SUMMARY: NetApp Filer, Solaris 8 with Oracle

Thanks to:

Tan Tshun Kiat
Mike Kiernan  
Julian Simpson 
Timothy Lorenc 
Jez Ahl      

Solution: 

Trunk/multipath your Sun NIC's to access the NetApp Filer to increase network throughput.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 08:42:34AM +0200, I asked:
>
> We have a NetApp Filer F740 hosting files for various Solaris 8 E420R's, E280R's and future StarFire 48xx's running Oracle 8.1.x.
>
> At the moment there is no problems since the configuration is dead easy but I fear the network (netapp on it's own 100TX subnet) will become a bottlenet and possibly cause NFS timeouts with the Solaris machines.
>
> I would be greatful to know your experiences regarding this combination of hardware/software.

----
On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 02:55:45PM +0800, Tan Tshun Kiat wrote:
> Hi,
>     Get another quad card for your NetApp Filer and trunk them. Do the same onyour switch as well.
> 
> OR
> 
>     Get a Gigabit card. 8-)

----
On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 03:55:57AM -0500, Timothy Lorenc wrote:
> 
> You might want to look at buying a quad Ethernet card for the
> NetApp 740 and trunking all four ports together to give you a
> potential bandwidth of 800 Mbps (that is 400 Mbps full duplexed,
> if your network gear will support trunking, most modern switches
> such as Cisco, BayNetworks, Cabletron, and HP do...)
> 
> I have personally set this up and I have seen great improvement
> with our NetApp filer since we made this change...

----
On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 01:36:07AM -0700, Julian Simpson wrote:
> You can get gigabit cards for the filer.  Or maybe a quad card?

----
On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 09:09:02AM +0200, Mike Kiernan wrote:
> I'm not familiar with the F740's but if they're anything like the other Filer's they probably come
> with a Quad Fast Ethernet card as standard (4 port 100Mb). If you do run out  of bandwidth it'll
> be fairly straightforward to add some more bandwith to your network (dependingon what kind of
> switch(es) you are using).  With a Sun box and a quad card you can:
> - have 4 ports on the same subnet (if you're using Solaris 8 you can use IP   Multipathing to
>     implement load balancing and failover between the ports)
> - use Sun Trunking software - 1 ip address for all 4 physical ports with load
balancing - this
>     requires your switch to support trunking also.  
> - add more subnets and have 1 different subnet ipaddress per port on the quad
card - so you
>     can send nfs out onto 4 different subnets (even private direct connects
via crossover cables
>     to problematic servers)
> 
> The 3rd one definitely works on Netapps, but I'm not sure if they can do the 
first 2 - 4 ports on
> one subnet with load balancing or Trunking - it'd be worth putting the
question to Netapps.
> 
> hope that helps...a bit!

----
On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 10:13:32AM +0100, Jez Ahl wrote:
> Hi Sugan,
> 
> We are in the same boat - we have an F740 with 2 additional quad 100MB
> cards. Two of these ports are trunked into a 100TX subnet. We have about 12
> servers (420s and Netra T1s - running Oracle 8.1.x on Solaris 7) connecting
> either on the subnet, or directly into the quad cards.
> I think that the 740 can (potentially) throughput 26MB (208Mbit/s) - so
> theoretically we could max out with trunked 200Mbit. 
> Out next step (quite soon I think) will be to upgrade the filer to gigabit,   > and put in a 35xxXL-type switch. 
> 
> Hope this is of some use!

-- 
Sugan Moodley
Sysadmin - Miraculum
www.miraculum.com

The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
	-- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972