The SAM Team Asks YOU About Peripheral Devices, Disks, and File Systems

[SAM TEAM]

Greetings!

First of all, thank you to everyone who participated in our previous SAM questions. We have captured some very valuable data about SAM and have started designing exciting changes for SAM in the near future.

Today, we'd like to find out more about how YOU manage peripheral devices, disks, and file systems. We are interested in learning how you work in this area and what we can do to design a better tool for YOU. So if you have a moment, we'd love to hear your responses to the some of questions listed below.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with us. It will help us improve the tools you use.

-The SAM Team :)

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1. How often do you use the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Area in SAM under Peripheral Devices? Approximately how many UPS units do you have?

2. What are the most common tasks you perform when administering peripheral devices, disks, and file systems?

(Ex: A. Create a new file system, B. Configure swap space, C. Create a logical volume for a device, etc.)

3. In reference to the tasks listed in question 1, what types of tools do you use to complete these tasks? (Command?line utilities, SAM, Other ? please name) What is the advantage of using this tool for this task?

4. Does SAM fulfill your peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs? How could SAM be changed to better fit the work you do in this area?

5. If you have OLAR-able cards (OnLine Add and Replace), does SAM?s OLAR mechanism meet your needs? How often do you OLA/OLR a card? Which one do you use more frequently ? OLA or OLR? If Card OLD (OnLine Delete) were available now, how much would you expect to use it compared to OLA/OLR?
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Thanks! :)

[Mark Mitchell · Accepted solution]

1. I don't use it other than the original setup.
2. Set up modems.
3. I just work on the command line.
4. Only issue is the speed that it takes to pull system information.
5. No Olar.

[Alan Riggs]

1. How often do you use the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Area in SAM under Peripheral Devices? Approximately how many UPS units do you have?

I have used it once. The first time I needed to configure indiviual UPS systems for L-class servers. In our primary data centers, we use central UPS solutions. Only on these two servers do we have individual UPS.

2. What are the most common tasks you perform when administering peripheral devices, disks, and file systems?
(Ex: A. Create a new file system, B. Configure swap space, C. Create a logical volume for a device, etc.)
I sometimes use SAM for modem configurations. I do all disk, lv, swap, and filesystem manipulations through the command line.

3. In reference to the tasks listed in question 1, what types of tools do you use to complete these tasks? (Command?line utilities, SAM, Other ? please name) What is the advantage of using this tool for this task?
UPS? (question 1)
or peripherals, disks, etc. (question 2)

I use tools supplied by the UPS manufacturers for #1, combined with a monitoring daemon and scripted actions on teh HP-UX servers.

For #2 I use command line, the advantages being speed, scriptability, clarity of scope, ease of replication for multiple servers.

4. Does SAM fulfill your peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs? How could SAM be changed to better fit the work you do in this area?
SAM does fine when I use it. Speed and scriptability are the reasons I generally do not. I also got in the habit of avoiding SAM for lvm manipulations when I first learned that it did not automatically issue a vgcfgbackup after modifications. I hope that you have corrected that situation, but I have never checked.

5. If you have OLAR-able cards (OnLine Add and Replace), does SAM?s OLAR mechanism meet your needs? How often do you OLA/OLR a card? Which one do you use more frequently ? OLA or OLR? If Card OLD (OnLine Delete) were available now, how much would you expect to use it compared to OLA/OLR?
I have not used OLAR.

[Patrick Wallek]

1) Have never used the UPS Area. No UPSs directly attached to the servers. We have a UPS and Backup Generator for the entire data center.

2) The most common task is extending an LV. Since I online JFS, I use sam to do the extend so I don't miss a step or screw something up. Other tasks I performs are creating a new VG, and creating new LVs, though not nearly as often as extending an LV.

3) I generally use SAM to create a VG, the command line to create the LVs, because I use the '-D' option to lvcreate which SAM does not support, and then SAM to extend the LVs if / when needed.

4) SAM doesn't fit the needs for creating LVs because it doesn't have support for '-D' option in LVCREATE. SAM could be better if:
4a) It would come up faster. Getting into the VG or File Systems areas in SSSSSLLLLOOOOOOOWWWWWWW.
4b) When creating a VG, it would be nice to be able to select multiple disks and not have to go through the steps for each separate disk.
4c) Put in support for the '-D' option of lvcreate.

5) No OLAR capability in my machines.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi SAM Guys,

1) I always use SAM's UPS Configuration when I set up a new system; it works well for my environment where each cabinet has a PowerTrust UPS and emergency power is supplied by generator.
2) The most common task I use it for is extending Online JFS filesystems after I saw that you guys actually did all the steps correctly.
3) I most often use the command line to build volume groups, logical volumes, and filesystems.
4) Other than speed it works well and it's easy to talk a Jr. Admin through it when necessary.
5) Haven't done one yet.

PS. While I have you SAM guys, how about removing that silly 500 user limit filter
stuff in the User Admin section. I don't care about the speed, I do care about no extra steps if I have to talk someone through the process.

But all in all, SAM has come a long way over the years.

Regards, Clay

[someone_4]

1. I don't use it at all
2. Set LVOL / file systems
3. I Mostly work on the command line
4. Its locks up allot
5. No I dont use Olar.

[f. halili]

1. I do't use the UPS area in SAM
2. Disk management
3. command line
4. yes
5. N.A.

thanks,
fnhalili

[James R. Ferguson]

Greetings to the SAM Team, too!

1): I've never used SAM's UPS module and have no server-based UPS units. Our computer rooms are powered with an industrial UPS/PDS with diesel generator backup to utility power and about a 15-minute battery life in the absence of input current.

2/3): The most common tasks administering peripheral and disk devices I perform at command-line. These include creating, destroying, and extending volume groups and logical volumes. I prefer command-line interface for two reasons: (1) tailoring and (2) re-use. That is, to tailor volume groups and logical volumes to my needs quickly, for instance, in an EMC2 environment, I want to create distributed-extent logical volumes with larger than default 'max_pe' sizes and disable bad block relocation and the bad block directory as I create the logical volumes. From a "reuse" standpoint, if I script the creation of volume groups, logical volumes, and filesystems, then I can reuse these scripts in off-site disaster-recovery situations. In balance, tasks that I perform very infrequently, like swap space allocation, I resort to SAM for speed.

4): I think enhancements to SAM in the area of disk maintenance would certainly include speed/performance improvements. It seems like SAM performs 'ioscan' without regard to the kernel's tables. It would seem that more "intelligence" might be crafted into each instantiation of SAM such that only an initial scan would be required; other scans depending on exactly what is being done. To some extent, I'm sure that this is the case, but I think improvements could be made.

In addition to performance improvements, it would be nice if SAM could be instructed (optionally) to create reusable scripts using standard command-line syntax. You already have the "guts" of this with SAM's log viewer.

5): I don't have any (servers with) OLA/OLR cards; no experience nor familiarity with them; and therefore cannot comment on this further.

...With regards and thanks for your efforts!

...JRF...

[Ravi_8]

Fisrt i would like to congradulate SAM team for providing such a useful administration tool.
with ref to ur querries
1. i use it as in the original setup
2.i do swap management, lv,lv creation, filesystem,creation and extension.
3. most of the time i do using commands
4.i will be doing common task like increasing the swap, creation of new file systems, increasing the size, adding the new disks etc..
Here i would like to add my comments: it will be better if u provide the on line JFS. because whenever we need to increase the filesystem size we need to go to single user mode do unmount and increase the size and mount again. this causes the inconvience to users. i think this is the area where AIX scores a lot.
5. No OLAR

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi SAM Team

Greetings

Here is what you are looking for :

1. We donot use UPS utilities with HP , even though we have about 27 HP servers with about 15-20 UPS units ,since we have a good power conditioning UPS big Unit installed and it has never been a cause of worry since the power is really stable.

2. I mainly do most of the tasks like printer , terminal ,Lan mgmt , Disk mgmt ( we have EMC ) by command line , however I use SAM to allocate secondary swap sometimes ,I check status of FC60 controllers using SAM , also it helps in doing swintall since in command line we need to type lots of options .

3. Since No UPS monitoring so no tasks from SAM to do this .

4. Yes it helps in completing most of the tsaks almost 100 %.

5. No OLAR cards .


Manoj Srivastava

[Pedro Sousa]

Hi SAM TEAM!
1. I use it in 5 workstations. It works fine for me. The rest of the systems are connected to a central UPS.

2. The most common tasks are related to LVM configurations. Normally Creating or Extending lvs... always with OnlineJFS.

3. For question 1 I use SafeWare. And for Question 2 I normally use command line. Although I know SAM is capable of doing almost everything with LVM config.

4. As said before, SAM is toooooo slow.But there are other problems, you cannnot have the same control of what you want/need to do. For example: I cannot apply the option "-s g" when creating LVs. So, maybe the main problem with SAM is that it still doesn't offer you the capabilities you have with command line.

5.N/A!

This kind of questionares are GREAT! Keep it up!

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Here my answers :

1. -5- UPS / twice a year
2. setup modems and termminals
3. SAM ( for my tasks faster )
4. yes / no idea for changes
5. no such boards
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[eran maor]

Hi

1. i have never use the UPS option .

2. checking lvm , creating and modify
filesystem.
i m creating all the time the swap by
myself .

3. i m working most of the time with command line .

4. i think that sam give all the need about devices and i m use to work with command line
but i found that pepole with no expr. with command line love this util. of the sam .

5. not at all .

[Stefan Farrelly]

1. Very rarely. With lots of servers its always cheaper and easier to use computer room UPS rather than individual HP UPS units.

2. When you have tons of disks/Luns SAM gives a nice overview in one display of each VG and its free space etc. Thats the benefit of SAM - an overview which you cant easily replicate from the command line without a complicated script. So we thus use it for assigning disks to VG's and allocating alternate links.

3. Dont use them.

4. If SAM could add in an overview display showing VG's and disks and lvols and how they are allocated across disks (ie. view a disk and it shows which lvols and vg's are onit, or view a VG and it shows all the pv's and lv's and which disks they are on) it would be a huge benefit. Something again you cant really do from the command line.

5. Only have OLAR capable servers enroute, none setup as yet so havent tested it under SAM. Certainly it sounds like a useful feature which we would use.

[Mark Vollmers]

1) we have an APC UPS on the server, so we do not use SAM with it.
2) Logical volume (create, extend). most periphrial device stuff from command line
3) Mainly command line. It is quicker than waiting for sam to load and moving through the windows in most cases. Easier to do at console as well (as opposed to using the non-GUI SAM interface).
4) Slow to pull up information
5) no OLAR on the server

[Tracey]

I have HP/UX 10.20

1) Never used it. We have an industrial sized UPS for all the servers.

2) Creating new printers using JetAdmin, new FS, new logical volumes.

3) We use the APC Software that came with the computer room based UPS.

4) Sam could make it easier to adminsiter my Raid 5 LUN's.

5) N/A

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi

1. How often do you use the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Area in SAM under Peripheral Devices? Approximately how many UPS units do you have?

Never in SAM
10 UPS

2. What are the most common tasks you perform when administering peripheral devices, disks, and file systems?

(Ex: A. Create a new file system, B. Configure swap space, C. Create a logical volume for a device, etc.)

All disk management - mirror split (for backups)

3. In reference to the tasks listed in question 1, what types of tools do you use to complete these tasks? (Command?line utilities, SAM, Other ? please name) What is the advantage of using this tool for this task?

SAM for 99% of disk admin - mirror split from backup script

4. Does SAM fulfill your peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs? How could SAM be changed to better fit the work you do in this area?

If a command fails more info on why the failure occured.

5. If you have OLAR-able cards (OnLine Add and Replace), does SAM?s OLAR mechanism meet your needs? How often do you OLA/OLR a card? Which one do you use more frequently ? OLA or OLR? If Card OLD (OnLine Delete) were available now, how much would you expect to use it compared to OLA/OLR?

Do not use


Paula

[Ryan Green]

1.) I use sam to set up the UPS configuration. We currently have 12 UPS units.

2.) May use sam for modem set up.

3.) Command line utilites are first choice.

4.) As a rule, we don't use sam for disks and other peripherals. When training others, I always steer them away from sam. It is too slow. Did I mention that it is too slow.

4.) We have OLARable cards but have not had the opportunity to try this feature out, yet. But I would use the CLI over sam for this function.

[Rita C Workman]

1. How often do you use the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Area in SAM under Peripheral Devices? Approximately how many UPS units do you have?
.....I have never used it. We have UPS units attached to most servers. I was not here when UPS was installed and simply inherited it.

2. What are the most common tasks you perform when administering peripheral devices, disks, and file systems?
.....In the order of most done first:
add pv to existing vg; lvcreate/extend; extendfs; create new vg,lvol,newfs;swap space done once when systems set up, rarely need to extend this-now on this I use command line and then activate swap via SAM.
And I tend to do all this via the command line.

3. In reference to the tasks listed in question 1, what types of tools do you use to complete these tasks?
.....n/a since I have never had to do it.

4. Does SAM fulfill your peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs?
....no SAM (to me) does not. I prefer to use the command line. I do not want to lose command line skills and feel that relying on SAM for this would allow command lines skills to get 'rusty'. So although I feel this would be helpful to others (newbies)...I prefer command line.

5. If you have OLAR-able cards (OnLine Add and Replace), does SAM?s OLAR mechanism meet your needs? How often do you OLA/OLR a card? Which one do you use more frequently ? OLA or OLR? If Card OLD (OnLine Delete) were available now, how much would you expect to use it compared to OLA/OLR?
......don't have, so I can't comment on this one.

/rcw

[Dave Wherry]

1. Have not used it for about 5 years. We went away from the PowerTrust units to larger ones

2. Creating logical volumes and file systems. Resizing logical volumes and file systems, both extending and decreasing.

3. Question 1 refers to UPS tasks. I use the vendors' utilities - APC PowerChute. Once the agent is installed it is managed through a web interface. It's better than command line.

4. SAM does not fulfill my peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs? We use the -D option almost all of the time which is not available in SAM.
When mirroring I can not select the disk I want as the target when using SAM.
As I've moved to larger systems with more LUNs, it is just too slow to be useful. Waiting 5 minutes for a screen to paint is unusable. Then going to another area such as volume group to logical volumes and having to wait again. The day is not that long.
I do occasionally use it for displaying some logical volume or volume group information. It is much easier to sort the output in SAM than from the command line. I usually start it and then go do something else for awhile.

5. Have not used OLAR on HP systems.

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,
1a. Never.
1b. most of our (Unix)servers have their own UPS, 2 large UPS units for the whole computer room.
2. basic creating, modifying, deleting of VG, LVOL & Swap. But tend to use command line more and more, more options available on command line like specifying which disk to create lvol on within a VG, specifying which disk to remove from mirror, ...
3. plain command line
4. SAM is OK for basic tasks, but is limited on options, and speed ;)
5. N/A

[Charles McCary]

1. How often do you use the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Area in SAM under Peripheral Devices? Approximately how many UPS units do you have?

---Almost never. I have a couple.


2. What are the most common tasks you perform when administering peripheral devices, disks, and file systems?

-- Creating file systems
-- Creating lvols
-- Creating LUNs


(Ex: A. Create a new file system, B. Configure swap space, C. Create a logical volume for a device, etc.)

3. In reference to the tasks listed in question 1, what types of tools do you use to complete these tasks? (Command?line utilities, SAM, Other ? please name) What is the advantage of using this tool for this task?

-- (new fs, new lvols, new vg) Command line - ease of use.
-- (LUN mgt) SAM - handles all of the different commands neccessary to manage LUNs.

4. Does SAM fulfill your peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs? How could SAM be changed to better fit the work you do in this area?

-- Yes - however I don't use it very often for fs, lvol, vg, tasks due to the fact that I can finish the work on the command line much quicker.

5. If you have OLAR-able cards (OnLine Add and Replace), does SAM?s OLAR mechanism meet your needs? How often do you OLA/OLR a card? Which one do you use more frequently ? OLA or OLR? If Card OLD (OnLine Delete) were available now, how much would you expect to use it compared to OLA/OLR?

-- N/A

[Rita Li]

1. Never use UPS area in SAM
# of UPS : 1

2. terminals, lvol, add/remove/change size for a file system, putting in/deleting mirrors for swapping between development/production area

3. UPS is in before I am here, so I just inherited it

4. Yes, SAM mostly fulfill my needs for peripheral devices, disks, and file system management. Except for the speed.

5. No OLAR-able cards

As you SAM people are here, I need to ask why when configuring new printer needs to suspend the print spooler temporarily, which would affect all other print jobs already queued up. Can this be changed? I used to work on Solaris which is not like this.

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

1. How often do you use the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Area in SAM under Peripheral Devices? Approximately how many UPS units do you have?

Never used the UPS section.

Depending on the kVA,
- our V-class uses 3 units of 2.2 kVA.
- other servers share a single unit of 20 kVA

2. What are the most common tasks you perform when administering peripheral devices, disks, and file systems?

peripheral devices - insf, rmsf, ioscan, lssf
disks - pvcreate
filesystems - lvcreate, vgextend, vgreduce, lvremove, lvextend, bdf, newfs, extendfs, fsadm, mount, umount

Most common task is create filesystems, extend filesystems and create mirrors.

3. In reference to the tasks listed in question 1, what types of tools do you use to complete these tasks? (Command?line utilities, SAM, Other ? please name) What is the advantage of using this tool for this task?

Command-line all the way. Ease of configuration. I can set the mirror copy to a specific harddisk by using lvextend. I cannot perform this with SAM. I can also perform scripting with the command-line to re-create a list of LVs of specific configuration requirements. This is particularly useful for test servers.

4. Does SAM fulfill your peripheral devices, disks, and file system management needs? How could SAM be changed to better fit the work you do in this area?

As stated in 3. In addition, it would be nice as well if we can record all our actions and replay them in SAM.

5. If you have OLAR-able cards (OnLine Add and Replace), does SAM?s OLAR mechanism meet your needs? How often do you OLA/OLR a card? Which one do you use more frequently ? OLA or OLR? If Card OLD (OnLine Delete) were available now, how much would you expect to use it compared to OLA/OLR?

Have not used this function as yet.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong
Brainbench MVP for Unix Admin
http://www.brainbench.com

[John Bolene]

1. We don't have any UPS to configure
2. Disk space expansion
3. sam
4. yes
5. N.A.