Many thanks to everyone who answered. There appears to be some difference
in opinion, however most said that yes the Volume Management Software would
work with disks outside the array. If one is using the software that comes
with the SSA however one can not remove the SSA from the system because the
Volume Management software will disable itself. There is a seperate
license one can get of course from Sun that has no limitation like this.
The quotes I got from Sun put the software from $100 for a Sparc20, to
around $7,000 for a 2000 or Ultra 3000 license and I've heard that a 10000
license is around $25k. I believe our plan will be to purchase a test
license and see how we like it and just how well it works in our
environment. Following are the replies from everyone, again, many thanks
to you all.
Stephen Frost
---------------------------------------------------------------
SROTHENB@montefiore.org (Seth Rothenberg)
We use Solstice Disk Suite 4.0 for our SSA. SDS
should work with any raw disk that is supported
on Solaris. I believe SDS 4.1 is included with
Solaris 2.5.1 and 2.6. Others may confirm
this for you.
I would be wary of setting up a system
where local disk management depends on the
presence of the SSA. If the SSA goes bad,
or if the fibre breaks, or the SBUS card goes
bad, you are in big trouble.
Seth
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Yes, you may use the Volume Manager software on disks other than
in the array.
- --
Brooke King jbking@sandia.gov +1.505.844.5936 both voice and fax
---------------------------------------------------------------
You should check out Solstice DiskSuite. It can do RAID arrays through
software. It also can combine multiple slices into a single, large volume.
It doesn't care where the disks are.
Erwin Fritz
UNIX/NT/LAN/DBA Guy
Gilbert Laustsen Jung Associates Ltd.
http://www.glja.com
---------------------------------------------------------------
bismark@alta.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Bismark Espinoza)
The software should work with other disks.
Make sure each disk set has the same manufacturer
and model number, same firmware version.
---------------------------------------------------------------
No, the verias license that comes with the SSA *only* works on the SSA.
You can
purchase a license upgrade. Depending on the system, it can be cheap, or
*very*
expensivee. (For our E10000 it was $25,000!)
The Online Disksuite that sun bundles with the server versions is free, and
reasonable good for software RAID.
- -Peter L. Wargo | plw@ncgr.org | +1 505 995 4476
Senior Systems Administrator
The National Center for Genome Resources
Santa Fe, NM 87505 (USA) | http://www.ncgr.org
---------------------------------------------------------------
daves@adnc.com (David Schiffrin)
Yes, but the license will die if you remove the SSA.
If this worries you, you can 1) buy another VM license or 2) use DiskSuite.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
For both VxVM (Veritas) and SDS a disk is just a disk.
l & h,
kev
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, although you do have to keep the SSA connected (otherwise EVM
will disable itself). Of course you can purchase the product
separately if you do need to get rid of the SSA.
Solstice Disk Suite (comes with a Server license) will also do
software Raid with somewhat different interfaces and capabilities.
- --
Darren Dunham ddunham@taos.com
Unix System Administrator Taos Mountain
Got some Dr. Pepper? Santa Clara, CA
< Please move on, ...nothing to see here, please disperse >
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sun Enterprise Volume Manager is shipped with an SSA, and is a cut down
version of Veritas Volume Manager, which will only manage SSA discs.
This is an extremely well regarded product, and you can buy the full
version (list price around #5000 I think) which will then allow you
to administer non SSA discs. Both products will do RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 1+0
and 5.
Solstice Disc Suite also ships with an SSA, and I think that this
is also subject to the same restrictions, but I'm not so sure.
Matthew.
- --
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Atkinson Phone: +44 (0) 1904 462120
Sun Systems Technical Administrator Fax: +44 (0) 1904 462111
Information Systems Team
Central Science Laboratory E-mail: m.atkinson@csl.gov.uk
Sand Hutton, York, YO41 1LZ, England Web: http://www.csl.gov.uk
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
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