0

In our department we have an Iomega NAS (px4-300d) connected to a Supermicro cluster with 5 nodes (12 cores per node). Each node mounts a share on that NAS by using NFS. Unfortunately after some time (several minutes) of permanent read/write operations (from all nodes) the NAS starts to block and a bit later freezes completely. We tried several options of the mount command, but nothing helped (async, intr, wsize, rsize). The NAS itself doesn't allow many options (better to say none). Do you have any recommendation how to integrate a NAS using NFS in a cluster environment?

medihack
  • 145
  • 1
  • 1
  • 6
  • What is your quesiton? I Mean, defective hardware = support call. Hardware unsuited for job = replace with one suited. There is not a lot we can do if your appliance does not work properly - call Iomega and talk to them. Only advice here: Upgrade firmware if needed, open support ticket. – TomTom Jun 05 '12 at 11:16
  • @Dmitri ... A shell also hangs completely when trying to access the mounted share then (e.g. a directory listing), so we power off and restart the NAS. After that everything works fine again. Data integrity is no problem at the moment as we don't use it in production yet. – medihack Jun 05 '12 at 11:20
  • @TomTom ... that is what we did ... called the Iomega support and they opened a ticket. Unfortunately Iomega is not very responsive, and we want to make sure that we didn't overlooked something (maybe an option that is recommend for all NFS mounts in cluster environments). And imho it's not a hardware failure as the NAS is still accessible through ftp or other protocols even when it hangs using NFS. We also use the current firmware. – medihack Jun 05 '12 at 11:24
  • 1
    @Zardoz It is important that the box is still accessible with FTP, please add this to the question. Are you using the same GigE physical interface on the NAS for ftp and for NFS (that is to exclude ethernet interface failure)? Can you reproduce the problem with bonnie++ rewrite test or is it a custom application? – Dima Chubarov Jun 05 '12 at 11:35

1 Answers1

2

If a consumer quality NAS is used in an office environment, you may find that the manufacturer's support won't help you. If this is for a serious enough job that you require support and a NAS that doesn't intermittently fail, you should get the IT team to provide you and support a NAS meant for businesses.

The IOMEGA NAS you're using here is probably at fault, but since there's no way to really manage or repair it, you can only replace it.

Basil
  • 8,851
  • 3
  • 38
  • 73