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Expanding Offline storage with new ISCSI disks

  • 1 December 2022
  • 2 replies
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We have 9 Hyperscale Appliances and an offline NetApp NAS Storage. The offline storage is used on Mondays only for Aux copy and path on Hyperscalar Appliances are mounted using NFS.

Now Offline storage library is 90% full and we are in process of expanding the storage. As per existing design NetApp NAS is mounted on all 9 HSs. The new storage is HP MSA SAN storage supporting ISCSI. We have allocated the new disks to HS using ISCSI and mounted them on all 9 HyperScalar Appliances as per existing design.

I manually tested by creating a file on one of the HS and then tried to remount the mount path on other HS. While doing so the mount point showed corruption  and had to clean the FS.

 

My concern is whether we have taken a right approach and there should to a change in design like adding an additional server to use NFS on 10G network.

 

Recommendations are much appreciated. 

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Best answer by Zubair Ahmed Sharief 2 December 2022, 17:18

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Userlevel 5
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Hello @Mudasir 

I am not familiar with ISCSI configuration on Linux MediaAgents but from my understanding the drive can only be mounted to Linux with NFS. Additionally, from my understanding only a network path can be mounted to multiple servers at once (via NFS) without corruption occuring.

For example with Windows, having the same iSCSI target attached to 2 servers would cause filesystem corruption, but an SMB path can be access by many servers at the same time.

 

Thank you,
Collin

Userlevel 3
Badge +9

Hello @Mudasir 

iSCSI brings IP handling overhead which are not recommended for data intensive operations (like for backup and Auxcopy), even though this may work but not recommended.

Also, I would suggest checking with you TAM & SAM for the expansion of the space you are pursuing currently. 

Check for data forecast and data retention report to check why the storage is filling up and address the issue. If possible, in short term, data retention can be lowered for data to age. For long term , need to perform the capacity management and scale the CommCell components accordingly.

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