Just had someone ask me how they can delete all snapshots on a volume in cdot without being prompted for each snapshot to authorize it.
I told them powershell. Here’s a quick illustration of how to do it.
Click to continue reading “Quick Tip: NetApp DataOnTap Powershell Toolkit + cDot Snapshots”
So, I have a customer who I need to move 3 “boot from iscsi san” luns from a Netapp OnTap 8.2 Cluster Mode vServer shared with regular iscsi luns, to their own dedicated vserver. How do you easily move between vservers? NDMPCOPY!
Click to continue reading “NDMPCOPY on NetApp 8.2.x Cluster Mode”
I am constantly having to pre-create or migrate massive amounts of LUNs in customer environments. I have many ways to go about it, powershell, ruby, but my awk script is my #1 way to do it
Imagine having to make luns for dozens of database instances on multiple hosts for dev/prod/qa. Suckage!
They all would follow a certain order and naming convention. Most of the sizes would be the same.
If I have to do anything once, I’ll probably have to do it again. So, script it! This will work in any shell with awk (osx/linux/solaris/CygWin)
Click to continue reading “Quick n Dirty Netapp LUN creation script”
Cluster mode is an awesome beast. I say beast, because everything takes MANY more steps to do. Say you want to just enable SSH or OnCommand System Manager client access to your base level cluster? Not so fast… there’s lots of steps before that.
In order to add active directory authentication to a Cluster Mode environment, you have to do the following:
Here I will walk you through what it takes to create do all the crap I listed above.
Click to continue reading “NetApp Cluster Mode – Active Directory Authentication setup”
It really pisses me off when I have to type passwords over and over and over again. Even more so when I am trying to do a ton of work or do a deployment and I need to do it.
It’s even more annoying when a customer won’t enable proper access to their systems, or they use root forever with weak passwords.
Enter the SSH KEYs. Here is how to set them up on your NetApp in both 7-mode and Cluster Mode!
Click to continue reading “Snippet: NetApp SSH Keys for passwordless auth.”
Doing an intensive 3-day NetApp & VMware healthcheck for a customer, and I found the “Ghost in the Machine”.
Click to continue reading “Ghost in the machine… I found it!”
Recently I did a deployment where a great and awesome longtime customer added a new site in Canada. I flew up to Canuckland to install new VMware servers, new Netapp 2240, and a Riverbed Steelhead. There was a partner Riverbed Steelhead here in PA at the customers office. This was a great deployment. Once I got everything worked out and configured, their WAN got a major injection of Honey BooBoos GoGoJuice.
How much faster? Optimization quickly jumped up to 97% WAN reduction and a 23.6X increase in throughput!!!!
743Mb/s LAN throughput, fitting into 55Mb/s WAN bandwidth!!
Click to continue reading “Riverbed Steelhead & Netapp Snapmirror – OMFG Happiness!”
I saw a question on LinkedIn on the Netapp group today.
“what is the downtime (in seconds) for a FAS2240 high-availability machine in case one controller fails and the other takes over? ”
My pre-first cup of coffee answer was less on the question, and more on proper upkeep of a system running on a SAN/NAS. Any SAN/NAS. Set your damn timeouts on your hosts!
Click to continue reading “Tip #8: Set your damn host timeouts!”
I am pretty active on LinkedIn with the NetApp groups there, and newbie NetApp admins are asking quite often lately about the NCDA exam.
Here are some helpful things to try out on the simulator. Every netapp admin should know them.
Click to continue reading “TIP #7: Using Netapp simulators to prepare for NCDA/NCIE exam”
A tale of debugging and tech support hell… don’t freaking buy an HBA with a server! Don’t REUSE cards you have laying around if they were sourced from any server manufacturer or different brand SAN.
Click to continue reading “Do not buy your FC HBAs from your server manufacturer!”
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