Summary: Need comments on ClearCase (2/5)

From: Boris.XSSC@fxap.xerox.com
Date: Wed Feb 05 1997 - 03:40:37 CST


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From: Louis Brune <lbrune@qualcomm.com>
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A friend sent me your questions. I'm a sysad at Qualcomm, where one
rather large project uses clearcase.

    1. Any additional work needed in system admin? Percentage increae
    in workload?

This depends on the current configuration of your machines. To be
effective, clearcase needs between 100 and 1000 MB (i.e., up to a gig)
of local disk space on the "view-servers", machines you and I are used
to thinking of as "clients".

    2. Hardware/resources requirements on Server, and Client stations.

See above for clients. On the VOB server(s), you need gigabytes of
disk space, twice as much or more compared to what you're using now.

    3. Increase in network traffic.

not too bad

    4. Any VOB backup/restore issue?

Yup! VOBs must be backed up atomically, i.e., without being modified
during the backup. The VOB is locked, it gets backed up, then
unlocked. The problem is that your developers use more than one VOB.
If only one of their several is locked, their compilation (or
whatever) fails.

    5. Any file system management issue?

Not really. You will be doing a lot more nfs than you are now, for
sure. Clearcase's mvfs runs on top of nfs.

    6. Others.

Just a guess. Plan on at least one (very good) or two (much more
likely) full-time employee(s) who is clearcase administrator, for a
project the size you gave (~100 developers). This person may well be
used to having root access in his or her previous job. You'll *have*
to get along with the ccadmin(s).

Clearcase seems to be happier on Solaris 2.x than on Suns 4.1.x, but
YMMV.

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Hi,

My name is Yariv and I am the ClearCase Administrator in
3com/Israel/Rehovot.
My company installed ClearCase about 3 month ago so I can't give you a lot
of tips, but here is some thing I do know regarding your question:

1. ClearCase needs on-going changes and administration. Therefore, it
will
     probably add some work to the System Administration.
     As I saw in other companies, someone is assigned to be ClearCase
     Administrator ( you should decide if you want this person to come from
the
     programmers or from the system group).
2. ClearCase might crash and cause a lot of problems if he is out of disk
space.
     CC save a growing data-base which might take 5-7 Giga per project (in
a
     year or two).
     The size of our VOBs server is 16 Giga .( after 2 month of working we
past the
     limit of 500 MB )
3. ClearCase works usually on network, therefore he increases the traffic
on the
     network.
4. There is no special issues with VOBs backup.
     It is recomanded to lock the VOBs before backup or to backup when no
one
     works.
     (I've been told that Atria will add a backup feature with auto lock
in the next
     version of ClearCase).

In this company we works with NT4.0 and all Unix platforms.
We use Solaris 2.5.1 as VOB server and PC as VIEWs server, it means that
the
programmers works on NT4.0 and the data-base kept on Unix.

So far, we had one big problem:
     We used Samba as NFS , and our VOB crashed.
-Atria does not support Samba and when we moved to other NFS the problem
seams
to be solved.

For more information about ClearCase problems, you can ask Atria to add you
to the
ClearCase mailing list (cciug@atria.com).

If you have more questions, you can email me to :

     Yariv_Tawili@3mail.3com.com

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From: Jason Keltz <cs911089@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 07:34:47 +1100
From: Jason Noorman <jasonn@nabaus.com.au>
To: cs911089@ariel.cs.yorku.ca
Subject: Re: Need comments on ClearCase

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
We here at the bank use ClearCase for version control. We are only a solaris
developement site, but we are investigating CC on NT.

As for resourse requirements, CC could be concidered a virus as it consumes
mamouth amounts of disk space, CPU, memory etc.

We currently have two build guys who manage CC with a swag of consultants to
provide OO methollogy and direction.

However, CC works very well and all of our unix build products are now
developed and compiled under it.

This is my opinion only and does not represent in any way the view of the bank.

Thanks,

Jason..

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| .-./\ Jason D. Noorman Email: jasonn@nabaus.com.au |
| / \ Snr Unix Systems Consultant. Group Treasury Technology. |
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