Setting up a NetApp as a simple FC LUN carver

Question

For a particular application, I want to configure a NetApp filer (7-mode) to be as close as possible to an old-fashioned storage subsystem without snapshots or fancy features.

vol create vol_ESX -s volume aggr1 1500M
vol options vol_ESX nosnap on
vol options vol_ESX nosnapdir on
vol options vol_ESX fractional_reserve 0
snap sched vol_ESX 0 0 0
snap reserve vol_ESX 0

# Ensure no snapshots exist on vol_ESX
snap list vol_ESX 

# Create a LUN or multiple LUNs that take up the entire volume
lun create -s 1565523968 -t vmware /vol/vol_ESX/lun0
lun map /vol/vol_ESX/lun0 challenger

Is this safe? Is this the Best Way of doing what I'm trying to accomplish? Is there anything else I should set?

You may also find that you can get useful assistance from the toasters administrators' mailing list, which I run, at http://www.teaparty.net/mailman/listinfo/toasters . — MadHatter, Jun 29 '13 at 07:08

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 29 '13 at 01:43

We also use our NetApps as plain block storage for VMware and have been doing so for over two years now without issue (except that we use iSCSI). (I'm personally not too happy about that since it seems like our NetApps are overqualified for this.)

I don't have the exact commands we used to create the vol and LUN but here's what they look like now:

vmstorage4a> vol status vol1
     Volume State           Status            Options
       vol1 online          raid_dp, flex     nosnap=on, nosnapdir=on,
                            64-bit            no_atime_update=on,
                                              fractional_reserve=0
            Containing aggregate: 'aggr0'

vmstorage4a> lun show -v
    /vol/vol1/vms5a-0              8t (8796093022208) (r/w, online, mapped)
            Serial#: -d9-P?B811NB
            Share: none
            Space Reservation: enabled
            Multiprotocol Type: vmware
            Maps: vm=0
            Occupied Size:    3.4t (3793203814400)
            Creation Time: Fri Jun  8 22:39:10 EDT 2012
            Cluster Shared Volume Information: 0x0

vmstorage4a> df -h vol1
Filesystem               total       used      avail capacity  Mounted on
/vol/vol1/              8500GB     8225GB      274GB      97%  /vol/vol1/
snap reserve               0TB        0TB        0TB     ---%  /vol/vol1/..

This is mostly what you have except we also have no_atime_update=on. My understanding is that this prevents the last-access timestamp on the LUN from being updated every time the LUN is accessed, thereby reducing unnecessary write I/O.

If you have one LUN per volume, make sure that guarantee=volume isn't disabled (in vol status). If it is, your LUN could grow larger than the volume. I have had this happen and it was unfortunate.

Setting up a NetApp as a simple FC LUN carver

1 Answers1