v440 with A1000 configuration question
I have an A1000 with 4 72gb drives that I am getting ready to attach to a Sun v440. I have downloaded the latest rm6 software & patches. The OS is Solaris 9. I will add 8 more 72gb disks later. The A1000 will be used for Oracle DB. I do have Veritas Foundary Suite but I don't have to use it. I sure could use some help on the best way to configure these disks. I have read alot about RAID 1+0 and was thinking of going that route.
1. My understanding is that the A1000 is a hardware RAID deivce. Can I just use RM6 to configure the 4 disks as 1+0 and not use Veritas?
2. I think another option is to use RM6 to create a LUN and then use Solaris Vol Manager for the RAID 1+0. I don't know if this will work because when you create a LUN in RM6, I think you need to tell it what RAID level to use.
3. Do I need Veritas at all? From what I have read, the Vol Manager that comes with Solaris 9 can do everything that Veritas can.
As you can probably tell, I am really confused. I would really appreciate some guidance or suggestions.
Thanks and Merry Christmas to all!!
zeekstern
[1136 byte] By [
zeekstern] at [2007-11-25 23:14:33]
# 3
> Veritas volume manager vs disk suite is really your
> preference unless you want to use vxfs.
>
> I like veritas volume manager over disk suite because
> of DMP and other
>
> features.
VxFS is independent of Volume Manager... You can it on plain disk, Disk Suite metadevice.... A Veritas volume is not required... so if you really wanted to you could choose DiskSuite(SVM) as your volume manager and VxFS as your file system... don't know anyone who is actually doing it.. but you could...;-)
# 6
A1000 is a hardware raid solution. It supports 1+0, 0+1, raid 3 and raid 5. (raid 3 and 5 behave the same, but at the time the
unit came out, some people swore that raid 3 was superior).
It requires the correct version
of rm6 to match the OS of the host. The latest is 6.22_1 I believe.
Make absolutely sure you haveNVSRAM, Firmware, and rm6
version levels that work together. There is an infodoc that identifies
which version matches with what and what patch gives you
a specific version of each.
Sounds like you may have just picked up this A1000 someplace.
Make sure the disks are supported in the array. As I recall, it is
not an easy thing to just add disks to an A1000. You would have
to back up the data, remove your luns, add disks, build new luns, and then restore the data. So I'd advise putting all the disks you want to have in the unit up front.
If you only have 4 disks and you use raid 1+0, you have less than 142 gig of usable space. I'd suggest using raid 5. Indeed, the unit is really intended to be a raid 5 unit . With only 4 disks, make a 3 disk raid 5 lun and a single hot spare.
rm6 has a gui that allows you to configure the array with the
desired configuration.
Hope this helps.
