But there's another strategy you may wish to consider for optimum space utilization and cache (PAM) performance. Don't make 50 copies of these LUNs (VMs). Make 50 clones. The space savings for cloning virtual machines is huge. ( 50 X 20G = 1TB ,  50 clones of 20G = ~40G ? ). But there's another advantage in cache performance. When you're using clones Data ONTAP only needs to cache the shared blocks once, instead of cache holding 50 copies of the same blocks. Be sure to keep your data sets seperate from your OS images to segregate your rate of change in snapshots. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.) ... View more

Michael - I'm not sure what it is that SnapDrive is doing under the hood when you do a space reclaim, but you may want to try running reallocate on the LUNs in question to reclaim freed space within the volume. (I'm going to try this out in my lab environment...) BTW Snapdrive isn't that expensive - it's well worth it in SAN implementations. I hope this response has been helpful to you. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff (P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers!) ... View more

It sounds like you've already been doing the study work on your own to cover DOTF, you'd probably do well taking the advanced boot camp. The advanced boot camp includes NFS, CIFS, SAN, and Data Protection. I throw in extra coverage of Metrocluster when I teach it. You can find course descriptions and schedules at http://www.fastlaneus.com/ . I'm currently scheduled to teach the ANCDA class the week of 11/29 in Atlanta, and again 12/6 in Sunnyvale. I'd love to see you in class ! Check to see if your company has NetApp training credits ? They're often included with a sale, and then forgotten about. At your service, Eugene Kashpureff ... View more