Re: Advice on setting up minidisks
Everyone, Thanks for all the advice. Ron On 1/13/2011 2:23 PM, Mauro Souza wrote: On the new projects I work with, we try to allocate mod-3s and mod-9s to zVM and to Linux filesystem (var, home, usr, etc and so...), and use FCP disks to everything else, like Oracle databases, webserver logs, NFS area, and everything it's supposed to grow a lot in the future. Troubleshooting zVM and Linux installed on 3390 is way easier for me (and for almost every zVM guy) than on FCP. And creating 600GB of storage area in 3390-3 disks is not a pleasant task... So we mix them. Mauro http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521 Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God. On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Ron Foster at Baldor-ISrfos...@baldor.com wrote: Hello list, This may have been discussed before... Way back in deep dark ancient history, we used the Redbook to get started with Linux under z/VM. As a result, we carved up our storage subsystem in to a bunch of mod3 drives. We put a few mod 9 drives in the mix. We added drives to a guest in standard chunks. That is when storage was needed by a Linux system, we added a mod9 or mod3 to it. When that Shark went off lease and we moved to a DS8000, we pretty well kept the same philosophy. Only we added a bunch more mod3 and mod 9 drives. We are a SAP shop and any large databases reside in DB2 on z/OS. There are a few large file systems on 3 or 4 of our Linux systems, but for the most part the drives attached to a Linux system go something like this. A boot drive. One to several mod3 drives for swapping (the appropriate ones have vdisks). One to several mod3 or mod9 drives for the SAP code and local files. We are moving our production drives. We finally have gotten our production Linux systems where about half or do very little swapping. We do not have dirmaint, so we keep up with disk allocations with dirmaint and a spreadsheet. Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron Foster -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ . -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
Re: Advice on setting up minidisks
Our current situation is MOD 3 for Z/VSE and z/VM and MOD 9 for zlinux We will be migrating to an new DS8800 and we are still discussing about how we will use our drives. We will probably do something like this. We have ordered HyperPAV licensing for the SAN: MOD3: For linux swap disks and VM paging disks. MOD 9: Linux system disks MOD 27: disks for logical volumes. We are still running SUSE 10 that doesn't support HyperPAV. So we will still use MOD 9 for the logical volumes in production until we migrate to SUSE 11 and when we have tested the performance implications of going from MOD 9 to MOD-27 with PAV (Theoritically it should give better performance, but better to be safe than sorry) For the development, test and acceptance machines we will start using MOD 27 with normal PAV. You should definitly check out hyperPAV. The extra license price was in our case peanuts considering the potential performance boost. And hyperPAV doesn't need any configuring in SUSE 11, so no extra work there. Best regards Samir Reddahi From: Ron Foster at Baldor-IS rfos...@baldor.com To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU Date: 13/01/2011 20:42 Subject:Advice on setting up minidisks Sent by:Linux on 390 Port LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU Hello list, This may have been discussed before... Way back in deep dark ancient history, we used the Redbook to get started with Linux under z/VM. As a result, we carved up our storage subsystem in to a bunch of mod3 drives. We put a few mod 9 drives in the mix. We added drives to a guest in standard chunks. That is when storage was needed by a Linux system, we added a mod9 or mod3 to it. When that Shark went off lease and we moved to a DS8000, we pretty well kept the same philosophy. Only we added a bunch more mod3 and mod 9 drives. We are a SAP shop and any large databases reside in DB2 on z/OS. There are a few large file systems on 3 or 4 of our Linux systems, but for the most part the drives attached to a Linux system go something like this. A boot drive. One to several mod3 drives for swapping (the appropriate ones have vdisks). One to several mod3 or mod9 drives for the SAP code and local files. We are moving our production drives. We finally have gotten our production Linux systems where about half or do very little swapping. We do not have dirmaint, so we keep up with disk allocations with dirmaint and a spreadsheet. Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron Foster -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ - Confidentiality Notice - This communication and the information it contains is intended (a) for the person(s) or organization(s) named above and for no other person or organization, and (b) may be confidential, legally privileged and protected by law. Unauthorized use, copying or disclosure of any of it may be unlawful! If you receive this communication in error, please notify us immediately, destroy any copies and delete it from your computer system. Please consult our disclaimer on our site www.securex.eu Thank you. -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
Re: Advice on setting up minidisks
At first, when Mark suggested only -9 and -27 disks, I disagreed with him. After a day, I started agreeing with him. Now I'm back to disagreeing with him. G I guess it all depends First, you have to go back to hardware. You can only create 256 drives out of any RAID array. On the DS6800/DS8100, if you are using 72 GB drives, if you only define mod-3s, you can't use all the space available. And this gets worse as you go to the 145 GB drives, the 300 GB drives, the 500 GB drives and the 1 TB drives. You just have to have some/many large 3390s in order to use all the space. Mark is pretty much correct, that 3 3390-3 vs 1 3390-9 are the same. If they are on the same raid array there isn't much performance improvement unless you consider that you can only do 1 I/O per device at the same time, unless you use PAV (and paid for that feature). Consider that a mod-27 will be only on a single RAID array. Divide it into 3 3390-9 and you can put each one on a different array. Now you can truely do multiple I/Os at the same time. In my case, I do have some larger Linux guests, but I do have a bunch of small ones. Really they could be on a 3390-1, but, eventually, some of them, due to software installs, tend to grow and I need more space. Their data, however, I either have as LVM (yep, larger capacity drives work well here), or NFS mounted space. So my root drive is usually a 3390-3. HOME and other data directories are on LVM or NFS space. For example, my Oracle servers use LVM for local Oracle tablespace. However, it backs up to a NFS server. That NFS server is an easy place for me to backup all the data from multiple machines to tape. The Oracle server is physically backed up weekly with FlashCopy and that flashed image is then backed up to tape as a physical image. This is used for disaster recovery purposes. My point is that small drives have their purpose. But I also would tie together a dozen mod-3 drives if I had the option to tie together a lessor amount of mod-9 drives (or higher capacity). If you need I/O performance, make sure you spread your data across several arrays. This may require you to do smaller drives. I can sure tell the difference when I copy a GB file when from/to are on the same array vs from/to being on different arrays. BTW, I'm not sure why someone would do this, but you can create mod-10, mod-11 mod-xx drives in the IBM Dasd Subsystems. Any size is really available. But you may face issues of standards. Just another opinion Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting Ron Foster at Baldor-IS rfos...@baldor.com 1/13/2011 1:41 PM Hello list, This may have been discussed before... Way back in deep dark ancient history, we used the Redbook to get started with Linux under z/VM. As a result, we carved up our storage subsystem in to a bunch of mod3 drives. We put a few mod 9 drives in the mix. We added drives to a guest in standard chunks. That is when storage was needed by a Linux system, we added a mod9 or mod3 to it. When that Shark went off lease and we moved to a DS8000, we pretty well kept the same philosophy. Only we added a bunch more mod3 and mod 9 drives. We are a SAP shop and any large databases reside in DB2 on z/OS. There are a few large file systems on 3 or 4 of our Linux systems, but for the most part the drives attached to a Linux system go something like this. A boot drive. One to several mod3 drives for swapping (the appropriate ones have vdisks). One to several mod3 or mod9 drives for the SAP code and local files. We are moving our production drives. We finally have gotten our production Linux systems where about half or do very little swapping. We do not have dirmaint, so we keep up with disk allocations with dirmaint and a spreadsheet. Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron Foster -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
Advice on setting up minidisks
Hello list, This may have been discussed before... Way back in deep dark ancient history, we used the Redbook to get started with Linux under z/VM. As a result, we carved up our storage subsystem in to a bunch of mod3 drives. We put a few mod 9 drives in the mix. We added drives to a guest in standard chunks. That is when storage was needed by a Linux system, we added a mod9 or mod3 to it. When that Shark went off lease and we moved to a DS8000, we pretty well kept the same philosophy. Only we added a bunch more mod3 and mod 9 drives. We are a SAP shop and any large databases reside in DB2 on z/OS. There are a few large file systems on 3 or 4 of our Linux systems, but for the most part the drives attached to a Linux system go something like this. A boot drive. One to several mod3 drives for swapping (the appropriate ones have vdisks). One to several mod3 or mod9 drives for the SAP code and local files. We are moving our production drives. We finally have gotten our production Linux systems where about half or do very little swapping. We do not have dirmaint, so we keep up with disk allocations with dirmaint and a spreadsheet. Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron Foster -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
Re: Advice on setting up minidisks
On the new projects I work with, we try to allocate mod-3s and mod-9s to zVM and to Linux filesystem (var, home, usr, etc and so...), and use FCP disks to everything else, like Oracle databases, webserver logs, NFS area, and everything it's supposed to grow a lot in the future. Troubleshooting zVM and Linux installed on 3390 is way easier for me (and for almost every zVM guy) than on FCP. And creating 600GB of storage area in 3390-3 disks is not a pleasant task... So we mix them. Mauro http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521 Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God. On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Ron Foster at Baldor-IS rfos...@baldor.com wrote: Hello list, This may have been discussed before... Way back in deep dark ancient history, we used the Redbook to get started with Linux under z/VM. As a result, we carved up our storage subsystem in to a bunch of mod3 drives. We put a few mod 9 drives in the mix. We added drives to a guest in standard chunks. That is when storage was needed by a Linux system, we added a mod9 or mod3 to it. When that Shark went off lease and we moved to a DS8000, we pretty well kept the same philosophy. Only we added a bunch more mod3 and mod 9 drives. We are a SAP shop and any large databases reside in DB2 on z/OS. There are a few large file systems on 3 or 4 of our Linux systems, but for the most part the drives attached to a Linux system go something like this. A boot drive. One to several mod3 drives for swapping (the appropriate ones have vdisks). One to several mod3 or mod9 drives for the SAP code and local files. We are moving our production drives. We finally have gotten our production Linux systems where about half or do very little swapping. We do not have dirmaint, so we keep up with disk allocations with dirmaint and a spreadsheet. Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron Foster -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
Re: Advice on setting up minidisks
Because we were approaching running out of 64K addresses, we're a mainly all mod 27 and 54. 3's are only used for paging basically. 9's for z/VM stuff and some Linux stuff. The issue with larger disks can be queuing on a UCB and that's what PAV solves. We just continue to monitor things to see if we might have any queuing problems and haven't implemented any PAV yet. We're not seeing any issues thus far. Marcy -Original Message- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:LINUX-390@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of Ron Foster at Baldor-IS Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 11:42 AM To: LINUX-390@vm.marist.edu Subject: [LINUX-390] Advice on setting up minidisks Hello list, This may have been discussed before... Way back in deep dark ancient history, we used the Redbook to get started with Linux under z/VM. As a result, we carved up our storage subsystem in to a bunch of mod3 drives. We put a few mod 9 drives in the mix. We added drives to a guest in standard chunks. That is when storage was needed by a Linux system, we added a mod9 or mod3 to it. When that Shark went off lease and we moved to a DS8000, we pretty well kept the same philosophy. Only we added a bunch more mod3 and mod 9 drives. We are a SAP shop and any large databases reside in DB2 on z/OS. There are a few large file systems on 3 or 4 of our Linux systems, but for the most part the drives attached to a Linux system go something like this. A boot drive. One to several mod3 drives for swapping (the appropriate ones have vdisks). One to several mod3 or mod9 drives for the SAP code and local files. We are moving our production drives. We finally have gotten our production Linux systems where about half or do very little swapping. We do not have dirmaint, so we keep up with disk allocations with dirmaint and a spreadsheet. Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks, Ron Foster -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
Re: Advice on setting up minidisks
On 1/13/2011 at 02:41 PM, Ron Foster at Baldor-IS rfos...@baldor.com wrote: Now time has come to migrate to another storage system. I was wondering what other folks do. 1. Do they have a whole bunch of mod9 and mod3 drives that they allocate to their guests? 2. Do they take mod27 drives (someone at SHARE warned me about taking mod54 drives) and use mdisk to carve them up into something smaller. I see very little value in having 3390-3 drives for Linux use. Depending on how big or small a system image is, I would go with a 3390-9 or -27, and put three partitions on it: 1. / file system (around 500MB or so) 2. Swap (fall-back for VDISK) 3. LVM (holds all of /home, /opt, /srv, /tmp, /usr, and /var) Mark Post -- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 -- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
