SUMMARY: Disksuite 4.0 experience ?

From: Orn Asgeirsson (orn@althingi.is)
Date: Mon Jan 27 1997 - 04:54:02 CST


Hi all,

I basically got what I wanted, a real life examples of DiskSuite 4.0
actually working.

Original question:

>We are in the process of starting to mirror disks on several Solaris
>2.5/2.5.1 servers. The purpose is to minimize system downtime should we
>have to restore from DLT and loss of data. I have seen some conflicting
>reports on how Disksuite 4.0 is working out. Can anyone share his/hers
>experience of Disksuite ?
>
>I have seen rdist and mirror-ftp used for the same purpose, what about
>those methods ?
>
>The primary disks are external F/W Seagate and backups are the same sort
>of disks on the integrated bus.

I got 10+ replies, all stating that DiskSuite works, with certain
conditions:

"You do need to watch it, however. If, as in our case, you mirror
the root partition, and start getting errors on one half of the
mirror, and it doesn't detach it itself, YOU need to manually detach
it or your system will grind to a (bad) halt."

"Just be sure to have multiple replicas of the ODS DB, on separate
partitions, on diferente spindles."

"I've run DS 4.0 under Solaris 2.4 and 2.5 in mirroring mode with
no problems -- but WITH THE PATCHES. Without the patches, things
are not so good. I've had some problems with RAID-5, but haven't
tried it again since about June 1996."

"Make sure you install the latestpatch, 102580-xx. Never had a problem,
in fact sometimes it is so good that you don't know a disk is failed if
you miss the warning message or don't check."

The rdisk/mirror-ftp method was not popular:

"They'll work, mostly, *but* both suffer from latency problems, e.g.
the copy is not kept in sync with the original. And neither copes
especially gracefully with special files (e.g. devices)."

I liked this one:

"I have even tested how it responds by pulling out various hd's and we
have never lost anything ever."

Thanks to:

Dan Lorenzini
Jason D. Noorman
Marina Daniels
Fletcher B. Cocquyt
Glenn Satchell
Rich Kulawiec
Jim Brown
Bernd Weninger
Rogerio Rocha
Chipp Kuldell
Jeff Wasilko

--
Orn Asgeirsson			tel:     +354-563-0656
Network and system admin.	fax:	 +354-563-0654/670
Comp. dept.			beeper:       845-2078	  
Parliament of Iceland		orn@althingi.is



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