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hpux and NAS storage

 
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Adam Noble
Super Advisor

hpux and NAS storage

Hi all,

Not sure if anyone has experience of using NAS storage with HP servers. I have a customer who wants 9 seperate filesystems all on different paths. I have been told we are going to use the NAS to present this storage. My experience of NFS tells me having 9 seperate NFS mounts may not be a wise decision. Does anyone have any opinion on this and is anyone doing anything similar.

Thanks
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Tim Nelson
Honored Contributor
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Re: hpux and NAS storage

Nowadays NAS does not have to mean NFS. NAS devices also support iSCSI.

But yes, running applicaitons over NFS even on 1000MB LAN will suffer performance issues.

If this is a low IO application then performance may not be an issue but beware of reliability issues as well. Network problems or NAS problems on NFS mounts will typically show as hung applications and rebooting is your only way out.

NAS solutions are great for small or Intel based environments. Not a speedy reliable solution in the UNIX world.

Best of luck.
V. Nyga
Honored Contributor

Re: hpux and NAS storage

Hi,

I don't know which point makes you headache.
We're using a NAS filer from NetApp with no problems.
I've 14 separate nfs mounts from my server, the clients have even some more.

Volkmar
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Dave Olker
Neighborhood Moderator

Re: hpux and NAS storage

I've written extensively on NFS performance so if there is still some area of NFS performance that is causing problems for customers I'd really appreciate knowing about them.

Regards,

Dave


I work at HPE
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[Any personal opinions expressed are mine, and not official statements on behalf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise]
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Bill Hassell
Honored Contributor

Re: hpux and NAS storage

I would definitely recommend Dave Olker's book on NFS for HP-UX. And because NFS is spliced directly into the HP-UX filesystems, problems with the NAS storage device can adversely affect applications, even the ability to login. Make sure the storage network is a dedicated network -- don't share the LAN with any other traffic.

The other issue is that NAS storage devices have the same issues with firmware and diagnostics as SAN disk arrays. If you connect to a really old array and a disk goes bad, it may be very invasive to the OS as well as difficult to identify the problems.

NFS performance will be pitiful with 100Mbit LANs, probably acceptable with a Gbit link but you have to look at all the options for parallel access for NAS. If performance is important, look at features like load balancing with multiple LAN connections. And be sure that any parallel path, load balancing software is compatible with your OS. The link count is not an issue with clean networks. Most problems with NFS always point back to an unstable server, never a good idea for any production server.


Bill Hassell, sysadmin