User's Guide User's Guide User's Guide User's Guide User's Guide

StorNext® 4.0
StorNext

6-01658-09
Document Title, 6-01658-09 Rev A, March 2010, Product of USA.
Quantum Corporation provides this publication “as is” without warranty of any kind, either express or
implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular
purpose. Quantum Corporation may revise this publication from time to time without notice.

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
Copyright 2010 by Quantum Corporation. All rights reserved.
Your right to copy this manual is limited by copyright law. Making copies or adaptations without prior
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violation of the law.

TRADEMARK STATEMENT
Quantum, the Quantum logo, DLT, DLTtape, the DLTtape logo, Scalar, and StorNext are registered
trademarks of Quantum Corporation, registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Backup. Recovery. Archive. It’s What We Do., the DLT logo, DLTSage, DXi, DXi-Series, Dynamic
Powerdown, FastSense, FlexLink, GoVault, MediaShield, Optyon, Pocket-sized. Well-armored, SDLT,
SiteCare, SmartVerify, StorageCare, Super DLTtape, SuperLoader, and Vision are trademarks of Quantum.
LTO and Ultrium are trademarks of HP, IBM, and Quantum in the U.S. and other countries. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective companies.
Specifications are subject to change without notice.

ii Quantum Product Name User’s Guide

 Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 1
About StorNext File System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About StorNext Storage Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
About Distributed LAN Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
About Licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Purpose of This Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
How This Guide is Organized. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Notes, Cautions, and Warnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Document Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 2 StorNext GUI Overview 7

Accessing the StorNext GUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The StorNext Home Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
StorNext Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
StorNext Home Page Dropdown Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 3 The Configuration Wizard 17

Step 1: Welcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Step 2: License. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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License Expiration and Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Updating Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Licensing and Upgrades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Step 3: Name Servers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Deleting a Name Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Step 4: File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Step 5: Storage Destinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Adding a New Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Viewing an Existing Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Editing a Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Deleting a Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Performing Other Library Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Storage Disk Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Adding a New Storage Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Viewing an Existing Storage Disks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Editing a Storage Disk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Deleting a Storage Disk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Adding a New Data Replication Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Editing a Data Replication Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Deleting a Data Replication Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Adding a New Mount Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Enabling Data Deduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Step 6: Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Adding a Storage Manager Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Adding a Replication Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Viewing a Storage Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Running a Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Editing a Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Deleting a Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Step 7: Email Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Adding an Email Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Step 8: Email Notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Adding an Email Recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Viewing Email Recipient Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Editing an Email Recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Deleting an Email Recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Step 9: Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

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Chapter 4 File System Tasks 61

Label Disks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Labeling a Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Unlabeling a Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Check File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Viewing and Deleting a Check Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
File System Check Output Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Affinities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Allocation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Example Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Adding a New Affinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Deleting an Affinity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Migrate Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Truncation Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter 5 Storage Manager Tasks 77

Storage Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Setting Devices Online and Offline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Additional Options for Tape Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Drive Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Viewing Drive Pool Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Adding a Drive Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Editing a Drive Pool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Deleting a Drive Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Media Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Viewing Media Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Filtering Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Performing Media Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Library Operator Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Software Requests. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Scheduler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Viewing a Schedule. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Adding a Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Editing an Existing Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Deleting an Existing Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

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Alternate Retrieval Location. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Distributed Data Mover (DDM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Distributed Data Mover Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Installing the DDM Feature on Clients. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Accessing Distributed Data Mover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Enabling DDM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Managing DDM Hosts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Host Priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Distributed Data Mover Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Disaster Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Chapter 6 Replication and Deduplication 113

Replication Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Replication Configuration Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Replication Process Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Files Excluded From Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Replication Terms and Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Namespace Realization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Blockpool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Blackout Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Replication Source Policy and Replication Source Directory . 118
Replication Target Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Replication Schedule. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Replication Copies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Bandwidth Throttling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Multilink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Virtual IP (vIP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Some Replication Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Scenario 1: Simplest Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Scenario 2: Replicating Multiple Copies in the Same Target
File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Scenario 3: Replicating to Multiple Target Hosts / File
Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Additional Replication Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Non-Supported Replication Between Source and Target. . . . 126
Configuring Replication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Step 1: Create Source and Target File Systems . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Step 2: Setting up the Blockpool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Step 3: Creating Replication Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

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Step 4: Create a Replication Storage Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Configuration Steps Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Scheduling Replication Blackouts (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Optional HA and Multilink Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Running Replication Manually (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Replication Statuses and Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Replication Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Replication Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
StorNext Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Troubleshooting Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Data Deduplication Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
How Deduplication Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Deduplication and Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Setting Up Deduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Step 1: Creating a Deduplication-Enabled File System . . . . . 149
Step 2: Specifying the Blockpool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Step 3: Creating a Deduplication-Enabled Storage Policy . . . 150
Data Deduplication Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Deduplication Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Deduplication Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Chapter 7 Tools Menu Functions 153

User Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Adding a New User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Viewing an Existing User Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Modifying an Existing User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Deleting an Existing User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Changing the Admin Password. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Client Download . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
System Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Starting or Stopping StorNext File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Starting or Stopping StorNext Storage Manager . . . . . . . . . 162
Refreshing System Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Specifying Boot Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
File and Directory Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Store Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Change File Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

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Recover Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Recover Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Retrieve Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Retrieve Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Truncate Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Move Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Modify File Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
View File Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Storage Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Replication and Deduplication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
HA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Chapter 8 Service Menu Functions 177

The Health Check Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Running a Health Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Viewing the Health Check Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Viewing Health Check Histories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
The Capture State Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Creating a Capture State Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Deleting a Previous System State Capture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
The System Backup Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
The Admin Alerts Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
The Tickets Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Viewing Ticket Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Editing Ticket Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Closing Tickets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Chapter 9 Converting to HA 189

HA Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
HA Terms and Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Failover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Primary Node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Secondary Node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Virtual IP (vIP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

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Virtual Netmask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

HA Reset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Preparing for HA Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Pre-Conversion Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
HA and Distributed LAN Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Converting to HA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
HA Conversion Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Managing HA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
HA Statuses and Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Troubleshooting HA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Chapter 10 StorNext Reports 199

Report Navigation Controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
StorNext Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
StorNext Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
The LAN Client Performance Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
The Clients Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
The File System Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
The Jobs Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
The SAN Devices Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
The Distributed Data Mover Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Replication Deduplication Reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Policy Activity Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Policy Summary Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Chapter 11 Customer Assistance 217

Quantum Technical Assistance Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Appendix A Operating Guidelines 219

The Reserved Space Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Windows Configuration File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Distributed LAN Server/Client Network and Memory Tuning . . . . . . . 221
Distributed LAN Server and Client Network Tuning. . . . . . . . 221

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Distributed LAN Server Memory Tuning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Configuring LDAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Using LDAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
UNIX File and Directory Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
LDAP Refresh Timeout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Setting Up Restrictive ACLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Default Single-Path I/O Retry Behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Event Handles for fsm.exe on a Windows Metadata Server . . . . . . . . 226
FSBlockSize, Metadata Disk Size, and JournalSize Settings . . . . . . . . 227
Disk Naming Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
General Operating Guidelines and Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Appendix B Replication and Deduplication 239

Replication Configuration File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Replication Terminology and Conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Copies and Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Replication Target Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Number of Replication Copies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Isolating a Replication Target Directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Final Recommendation For Target Directories. . . . . . . . . . . . 244
StorNext snpolicyd Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Replication Copies = 2 (Detail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
More About Replication Target Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Deduplication Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Enabling Deduplication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Deduplication Modification Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Deduplication and Blockpools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Deduplication and Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Enabling Deduplication and Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Storage Manager Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Replication, Deduplication and Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Replication, Deduplication and Storage Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Replicating into a Storage Manager Relation Point . . . . . . . . 259

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Truncation and Deduplication / Replication (with and without

SM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
The snpolicyd Debug Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Appendix C HA Systems 271

HA Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Primary and Secondary Server Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
File System Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
The ha_peer and fsnameservers File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
HA Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Configuration and Conversion to HA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Conversion to HA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
SyncHA process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Managing HA in the StorNext GUI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
HA Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Windows and Linux SNFS Installations Without the HaShared
File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Linux SNMS and SNFS Installations with the HaShared File
System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
HA Resets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
HA Resets of the First Kind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
HA Resets of the Second Kind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
HA Resets of the Third Kind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Using HA Manager Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
HA Tracing and Log Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Single (Singleton) Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
FSM failover in HA Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Failover Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Replacing an HA System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Appendix D Web Services API 309

Enabling WS-API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
WS-API APIs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide xi

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The doCancel API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

The doMediaMove API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
The doRetrieve API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
The doStore API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
The doTruncate API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
The getDriveReport API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
The getFileLocation API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
The getMediaInfo API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
The getMediaReport API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
The getSMQueue API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
The getSNAPIVersion API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
The setMediaMoveInfo API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Appendix E Storage Manager Truncation 315

Truncation Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Normal Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Immediate Truncation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Daily Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Space Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
LOSPACE Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Emergency Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Disabling Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Truncation Feature Locking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Disable Truncation Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Common Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Files Are Not Truncated as Expected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
"Old" Files Not Truncating According to Policy Class . . . . . . . 320
Small Files Not Truncating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Miscellaneous Usage Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Appendix F Security 323

StorNext Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
ACLs on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
ACLs on Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
“Central Control” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

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Cross-Platform Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Config (.cfg) File Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Appendix G Troubleshooting 337

Troubleshooting StorNext File System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Troubleshooting StorNext Storage Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Troubleshooting OS Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Troubleshooting Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Troubleshooting HA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Troubleshooting StorNext Installation and Upgrade Issues . . 356
Troubleshooting Other Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Appendix H RAS Messages 359

Media and Drive RAS Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
SNFS RAS Messages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Other RAS Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

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xiv Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Figures

Figure 1 StorNext Login Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Figure 2 System Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 3 StorNext Home Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Figure 4 Setup > Configuration Wizard Welcome Screen . . . . . . . 19
Figure 5 Setup > License > Agreement Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Figure 6 Setup > License > Entry Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Figure 7 Setup > License > Entry Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Figure 8 Name Servers Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Figure 9 Setup > File System Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Figure 10 Setup > File System > New Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Figure 11 Storage Destinations > Library Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Figure 12 Storage Destinations > Library > New Screen. . . . . . . . . 34
Figure 13 Library Details Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Figure 14 Edit Library Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Figure 15 Setup > Storage Destinations > Storage Disk Screen. . . . 39
Figure 16 Storage Destinations > Storage Disk > New Screen. . . . . 40
Figure 17 Storage Disk Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Figure 18 View Storage Disk Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide xv

Figures

Figure 19 Setup > Storage Destinations > Replication /

Deduplication Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Figure 20 Setup > Storage Destinations > Replication /
Deduplication Screen (Blockpool) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Figure 21 Setup > Storage Policy Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 22 Storage Policy > New Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 23 Storage Policy > New > General Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Figure 24 Storage Policy > New > Relocation Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Figure 25 Storage Policy > New > Steering Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Figure 26 Storage Policy > New > Schedule Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Figure 27 Storage Policy > New > Associated Directories Tab . . . . . 52
Figure 28 View Storage Policy Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Figure 29 Setup > Email Server Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Figure 30 Setup > Email Notifications Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Figure 31 Setup > Email Notifications New Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Figure 32 Setup > Configuration Wizard Done Screen. . . . . . . . . . . 59
Figure 33 Label Disks Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Figure 34 Check File System Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Figure 35 Check File System Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Figure 36 Affinities Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Figure 37 New Affinity Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Figure 38 Migrate Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Figure 39 Truncation Parameters Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Figure 40 Storage Components Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Figure 41 Drive Pool Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Figure 42 New Drive Pool Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Figure 43 Media Actions Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Figure 44 Library Operator Interface Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Figure 45 Software Requests Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Figure 46 Scheduler Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

xvi Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Figures

Figure 47 Scheduler > New Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Figure 48 Alternate Retrieval Location Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Figure 49 Setup > Distributed Data Mover Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Figure 50 DDM Screen New Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Figure 51 Replication Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Figure 52 Replication scenario 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Figure 53 Replication Scenario 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Figure 54 Replication Scenario 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Figure 55 Replicating From One Source to Multiple Targets. . . . . . 124
Figure 56 Replicating From Multiple Sources to One Target. . . . . . 125
Figure 57 Non-Supported Replication From Source to Target . . . . 126
Figure 58 Setup > File System > New Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Figure 59 Setup > Storage Destinations > Deduplication Screen
(Blockpool)129
Figure 60 Storage Destinations > Replication Targets Screen . . . . 130
Figure 61 Setup > Storage Policy > New Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Figure 62 Setup > Storage Policy > New / Source Directories
Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Figure 63 Storage Policy > New > Outbound Replication Tab . . . . 134
Figure 64 Outbound Replication Tab > Replication Schedule. . . . . 135
Figure 65 Setup > Storage Policy Screen (Select “target”) . . . . . . . 136
Figure 66 Storage Policy > Edit > target > Inbound Replication
Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Figure 67 Setup > Storage Policy (Run Policy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Figure 68 Storage Policy > New > Blackout Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Figure 69 Tools > HA Convert Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Figure 70 Tools > Replication > Bandwidth Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Figure 71 Tools > Replication/Deduplication > Administration
Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Figure 72 Deduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide xvii

Figures

Figure 73 Replication/Deduplication Policy Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Figure 74 User Access Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Figure 75 New User Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Figure 76 Edit User Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Figure 77 Edit User Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Figure 78 Edit Admin Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Figure 79 Client Download Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Figure 80 Client Download Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Figure 81 System Control Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Figure 82 File and Directory Action Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Figure 83 Change File Version Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Figure 84 Recover Files Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Figure 85 Recover Directories Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Figure 86 Retrieve Files Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Figure 87 Retrieve Directory Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Figure 88 Truncate Files Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Figure 89 Move Files Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Figure 90 Modify File Attributes Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Figure 91 View File Info Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Figure 92 Health Check Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Figure 93 Health Check > View Selected Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Figure 94 Health Check > View History Screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Figure 95 Capture State Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Figure 96 Backup Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Figure 97 Admin Alerts Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Figure 98 Tickets Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Figure 99 Tickets > View Ticket Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Figure 100 Tickets > Edit Ticket Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Figure 101 Tools > HA Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

xviii Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Figures

Figure 102 Manage HA Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Figure 103 Reports > Logs Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Figure 104 LAN Client Performance Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Figure 105 Clients Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Figure 106 File System Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Figure 107 Jobs Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Figure 108 SAN Devices Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Figure 109 Distributed Data Mover Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Figure 110 Replication/Deduplication Policy Activity Report . . . . . . . 212
Figure 111 Replication/Deduplication Policy Summary Report. . . . . 214
Figure 112 Replication/Deduplication Policy Details Report . . . . . . . 215
Figure 113 Replication/Deduplication Policy Completion Report . . . 216
Figure 114 HA Manage Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Figure 115 FSM Failover in an HA Cluster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Figure 116 Possible Drive/Media Mount Discrepancy RAS . . . . . . . . 360
Figure 117 Tape Drive Alerts RAS part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Figure 118 Tape Drive Alerts RAS part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Figure 119 Tape Drive Alerts RAS part 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Figure 120 Drive Reported Drive Error RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Figure 121 Cleaning of Drive Failed RAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Figure 122 Wrong Firmware Level/Invalid Drive Type RAS . . . . . . . . 366
Figure 123 Tape Drive - Reported Media Error RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Figure 124 Cleaning Media Expired RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Figure 125 Duplicate Physical Media Found RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Figure 126 Storage Disk Taken Offline RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Figure 127 Configuration Not Supported RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Figure 128 Label Validation Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Figure 129 Connection Rejected RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Figure 130 File System Failover RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide xix

Figures

Figure 131 I/O Error RAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Figure 132 Journaling Error Detected RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Figure 133 SNFS License Required RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Figure 134 SNFS License Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Figure 135 LUN Mapping Changed RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Figure 136 Communication Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Figure 137 Metadata Inconsistency Detected RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Figure 138 Bad File System Metadata Dump RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Figure 139 Metadata Dump Failure RAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Figure 140 File System or Metadata Capacity Warning RAS . . . . . . . 376
Figure 141 File Processing Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Figure 142 Missing LUNs RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Figure 143 Disk Space Allocation Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Figure 144 System Resource Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Figure 145 Affinity Configuration Violations RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Figure 146 Quota Limit or Fragmentation Warnings RAS . . . . . . . . . 380
Figure 147 Shutdown Error RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Figure 148 Initialization Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Figure 149 SNFS I/O Error RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Figure 150 Port Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Figure 151 Checksum Error RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Figure 152 Troubleshooting the StorNext Software RAS . . . . . . . . . 384
Figure 153 Software Resource Violations RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Figure 154 Vault Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Figure 155 Robotics - Not Ready RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Figure 156 Robotics - Move Failure RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Figure 157 Robotics - Wrong Firmware Level/Invalid Library Type
RAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Figure 158 Backup Errors RAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

xx Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Figures

Figure 159 Invalid Configuration RAS part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

Figure 160 Invalid Configuration RAS part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide xxi

 Chapter 1
Introduction

StorNext is data management software that enables customers to

complete projects faster and confidently store more data at a lower
cost. Used in the world's most demanding environments, StorNext is the
standard for high performance shared workflow operations and
multitier archives. StorNext consists of two components: StorNext File
System (SNFS), a high performance data sharing software, and StorNext
Storage Manager (SNSM), the intelligent, policy-based data mover.

About StorNext File StorNext File System streamlines processes and facilitates faster job
System completion by enabling multiple business applications to work from a
single, consolidated data set. Using SNFS, applications running on
different operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and
Mac OS X) can simultaneously access and modify files on a common,
high-speed SAN storage pool.
This centralized storage solution eliminates slow LAN-based file
transfers between workstations and dramatically reduces delays caused
by single-server failures. In high availability (HA) configurations, a
redundant server is available to access files and pick up processing
requirements of a failed system, and carry on processing.

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

About StorNext Storage StorNext Storage Manager enhances the StorNext solution by
Manager reducing the cost of long term data retention, without sacrificing
accessibility. SNSM sits on top of SNFS and utilizes intelligent data
movers to transparently locate data on multiple tiers of storage. This
enables customers to store more files at a lower cost, without having to
reconfigure applications to retrieve data from disparate locations.
Instead, applications continue to access files normally and SNSM
automatically handles data access – regardless of where the file resides.
As data movement occurs, SNSM also performs a variety of data
protection services to guarantee that data is safeguarded both on site
and off site.

About Distributed LAN StorNext supports distributed LAN clients. Unlike a traditional StorNext
Clients SAN client, a distributed LAN client does not connect directly to
StorNext via fibre channel or iSCSI, but rather across a LAN through a
gateway system called a distributed LAN server. The distributed LAN
server is itself a directly connected StorNext client, but it processes
requests from distributed LAN clients in addition to running
applications.
Any number of distributed LAN clients can connect to multiple
distributed LAN servers. StorNext File System supports Distributed LAN
client environments in excess of 1000 clients.
Besides the obvious cost-savings benefit of using distributed LAN
clients, there will be performance improvements as well.
Distributed LAN clients must be licensed in the same way as StorNext
SAN clients. When you request your permanent StorNext license, you
will need to specify the number of distributed LAN clients you plan to
use. Naturally, you can always purchase additional distributed LAN client
licenses as your needs expand. For more information about StorNext
licensing, see Step 2: License on page 19
StorNext provides distributed LAN client information via the status
monitors on the StorNext home page. More detailed information is
available through the Clients Report and the Distributed LAN Client
Performance Report. For more information about StorNext reports, see
StorNext Reports on page 201.
Before you can fully use distributed LAN clients, you must first configure
a distributed LAN server and distributed LAN clients as described in the
StorNext Installation Guide.

2 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 1: Introduction
Purpose of This Guide

About Licensing Beginning with StorNext 4.0, licensing has changed significantly
compared to previous releases. Multiple licenses are now required for
various StorNext features, as well as to perform an upgrade to a new
release.
If you have not already installed StorNext 4.0 (or upgraded from a
previous release), be sure to read the procedure in the section Step 2:
License on page 19 before you proceed.

Purpose of This Guide

This guide is intended to assist StorNext users perform day-to-day tasks
with the software. This guide also describes how to generate reports.
Quantum recommends using the graphical user interface to accomplish
tasks, but an appendix provides alternative procedures for users who
wish to perform those tasks via the command line interface.

How This Guide is Organized

This guide contains the following chapters:
• Chapter 1, Introduction
• Chapter 2, StorNext GUI Overview
• Chapter 3, The Configuration Wizard
• Chapter 4, File System Tasks
• Chapter 5, Storage Manager Tasks
• Chapter 6, Replication and Deduplication
• Chapter 7, Tools Menu Functions
• Chapter 8, Service Menu Functions
• Chapter 9, Converting to HA
• Chapter 10, StorNext Reports

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 3

Chapter 1: Introduction
Notes, Cautions, and Warnings

• Chapter 11, Customer Assistance

• Appendix A, Operating Guidelines
• Appendix B, Replication and Deduplication
• Appendix C, HA Systems
• Appendix D, Web Services API
• Appendix E, Storage Manager Truncation
• Appendix F, Security
• Appendix G, Troubleshooting
• Appendix H, RAS Messages

Notes, Cautions, and Warnings

The following table describes important information about Notes,
Cautions, and Warnings used throughout this guide.

Description Definition Consequences

Note: Indicates important No hazardous or

information that helps damaging
you make better use of consequences.
the software.

Caution: Advises you to take or Failure to take or avoid

avoid a specified action. this action could result
in loss of data.

Warning: Advises you to take or Failure to take or avoid

avoid a specified action. this action could result
in physical harm to the
user or hardware.

4 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 1: Introduction
Document Conventions

Document Conventions
This guide uses the following document conventions to help you
recognize different types of information.

Conventions Examples

For all UNIX-based TSM_control stop

commands, the # prompt is is the same as
implied, although it is not
# TSM_control stop
shown.

For all UNIX-based cvaffinity <filename>

commands, words in italic where <filename> is a
are variables and should be variable and should be
replaced with user-defined replaced with a user-defined
values. value.

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 5

Chapter 1: Introduction
Document Conventions

6 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 2
StorNext GUI Overview

This section describes how to access and navigate through the StorNext
GUI.
This chapter includes the following topics:
• Accessing the StorNext GUI
• The StorNext Home Page

Note: StorNext supports internationalization for the name space of

the file system. This support is fully UTF-8 compliant. It is up to
the individual client to set the proper UTF-8 locale.

Accessing the StorNext GUI

The StorNext GUI is browser-based and can be remotely accessed from
any machine with access to the StorNext server.
Use this procedure to access the StorNext GUI.
1 Open a Web browser.

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Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
Accessing the StorNext GUI

Note: The following browsers have been tested to work with

StorNext. Browsers not listed may work but are not
recommended.
• Internet Explorer 7.x and 8.x
• FireFox 3.x
To ensure proper browser operation, all monitors must be set to
display at a minimum resolution of 1024 x 768. If you use a
popup blocker, be sure to enable pop-ups in order to ensure
that StorNext displays properly.

2 In the browser’s Address field, type the full address of the machine
and its port number, and then press Enter. For example: http://
<machine name>:<port number>. Use the name of the machine and
port number you copied when you installed the StorNext software.

Note: Typically, the port number is 81. If port 81 is in use, use the next
unused port number. (I.e., 82, 83, etc.)

After you enter the machine name and port number, the following
window appears:

Figure 1 StorNext Login

Window

3 In the User ID field, type admin.

4 In the Password field, type password.
5 Click Login. The initial StorNext System Control screen appears.

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 Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

Figure 2 System Control

6 On this screen you can determine if the StorNext File System and
Storage Manager components are currently started. If not, click
Start for each component to start them.
7 Click the home (house) icon in the upper right corner to go to the
StorNext Home Page.

Note: When you log into StorNext for the first time, you might see a
message warning you about a security certificate. Refer to the
Quantum Knowledge Base for a permanent workaround to this
issue. For a temporary solution, create a certificate exception
that will allow you to log into StorNext without seeing the
warning message during subsequent logins.

The StorNext Home Page

On the home page you will find the following:
• Status and Capacity Monitors for file systems, libraries, storage
disks, and tape drives

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Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

• Dropdown Menus: Setup, Tools, Service, Reports and Help

• Current status indicators for the file system and Storage Manager
• A link to the tickets page (if tickets exist)
• A link to admin alerts (if they exist)
• A link to the Library Operator Actions Required page if actions exist
• A link to blockpool status if the blockpool is in the process of
starting up
From any page you can return to the StorNext home page by clicking
the Home (house) icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
Beside the Home icon is a question mark icon. Clicking this icon displays
a list of StorNext online help topics.
Displayed in the upper right corner beneath the home and help icons is
the user name or IP address of the StorNext user currently logged in.

Figure 3 StorNext Home Page

10 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

StorNext Monitors The StorNext Home Page displays the following status and capacity
monitors which are used to show the current state of the StorNext
system:
• File Systems Capacity Monitor
• Libraries Capacity Monitor
• Storage Disks Capacity Monitor
• Tape Drive Status
• Policy Capacity Monitor
Use these monitors to view current statistics of managed or unmanaged
file systems and configured libraries and/or drives, including file system,
library, and drive information. Each of the status monitors provides an
at-a-glance view of the total number of components (file systems,
libraries, storage disks, or tape drives) and the current state of the file
system: green for normal, yellow for warning, and red for error.
The information shown in the monitors is refreshed periodically. You can
specify the refresh rate by choosing the desired interval from the
Refresh Rate list:
• No Refresh
• 30 seconds
• 1 minute
• 2 minutes
• 5 minutes
• 10 minutes

File Systems Capacity Monitor

The File Systems Capacity Monitor provides the following information:
• Total space (in GB) for the file system
• A graphical representation of the free and used space amount
• The number of active StorNext SAN clients (connected via fibre
channel or iSCSI) for which you are licensed
• The number of StorNext distributed LAN clients for which you are
licensed. For more information about distributed LAN clients, see
About Distributed LAN Clients on page 2.

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 11

Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

• The number of store candidates, which are files selected for storage
to secondary media.
• The number of files that have been stored and meet the criteria to
become a truncation candidate.
• Current status (Error, Warning or Normal)

Libraries Capacity Monitor

The Libraries Capacity Monitor provides the following information:
• Total space (in GB) for the library. (This amount is an approximation
if the library contains unformatted media.)
• A graphical representation of the library's free and used space
amount
• The number of mounted and unmounted media
• The number of used slots
• The total number of slots
• Current status (Error, Warning or Normal)

Storage Disks Capacity Monitor

The Storage Disks Capacity Monitor provides the following information:
• Total number of storage disks
• A graphical representation of the free and used space amount
• Current status (Error, Warning or Normal)

Tape Drive Status

The Tape Drive Status Monitor provides the following information:
• Total number of tape drives
• A graphical representation of the free and used space amount
• Current status (Error, Warning or Normal)

12 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

Policy Capacity Monitor

The Policy Capacity Monitor provides the following information:
• Total space (in GB) for policy
• A graphical representation of the free and used space amount

Note: NOTE: The home page status and capacity monitors are
intended to give you an approximate at-a-glance view of all
the file systems, libraries, storage disks etc. on your system.

For a detailed, more accurate summary of your system's

components, click inside one of the Status or Capacity boxes to
view all file system, libraries, storage disks, and so on. (For
example, click inside either the File Systems Status or Capacity
box to view all file systems.)

StorNext Home Page The dropdown menu options located in the bar at the top of every page
Dropdown Menus allow you to access StorNext setup, tools, service, and reporting
options.
The StorNext home page contains these drop-down menus and menu
options:

The Setup Menu

Use these menu options to launch the Configuration Wizard or
complete individual configuration tasks.
• Configuration Wizard: Launches the StorNext Configuration
Wizard
• License: Enter StorNext license information
• Name Servers: Enter and set order for servers used for StorNext file
systems
• File System: Add a file system to your environment
• Storage Destinations: Add a library or storage disk, or set up data
replication and deduplication
• Storage Policy: Add a storage policy to a file system

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 13

Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

• Email Server: Configure the email server to use for notifications

• Email Notifications: Configure email notifications for Service
Tickets, Admin Alerts, StorNext Backups, and Policy Class Alerts

The Tools Menu

Use these options to control day-to-day operations of StorNext.
• User Access: Control user access to StorNext tasks
• Client Download: Download StorNext client software
• System Control: Stop or start the file system or StorNext Storage
Manager, and specify whether to automatically start StorNext at
system startup
• File and Directory Actions: Perform file-related and directory-
related tasks such as storing and moving files, recovering and
retrieving files and directories, and modifying file attributes.
• File System
• Label Disks: Label disk drives
• Check File System: Run a check on your file system before
expanding the file system or migrating a stripe group.
• Affinities: Add affinities to the file system.
• Migrate File System: Migrate the file system's stripe group(s)
• Truncation Parameters: Manage the file system's truncation
parameters
• Storage Manager
• Storage Components: View current status for libraries, storage
disks, and tape drives; place one or more of these components
online or offline
• Drive Pool: Add, modify, or delete drive pools
• Media Actions: Remove media from a library or move media
from one library to another
• Library Operator: Enter or eject media from the Library
Operator Interface
• Software Requests: View or cancel pending software requests

14 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

• Scheduler: Schedule file system events including Clean Info,

Clean Versions, Full Backup, Partial Backup, and Rebuild Policy
• Alternate Retrieval Location: Specify a remote retrieval
location to use in situations where files stored on tape or a
storage disk cannot be accessed.
• Distributed Data Mover: Distribute data movement operations
from the metadata controller to client machines.
• Replication/Deduplication
• Administration: View current progress for data replication,
data deduplication, and truncation operations
• Replication Targets: Add replication hosts and mount points to
your replication targets, and edit properties for existing hosts
and mount points
• Replication Bandwidth: Monitor bandwidth usage for ongoing
data replication processes
• HA
• Convert: Convert to a High Availability (HA) configuration
• Manage: Manage an HA configuration

The Service Menu

Use these options to monitor and capture system status information.
• Health Check: Perform one or more health checks on StorNext and
view recent health check results
• Capture State: Obtain and preserve detailed information about the
current StorNext system state
• System Backup: Run a backup of StorNext software
• Admin Alerts: View informational messages about system activities
• Tickets: View, edit, or close service tickets generated for the system

The Reports Menu

Use these options to view StorNext reports.
• Logs: Access logs of StorNext operations

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Chapter 2: StorNext GUI Overview
The StorNext Home Page

• LAN Client Performance: View information about distributed LAN

clients and servers, including read and write speed
• Clients: View statistics for StorNext clients, including the number of
connected clients and distributed LAN clients, and client
performance
• File System: View file system statistics including active clients,
space, size, disks, and stripe groups
• Jobs: View a list of pending and completed jobs on the system
• SAN Devices: View information about devices currently attached to
your SAN, including disks/LUNs, libraries, and tape drives
• Replication/Deduplication
• Policy Activity: View replication and deduplication performance
statistics
• Policy Summary: View replication and deduplication
information for each policy
• Distributed Data Mover: View activity related to the Distributed
Data Mover feature

The Help Menu

Use these options to access StorNext documentation, find Quantum
contact information, or detailed information about this version of
StorNext.
• Documentation: Access the StorNext documentation
• Support: Access Quantum Technical Support information
• About: Access detailed information about your version of
StorNext and the system on which it is running. Also shows
StorNext patent information.

16 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 3
The Configuration Wizard

StorNext includes a Configuration Wizard that guides you through the

process of setting up your StorNext system. The wizard includes tasks
you would typically perform when you are first configuring your system.
The Configuration Wizard appears automatically when you launch
StorNext for the first time. As you complete tasks, click Next to proceed
to the next configuration task, or click Back to return to the previous
task. Some tasks allow you to skip the task for configuration at a later
time. These tasks have a Next/Skip button instead of a Next button.
You can display the Configuration Wizard at any time by selecting
Configuration Wizard from the StorNext Setup menu. If you have
completed all of the tasks, each task will be marked as Complete. If you
have not completed all tasks, the ones you finished will be marked
Complete and the wizard will be ready for you to begin the next
uncompleted task.
You can perform any of the Configuration Wizard’s tasks separately
rather than through the wizard. Each of these tasks is selectable from
the StorNext Setup menu.
Following are the setup and configuration tasks the Configuration
Wizard allows you to complete:
• Step 1: Welcome: View disks and libraries currently available for
StorNext usage
• Step 2: License: Enter StorNext License Information

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 17

Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 1: Welcome

• Step 3: Name Servers: Specify and order the machines acting as

StorNext name servers
• Step 4: File System: Add a StorNext file system
• Step 5: Storage Destinations: Add a library, storage disks, and other
storage destinations
• Step 6: Storage Policy: Add a Storage Manager or replication
storage policy
• Step 7: Email Server: Specify an email server to handle StorNext
notifications
• Step 8: Email Notification: Add email notifications recipients
• Step 9: Done: Signify that you are finished using the Configuration
Wizard. You can also convert to a high availability (HA) system.
This chapter provides an overview of the steps necessary to complete
each of the Configuration Wizard’s tasks.

Step 1: Welcome
The first screen in the Configuration Wizard is the Welcome screen. This
screen shows disks and libraries that are currently available for StorNext
usage. As you add new disks and libraries, the information on this
screen is updated.
If desired, you can manually update the screen by clicking Refresh.
When you are ready to proceed to the next step, click Next in the left
column.

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 Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

Figure 4 Setup >

Configuration Wizard
Welcome Screen

Step 2: License
Use the Enter License wizard to enter license strings for the StorNext
products you have purchased. You must have a license to configure or
use StorNext products or features.
If the license.dat file does not contain permanent licenses, StorNext
produces an auto-generated license with an expiration date for all
StorNext products and features except Deduplication. In some cases
Quantum may provide evaluation licenses for features. Evaluation
licenses also have a fixed expiration date.
Beyond the evaluation period, you must have a permanent license to
configure or use StorNext features.
Here is a list of StorNext licenses:
• File System: A File System license enables you to create and modify
StorNext-supported file systems.
• LAN Client: You must have a Distributed LAN Client license for each
LAN client you use with StorNext (in addition to any SAN clients).

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

• Storage Manager: A Storage Manager license provides full access

to StorNext's Storage Manager features that are not licensed
separately.
• Replication: A replication license is required if you want to use
StorNext's Data Replication feature.
• Deduplication: A deduplication license is required if you want to
use StorNext’s Data Deduplication (blockpool) feature.
• Vaulting: A Vaulting license provides the ability to move seldom-
used media to a manual archive vault, freeing room for media in the
managed archives.
• Storage Disk: You must have a Storage Disk license to be able to
configure and use StorNext storage disks.
• Checksum: A Checksum license enables you to verify data integrity
by ensuring that the checksum created when data was stored
matches the checksum upon data retrieval.
• Distributed Data Mover (DDM): A license is required for using
DDM if you plan to use additional machines besides the primary
server to distribute data streams.
• Failover (HA): A Failover (High Availability) license is required if you
plan to use StorNext's HA failover features.
• Maintenance: A Maintenance license verifies that your site has
purchased StorNext upgrade licenses, and is required for StorNext
upgrades. It is also used at run time to verify the revision number in
the software matches what was purchased.
To obtain permanent product/feature licenses, you must contact the
Quantum Technical Assistance Center at [email protected] and
give them the following information:
• The serial number from your product CD or box.
• A list of the products/features you wish to license
• The number of StorNext SAN clients and distributed LAN clients you
want to support, as well as capacity.
• The StorNext server identification number. You can find this number
on the Configuration Wizard’s Setup > License screen.
After the Quantum Technical Assistance Center receives the above
information, a representative will send you license strings for the

20 Quantum StorNext User’s Guide

 Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

products/features you specified. Enter these license strings on the Setup

> License > Entry screen to begin using StorNext features.

Note: You cannot mix auto-generated/evaluation and permanent

licenses. Once you enter one or more permanent licenses in
StorNext, all auto-generated/evaluation licenses are deleted. If
you are using an auto-generated or evaluation license period to
evaluate new features, be aware that you will lose any
remaining time on your temporary licenses as soon as you
enter one or more permanent license.

After you have entered permanent licenses, you should not

install an evaluation license.

For more information about licenses and obtaining a

permanent license, see the StorNext User’s Guide or the online
help.

There are two ways to access the Enter License wizard:

• Through the StorNext Configuration wizard
• By choosing License from the Setup menu
1 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose License on the
left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose License from the Setup
menu.) The Setup > License > Agreement screen appears. You
must accept the license agreement in order to continue with the
licensing process.

Quantum StorNext User’s Guide 21

Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

Figure 5 Setup > License >

Agreement Screen

2 Read the license carefully, and then click Accept. The Setup >
License > Entry screen appears.

Figure 6 Setup > License >

Entry Screen

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 Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

3 To import license string information from a text file, click Import.

When the Import License File window appears, click Browse and
navigate to the file's location. Click Close to continue.
A message at the top of the screen informs you whether the
information was successfully imported and copied from the file into
the StorNext license file. The status indicator changes to enabled (a
green check mark icon and you are now ready to activate your
licenses.
4 To enter licenses individually, select the product/feature and then
click Enter/Update. At the [License/Feature Name] License field,
enter the license string you received from Quantum. Click Apply to
apply the string.

Figure 7 Setup > License >

Entry Screen

A message at the top of the screen informs you whether the

information was successfully validated and copied into the StorNext
license file. The status indicator changes to enabled (a green check
mark icon) and you are now ready to activate your licenses.

License Expiration and Each StorNext feature license has a license expiration date (shown in the
Limits Expires column) and a limit shown in the Limit column.
Following is an explanation of the limit for each feature as it pertains to
licensing:
• File System: The number displayed is the maximum number of SAN
clients allowed
• LAN Clients: The number displayed is the maximum number of LAN
clients allowed
• Storage Manager: The number displayed is the licensed capacity
for files being managed by the SNSM software.

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

The current used capacity for the Storage Manager feature is

determined as follows: It is the sum of all managed files that have
been copied to Storage Manager media. This includes tape media
and also storage disk. (The capacity calculation does not include
files on tape media that have been moved to a vault archive.)
Note the following about the used space that is tracked:
• The used space includes the sizes of all files stored to the media.
This includes multiple copies of files, if present, as well as old
versions available for recovery.
• The used space includes the size of the header information
written to the media with the file. This header contains
information used to verify file information at retrieve time,
etcetera.
• If compression is enabled, the used space is determined by the
native size of the files and not the compressed size.
• For tape media, the used space includes “dead space” for files
that have been removed or modified, and for which fsclean has
been run to clean up knowledge of the file in the Storage
Manager database.

Note: The capacity for storage disks does not include “dead
space” but does include all data on the file system where
the storage disk has been configured, not just files copied
to the file system by the Storage Manager. To maximize the
licensed Storage Manager capacity, the storage disk file
systems should be restricted to Storage Manager data only.
If your storage disk contains ‘user’ data you should
consider moving that data to an alternate location prior to
performing a StorNext upgrade.

If you are unsure about the location of the Storage

Manager data on a file system run the command
fsdiskcfg with no arguments. This command produces a
report on the configured storage disks and the location of
the managed data on each file system. The ‘Path’ column
in the command output indicates the directory containing
the managed data.

• Replication: Unlimited

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Step 2: License

• Deduplication: The number displayed is the size of the blockpool.

The capacity is tracked to the nearest terabyte.
• Vaulting: Unlimited
• Storage Disk: Unlimited
• Checksum: Unlimited
• Distributed Data Mover (DDM): The number displayed is the
maximum number of clients that can be used to run mover
processes.
• Failover (HA): Unlimited
• Maintenance: The number displayed is the release number for the
StorNext software.

Determining License Capacity

The numbers displayed on the StorNext License screen represent
licensed capacity, not necessarily actual capacity. You can determine the
actual capacity for the File System, LAN Clients, Deduplication,
Replication, Failover and Maintenance licenses by running the following
command from the command line:
# snlicense <license type>
When running this command, do not use capital letters or include the
angled brackets around the license type.
To obtain capacities for the Storage Manager, Vaulting, Storage Disk,
Checksum, DDM and Maintenance features, run the following
command from the command line:
# sntsm -l <feature name>
Note that character after the dash in the preceding command is the
letter L, not the numeral 1. As before, when running this command do
not use capital letters or include the angled brackets around the feature
name.
For more information, see the man pages for both of these commands.

Updating Licenses You will need to update a license if the license expires or if your
configuration changes (for example, if you add additional clients or
increase capacity.)

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 2: License

To update a license, select the desired product/feature and then click

Enter/Update. When the Setup > License > Enter/Update screen
appears, copy the license string you received from Quantum into the
[License/Feature Name] License field, and then click Apply.

Licensing and Upgrades The new licensing implementation affects StorNext upgrades, both for
release 4.0 and future releases. Be aware of the following upgrade-
related implications and plan accordingly:
• A non-expired Maintenance license is required to perform a
StorNext upgrade. This means you must contact Quantum Technical
Support for a Maintenance license before you can upgrade to
StorNext 4.0.
• The Maintenance license provided by Quantum Technical Support
must be put into place prior to the upgrade, or you will not be
allowed to proceed with the upgrade. This step is done by manually
editing the license.dat file because the StorNext GUI has not
been installed and therefore you cannot enter licenses through the
GUI. This applies to upgrades to StorNext 4.0 and also to future
upgrades.
• For future upgrades, for any StorNext feature or component
currently in use, you must have a license in place prior to the
upgrade. Otherwise, you will not be allowed to proceed with the
upgrade.
• For future upgrades, after an upgrade you will still be allowed to
run StorNext if the Maintenance license expires. However, no future
upgrades will be allowed.
• The Maintenance license must remain in place even after expiration
to allow the StorNext software to run, because it indicates which
version of the software was purchased.
• If you are ready to upgrade and then notice that the Storage
Manager capacity has been exceeded, you can follow the procedure
below to free up capacity to bring it under the licensed value. These
steps will clean up “dead space” on tape media, and do not apply to
storage disks.

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Step 3: Name Servers

1 Run the fsmedcopy command with no arguments. Running

command generates a report of media and wasted space. The
report looks similar to this:
% fsmedcopy
-----------------------------------------------------
Media Fragmentation Report Thu Feb 4
15:18:14 2010

Media ID Fill Level Wasted Space

-----------------------------------------------------
000099 10.00 0.00
000098 30.00 5.00
000096 70.99 44.98
000099 0.12 99.65
The “Fill Level” column shows how full the media is. The
“Wasted Space” column indicates how much of the used space
is wasted, NOT the percentage of the entire tape.
Media with high percentages for both values (such as media
000096 in the example) are good candidates for eliminating
dead space.
2 For each media you identify as having significant dead space,
run this command:
% fsmedcopy -r <mediaid>

Note: On a large system, the fsmedcopy report can take a

long time to complete. If your site is dynamic (that is, it
has a lot of file removes and updates,) you can skip
step 1 and just pick media you know are full, and then
run the command fsmedcopy -r against those
media.

Step 3: Name Servers

This screen enables you to manage machines acting as File System name
servers. These machine names are copied into the StorNext
fsnameservers file, which specifies machines serving as File System

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 3: Name Servers

Name Server coordinator(s). The File System Name Server coordinator is

a critical component of the StorNext File System Services (FSS).
A principal function of the coordinator is to manage failover voting in a
high-availability configuration. Therefore, it is critical to select highly
reliable systems as coordinators. Redundancy is provided by listing
multiple machine entries in the fsnameservers file, one entry per line.
The first machine listed is the primary coordinator and any subsequent
machines listed serve as backup coordinators. To create redundancy, it is
recommended that you list two machines. Typically, the selected systems
are also configured for FSM services, but this is not a requirement.
If the fsnameservers file does not exist, then the file system operates
as a local file system, requiring both a client and a server. The file system
will not communicate with any other StorNext File System product on
the network, thus eliminating the sharing of the FSS over the SAN.
1 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose Name Servers
on the left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose Name Servers
from the Setup menu.) The Setup > Name Servers screen appears.
(If name servers were previously created, a list of those IP addresses
appears on the Name Servers screen.)

Figure 8 Name Servers Screen

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Step 4: File System

2 To add a new name server, enter the IP address in the field to the left
of the Add button. The new name server appears in the list of
available name servers.
3 When a message informs you that Name Servers has been updated,
click OK to continue.
4 If there are previously configured name servers, you can specify the
order in which name servers are used. To set the order, select a
server and then click Move Up or Move Down until the selected
server is in the correct order.
A green check mark icon under the Enabled column heading indicates
that the server is currently enabled as a name server. A red X icon
indicates that the server is not currently enabled.

Deleting a Name Server To delete a name server, select the name server you want to delete and
then click Delete. Finalize the deletion by clicking Apply.

Caution: This delete function does not provide a confirmation

message before completing the deletion, so be absolutely
certain you want to delete a name server before clicking
Delete.

Step 4: File System

After entering license information, the next task is to create a file
system. When you reach this step, any previously created file systems
are displayed.
The following procedure describes the easiest way to create a new file
system quickly so you can complete the Configuration Wizard tasks and
begin using StorNext immediately. For more detailed information about
file systems such as editing, modifying or deleting existing file systems
or performing additional file system actions, see File System Tasks on
page 61.
1 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose File System on
the left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose File System from

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 4: File System

the Setup menu.) The Setup > File System screen displays all
currently configured file systems. (If you are running the
Configuration Wizard for the first time, there will be no existing file
systems.)
From this screen you can view, add, edit, or delete a file system. For
information on these procedures, see the online help.

Figure 9 Setup > File System

Screen

2 Click New to add a new file system. The Setup > File System > New
Screen appears.

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Step 4: File System

Figure 10 Setup > File System

> New Screen

3 Enter the fields on the top half of the screen.

• File System Name
• Mount Point
• Storage Manager
• Replication/Deduplication
• Configuration Mode: Simple or Advanced
(For detailed information about what to enter on this screen, see
the online help.)
If you chose Advanced Mode, skip to Step 8.
4 Select one or more disks to assign to the file system. (Hold down the
Shift or Control key to select multiple disks.) Click All to select all
available disks, or None to deselect all disks.
5 After selecting one or more disks, click Meta to designate the disk(s)
as used for metadata, or click Journal to use the disk(s) for
journaling. A disk can be used for both metadata and journaling.
6 At the field to the left of the Label button, enter a disk label name.
Click Label to apply the label name to the selected disks. (Clicking
Unlabel removes label names from selected disks.) When asked to

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

confirm the action (either Label or Unlabel), click OK to continue or

Cancel to abort.
7 After you are finished entering label information, click Assign to
assign the disk(s) to the file system. (Clicking Unassign removes any
existing associations between disks and the file system. For example,
if you assign disks erroneously, clicking Unassign is an easy way to
remove associations and reassign disks.)
8 Click Configure.
Simple Configuration Mode: If you chose the Simple configuration
mode, StorNext to automatically configures and creates the file
system based on the information you entered. Proceed to Step 11.
Advanced Configuration Mode: If you chose the Advanced
configuration mode, you must enter the fields on the Options tab
and Stripe Group tab. You can also enter Advanced Options
information for the new file system. (For information about entering
these tabs, see the online help.)
9 (Advanced Configuration Mode only) After you enter information
on the Options tab and Stripe Groups tab, click Finish. Any
configuration errors are listed at the top of the screen. You should
correct these errors as soon as possible.
10 Click Apply to save your changes and create the file system.
11 When a message informs you that the file system was successfully
created, click OK.

Step 5: Storage Destinations

After you have created at least one file system, the Setup menu's
Storage Destinations option allows you to add, edit, or delete libraries
and storage disks. You can also enter or edit targets for data replication,
and specify a blockpool host file system for data deduplication.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Adding a New Library Follow this procedure to add a new library:

1 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose Storage
Destinations on the left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose
Storage Destinations from the Setup menu.)
2 If necessary, click the Library tab. The Setup > Storage Destinations
> Library Screen appears.

Figure 11 Storage Destinations

> Library Screen

3 Click New. The Setup > Storage Destinations > Library > New Screen
appears.

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 5: Storage Destinations

Figure 12 Storage Destinations

> Library > New Screen

4 Enter the fields at the top of the screen. (For detailed information
about what to enter on this screen, see the online help.)
5 In the Drives section, select a tape drive to add to your new library,
or click Scan to have StorNext discover available drives for you.
6 In the Media section, view media available for use. (Click Scan to
have StorNext discover available media for you.)
7 Click Apply.
8 After a message informs you that the library was successfully
created, click OK.
9 Repeat steps 3 - 8 to add additional tape drives and media to the
new library.

Viewing an Existing Follow this procedure to view details for a previously created library:
Library 1 Choose Storage Destinations from the Setup menu. If necessary,
click the Library tab. The Setup > Storage Destinations > Library
screen appears. (See Figure 11.)
2 Select the library whose information you want to view.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

3 Click View, or choose View from the actions dropdown list. The
library detail screen appears.

Figure 13 Library Details

Screen

4 The library information screen provides the following information:

• Name: The name of the library
• Serial Number: The library's serial number
• Fill Level: The library's current fill level
• Type: The type of library (e.g., SCSI, ACSLS, etc.)
• State: The library's current state (e.g., online or offline)
• Dual Aisle: Indicates whether the library has a dual aisle
configuration
• EIF Port Config: The current EIF port configuration
• HA Failover: Indicates whether HA failover is enabled for the
library
• Drive Count: The number of tape drives in the library
• Media Count: The number of media in the library
5 When you are finished viewing library information, click Done.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Editing a Library Follow this procedure to edit parameters for an existing library:
1 If you have not already done so, choose Storage Destinations from
the Setup menu and then click the Library tab.
2 Select the library you want to edit.
3 Click Edit, or choose Edit from the actions dropdown list. After you
select this option StorNext scans the library, which could take some
time to complete depending on your configuration.

Figure 14 Edit Library Screen

4 If desired, click Scan if you want StorNext to scan the library for
drives.
5 Select the tape drives you want included in your library, or click All
to include all available tape drives. (To exclude all drives, click None.)
6 Click Apply.
7 When a confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or No
to abort.
8 After a message informs you that the library was successfully
modified, click OK.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Deleting a Library Follow this procedure to delete an existing library:

1 If you have not already done so, choose Storage Destinations from
the Setup menu and then click the Library tab.
2 Select the library you want to delete.
3 Click Delete, or choose Delete from the actions dropdown list.
4 When a confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed with
the deletion or No to abort.
5 After a message informs you that the library was successfully
deleted, click OK.

Performing Other Towards the middle of the Setup > Storage Destinations > Library
Library Actions screen is a dropdown list of actions you can perform for libraries.
Select the library for which you want to perform the action, and then
choose one of these options from the Select Action dropdown list:
• Audit: Select this option to perform an audit on the selected library.
An audit is a physical check of each library component to verify its
integrity and make sure the database and library are synchronized.
Quantum recommends that you audit the library after each restore.
• Remap-Audit: Select this option to perform an audit on the
selected library with a physical inventory of the library. This option
synchronizes the StorNext databases with the library databases.
• Online: Select this option to set the library online. No additional
actions are required.
• Offline: Select this option to take the library offline. No additional
actions are required.
• Drives Online: Select this option to place the drives in the library
online. No additional actions are required.
• Drives Offline: Select this option to take the drives in the library
offline. No additional actions are required.
• Add Media Bulkload: Select this option to add media to the library
via the bulk loading method.
• Add Media Mailbox: Select this option to add media to the library
through the library's mailbox.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Storage Disk Overview Storage disks are external devices on UNIX-based file systems that can
be used for long term data storage. Storage disks function and operate
the same way as physical tape media.
When a storage disk is configured, the StorNext Storage Manager
moves data to storage disks for long-term retention in addition to, or
instead of tape. This enables users to leverage the specialized third-party
functionality of appliances or store small files that might take longer to
retrieve from tape. Many users will still use tape for long-term storage
and vaulting, but storage disk can be used to create tape-free archives.
Here are a few differences storage disks have over tape media, aside
from the obvious cost-saving benefit:
• A storage disk either belongs to no policy class, or belongs to a
single policy class
• A storage disk can store file copies only with the same copy ID.

Note: Before you create a storage disk, the disks you plan to use must
reside in an existing, mounted file system.

After you create a storage disk, observe the following usage

recommendations:
• If your file system includes storage disks, avoid using that file system
for any data other than storage disk stored data.
• Use complete and physically dedicated file systems (snfs, local, NFS,
or other,) for storage disk data, not shared file systems or file
systems with linked directories.
• If your file system includes storage disks and you accidentally fill it
with unrelated user data (i.e., non-storage disk data,) call the
Quantum Technical Assistance Center and ask for a procedure to
clean up and transcribe data.
The following procedures describe how to view, edit and delete storage
disks. The procedure for adding a storage disk is identical to entering
one through the StorNext Configuration Wizard as described in Adding
a New Storage Disk on page 39.)

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Adding a New Storage Follow this procedure to add a new storage disk.
Disk 1 Click the Storage Disk tab. The Setup > Storage Destinations >
Storage Disk Screen appears.

Figure 15 Setup > Storage

Destinations > Storage Disk
Screen

2 Click New. The Storage Destinations > Storage Disk > New
Screen appears.

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 5: Storage Destinations

Figure 16 Storage Destinations

> Storage Disk > New Screen

3 Enter the fields on the screen. (For detailed information about what
to enter on this screen, see the online help.)
4 Click Apply.
5 Repeat steps 2 - 4 to add additional storage disks.

Viewing an Existing Follow this procedure to view a list of previously configured storage
Storage Disks disks.
1 Choose Storage Destinations from the Setup menu.
2 Click the Storage Disk tab. Any previously configured storage disks
are displayed.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Figure 17 Storage Disk Screen

3 Select the storage disk whose information you want to view.

4 Click View.

Figure 18 View Storage Disk

Screen

5 When you are finished viewing library information, click Done.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Editing a Storage Disk Follow this procedure to edit a currently configured storage disk.
1 If you have not already done so, choose Storage Destinations from
the Setup menu and then click the Storage Disk tab.
2 Select the storage disk whose information you want to edit.
3 Click Edit.
4 Modify any of the fields you entered when creating the storage disk.
(For field information, see the online help or the descriptions in
Adding a New Storage Disk on page 39.)
5 Click Apply.
6 When a confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or No
to abort.
7 After a message informs you that the storage disk was successfully
modified, click OK.

Deleting a Storage Disk Follow this procedure to delete a currently configured storage disk.
1 If you have not already done so, choose Storage Destinations from
the Setup menu and then click the Storage Disk tab.
2 Select the storage disk you want to delete.
3 Click Delete.
4 When a confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed with
the deletion or No to abort.
5 After a message informs you that the storage disk was successfully
deleted, click OK.

Adding a New Data Follow this procedure to add a new replication target host.
Replication Host 1 Click the Replication Targets tab. The Setup > Storage Destinations
> Replication / Deduplication Screen appears.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

Figure 19 Setup > Storage

Destinations > Replication /
Deduplication Screen

2 Click Add Host.

3 Enter the fields in the New Target section. (For detailed information
about what to enter on this screen, see the online help.)
4 Click Add to add the new replication target, or Cancel to abort
without saving.
5 Click Apply to save your changes.
6 Repeat steps 3 - 6 to add more targets.
7 After a message informs you that the target was successfully added,
click OK.

Editing a Data Follow this procedure to edit an existing data replication target.
Replication Host 1 If you have not already done so, click the Replication Targets tab.
2 If necessary, click the plus sign (+) beside the Replication Targets
heading in the box titled Replication Target Configuration.
3 Select the replication target you want to edit.
4 Click Edit.

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Step 5: Storage Destinations

5 At the Hostname or IP field, modify either the host name or IP

address for the replication target.
6 Click Update to save your changes, or Cancel to abort.

Deleting a Data Follow this procedure to delete a replication target.

Replication Target 1 If you have not already done so, choose click the Replication
Targets tab.
2 If necessary, click the plus sign (+) beside the Replication Targets
heading in the box titled Replication Target Configuration.
3 Select the replication target you want to delete.
4 Click Delete.

Caution: There is no confirmation message for this delete function,

so make absolutely certain you want to delete the
replication target before you click Delete.

Adding a New Mount Follow this procedure to add a new mount point to a replication target.
Point 1 If you have not already done so, choose Storage Destinations on
the left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose Storage
Destinations from the Setup menu.)
2 Click the Replication Targets tab.
3 Select the replication target (host) to which you would like to add a
mount point. (You might need to click the dash to the left of the
Replication Targets heading to display the available hosts.)
4 Click Add Mount Point.
5 Click Scan Host to identify available mount points on the selected
host.
6 At the Mount Point field, select a mount point and then click Add.
7 Repeat steps 3 - 6 to add additional mount points.
8 Click Apply to save the changes.

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9 After a message informs you that changes were successfully

incorporated click OK.

Enabling Data The Deduplication tab enables you to create a blockpool on a specified
Deduplication file system.
To create the blockpool, select the desired file system from the
dropdown list next to the Blockpool File System label, and then click
Apply.

Note: The blockpool should not be placed on a file system that will be
used as the HA shared file system. This is a requirement even if
you do not plan to use the StorNext Deduplication feature.

Figure 20 Setup > Storage

Destinations > Replication /
Deduplication Screen
(Blockpool)

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 6: Storage Policy

Step 6: Storage Policy

A storage policy defines how files will be managed in a directory and
subdirectories.
These are the available storage policy settings:
• Number of copies to create
• Media type to use when storing data
• Amount of time to store data after data is modified
• If disk-to-disk relocation is enabled, the amount of time (in days)
before relocating a file
• Amount of time before truncating a file after a file is modified
Storage policies can be related to one or more directories. In this
situation, all files in that directory and sub-directories are governed by
the storage policy. The connection between a storage policy and a
directory is called the relation point.
Here are some examples of storage policy usage:
• A directory in which to store backups every night is created. This
directory is seldom accessed after the files are copied over. A storage
policy could be set up to create two tape copies of the files, store
one copy of the files to AIT media after residing on disk for 10
minutes, and then truncate the other set of files immediately after
storing the other set to tape in order to free up disk space. This
policy can be associated with a directory such as: /sandsm/dsm1/
backup.
• A directory has been created to store all documents that are
accessed frequently, and if truncated, need to be retrieved quickly.
The in this case could be set up to create a single tape copy, store
the files to LTO media 15 minutes after being on disk, and then
truncate after 60 days of non-use. This policy can be associated with
a directory such as: /sandsm/dsm1/docs.

Adding a Storage Follow this procedure to add a new Storage Manager storage policy:
Manager Storage Policy 1 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose Storage Policy
on the left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose Storage Policy

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Step 6: Storage Policy

from the Setup menu.) The Setup > Storage Policy Screen
appears.

Figure 21 Setup > Storage

Policy Screen

2 Click New. The Storage Policy > New Screen appears.

Figure 22 Storage Policy >

New Screen

3 Enter the following fields:

• Policy Name: The name of the new policy you are creating

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Step 6: Storage Policy

• Policy Type: choose Storage Manager to create a policy for

StorNext Storage Manager
4 Enter information on the General, Relocation, Steering, Schedule
and Associated Directories tabs. (See the sections following for
more information about these tabs.)
5 When you are finished entering information about the new policy,
click Apply, or click Cancel to exit without saving.
6 After the Status screen informs you that the policy was created
successfully, click OK.

The General Tab

The General tab contains parameters that apply to all storage policies.
Fields marked with an asterisk are required. Enter additional fields as
desired, or accept the displayed default values.

Figure 23 Storage Policy >

New > General Tab

For instructions on what to enter on this screen, see the online help.

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Step 6: Storage Policy

The Relocation Tab

The Relocation tab enables you to configure the Disk-to-Disk relocation
feature.
Disk-to-Disk relocation allows you to move data from one set of disks
(disk stripe group) to another without affecting the file name space.

Figure 24 Storage Policy >

New > Relocation Tab

For instructions on what to enter on this screen, see the online help.

The Steering Tab

The Steering tab enables you to configure file steering, which allows you
to direct a copy to a designated drive pool. For example, you could have
a file system with one drive pool of SATA disks intended for proxy files
or temporary storage such as less critical data on lower-duty cycle,
slower disks. You might have another larger fibre channel drive pool for
storing raw content such as high value data, on higher duty cycle,
higher performance disks.

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Step 6: Storage Policy

Figure 25 Storage Policy >

New > Steering Tab

For instructions on what to enter on this screen, see the online help.

The Schedule Tab

The Schedule tab allows you to enable or disable the Store Files
Automatically feature.
When this feature is enabled, StorNext automatically stores files for the
current storage policy. If this feature is disabled, Quantum recommends
that the files for the policy class be stored by scheduled events.

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Step 6: Storage Policy

Figure 26 Storage Policy >

New > Schedule Tab

For instructions on what to enter on this screen, see the online help.

The Associated Directories Tab

The Associated Directories tab enables you to view or delete any existing
associated directories in the file system for the policy, and to add new
directories.

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 6: Storage Policy

Figure 27 Storage Policy >

New > Associated Directories
Tab

For instructions on what to enter on this screen, see the online help.

Adding a Replication The steps for creating a replication storage policy are described in Step
Storage Policy 4: Create a Replication Storage Policy on page 131.

Viewing a Storage To view storage policy details To view storage policy details for a Storage
Policy Manager or Replication policy, do the following:
1 From the Setup > Storage Policy screen, select the storage policy
you wish to view.
2 Click View.

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Step 6: Storage Policy

Figure 28 View Storage Policy

Screen

3 Click Back to return to the Setup > Storage Policy screen.

Running a Storage Follow this procedure to run an existing storage policy.

Policy 1 If you have not already done so, choose Storage Policy from the
Setup menu.
2 Select the policy you want to run, and then click Run.
3 When a message informs you that the job was successfully initiated,
click OK to continue.
4 To view job progress, select Jobs from the Reports menu.

Editing a Storage Policy To edit an existing storage policy:

1 From the Setup > Storage Policy screen, select the policy you wish
to edit.
2 Click Edit.
3 Modify policy information as desired by clicking the tabs and editing
or adding information. The process is the same as when you first
created the policy.

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Chapter 3: The Configuration Wizard
Step 7: Email Server

If you are editing a Storage Manager policy, you can edit fields on
the General, Relocation, Steering, Schedule and Associated
Directories tabs. For more information about fields on these tabs,
see the online help.
If you are editing a Replication global policy, you can edit fields on
Deduplication, Truncation, Outbound Replication, Inbound
Replication, and Blackout tabs. If you are editing a Replication
target policy, you can modify field on only the Inbound Replication
tab. For more information about fields on these tabs, see the online
help.
4 Click Apply to save changes and return to the Setup > Storage
Policy screen, or Cancel to abort.

Deleting a Storage To delete an existing storage policy:

Policy 1 From the Setup > Storage Policy screen, select the policy you wish
to delete.
2 Click Delete.
3 Click Yes to confirm the deletion, or No to cancel.

Step 7: Email Server

The Email Server option allows you to specify the email server used for
processing StorNext notification email messages. On this screen you will
enter basic information such as the email server name and sending
entity. You also have the option of sending a test message so you can
verify that StorNext recognizes the email server whose information you
entered.

Note: The Email Server option does not configure your email server.
Instead, it allows you to specify a previously configured email
server so StorNext knows which server is responsible for
processing notification messages. Before you use the Email
Server option, make sure your email SMTP server is already
configured.

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Step 8: Email Notification

Adding an Email Server Follow this procedure to add a new email server.
1 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose Email on the
left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose Email Server from the
Setup menu.) The Setup > Email Server Screen appears.

Figure 29 Setup > Email

Server Screen

2 Complete the fields related to your email system configuration on

the Setup > Email Server screen. (For detailed information about
what to enter on this screen, see the online help.)
3 Click Apply to save your changes.

Step 8: Email Notification

The Email Notification feature allows you to specify parties who should
receive StorNext email messages about backup statuses, service tickets,
admin alerts, and policy class messages.

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Step 8: Email Notification

Note: In order for this feature to work properly, make sure you have
specified a configured email server as described in Adding an
Email Server on page 55.

Adding an Email Follow this procedure to add a new email recipient.

Recipient 1 Choose Email Notifications from the Setup menu.
2 When the Configuration Wizard is displayed, choose Email
Notifications on the left side of the screen. (Alternatively, choose
Email Notifications from the Setup menu.) The Setup > Email
Notifications Screen appears.

Figure 30 Setup > Email

Notifications Screen

3 Click New. The Setup > Email Notifications > New screen
appears.

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Step 8: Email Notification

Figure 31 Setup > Email

Notifications New Screen

4 Complete the fields for the new email recipient. (For detailed
information about what to enter on this screen, see the online
help.)
5 Click Apply to save your changes.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
7 When a message informs you that the email notification recipient
was successfully added, click OK to return to the Setup > Email
Notifications screen.

Viewing Email Recipient Follow this procedure to view details for an existing email recipient.
Information 1 If you have not already done so, when the Configuration Wizard is
displayed, choose Email Notifications on the left side of the screen.
(Alternatively, choose Email Notifications from the Setup menu.)
2 On the Setup > Email Notifications screen, review the list of
current email recipients.
3 Select the recipient whose information you want to view, and then
click View.

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Step 8: Email Notification

4 When you are finished viewing recipient information, click Cancel to

return to the Setup > Email Notifications screen.

Editing an Email Follow this procedure to edit information for a previously entered email
Recipient recipient.
1 If you have not already done so, when the Configuration Wizard is
displayed, choose Email Notifications on the left side of the screen.
(Alternatively, choose Email Notifications from the Setup menu.)
2 On the Setup > Email Notifications screen, select the recipient
whose information you want to edit and then click Edit.
3 Modify any of the fields on the screen. (For detailed information
about what to enter on this screen, see the online help.)
4 When you are finished making modifications, click Apply to save
your changes and return to the Setup > Email Notifications
screen. (To exit without saving, click Cancel.)

Deleting an Email Follow this procedure to delete a previously entered email recipient.
Recipient 1 If you have not already done so, when the Configuration Wizard is
displayed, choose Email Notifications on the left side of the screen.
(Alternatively, choose Email Notifications from the Setup menu.)
2 On the Setup > Email Notifications screen, review the list of
current email recipients.
3 Select the recipient you want to delete and then click Delete.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort the deletion.
5 When a message informs you that the email notification recipient
was successfully deleted, click OK return to the Setup > Email
Notifications screen.

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Step 9: Done

Step 9: Done
The last step in the Configuration Wizard is to click Done to indicate
that you have completed all configuration steps.
On this screen you can also convert to a high availability (HA)
configuration by clicking Convert to HA. Clicking this button is the
same as choosing HA > Convert from the Tools menu. For information
about entering the fields on this screen and converting to an HA system,
see Converting to HA on page 193.

Figure 32 Setup >

Configuration Wizard Done
Screen

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Step 9: Done

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 Chapter 4
File System Tasks

In addition to the basic file system tasks described for the Configuration
Wizard in Step 4: File System on page 29, the Tools > File System menu
contains additional options that enable you to perform the following
file system-related tasks:
• Label Disks: Apply EFI or VTOC label names for disk devices in your
StorNext libraries
• Check File System: Run a check on StorNext files systems prior to
expanding or migrating the file system
• Affinities: Allocate additional storage to a file system by creating a
new stripe group in the file system configuration file, and assigning
new disks to the stripe group
• Migrate Data: Move data files from a source file system to a
destination stripe group, freeing stripe groups so they can be
removed from an existing StorNext file system
• Truncation Parameters: Enter truncation parameters for your file
systems in order to free up file storage that isn’t being actively used

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Label Disks

Label Disks
Each drive used by StorNext must be labeled. (A new drive must be
labeled only one time.) You can label a drive from any StorNext server or
client that has a fibre channel (FC) connection to the drive.
There are two types of label:
• EFI labels are required if you plan to create LUNs that are larger than
2TB. (For Solaris, EFI labels are also required for LUNs with a raw
capacity greater than 1TB.) EFI labels will not work with the IRIX
operating system.
• VTOC labels were used for all operating systems in previous
StorNext and Xsan releases, and are still required for the SGI IRIX
operating system, Solaris releases prior to Solaris 10 Update 2, and
LUNs less than 1TB.

Labeling a Device Follow this procedure to label any new or unused devices, or relabel a
device that has been unlabeled.

Caution: Labeling a disk device may result in a complete loss of data

on that disk device.

1 Choose Label Disk from the Tools > File System menu. The Tools >
Label Disks screen appears.

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Label Disks

Figure 33 Label Disks Screen

2 Select the disk devices to which you want to apply labels. (Click All
to select all available disks.) If a disk device already has a label,
continuing with this procedure overwrites the existing label.

Caution: Overwriting or renaming a disk device label may result

in a complete loss of data on that disk device.

3 Specify the label type by choosing EFI or VTOC.

4 Enter a label name in the text field to the right of the EFI and VTOC
buttons.
5 Click Label.
6 When the confirmation message appears, verify that the disk you
are labeling is empty, and then click OK to proceed. (Click Cancel to
abort without labelling the disk.)

Note: If you later unlabel a device and then decide to make the
unlabeled device usable by the StorNext File System, you must
first relabel the device. The relabeling process is identical to
labeling initially.

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Check File System

Unlabeling a Device Follow this procedure to remove a label from a previously labeled
device. If you unlabel a device and then decide later to make the
unlabeled device usable by the StorNext File System, you must first
relabel the device. The relabeling process is identical to labeling initially
as described in Labeling a Device.

Note: You cannot remove the label from a disk device that has been
previously assigned to a file system. You can identify these
devices by the file system name under the Filesystem heading.

1 If you have not already done so, choose Label Disk from the Tools
> File System menu.
2 Select the disk devices from which you want to remove labels. (Click
All to select all available disks.)
3 Click Unlabel.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click OK to verify that you
want to unlabel the selected disk(s). (Click Cancel to abort without
unlabelling the disk.)

Caution: When you unlabel a device, all data on that device will be
lost. Additionally, the unlabeled device will no longer be
used by the file system until it is relabeled.

Check File System

Before you perform either File System Expansion or Migration, you must
first perform a check on the file system you plan to use for these
features. This operation could take a significant amount of time
depending on the size of the file system, so plan accordingly.
Also, this operation could consume a significant amount of space on the
local file system. For example, for large file systems you should allow at
least 20GB of free space on the local file system for temporary files.
Use the following procedure to perform a file system check.

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Check File System

1 Choose Check File System from the Tools > File System menu. The
Tools > Check > [file system name] screen appears.

Figure 34 Check File System

Screen

2 At the Temp File Directory field, enter a new directory if the

specified directory does not have enough space to perform the
check. (The checking process on large file systems can take
hundreds of megabytes or more of local system disk space for
working files.)
3 Select the file system you want to check. (Only file systems eligible
for File System Expansion or Migration are shown.)
4 Click Check to begin checking the selected file system. Current
progress and other details about the checking process appear at the
bottom of the screen.

Note: If the file system you select is currently started and mounted,
the check will be automatically performed in read-only mode.
In read-only mode on a live file system (started and mounted,)
you could receive false errors.

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Check File System

Viewing and Deleting a After you have run at least one file system check, information about the
Check Report process appears at the bottom of the screen: file system name, the time
the check was initiated and completed, and the status of the check. To
view details about a specific check, select the desired check at the
bottom of the screen and then click Report. When you are finished
viewing the report, click Done to return to the previous screen.

Figure 35 Check File System

Report

To delete a check report from the list, select the check you want to
delete and then click Delete. To delete all previously run checks listed,
click Delete All.

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Affinities

File System Check If you do not want to use StorNext to view output from the file system
Output Files check, you can view output in two files:
• /usr/cvfs/data/<fsname>/trace/cvfsck-<timestamp>
For example: /usr/cvfs/data/snfs1/trace/cvfsck-
02_22_2010-12_15_19
• /usr/adic/gui/logs/jobs/CHECK_FS-<timestamp>-
<jobid>
For example: /usr/adic/gui/logs/jobs/CHECK_FS-
20100222_121519-77

Affinities
This section describes StorNext’s “stripe group affinity” feature, and also
provides some common use cases.
A stripe group is a collection of LUNs (typically disks or arrays) across
which data is striped. Each stripe group also has a number of associated
attributes, including affinity and exclusivity.
An affinity is used to steer the allocation of a file’s data onto a set of
stripe groups. Affinities are referenced by their name, which may be up
to eight characters long. An affinity may be assigned to a set of stripe
groups, representing a named pool of space, and to a file or directory,
representing the logical point in the file system and directing the
storage to use the designated pool.
Exclusivity means a stripe group has both an affinity and the exclusive
attribute, and can have its space allocated only by files with that affinity.
Files without a matching affinity cannot allocate space from an exclusive
stripe group. Files with an affinity that is exclusive cannot be stored on
other stripe groups without that affinity. If the exclusive stripe group(s)
become filled, no more files with that affinity can be stored.

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Affinities

Affinities for stripe groups are defined in the file system configuration
file. Although stripe groups can be created by adding one or more
Affinity lines to the configuration file’s StripeGroup section, Quantum
recommends using the StorNext GUI to add stripe groups. A stripe
group may have multiple affinities, and an affinity may be assigned to
multiple stripe groups.

Allocation Strategy • StorNext has multiple allocation strategies which can be set at the
file system level. These strategies control where a new file’s first
blocks will be allocated. Affinities modify this behavior in two ways:
• A file with an affinity will be allocated only on a stripe group with
matching affinity.
• A stripe group with an affinity and the exclusive attribute will be
used only for allocations by files with matching affinity.
Once a file has been created, StorNext attempts to keep all of its data on
the same stripe group. If there is no more space on that stripe group,
data may be allocated from another stripe group. If the file has an
affinity, only stripe groups with that affinity will be considered; if all
stripe groups with that affinity are full, new space may not be allocated
for the file, even if other stripe groups are available.

Example Use Cases Affinities can be used to segregate audio and video files onto their own
stripe groups. For example:
• Create one or more stripe groups with an AUDIO affinity and the
exclusive attribute.
• Create one or more stripe groups with a VIDEO affinity and the
exclusive attribute.
• Create one or more stripe groups with no affinity (for non-audio,
non-video files).
• Create a directory for audio using ‘cvmkdir -k AUDIO audio’.
• Create a directory for video using ‘cvmkdir -k VIDEO video’.
Files created within the audio directory will reside only on the AUDIO
stripe group. (If this stripe group fills, no more audio files can be
created.)

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Affinities

Files created within the video directory will reside only on the VIDEO
stripe group. (If this stripe group fills, no more video files can be
created.)
To reserve high-speed disk for critical files:
• Create a stripe group with a FAST affinity and the exclusive
attribute.
• Label the critical files or directories with the FAST affinity.
The disadvantage here is that the critical files are restricted to only using
the fast disk. If the fast disk fills up, the files will not have space
allocated on slow disks.
To reserve high-speed disk for critical files, but allow them to grow onto
slow disks:
• Create a stripe group with a FAST affinity and the exclusive
attribute.
• Create all of the critical files, pre allocating at least one block of
space, with the FAST affinity. (Or move them using snfsdefrag, after
ensuring they are non-empty.)
• Remove the FAST affinity from the critical files.
Because files will allocate from their existing stripe group, even if they
no longer have a matching affinity, the critical files will continue to
grow on the FAST stripe group. Once this stripe group is full, they can
allocate space from other stripe groups, since they do not have an
affinity.
This will not work if critical files may be created later, unless there is a
process to move them to the FAST stripe group, or an affinity is set on
the critical files by inheritance but removed after their first allocation (to
allow them to grow onto non-FAST groups).

Adding a New Affinity Follow this procedure to add affinities:

1 Choose Affinities from the Tools > File System menu. The Tools >
File System > Affinities screen appears.

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Affinities

Figure 36 Affinities Screen

2 Click New. The New Affinity screen appears.

Figure 37 New Affinity Screen

3 At the Affinity field, enter the name of the new affinity.

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Migrate Data

4 At the File System field, select the file system to which you want to
associate the new affinity.
5 Click Apply to create the affinity.
6 When a message notifies you that the affinity was successfully
created, click OK to continue.

Deleting an Affinity Follow this procedure to delete affinities:

1 If you have not already done so, choose Affinities from the Tools >
File System menu. The Tools > File System > Affinities screen
appears.
2 Select the affinity you want to delete.
3 Click Delete.
4 When asked to confirm the deletion, click Yes to proceed or No to
abort.
5 When a message notifies you that the affinity was successfully
deleted, click OK to continue.

Migrate Data
Migrating file system data refers to moving data files from a file
system’s source stripe group to all the other stripe groups on the same
file system, and then freeing the source stripe group so it can be
removed from the file system. You can select the source stripe group
only, not the destination stripe group(s). Files will be moved randomly
to new stripe groups while respecting their affinity rules (if any). When
migrating, make sure the source stripe group is completely empty when
the process completes, because source files that are updated while the
file system is running may be left behind, requiring a second iteration of
the migration.
During file system migration, you indicate a file system from which to
move data.
StorNext then moves all data of the same type (either data or
metadata,) from the source file system to the specified destination

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Migrate Data

stripe group. During movement the file system is left online and read/
write operations occur normally.
The time it takes to complete the migration process depends on the
amount of data being moved between source file system and target
stripe groups. When moving a data stripe group, the file system
continues to run during the move. StorNext does not block any new
read/write requests, or block updates to existing files on the source file
system. All operations (including metadata operations) are handled
normally, but no new writes are allowed to the source stripe group,
which will be marked read-only.
Use the following procedure to perform file system migration.
1 Choose Migrate Data from the Tools > File System menu. The
Tools > File System > Migrate screen appears.

Figure 38 Migrate Screen

2 Select the target file system from which files will be migrated.
3 Select the destination stripe group to which files will be migrated.
4 Click Migrate.

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Truncation Parameters

Caution: This particular function does not provide a confirmation

message, so be absolutely sure you want to migrate data
from the selected file system to the selected stripe group
before you click Migrate.

Truncation Parameters
The Truncation Parameters screen enables you to view or change the
following information pertinent to the truncation feature as it pertains
to StorNext Storage Manager:
• Run: Indicates the current status of the truncation feature: Online of
Offline.
• Mount: Indicates whether the file system is currently mounted.
• File System: Displays the name of the truncation-enabled file
system.
• Mount Point: Shows the mount point for the truncation-enabled
file system
• Truncation Parameters: Shows the current truncation setting, such
as Time-based 75%.

Note: This screen pertains ONLY to truncation for StorNext Storage

Manager users. It does not apply to deduplication or other
StorNext features.

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Truncation Parameters

Figure 39 Truncation
Parameters Screen

To change truncation parameters:

1 Click the line containing the file system whose truncation
parameters you want to change. Parameters appear at the bottom
of the screen.
2 As desired, modify any of the following fields. (See the online help
for information about what to enter at each field.)
• Enable Truncation
• Truncation Mode
• Minimum Usage (%)
• Low Water (%)
• High Water (%)
3 Click Apply to save your changes.
4 When a confirmation message appears, click Yes to continue or No
to abort without saving.

Note: When you save changes to truncation parameters, the

StorNext Policy Manager must be restarted. This process
could take several minutes, so plan accordingly.

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Truncation Parameters

5 Click Done when you are finished viewing or changing truncation

parameters.

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Truncation Parameters

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 Chapter 5
Storage Manager Tasks

The Tools > Storage Manager menu contains options that enable you
to perform the following Storage Manager-related tasks:
• Storage Components: View your system's libraries, storage disks,
and tape drives, and place those devices online or offline
• Drive Pool: View, add, edit, or delete drive pools (groups of tape
drives allocated for various administrator-defined storage tasks)
• Media Actions: Perform various actions on the storage media in
your library
• Library Operator Interface: The StorNext Library Operator Interface
allows you to perform media-related actions remotely from the
library
• Software Requests: View current software requests in progress or
cancel a request
• Scheduler: Schedule tasks to run automatically based on a specified
schedule
• Alternate Retrieval Location: Specify a remote retrieval location to
use in situations where files stored on tape or a storage disk cannot
be accessed.
• Distributed Data Mover (DDM): Spread the distribution of data
across several machines rather than the primary server.

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Storage Components

Storage Components
The Tools menu's Storage Components option enables you to view your
system's libraries, storage disks, and tape drives, and place those devices
online or offline. The Tools > Storage Manager > Storage
Components screen is divided into three sections corresponding to
libraries, storage disks and tape drives.
To access the Tools > Storage Manager > Storage Components
screen, choose Storage Components from the Tools > Storage
Manager menu.

Figure 40 Storage
Components Screen

Setting Devices Online The process for setting devices online or offline is identical regardless of
and Offline device type. Select the library, storage disk or tape drive you want to
place online or offline. You can select multiple devices in each category,
or select all available devices in each category by clicking All. After you
are satisfied with your selections, click either Online to place selected
devices online, or Offline to take selected devices offline.

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Drive Pool

Additional Options for There are four additional options available for tape drives:
Tape Drives • Dismount Delay: This option enables you to specify the time, in
seconds, that a tape drive remains idle before the media in that
drive is dismounted. Select the tape drives for which you want the
delay, enter the desired time interval at the Dismount Delay field,
and then click Dismount Delay.
• Enable Compression: Compression is a feature supported by some
tape drives which maximizes the amount of available storage space.
To enable compression, select the tape drives for which you want to
enable compression and then click Enable Compression.
• Disable Compression: If compression was previously enabled and
you want to disable it, select the tape drives for which you want to
disable compression and then click Disable Compression.
• Clean: This option allows you to request that a drive be cleaned.
Before choosing this option, make sure the tape drive is loaded with
a cleaning cartridge. When you are ready to proceed, click Clean.

Drive Pool
Drive pools are groups of tape drives allocated for various administrator-
defined storage tasks, and enable you to delimit storage processes
based on data type, performance, security, location, or all of these
variables. Drive pools can reside in a single tape library or span multiple
tape libraries.

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Drive Pool

Viewing Drive Pool Follow this procedure to view drive pool information.
Information 1 Choose Drive Pool from the Tools menu. The Drive Pool screen
appears.

Figure 41 Drive Pool Screen

2 Select the drive pool whose information you want to see, and then
click View.
3 The following information appears:
• Serial Number: The serial numbers of all tape drives in the drive
pool
• Drive Alias: The corresponding alias number for each drive
• Media Type: The type of tape drive media for each drive (e.g.,
LTO)
• Library: The name of the library to which each drive belongs
• Pool Name: The name of the drive pool to which each drive
belongs
4 When you are finished viewing drive pool information, click Done.

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Drive Pool

Adding a Drive Pool Follow this procedure to add a drive pool.

Note: This procedure requires restarting the StorNext Storage

Manager component.

1 If you have not already done so, choose Drive Pool from the Tools
menu.
2 Click New to add a new drive pool. The Drive Pool > New screen
appears.

Figure 42 New Drive Pool

Screen

3 Enter the following fields. (For information about what to enter at

each field, see the online help.)
• Drive Pool Name
• Available Drives
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort. If you click Yes, StorNext Storage Manager will be restarted
as part of the creation process.

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Drive Pool

6 After a message informs you that the drive pool was successfully
created, click OK to continue.

Editing a Drive Pool Follow this procedure to edit a drive pool.

Note: This procedure requires restarting the StorNext Storage

Manager component.

1 If you have not already done so, choose Drive Pool from the Tools
menu.
2 Select the drive pool you want to modify, and then click Edit.
3 Select or deselect available drives for the drive pool. (You cannot
change the drive pool name.)
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
6 After a message informs you that the drive pool was successfully
modified, click OK to continue.

Deleting a Drive Pool Follow this procedure to delete a drive pool. Before you begin, you must
first remove all drives in the pool you want to delete.

Caution: At least one drive pool must be configured at all times. Do

not delete the default drive pool.

1 If you have not already done so, choose Drive Pool from the Tools
menu.
2 Select the drive pool you want to delete, and then click Delete.
3 When a confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed with
the deletion or No to abort.
4 After a message informs you that the drive pool was successfully
deleted, click OK.

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Media Actions

Media Actions
The Tools menu's Media Actions option enables you to perform various
actions on the storage media in your library.
To access the Tools > Storage Manager > Media Actions screen,
choose Media Actions from the Tools > Storage Manager menu.

Figure 43 Media Actions

Screen

Viewing Media After you choose the Media Action option, the following information
Information about all of the storage media appears:
• Media ID: The unique identifier for the media.
• Library: The name of the library in which the media resides.
• Media Type and Class: The media type and class of media. (For
example, LTO, F0_LTO_DATA)
• Policy Class: The name of the policy class, if any associated with the
media.

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Media Actions

• Suspect: Indicates whether the media is “suspect” or potentially

defective.
• Write Protected: Indicates whether write protection is enabled on
the media.
• File Count: The current number of files currently on the media.
• Mounted in Drive: Indicates whether the media is mounted.
• Last Accessed: The time the media was last accessed.

Filtering Media Most Media Action screens contain a filtering feature that allows you
to restrict the available media to those whose media ID contains the
string you specify. Follow these steps to filter media:
1 At the Media ID Filter field, enter the string you want all available
media IDs to include.
2 Click Set Filter.
3 Click Refresh to update the list of available media. Only media
whose IDs contain the string you entered will be shown.
4 To reset the filter string, click Clear Filter. If desired, repeat steps 1 -
3 to use a new filter string.

Performing Media At the top of the screen is a dropdown list of actions you can perform
Actions for selected media. Select the media for which you want to perform the
action, and then choose one of these options from the Available Actions
list:

Mount Media
Select this option to mount the storage media.
1 After you select this option, select from the Library dropdown list
the library containing the media you want to mount.
2 Select the media to mount.
3 At the Mount Media Parameters > Drive field, select the drive on
which to mount the media.
4 Click Apply.

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5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to mount the

media, or No to abort.

Dismount Media
Select this option to dismount previously mounted media.
1 After you select this option. a list of mounted media appears.
2 Select the media you want to dismount, and then click Apply.
3 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to dismount the
media, or No to abort.

Move Media
Select this option to move media from one library to another.
1 After you select this option, select from the Library dropdown list
the library containing the media you want to move.
2 Select one or more media to move, or click All to select all media.
3 At the Move Media Parameters > Destination Library field, select
the destination library to which you want to move the selected
media.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to move the
selected media, or No to abort.

Remove Media
Select this option to remove media from the StorNext Storage Manager.
Only media with no active files on a media can be selected for removal.
The media is removed from the system and is physically ejected from the
library.
1 After you select this option, select from the Library dropdown list
the library containing the media you want to remove.
2 Select one or more media to remove, or click All to select all media.
3 Click Apply.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to remove the
selected media, or No to abort.

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Purge Media
Select this option to purge media from the StorNext Storage Manager.
All files are removed from the selected media, and then the media is
removed from the StorNext Storage Manager and is physically ejected
from the library.
1 After you select this option, select from the Library dropdown list
the library containing the media you want to purge.
2 Select one or more media to purge, or click All to select all media.
3 Click Apply.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to purge the
selected media, or No to abort.

Reclassify Media
Select this option to change the media type classification for selected
media.
1 After you select this option, select from the Media Class dropdown
list the current media class designation you want to change.
2 Select one or more media to reclassify, or click All to select all
media.
3 At the Reclassify Media Parameters > Destination Media Class
field, select the new media type designation for the selected media.
Select one of these options:
• DATA: This media class means that media are candidates for
read/write operations. Most media residing in the library have
this classification unless they are full.
• ADDBLANK: This is the default class with which media are
associated when they are added to StorNext MSM. (Running the
Fsmedin command pulls media from this class and changes the
classification to DATA.)
• IMPORT: Before running the fsmedin command on TSM-
exported media, the classification should be changed to
IMPORT.
• CHECKIN: This classification is used for re-entering media
which have been checked out. Media must be reclassified with

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CHECKIN prior to TSM performing fsmedin with the checkin

option.
• MIGRATE: TSM reclassifies media to this classification when the
media becomes full according to the FS_PERCENT_FULL system
parameter. Media with this classification can still be read.
• CLEAN: Media in the class are cleaning media. If the barcode of
a media ends with CLN, MSM imports the media into this class
instead of ADDBLANK.
• REMOVE: Media get reclassified to REMOVE when fsmedout is
used.
• BACKUP: Media with this classification were used for backups
before backups were managed by StorNext storage polices.
Consequently, this classification is rarely used.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to reclassify the
selected media, or No to abort.

Assign Media to Policy Class

Select this option to assign media to a previously created policy class.
1 Select one or more media to assign, or click All to assign all media.
2 At the Assign Media to Policy Class Parameters > Destination
Policy Class field, select the policy class to which you want to assign
selected media.
3 Click Apply.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to assign the
selected media, or No to abort.

Transcribe Media
Transcribe (copy) the contents of one media type to another media type,
or reclaim (defragment) media. During the transcription or reclamation
process, StorNext uses two drives to transcribe one media to another
media, file by file.

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Caution: For StorNext to successfully transcribe one media to

another media, two drives must be online. If only one drive
is online, the transcription or reclamation process fails.

1 Select one or more media to transcribe, or click All to select all

media.
2 Click Apply.
3 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to dismount the
media, or No to abort.
4 Repeat steps 1 - 3 to transcribe additional media.
If transcription or reclamation starts and all the drives are in use,
StorNext prioritizes and queues the job. When two drives become
available, the queued job starts and all active files are transcribed. When
transcription is complete, StorNext updates the database to reflect the
new location of the files.
If the transcription or reclamation process encounters a file that spans
multiple media, only the portion of the file that exists on the old media
is transcribed.
When the transcription or reclamation process is complete, only deleted
files remain on the source media. To remove the source copy of the
deleted files, you must clean the media. After the cleaning process is
complete and the source copy of the deleted files are removed, the
media is available for reuse as blank media.

Media Attributes
Select this option to view the attributes currently assigned to your
media, or to change attributes.
1 If desired, filter the displayed list of media by selecting one or more
of the following media attribute filters: Suspect, Marked, Full,
Unavailable, or Write Protected. The list refreshes each time you
select a media attribute filter.
"Suspect" means the media might not be physically sound, and
could be in a potentially damaged or unusable condition.
"Marked" means the media should be made inaccessible.

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"Full" means the media has reached capacity and should not be
available for further writing.
"Unavailable" means the media is not available for writing or
reading.
"Write Protected" means the media is protected against further
writing and cannot be overwritten or have data added.
2 Select from the list one or more media whose attributes you want to
change, or click All to select all media.
3 At the Media Attributes Parameters > New Media State field,
select the new attribute you want to apply to the selected media.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to move the
selected media, or No to abort.
6 Repeat steps 3 - 5 to apply additional attributes to the selected
media.

Clean Media by Media ID

Select this option if you want to select media for cleaning based on
media ID. Periodic cleaning helps prevent inactive information from
growing to an unmanageable size. When you run this function, the
StorNext Storage Manager removes inactive files that have not been
accessed since the specified endtime. This process does not affect
current file versions on the media.

Caution: Inactive file versions cleaned from the media cannot be

recovered or used again.

1 Select one or more media you want to clean, or click All to select all
media.
2 At the Clean Media by Media ID Parameters > End Time field,
enter the time when you want the cleaning process to stop. (You
can also use the displayed default end time.)
3 Use the format yyyy:MM:dd:HH:mm:ss when entering an end time.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to begin
cleaning media, or No to abort.

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Clean Media by File System

Select this option if you want to select media for cleaning based on the
file system with which media are associated. Periodic cleaning helps
prevent inactive information from growing to an unmanageable size.
When you select this option all media on the selected file system are
cleaned. When you run this function, the StorNext Storage Manager
removes inactive files that have not been accessed since the specified
endtime. This process does not affect current file versions on the media.

Caution: Inactive file versions cleaned from the media cannot be

recovered or used again.

1 At the Clean Media by File System Parameters > Managed and

Mounted File Systems field, select the file system whose media you
want to clean.
2 At the Clean Media by File System Parameters > End Time field,
enter the time when you want the cleaning process to stop. (You
can also use the displayed default end time.) Use the format
yyyy:MM:dd:HH:mm:ss when entering an end time.
3 Click Apply.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to begin
cleaning media, or No to abort.

Clean Media by Policy Class

Select this option if you want to select media for cleaning based on the
policy class with which media are associated. When you select this
option all media associated with the selected policy class are cleaned.
Periodic cleaning helps prevent inactive information from growing to an
unmanageable size. When you select this option all media on the
selected file system are cleaned. When you run this function, the
StorNext Storage Manager removes inactive files that have not been
accessed since the specified endtime. This process does not affect
current file versions on the media.

Caution: Inactive file versions cleaned from the media cannot be

recovered or used again.

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1 At the Clean Media by Policy Class Parameters > Policy Classes

field, select the policy class whose media you want to clean.
2 At the Clean Media by Policy Class Parameters > End Time field,
enter the time when you want the cleaning process to stop. (You
can also use the displayed default end time.) Use the format
yyyy:MM:dd:HH:mm:ss when entering an end time.
3 Click Apply.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to begin
cleaning media, or No to abort.

Add Media Mailbox

Select this option to add media through a library mailbox.
1 At the Add Media Mailbox Parameters > Library field, select the
library with the mailbox through which you want to add media.
2 Click Apply.
3 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
4 When a message informs you that the operation was successful,
click OK. After you see this message you are ready to load media
through the library mailbox.

Add Media Bulk Load

Select this option to add media to a library via bulk loading.
1 At the Add Media Bulk Load Parameters > Library field, select the
library into which you want to bulk load media.
2 Click Apply.
3 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
4 When a message informs you that the operation was successful,
click OK. After you see this message you are ready to bulk load
media into the library.

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Library Operator Interface

Library Operator Interface

The StorNext Library Operator Interface allows you to perform media-
related actions remotely from the library.
On the Tools > Storage Manager > Library Operator Interface screen
you can view the following information about media in the library:
• Media ID: The unique identifier for each piece of media
• Current Library: The name of the library where media currently
reside
• Pending Library: The name of the destination library to which the
media action will be carried out
• Reason: The reason for performing the media action
• Media Location: The current physical location of the media
• Action Required: The action to be performed on selected media
1 Choose Library Operator from the Tools > Storage Manager
menu. The Library Operator Interface Screen appears.

Figure 44 Library Operator

Interface Screen

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Software Requests

2 Select one or more media on which to perform the action indicated

in the Action Required column, or click All to select all media.
3 At the Port field, select the port number for
4 Click Perform Action to initiate the action.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.

Software Requests
The Software Requests menu option enables you to view software
requests currently in process, and to cancel requests.
On the Tools > Software Requests screen you can view the following
information about pending and currently running software requests:
• ID: The software request’s identifier
• Type: The type of software request currently running
• State: The current state of the request
• Time: The time the software request was initiated
• Priority: The priority assigned to the software request
1 Choose Software Requests from the Tools > Storage Manager
menu. The Software Requests Screen appears.

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Figure 45 Software Requests

Screen

2 If desired, click Refresh to update the list of software requests.

3 To cancel a software request, select the request you want to cancel
and then click Cancel Request.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.

Scheduler
StorNext events are tasks that are scheduled to run automatically based
on a specified schedule. The following events can be scheduled:
• Clean Info: This scheduled background operation removes from
StorNext knowledge of media.
• Clean Versions: This scheduled event cleans old inactive versions of
files.
• Full Backup: By default, a full backup is run once a week to back up
the entire database, configuration files, and the file system
metadata dump file.

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• Health Check: By default, health checks are set up to run every day
of the week, starting at 7:00 a.m.
• Partial Backup: By default, a partial backup is run on all days of the
week the full backup is not run. Partial backups include database
journals, configuration files, and file system journal files.
• Rebuild Policy: This scheduled event rebuilds the internal candidate
lists (for storing, truncation, and relocation) by scanning the file
system for files that need to be stored.
The StorNext Scheduler does not dynamically update when dates and
times are changed greatly from the current setting. You must reboot the
system for the Scheduler to pick up the changes.
Each of these events initially has a default schedule, but you can
configure the schedules to suit your system needs. To change the
schedule, see Modifying an Existing Schedule.

Viewing a Schedule The procedure for viewing an event's existing schedule is the same
regardless of the event type.
1 Choose Scheduler from the Tools > Storage Manager menu. A list
of currently scheduled events appears.

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Figure 46 Scheduler Screen

2 Select the event you want to view, and then click View.
3 When you are finished viewing event details, click Done.
4 Repeat steps 2 - 3 to view additional events.

Adding a Schedule Follow this procedure to add a new schedule.

1 If you have not already done so, choose Scheduler from the Tools >
Storage Manager menu.
2 Click New. The Scheduler > New screen appears.

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Figure 47 Scheduler > New

Screen

3 At the Name field, enter the name you want to assign to the new
schedule.
4 Select one of the following schedulable event types from the
Feature dropdown list:
• Clean Versions
• Clean Info
• Rebuild Policy
• Partial Backup
• Full Backup
• Health Check
5 At the Period field, select the execution interval for the new
schedule: Daily, Weekly or Monthly. You can also select multiple
days by holding down the Control key as you click the day.
6 At the Run Time field, specify when you want the schedule to start.
Enter the hour, minute, and a.m. or p.m.
7 At the Start Window field, specify the window in which you want
the StorNext Scheduler to start the event. The Scheduler attempts to
begin the event within the specified Start Window time (e.g., 30

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minutes). If the event cannot begin at that time, the Scheduler tries
again during the next cycle.
8 Click Apply to save the new schedule, or Cancel to exit without
saving.
9 When a message informs you that the new schedule was
successfully created, click OK to continue.

Editing an Existing Follow this procedure to edit an existing schedule. The procedure for
Schedule modifying an existing schedule is the same regardless of the event type.
1 If you have not already done so, choose Scheduler from the Tools >
Storage Manager menu.
2 Select the schedule you want to modify, and then click Edit.
3 Change the schedule Period interval, Run Time, or Start Window
as desired. You cannot change the schedule name or select a
different feature (schedule type).
4 Click Apply to save your changes, or Cancel to exit without saving.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
6 When a message informs you that the new schedule was
successfully modified, click OK to continue.

Deleting an Existing Follow this procedure to delete an existing schedule. The procedure for
Schedule deleting an existing schedule for an event is the same regardless of the
event type. Each event type has a default schedule. You must have at
least one schedule, so you will not be allowed to delete a solitary
schedule.
1 If you have not already done so, choose Scheduler from the Tools >
Storage Manager menu.
2 Select the schedule you want to delete, and then click Delete.
3 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
4 When a message informs you that the new schedule was
successfully deleted, click OK to continue

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Alternate Retrieval Location

Alternate Retrieval Location

In situations where file retrieval fails because the normal file copies
cannot be retrieved from the machine on which StorNext Storage
Manager resides, this feature enables you to retrieve a copy of the
truncated file from a different machine.
For example, if StorNext creates two copies of each file, when retrieving
a truncated file StorNext tries to retrieve Copy One and then Copy Two.
If neither of these copies can be retrieved and this feature is not
enabled, the retrieval fails. However, if this feature is enabled for the file
system, after retrieving Copy Two fails Storage Manger tries to retrieve
the file from the alternate machine you specified during feature setup.
This feature applies only to managed file systems that have at least one
configured policy class.
For this feature to work correctly, it is your responsibility to make sure all
files you might want to retrieve are copied to the alternate machine.
Otherwise retrieval will fail when StorNext attempts to retrieve the file
from the alternate location and cannot find the file.
Follow this procedure to configure an alternate retrieval location.
1 Choose Alternate Retrieval Location from the Tools > Storage
Manager menu. The Alternate Retrieval Location screen appears.

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Figure 48 Alternate Retrieval

Location Screen

2 At the Remote Node IP / Host Name field, enter either the IP

address or the host name of the remote server from which you
would like to retrieve data.
3 Select Enable to activate the Alternate Retrieval Location feature.
4 At the field under the Remote Path heading, enter the directory
path for the remote node (server).
5 Click Apply to save your changes, or Cancel to exit without saving.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
7 After a message informs you that the alternate retrieval location
was successfully added, click OK.

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Distributed Data Mover (DDM)

Distributed Data Mover (DDM)

StorNext 4.0 contains support for a new StorNext feature: Storage
Manager Distributed Data Mover (DDM).
This section contains the following main topics related to DDM:
• Distributed Data Mover Overview
• Installing the DDM Feature on Clients
• Accessing Distributed Data Mover
• Enabling DDM
• Managing DDM Hosts
• Host Priority
• Distributed Data Mover Reporting
• Disaster Recovery

Distributed Data Mover Quantum developed the Distributed Data Mover feature to enhance the
Overview data movement scalability of its StorNext Storage Manager software.
With this feature the data movement operations are distributed to client
machines from the metadata controller, which can improve the overall
throughput of data movement to archive tiers of storage.
Previously, the data mover process, fs_fmover, ran only on the
metadata controller (MDC), allowing up to one fs_fmover process per
tape drive or storage disk (SDisk) stream to run at one time.

Note: The DDM feature supports only storage disks on StorNext file
systems, not on NFS.

The new feature expands data moving flexibility by transferring the

mover process to clients that have access to the drives and managed file
systems. The actual data moving process remains the same, with the
added benefit that the load on the metadata controller is alleviated by
moving those processes to clients.
The following diagram illustrates the data moving process when the
Distributed Data Mover feature is enabled:

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Legend:
• fs_fcopyman: Manages copy requests and invokes a mover proxy
when copy resources have become available
• fs_fmover: The process that performs copy operations, either on
the MDC or a client
• fs_fmoverp: The proxy for a mover that always runs on the MDC.
This proxy kicks off and waits for an fs_fmover process, and then
makes any needed database updates etc. when the mover
completes.

Note: Proxies are used even in local-only operations.

Feature Highlights
The Distributed Data Mover feature provides the following benefits:
• Concurrent utilization of shared StorNext tape and disk tier
resources by multiple Distributed Data Mover hosts
• Scalable data streaming
• Flexible, centralized configuration of data movement
• Dynamic Distributed Data Mover host reconfiguration
• Support for StorNext File System storage disks (SDisks)
• Works on HA systems without additional configuration

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Distributed Data Mover Terms

Following are definitions for some terms as they pertain to the
Distributed Data Mover feature:
• Mover: A process that copies data from one device/file to another.
The process can run locally on the metadata controller or on a
remote client. (See definitions for these terms below.)
• Host: Any server/client on the SAN. Any host can serve as a location
for a mover to run as long as it meets the specifications listed in the
Supported Operating Systems section below.
• Metadata Controller (MDC): The server on which the StorNext
Storage Manager software is running. (The metadata controller
host.) Also known as the local host, or the primary server on HA
systems.
• Remote Client: A host other than the MDC.

Tape Devices and Persistent SCSI Reserve

The Distributed Data Mover feature uses persistent SCSI reserve, so all
tape devices used with this feature must support the PERSISTENT
RESERVE IN/OUT functionality as described in SCSI Primary Commands-3
standard (SPC-3). One implication is that LTO-1 drives cannot be used
with the DDM feature.
StorNext 4.0 incorporates support for SCSI-3 persistent reservations for
tape devices. SCSI-3 persistent reservation commands attempt to
prevent unintended access to tape drives that are connected by using a
shared-access technology such as Fibre Channel. Access to a tape drive
is granted based on the host system that reserved the device. SCSI-3
persistent reservation enables access for multiple nodes to a tape device
and simultaneously blocks access for other nodes.
Quantum recommends enabling SCSI-3 persistent reservations. Refer to
parameter FS_SCSI_RESERVE in /usr/adic/TSM/config/
fs_sysparm.README to direct the StorNext Manger to use SCSI-3
persistent reservations.
One implication of using SCSI-3 reservations is that all tape devices used
must support the PERSISTENT RESRVE IN/OUT functionality as described
in SCSI Primary Commands-3 standard (SPC-3).
A supported upgrade to StorNext 4.0 will maintain the existing SCSI
tape reservation settings, SCSI-2 reservations or not SCSI tape

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reservations. A new StorNext 4.0 installation will by default use SCSI-3

persistent reservations.
The StorNext Distributed Data Mover feature requires that SCSI-3
persistent reservations be used.

Verifying SCSI 3 Tape Drive Compatibility

A third-party utility is available to help you determine whether your tape
devices are or are not compatible with SCSI-3 persistent reservations.
This utility is called sg3_utils, and is available for download from many
sites. This package contains low level utilities for devices that use a SCSI
command set. The package targets the Linux SCSI subsystem.
You must download and install the sg3_utils package before running
the following commands. In the following example, there are two SAN-
attached Linux systems (sfx13 and sfx14 in this example) zoned to see a
tape drive.
• Step 1. Register the reservation keys by running these commands:
[root@sfx13]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg81 -o -I -S
0x123456
[root@sfx14]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg78 -o -I -S
0xabcdef
• Step 2: List the reservation key by running this command:
[root@sfx13]# sg_persist -n -k /dev/sg81
• Step 3. Create reservation by running this command:
[root@sfx13]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg81 -o -R -T 3
-K 0x123456
• Step 4. Read reservation by running this command:
[root@sfx14]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg78 -r
• Step 5. Preempt reservation by running this command:
[root@sfx14]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg78 -o -P -T 3
-S 0x123456 -K 0xabcdef
• Step 6. Release reservation by running this command:
[root@sfx14]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg78 -o -L -T 3
-K 0xabcdef

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• Step 7. Delete key by running these commands:

[root@sfx13]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg81 -o -o -K
0x123456
[root@sfx14]# sg_persist -n -d /dev/sg78 -o -o -K
0xabcdef

Limitations
Quantum does not currently support using multiple paths to tape
drives. Also, VTL does not support SCSI-3 persistent reservations.

Installing the DDM You must install the snfs-mover rpm on each client you want to act as a
Feature on Clients distributed data mover. Follow these installation steps for each client:
1 Log in as root.
2 Obtain the .tar archive from the metadata controller.
3 Extract the contents of the .tar archive by running the command
tar -xvf sn_dsm_linuxRedHat50AS_x86_64_client.tar.
4 Install the rpms in the .tar archive.
• For a new client installation, run either the command rpm -ivh
*.rpm or rpm -Uvh *.rpm
• For a client upgrade, run the command rpm -Uvh *.rpm

Accessing Distributed To enter DDM settings and manage hosts and devices, choose
Data Mover Distributed Data Mover from the Tools > Storage Manager menu.
The Setup > Distributed Data Movers screen appears. This screen
shows any previously configured DDM-enabled hosts, managed file
systems, tape drives and storage disks, as well as the current status:
Enabled, Not Configured, Not Enabled or Internally Disabled.

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Figure 49 Setup > Distributed

Data Mover Screen

“Configured” versus “Enabled”

“Configured means a host or device has been added to the list of hosts
and devices to be used for DDM operations. DDM does not recognize a
host or device until it has been configured.
“Enabled” means a host or device has been configured and is ready to
be used for DDM operations. A host or device cannot be enabled until it
is first configured, but a configured host or device may be either
enabled or disabled.

Enabling DDM The DDM screen’s Use Distributed Movers field allows you to enable or
disable the DDM feature, or to enable a mode called “Threshold.”
When DDM is disabled, data moving responsibilities rest solely on the
primary server. When DDM is enabled, data moving responsibilities are
distributed among the hosts you specify as described in Managing DDM
Hosts on page 107.
When you select the Threshold option, the local host (i.e., the metadata
controller) is given a preference over the remote clients. The
characteristics of this option are:

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• Mover processes will not be assigned to a remote client until a

threshold of local movers are already running.
• After reaching the threshold of local running movers, the “all”
option is used for allocating new mover requests.
• If not specified, the default value for the threshold is zero. This
means if a value is not set for the threshold via fsddmconfig the
system will effectively run in “all” mode.
You should use the Threshold option only if you want most data moving
operations to run locally on the MDC.
After you choose Disabled, Enabled, or Threshold, click Update to
save your selection.

Managing DDM Hosts The Distributed Data Mover screen enables you to add and configure a
new host for DDM, or change settings for a previously configured host.
You can also delete a host from the list of DDM-enabled hosts.

Adding a Host
1 If you have not already done so, choose Distributed Data Mover
from the Tools > Storage Manager menu.
2 Click New. Fields appear where you can enter host information

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Figure 50 DDM Screen New

Host

3 At the Host field, enter the name or IP address of the host you are
adding.

Note: If you use the IP address instead of the host name you must
continue using the IP address and cannot switch between
using IP addresses and host names. For example, you can’t
configure a host using the IP address and then try and
configure a device on the host using the host name.

4 Enter the remaining fields in the upper portion section of the

screen:
• Enabled
• MDC Mover Threshold
• Max Movers (active MDC)
• Max Movers (client or standby MDC)
For information about what to enter at these fields, see the online
help.
5 Under the corresponding headings, select Configure and/or Enable
for the Managed File Systems, Tape Drives and Storage Disks you
want to include in DDM processing.

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6 To add your selections to the new host, click Apply. (To exit without
saving, click Cancel. To remain on the screen but clear your entries,
click Reset.)
7 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
8 After a message informs you that your changes were successfully
saved, click OK to continue.

Editing a Host or Devices

1 If you have not already done so, choose DDM from the Tools >
Storage Manager menu.
2 Select from the Hosts list the host you want to edit.
3 Click Edit.
4 Modify the host configuration as desired.
5 If desired, select or remove managed file systems, tape drives and
storage disks.
6 Click Apply to save your changes.
7 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
8 After a message informs you that your changes were successfully
saved, click OK to continue.

Deleting a Host
1 If you have not already done so, choose DDM from the Tools >
Storage Manager menu.
2 Select from the Hosts list the host you want to delete.
3 Click Delete to exclude the host from DDM operation. (Clicking
Delete does not actually delete the host from your system, but
rather excludes it from the list of DDM hosts.)
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
5 After a message informs you that the host was successfully deleted,
click OK to continue.

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Host Priority When all hosts are chosen, no special preference is given to the local
host. Following are the operating characteristics when all hosts are
chosen:
• Internally within the StorNext Copy Manager (fs_fcopyman) there
will be a list of hosts to use (that is, the local host and the remote
clients). At this time there is no way to specify the order in which
hosts appear in the list.
• For each host in the list, the following information is tracked:
• The number of movers currently running on the host
• The time of the last assignment
• Whether the host is currently disabled
• When it is time to choose a host, a single pass through the host list
is made. Hosts are picked based on the following criteria:
1 The first valid host in the list will be selected. A host is
considered valid if:
• It is currently enabled
• The devices needed for the copy operation are also currently
enabled on the host
2 The next host will be skipped if not valid.
3 The next host in the list will be skipped if the number of running
movers on that host is greater than the current selection.
4 The next host will replace the current selection if the number of
running movers on that host is less than the current selection.
5 The next host will replace the current selection if the number of
movers is equal to the current selection AND the time of last
assignment is older than the current selection’s.
Criteria 2-5 are repeated for the remaining hosts in the list. Upon
completion, the host with the fewest running movers is selected. If
there is a tie, the host that has been used the least recently is chosen. (A
host that was not the least recently used may be chosen if its movers
completed quickly compared to the others.)

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Note: If a host has fewer drives and all other hosts have multiple
drives (for example, two drives versus ten,) the host with the
fewer drives will almost always be chosen for operations on
those two drives because it is likely to have the fewest running
movers.

Distributed Data Mover A DDM Report which shows current configuration information and
Reporting activity is available from the Reports menu. For more information about
the DDM report, see The Distributed Data Mover Report on page 210.

Disaster Recovery If disaster recovery becomes necessary, contact Quantum Technical

Support and refer them to CR 28279 for the updated instructions.

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 Chapter 6
Replication and Deduplication

StorNext incorporates replication and deduplication technologies which

can dramatically improve storage efficiency and streamline processing.
This chapter provides the following topics pertaining to these two
technologies:
• Replication Overview
• Replication Terms and Concepts
• Some Replication Scenarios
• Configuring Replication
• Running Replication Manually (Optional)
• Replication Statuses and Reporting
• Troubleshooting Replication
• Data Deduplication Overview
• Setting Up Deduplication
• Data Deduplication Functions

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Replication Overview
This section provides some background information that will help you
understand how replication is configured and how processing occurs.

Replication StorNext Replication makes a copy of a source directory and sends the
Configuration Overview information to one or more target directories. The target directories
may be on other host machines, or may be on the same host as the
source directory.
Replication behavior is defined by a Replication/Deduplication Policy.
(The other type of StorNext policy is a Storage Manager Policy, which
governs how StorNext Storage Manager works).
Here are some important facts about StorNext Replication/Deduplication
policies.
• A replication/deduplication policy exists on only one SNFS file
system. For example, a policy in a file system called /stornext/
sn1 can be used only to replicate directories in that file system. A
separate policy would be needed to replicate directories from file
system /stornext/sn2.
• If a replication/deduplication policy will be used in any file system
on a machine, you must configure a blockpool for that machine.
The blockpool for a machine contains data (called blocklets) if the
Deduplication feature is used, but the blockpool must be configured
for replication use even if you do not use deduplication.
• A policy may be applied to one directory or more than one directory
in the file system.
• A single policy can define behavior for replication sources and
targets, as well as for deduplication. This single policy can also
define the directories affected by the policy.
• However, it is often convenient to configure a policy that does
primarily one thing. For example, you could create a policy that
controls replication source behavior. Such a policy might be called a
"replication source policy" or a "source policy," even though the
policy could be configured to define other actions.

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When configuring replication you must configure a policy for the

replication source, and another policy for the replication target. You
typically configure the replication source by creating a new policy for
that file system. You typically configure the replication target by editing
the policy named "target" for the file system on the target host machine.
This is an important distinction:
• Configure the replication source by creating a new policy
• Configure the replication target by editing the “target” policy

Note: When the replication source is on a different machine than the

replication target (which is a typical situation,) you must use
two instances of the StorNext GUI: one instance connected to
the source machine, and another instance connected to the
target machine.

Configuring replication is discussed in more detail in the section

Configuring Replication on page 127.

Replication Process The actual replication process occurs in two stages:

Overview 1 Data Movement Stage: In this stage StorNext moves the data for
files from the source file system to the target file system. Data
movement occurs continuously as files are created or modified in a
source directory.

Note: A configuration option allows this "continuous" data

movement to be disabled during periods when the host
machine or the network may be busy.

Data movement occurs in one of the following two ways.

• Deduplicated Data: If deduplication has been enabled for the
policy that controls the source directory, deduplicated data
moves from the source host machine to the target host. With
deduplication enabled there may be less data moved than if the
entire file were copied. This is because for deduplicated
replication, only the unique deduplicated segments need to be
copied.
• Non-deduplicated Data: If deduplication is not enabled for the
policy that controls the source directory, the entire file is copied

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from the source directory to the target host. The entire file is
copied whenever a file is created or modified.
When data movement is in progress or even after it has just
completed, the replicated files may not be visible yet in the target
file system’s directories. Replicated files become visible in stage 2.
2 File System Namespace Realization Stage: In this stage StorNext
enumerates all the files in the source directory and recreates the file
name and subdirectory structure (the namespace) on the target file
system. Unlike in the Data Movement Stage, this stage happens only
at scheduled times, or when namespace realization is manually
initiated by the administrator.
The following illustration shows in simple terms how replicated data
flows from the one replication source to one replication target.

Figure 51 Replication Process

Files Excluded From Certain files may not be included in the replication process for various
Replication reasons. For example, a file that is open for read-only would be
replicated, but a file that is open for write (including all of the various
varieties of “write”), would not be replicated.
To determine which specific files were not included in the replication
process, see the Replication/Deduplication Completion Report, which
is accessible from the Replication/Deduplication Policy Summary
Report. For more information about Replication reports, see
Replication Deduplication Reports on page 211.
Here are some situations in which a file may be excluded from the
replication process:

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• Files that were truncated by Storage Manager before a replication

policy was set up on a directory are not replicated. If you have an
existing directory on which Storage Manger has been running and
files are truncated, the files will not replicate from the truncated
state. They must be retrieved from tape first. Once they are retrieved
they will become candidates for replication and will not be
truncated again until they have been either deduplicated or
replicated (in the case of non-deduplication replication).
• Named pipes and device special files are not replicated.
• In both deduplication and non-deduplication replication, the
completion report would mention if the file contents changed
during namespace replication. This means that the replicated file on
the target may represent an intermediate state taken during
replication.

Replication Terms and Concepts

This section contains terms and concepts related to replication. Some
terms have already been mentioned in the context of explaining
replication and how it works. For these terms that have already been
mentioned, this section contains a more complete, expanded definition.

Namespace Realization Namespace refers to the directory structure which contains replicated
data. Replicated data is always transferred separately from namespace
data (although some small file data is transferred along with the
namespace).
Namespace realization refers to the process in which the replicated
directory structure (the namespace) appears on the replication target.
Because file data and namespace data is transferred separately, in some
situations it might take longer for replicated data to complete
transferring than for the namespace realization to complete. This is
especially likely to happen if there is a backlog of file data waiting to be
transferred at the time when namespace is either scheduled to run or is
manually initiated.

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Blockpool The Blockpool is a data repository on the target. A blockpool is required

on each machine used for replication or deduplication. If you use only
replication, the blockpool file system can be small. If you configure
deduplication as well as replication, the blockpool file system must be
larger: at least large enough to hold the pool of deduplicated data
segments.
When you configure StorNext for the first time, the Configuration
Wizard enables you to specify the name of the file system you want to
use for the blockpool.

Note: Once you specify the file system on which the blockpool
resides, you cannot later choose a different blockpool file
system. Use care when specifying the blockpool file system.

Blackout Period A Blackout is a period during which replication does not occur. You may
schedule replication blackouts for periods in which you do not want
replication data transfers to occur on a busy network. For example, an
administrator may create a blackout during periods when WAN usage
and traffic is the heaviest. In this situation replication might run after
hours when WAN usage and traffic would be much lower.

Replication Source A replication source policy is a replication/deduplication policy that has

Policy and Replication "Outbound Replication" turned On via the policy's Outbound Replication
Source Directory tab.
The policy also has a Source Directories tab. The directories specified on
this tab will be replicated, and these directories are called replication
source directories.

Replication Target A replication target directory is the location to which replicated data is
Directory sent. The replication target may be a directory on a separate host
machine, or it may be a directory on the source host machine.
Regardless of where the target directory resides, it is very important that
you use the replication target directory only for replicated data. Also, do
not allows users to modify the files in the replication target directories.

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When creating replication target directories, remember that the target

directory must be at least as large as the sum of all replication source
directories from which replicated data is sent. For example, if you have
two source directories that are both 100GB, your replication target
directory must be at least 200GB.

Replication Schedule You can specify a replication schedule to define when the file system
namespace realization should occur for an outbound replication
schedule. For example, you might specify that you want namespace
realization to occur at 6am and 6pm every day.
If you do not specify a replication schedule, you must manually run the
replication policy whenever you want the realization to occur.

Replication Copies Replication Copies is the number of copies of replicated data saved on
the target. StorNext currently supports 1 to 16 replication copies per
target. The number of replication copies is entered or modified in
replication policies.

Bandwidth Throttling Bandwidth Throttling refers to limiting the receive rate and transmit rate
for replicated data (Replication Stage 1). This StorNext feature allows
network administrators to specify (in bytes per second) a ceiling for
incoming and outgoing replicated data. When bandwidth throttling is
enabled, replicated data will not be transmitted or received at a rate
higher than the specified maximum. Bandwidth throttling is a useful
tool for controlling network traffic.

Multilink StorNext provides support for Multilink configurations, which means

you can have multiple connections on one network interface card (NIC),
or even multiple connections on multiple NICs. StorNext provides a tool
that shows you the NICs on your system, and allows you to specify the
number of channels per NIC. On this same screen you can specify the
NICs you want enabled for replication.
One advantage of using multiple NICs (or multiple channels on one NIC)
is higher aggregate bandwidth because you can have multiple parallel
paths. For this reason, multilink is valuable for load balancing.

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Virtual IP (vIP) Virtual IP or vIP is similar to an alias machine name. StorNext uses virtual
IP addresses to communicate with machines rather than using the
physical machine name. Virtual IPs are required in HA (high availability)
environments, and are also used for multilink NICs.
Your network administrator can provide you with the virtual IP
addresses and virtual netmasks you need for your system.

Note: If your replication source policy or target policy is an HA

system, you must specify the vIP address in the field labeled
“Address for Replication and Deduplication” on the Outbound
Replication tab for the policy named "global" on each file
system for which you will use replication. The default value for
this field is "localhost".

Remember that each StorNext file system will have a policy

named “global,” and you should edit this field for each of
those policies named “global.”

Some Replication Scenarios

StorNext provides replication support to meet a variety of needs. This
section describes some common replication scenarios.

Scenario 1: Simplest In this simple replication scenario, the host machine host1 contains a
Replication StorNext file system called /stornext/fs1/. Host machine host2 has
a StorNext file system called /stornext/fs2.
In this scenario we can replicate directory /stornext/fs1/video on
host1 to file system /stornext/fs2 on host2. Replicated files will
appear in the directory /stornext/fs2/video, which is the default
location on host2.

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The following graphic illustrates replication scenario 1.

Figure 52 Replication scenario

1

Scenario 2: Replicating In this scenario the directory /stornext/fs1/video on host1 is

Multiple Copies in the again replicated to file system /stornext/fs2 on host2. However,
Same Target File System when the namespace realization occurs we want to retain the previous
replicated target directories.
For this scenario assume that we want to keep four copies of the
replication target directory. So, in file system /stornext/fs2 on
host2 we will find these four directories:
• /stornext/fs2/video (Contains the most recent realization)
• /stornext/fs2/video.1 (Contains the second-most recent
realization)
• /stornext/fs2/video.2 (Contains the third-most recent
realization)
• /stornext/fs2/video.3 (Contains the fourth-most recent
realization)
When using replication according to this scenario, in the StorNext GUI
use the "Copies to Keep on Target" box on the Outbound Replication
tab to enable multiple copies.

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The following graphic illustrates replication scenario 2.

Figure 53 Replication Scenario

2

Question: Why would we want to keep multiple directories containing

replicated data?
Answer: To save previous versions of the replicated directory. If you
maintain only a single directory, the directory is overwritten each time
replication occurs. For example, if replications happen daily at midnight,
each of the replicated target directories will contain the contents of the
source directory from that day's midnight replication.
You may keep from 1 to 16 copies on the target for each source
directory.
Question: Will keeping extra copies use a lot of extra disk space on the
target?
Answer: Not necessarily. For example, if file video/ myTVshow.mov
has not changed for the last 4 replications, then the four files would be:
• /stornext/fs2/video/myTVshow.mov
• /stornext/fs2/video.1/myTVshow.mov
• /stornext/fs2/video.2/myTVshow.mov
• /stornext/fs2/video.3/myTVshow.mov

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All of these files share the same data extents in the file system. An even
greater space saving can be realized by enabling deduplication for
replication, but using this feature is outside of the scope of the current
scenario discussion.

Scenario 3: Replicating In this scenario we replicate directory /stornext/fs1/video on

to Multiple Target Hosts host1 to file system /stornext/fs2 on host2 and to file system /
/ File Systems stornext/fs3 on machine host3. Replicated files will appear in the
target directories /stornext/fs2/video on host2 and in /
stornext/fs3/video on host3.
In this scenario we can also use the "Copies to Keep on Target" option.
When "Copies to Keep on Target" is specified in a replication source
policy, multiple copies are retained in each of the target file systems.
A replication source policy may specify up to three target hosts.
A target host may received replicated data from up to 5 source hosts.
The following graphic illustrates replication scenario 3.

Figure 54 Replication Scenario

3

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Additional Replication Here are some other possible replication combinations StorNext
Possibilities supports:
• Replication of a directory from one source host to multiple target
hosts and/or multiple target file systems.

Figure 55 Replicating From

One Source to Multiple Targets

• Replication from multiple sources hosts or file systems to a single

target host and file system.

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Figure 56 Replicating From

Multiple Sources to One Target

• Replication on HA systems - the source host and/or the target host

can be an HA pair.
• Replication with Storage Manager, where replicated data is moved
to tape from either the source directory or the target host/file
systems.
• Replication plus deduplication (in combination with any of the three
source-to-target setups), with or without Storage Manager
When you are first using replication, Quantum recommends beginning
with simple one-to-one replication (Scenario1).

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Non-Supported Replicating simultaneously between a replication source and target is

Replication Between not currently supported by StorNext. When configuring replication, be
Source and Target sure to avoid this particular scenario.

Example
In this non-supported configuration, Machine host1, file system fs1,
directory video1 replicates to Machine host2 , file system fs2,
directory video2
While at the same time
Machine host2, file system fs2, directory video2 replicates to
Machine host1, file system fs1, directory video1

Figure 57 Non-Supported
Replication From Source to
Target

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Configuring Replication
This section describes how to configure simple one-to-one replication
from one source directory on one file system to one target file system.
The source and target StorNext server computers can be the same
machine, standalone servers, or High Availability (HA) redundant
servers. When replication-target file systems are on an HA Cluster, it is
best to convert the cluster to HA before configuring replication source
policies that point to them. This allows the use of the virtual IP (vIP),
which is required for HA configurations.
Additional configuration options for StorNext features such as HA or
Replication with Storage Manager are also covered.
Before you begin configuring, make sure you have the Replication and/
or Deduplication licenses required for these features. If you are using an
HA configuration, basic StorNext single-server or HA Clusters should
already be set up. (For more information, see Chapter 3, The
Configuration Wizard).
These instructions assume you are using the StorNext Configuration
Wizard and have already completed the first three steps: Welcome,
Licenses, and Name Servers.

Step 1: Create Source After you complete the first three Configuration Wizard steps, the first
and Target File Systems replication step is to create file systems: the blockpool file system(s), and
the source and target file systems you plan to use.

Note: Although StorNext supports replicating from multiple source

hosts and file systems to multiple target hosts and file systems,
for simplicity this procedure describes how to replicate
between one source and one target file system on the same
host.

1 If you have not already done so, launch the StorNext Configuration
Wizard and proceed through Welcome, License and Name Servers
steps to the File System step.
2 The Setup > File System screen appears.

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3 On the Setup > File System screen, click New. The Setup > File
System > New Screen appears.

Figure 58 Setup > File System

> New Screen

4 At the File System Name field enter the name of a file system to be
used as a replication source. A default mount-point path
automatically appears but you can change this mount point if you
wish.
5 Choose the Replication/Deduplication option. A warning message
alerts you that "A blockpool has not been created." Disregard this
message for now because you will create the blockpool file system
in the Step 2: Setting up the Blockpool.
6 Select a set of LUNs for the file system, and then click Assign.
7 Click Configure. StorNext creates the file system configuration and
displays the Finish tab.
8 Click Apply to save the new file system. (For more information
about creating file systems, see Step 4: File System on page 29.)

Creating a Target File System and Blockpool File System

1 Repeat the process (steps 1 - 8) and create the file system you
intend to use as a target for replication on this same server.

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2 Configure another file system for the Blockpool that has neither
Data Migration nor Replication/Deduplication enabled.

Step 2: Setting up the In this step you will set up the blockpool on the blockpool file system
Blockpool you just created in the previous step.
1 Choose the StorNext Configuration Wizard’s Storage Destinations
task. The Setup > Storage Destinations screen appears.
There are four tabs on this screen: Library, Storage Disk,
Replication Targets, and Deduplication. When configuring
replication we are concerned with the Replication Targets and
Deduplication tabs. (The deduplication infrastructure is used to
handle the transfer of file data for the replication feature, so it must
be configured even when the deduplication feature is not used.)
2 Click the Deduplication tab. The Setup > Storage Destinations >
Deduplication Screen appears.

Figure 59 Setup > Storage

Destinations > Deduplication
Screen (Blockpool)

3 Click the Deduplication tab. This tab has only one field called
Blockpool Host File System. At this field select from the dropdown
list the file system to use for the blockpool. (This is the file system
you created in the previous step.)

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Note: Once applied, the blockpool location cannot be moved to

another file system. Be certain of the blockpool location
before you continue.

4 After you select the blockpool file system, click Apply. A

background job is started to create the blockpool. This job typically
finishes in a few minutes depending on the size parameter of your
deduplication license.

Step 3: Creating In this step you will specify the actual targets to which you want
Replication Targets replicated data sent. (Namespace realization will also occur on these
targets.)
1 Click the Replication Targets tab. The Setup > Storage
Destinations > Replication Targets Screen appears.
2 Click Add Host.

Figure 60 Storage Destinations

> Replication Targets Screen

3 At the Hostname or IP field, enter the host name or its IP address. If

the target is an HA cluster, the address should be the vIP for that
cluster.

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4 Click Scan Host to populate the Mount Point box with appropriate
file systems which are configured for replication/deduplication.
5 Select the file system you created for use as the target in Step 1:
Create Source and Target File Systems, and then click Add.
6 Click Apply. At this point you should see your file system listed as a
replication target.

Note: If you were adding additional replication targets, you would

repeat steps 3 - 6 to add additional hosts and file systems.

(Optional) Configuring Replication for an HA System

If you are planning to use replication on a high availability (HA) system,
this is the point in the configuration process when you should configure
HA. If you do not configure HA here, misconfiguration could result and
you could be prevented from using replication on your HA system.
If you are using replication on an HA system, proceed to Optional HA
and Multilink Configuration on page 140, and then return to Step 4:
Create a Replication Storage Policy.
If you are not using replication on an HA system, proceed to Step 4:
Create a Replication Storage Policy.

Step 4: Create a The next step in configuring replication is to create a replication storage
Replication Storage policy. This policy contains the replication "rules" specific to your
Policy replication source and target file systems. You must create a replication
policy for the source directory and enable inbound replication for the
target file system.

Creating the Source Directory Replication Policy

1 Choose the StorNext Configuration Wizard’s Storage Policy task.
The Setup > Storage Policy Screen appears.
2 Click New. The Setup > Storage Policy > New Screen appears.

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Figure 61 Setup > Storage

Policy > New Screen

3 Enter the following fields:

• Policy Name: The name of the new policy you are creating
• Policy Type: Choose Replication/Deduplication to create a
replication storage policy.
• File System: Choose the source file system from the dropdown
list.
• Click Configure.

Choose the Source File System

1 After you click Configure, the screen for configuring a replication/
deduplication storage policy appears.
2 Click the Source Directories tab.

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Figure 62 Setup > Storage

Policy > New / Source
Directories Screen

3 At the Directory field, enter the name of a directory you want to

create for the replication source directory.
4 Click Create Directory, and then click Add to add the new directory
to the policy.

Enter OutBound Replication Information

1 Click the Outbound Replication tab.

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Figure 63 Storage Policy >

New > Outbound Replication
Tab

2 At the Outbound Replication field, enable outbound replication

(going out from the source) by clicking the area to the right of the
field so that On is displayed.
3 Click Inherit to the right of the Copies to Keep on Target field, and
then select 1 from the dropdown list.
4 (Optional) To create a new replication schedule, in the Replication
Schedules box, click New. Additional fields appear where you can
create a replication schedule.

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Figure 64 Outbound
Replication Tab > Replication
Schedule

5 Under the heading Select Available Targets, select the target file
system on the target server.
6 Create a schedule by making a selection in every column. If you
select none of the schedule columns, this creates an unscheduled
policy that must be run manually. The schedule shown in Figure 64
will run at midnight every day.
7 Click Continue to complete the schedule and target selections.
8 Click Apply to finish creating the policy with the options from all of
the tabs.
9 After a message informs you that the policy was created
successfully, click OK.

Enter Inbound Replication Information

1 On the Setup > Storage Policy screen, select the replication/
deduplication policy named “target” for the replication target file
system, and then click Edit.

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Figure 65 Setup > Storage

Policy Screen (Select “target”)

2 When the Setup > Storage Policy > Edit > target screen appears,
Click the Inbound Replication tab.

Figure 66 Storage Policy >

Edit > target > Inbound
Replication Tab

3 At the Inbound Replication field, select On.

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Note: If you do not turn on replication, the process will fail and
you will receive an error message saying, “Replication
disabled on target.” It is VERY IMPORTANT that you enable
replication by setting Inbound Replication to On.

4 Click Apply to finish editing the policy with your selected options.

Configuration Steps The preceding four configuration steps accomplished the following:
Summary • Created a source replication policy and associated a source directory
with it
• Selected a target file system on a target host machine and left the
target directory unspecified, which uses the directory name of the
source
• Set a replication schedule that runs every day at midnight
• Enabled inbound in the target policy
• Enabled outbound replication in the source policy
The contents of the source directory (additions and deletions) will now
be replicated to the target directory every night. You can test this by
running the policy manually at any time on the Setup > Storage Policy
screen. (Select the policy you want to test and then click Run.)

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Figure 67 Setup > Storage

Policy (Run Policy)

Scheduling Replication The Replication Blackout feature provides bandwidth management by

Blackouts (Optional) allowing you to select of a time period when you do not want
replication to run. When a blackout is not in effect, replication data
transfer occurs automatically in the background as data changes in the
source directories, but the replicated files do not appear in the target
directory until the replication policy is run.
You can set a blackout period on the source or target file system (or
both) in the file systems’ global policy. During the blackout period, both
replication data transfer and the realization of file copies on the target
are prevented from starting.
A blackout period for a source file system prevents automatic starting
new data transfers or scheduled policies. However, manually started
policies do run, and perform the necessary data transfers.
A blackout period for a target file system prevents all inbound data
transfers from starting, which blocks both manually and automatically
started source policies.
However, note the following caveats about blackouts:
• Any replication attempt (whether scheduled or initiated from the
command line) which starts during the blackout on the source will

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not be started unless the force option is used. Replications started

before the blackout should complete.
• Any replication request which arrives at the target during its
blackout will be rejected by the target. The source will retry
replication until the process succeeds. Replications started before
the blackout will complete.
Follow these steps to set up a blackout:
1 Choose the StorNext Configuration Wizard’s Storage Policy task.
2 On the Storage Policy screen, select the “global” policy for the
desired source or target file system, and then click Edit. The Setup
> Storage Policy > Edit screen appears.
3 Click the Blackout tab.

Figure 68 Storage Policy >

New > Blackout Tab

4 Click the box to the right of the Replication Blackout Window

heading to display scheduling fields.
5 Specify the weekday(s), month(s), day(s), hour(s) and minute(s)
when you would like to block replication from starting
automatically.
6 Click Apply to save the changes in the replication/deduplication
storage policy.

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Optional HA and When the High Availability (HA) feature is used with replication, a virtual
Multilink Configuration IP (vIP) address must be configured to allow a replication source to use a
single IP address to access whichever server is currently performing the
Primary function in the target HA cluster.
The vIP is automatically moved to the correct server as part of the
failover process for the HaShared file system. (See Virtual IP (vIP) on
page 120 for an expanded definition.)
It is easiest to set up the vIP during the initial HA conversion. The vIP
configuration items appear automatically at this time if a license exists
for replication. It is not necessary to have a replication policy
configured.
The IP address used for the vIP must be statically allocated and routable
to the physical network interface of both servers in the HA cluster.
Please request this IP address and netmask information from your
network administrator before starting the HA conversion.

Note: This step describes only the tasks necessary for configuring
replication on an HA system. For general instructions about
configuring HA, see Converting to HA on page 189.

1 Choose HA > Convert from the Tools menu. The HA (Convert)

screen appears.

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Figure 69 Tools > HA

Convert Screen

2 At the Shared File System field, select from the dropdown list the
file system that will be dedicated to StorNext HA internal functions.
3 At the MDC Address field, select from the dropdown list the
primary system’s IP address for use in communicating between HA
MDCs.
4 Since this HA system runs a blockpool, you must configure a Virtual
IP Address (vIP). Under the heading Virtual Network IP Address
Configuration, check Enable and then enter the vIP (virtual IP)
Address and vIP Netmask provided by your network administrator.
5 Click Convert to convert the primary node to HA.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to exit without converting.
7 When a message informs you that the operation was completed
successfully, click OK. The configuration items for the Secondary
System will be added to the page.

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8 At the System Name field, enter the IP address of the Secondary

System to use for communications between HA MDCs, and then
click Scan Host.
9 Select the IP address of the physical interface to associate with the
vIP, and then click Convert.
10 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to exit without converting.
11 When a message informs you that the conversion was completed
successfully, click OK to continue.

Setting the IP Address of the Blockpool Server in HA Clusters

The default location of the blockpool server process is localhost. This
is not sufficient for HA Clusters where the blockpool server moves with
the Primary status to the redundant server in a failover of the HA Shared
file system.
1 Return to the StorNext Configuration Wizard’s Storage Policy task.
2 Locate the Deduplication/Replication file system, select its global
policy, and then click Edit. (This step must be repeated for each
Deduplication/Replication enabled file system.)
3 Click the Deduplication tab.
4 At the Address for Replication and Deduplication field, click the
Inherit button.
5 Replace the localhost value with the vIP address in the Override
box. (Override appears after you click Inherit.)
6 Click Apply.
7 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to exit. (In this case you can safely ignore the warning about
associated directories.)
8 When a message informs you that the operation was completed
successfully, click OK to continue.
9 Repeat steps 2 thru 8 for each file system.

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Configuring Multilink
Virtual IPs are also used in an HA environment if the multilink feature is
configured. A virtual IP address is required for each NIC card you use for
replication.
1 Choose Replication/Deduplication > Replication Bandwidth from
the Tools menu. The Tools > Replication > Bandwidth screen
appears.

Figure 70 Tools >

Replication > Bandwidth
Screen

2 The Replication Bandwidth screen displays a list of NIC cards

available for replication. Select Enable for each NIC card you want
to include in the replication process.
3 Enter the following fields:
• VIP: Enter the virtual IP address for the NIC. (Ask your network
administrator for this address as well as the virtual netmask.)
• VIP Netmask: Enter the virtual netmask for the NIC
• Receive Rate: Enter the maximum data reception rate
(expressed in bits per second) for the replication target. When
replication data is received on the target, it will not exceed this
speed. (For more information, see Bandwidth Throttling.)

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• Transmit Rate: Enter the maximum data transmission rate

(expressed in bits per second) for the replication source. When
replication data is transmitted to the target it will not exceed
this speed. (For more information, see Bandwidth Throttling.)
• Channels: Enter the number of channels you want enabled on
the NIC.
4 Click Apply to save your changes.

Running Replication Manually (Optional)

If you did not specify a schedule in the replication source policy, the
source directory will be replicated only if you manually run the policy. If
you did specify a schedule, you can also replicate the source directory at
any time by running the policy manually.
Follow these steps to manually run replication for any replication/
deduplication policy (whether it was scheduled or not):
1 Choose the StorNext Configuration Wizard’s Storage Policy task.
(Alternatively, choose Storage Policy from the Setup menu.) The
Setup > Storage Policy screen appears. (See Figure 67.)
2 Select the policy you want to run, and then click Run.
3 When a message informs you that the job was successfully initiated,
click OK to continue.
4 To view job progress, select Jobs from the Reports menu.

Replication Statuses and Reporting

StorNext provides three ways to monitor replication status:
• Replication Reports: View reports showing information pertaining
to storage policies and replication targets.
• Replication Administration: View the current replication status.

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• StorNext Jobs: View currently running StorNext jobs, including

replication.

Replication Reports There are two reports for replication: Policy Activity and Policy
Summary.
• The Policy Activity report shows replication performance statistics.
• The Policy Summary report shows replication-related information
for each policy.
Both of these reports also show information related to deduplication.
Access these replication reports by choosing Replication/Deduplication
from the Reports menu.
For more information about replication reports, see Replication
Deduplication Reports on page 211.

Replication The Administration option available under the Tools > Replication/
Administration Deduplication menu allows you to view current replication process, or
pause, resume, or stop replication.
After you choose Administration from the Tools > Replication/
Deduplication menu, the Tools > Replication/Deduplication >
Administration screen appears.

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Figure 71 Tools >

Replication/Deduplication >
Administration Screen

The Tools > Replication/Deduplication > Administration screen

shows the number of pending files and bytes remaining to replicate (or
deduplicate or truncate).

Pausing and Resuming Replication

Near the bottom of the Administration screen are two buttons, Pause
and Resume, which enable you to temporarily pause or resume
replication (or deduplication or truncation) respectively. Before you
pause or refresh, first select the process you want to pause or refresh:
Replication, Deduplication or Truncation.
If you pause or resume replication, clicking the Refresh button updates
the statuses shown on the Administration screen.

StorNext Jobs At any time you can view currently running StorNext jobs, including
replication. The Reports > Jobs screen shows the job ID and type of
job, the start and end times, and the current status.
To view jobs, choose Jobs from the Reports menu. The Reports > Jobs
report appears.

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Troubleshooting Replication

For more information about StorNext jobs, see The Jobs Report on
page 205.

Troubleshooting Replication
The Troubleshooting appendix in this guide contains simple
troubleshooting procedures related to replication. For more
information, see Troubleshooting Replication on page 351.
For issues not covered in that section of the appendix, contact the
Quantum Technical Support

Data Deduplication Overview

StorNext data deduplication refers to a specific approach to data
reduction built on a methodology that systematically substitutes
reference pointers for redundant variable-length blocks (or data
segments) in a specific dataset. The purpose of data deduplication is to
increase the amount of information that can be stored on disk arrays
and to increase the effective amount of data that can be transmitted
over networks.
For example, if the same 1 terabyte of file data appears in several
different files, only one instance of that 1 terabyte needs to be retained.
Each of those several files can use the same data bytes from a common
storage source when the data is needed.
Quantum's deduplication not only recognizes duplicate data in the
entire file, but also recognizes duplicate data ranges within files. For
example, if two 1TByte files share the same data from byte 10,000,000
through byte 500,000,000, those duplicate byte ranges can be
identified and stored only once. Several files may contain the same data
or some of the same data, and these files can all benefit from
deduplication.

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How Deduplication When a file is initially created in a directory managed by StorNext

Works deduplication, all of the application data is created in that file. Later, the
file may be ingested by StorNext. During the ingest process the file will
be split (logically) into segments called blobs, which is short for “binary
large objects.”
Each blob is stored in the machine's blockpool, and has a unique blob
tag associated with it. From the list of a file’s blob tags, StorNext can
reconstitute the file with data from the blockpool.
If several files contain the same blob, only one copy is stored in the
blockpool.
If StorNext file truncation is enabled for the deduplication policy, the
original file can be "truncated." (This means that the space for the
original file is released and can be re-used.) When part or all of the
original file data is needed by an application, the data is retrieved from
the blockpool. This concept of file truncation is similar to the file
truncation available with StorNext Storage Manager.
The following graphic illustrates how deduplication works.

Figure 72 Deduplication

Deduplication and If StorNext deduplication is enabled in a replication source directory, it is

Replication the blobs that get replicated from the source machine to the target
machine. This happens continuously during the first stage of replication,

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which is data movement. If a blob is shared by more than one file, less
data is transferred than when replication occurs without deduplication.
Replicated data moves from the source machine's blockpool to the
target machine's blockpool. If the source and target machine are the
same, then no data needs to move for replication Stage 1.
When the replication namespace realization occurs in replication Stage
2, the replicated files appear in the target directory as truncated files.
The blob tags needed to reconstitute the file are replicated along with
other file metadata during Stage 2. When replication is complete, an
application can access the replicated file and data will be retrieved from
the blockpool as needed.

Setting Up Deduplication
This section describes the steps necessary to configure data
deduplication. The easiest way to configure your system for
deduplication is to use the StorNext Configuration Wizard, but you can
also use the Setup menu's options to accomplish the same tasks.
Complete these tasks to set up and enable deduplication:
• Step 1: Enable replication/deduplication when you create (or edit) a
source file system.
• Step 2: Specify the file system to use for the blockpool (this is done
only once per machine.)
• Step 3: Create (or edit) a replication/deduplication storage policy
with deduplication enabled on the Deduplication tab.

Step 1: Creating a Create a file system as you normally would, or edit an existing file
Deduplication-Enabled system.
File System 1 In the Configuration Wizard, choose the File System task.
(Alternatively, choose File System from the Setup menu.)
2 On the Options tab, enable replication by selecting Replication/
Deduplication.

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3 Continue creating the file system as your normally would. (If you are
editing an existing file system, click Apply to save your changes.) For
more information about creating a file system, see Step 4: File
System on page 29.

Step 2: Specifying the To use deduplication you must specify the file system on which the
Blockpool blockpool resides. If you have already enabled replication and a
blockpool already exists, you can skip this step.
The process for specifying a blockpool for deduplication is identical to
specifying a blockpool for replication. For more information, see Step 2:
Setting up the Blockpool on page 129 in the Configuring Replication
section.

Step 3: Creating a To enable deduplication you must either create a new replication/
Deduplication-Enabled deduplication storage policy or edit an existing policy.
Storage Policy 1 Choose the StorNext Configuration Wizard’s Storage Policy task.
(The Setup > Storage Policy Screen appears.
2 If you are creating a new policy, click New. The Storage Policy >
New Screen appears. (See Figure 61.)
If you are editing an existing replication policy, select the policy you
want to edit and then click Edit. Skip to Step 5.
3 Enter the following fields:
• Policy Name: The name of the new policy you are creating
• Policy Type: choose Replication /Deduplication to create a
deduplication storage policy.
4 Click Configure. The Replication /Deduplication Policy screen
appears.

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Figure 73 Replication/
Deduplication Policy Screen

5 On the Deduplication tab, enable deduplication by clicking the field

to the right of the Deduplication heading so that it says On.
6 Accept the displayed default values for other fields, or click the
Inherit button beside the desired field to enter your own values.
(For information about what to enter at each field, see the online
help.)
Here are some especially important Deduplication parameters:
• Minimum File Idle Time before Deduplication: This parameter
determines the interval of time for a file to remain idle before
deduplication begins. The default value is 1 minute.
• Minimum File Size to Deduplicate: This parameter determines
the minimum size a file must be in order to be eligible for
deduplication. The default value is 4KB.

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Data Deduplication Functions

This section describes the deduplication options on the Setup and Tools
menus, which enable you to setup, administer, and manage data
deduplication on your StorNext system.

Deduplication The Tools > Replication/Deduplication > Administration screen

Administration allows you to view the number of pending files and bytes remaining to
be deduplicated (or replicated or truncate). (See Figure 71.)
On this screen you can also pause or resume deduplication. The process
for pausing or resuming deduplication is identical to pausing or
resuming replications. (For more information, see Pausing and
Resuming Replication on page 146.)

Deduplication Reports There are two reports for deduplication: Policy Activity and Policy
Summary.
• The Policy Activity report shows deduplication performance
statistics.
• The Policy Summary report shows deduplication-related
information for each policy.
Both of these reports also show information related to replication.
Access these deduplication reports by choosing Replication/
Deduplication from the Reports menu.
For more information about deduplication reports, see Replication
Deduplication Reports on page 211.

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Tools Menu Functions

The Tools Menu contains the following options:

• User Access: Control user access to StorNext tasks
• Client Download: Download SNFS client software
• System Control: Stop or start the file system or StorNext Storage
Monitor, and specify whether to automatically start StorNext at
system startup
• File and Directory Actions: Perform file-related and directory-related
tasks on managed file systems such as storing and moving files,
recovering and retrieving files and directories, and modifying file
attributes.
• File System
• Label Disks: Label disk drives
• Check File System: Run a check on your file system (cvfsck)
before expanding the file system or migrating a stripe group.
• Affinities: Configure affinities for your file system.
• Migrate File System: Migrate the file system's stripe group(s)
• Truncation Parameters: Manage the file system's truncation
parameters

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• Storage Manager
• Storage Components: View current status for libraries, storage
disks, and tape drives; place one or more of these components
online or offline
• Drive Pool: Add, modify, or delete drive pools
• Media Actions: Remove media from a library or move media
from one library to another
• Library Operator: Enter or eject media from the Library
Operator Interface
• Software Requests: View or cancel pending software requests
• Scheduler: Schedule file system events including Clean Info,
Clean Versions, Full Backup, Partial Backup, and Rebuild Policy
• Alternate Retrieval Location: Specify a remote retrieval
location to use in situations where files stored on tape or a
storage disk.
• Distributed Data Mover (DDM): Spread the distribution of
data across several machines rather than the primary server.
• Replication and Deduplication
• Administration: View current replication process, or pause,
resume, or stop replication
• Replication Targets: Add a host or directory for date
replication, or edit existing replication targets
• Replication Bandwidth: Configure replication bandwidth limits
and multilink
• HA
• Convert: Convert to a high availability configuration
• Manage: Manage HA system parameters

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User Access

User Access
The Tools Menu's User Access option allows you to add new StorNext
users and modify permissions for existing users. User Access is also
where you change the admin's password.

Adding a New User Follow this procedure to add a new StorNext user.
1 Choose User Access from the Tools menu. The User Access screen
appears. All existing users and the admin are shown.

Figure 74 User Access Screen

2 Click New. The User Access > New screen appears.

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Figure 75 New User Screen

3 In the User Name field, type the name the new user will enter at the
User ID field when he or she logs on to StorNext.
4 In the Password field, type the password the new user will enter
when logging on to StorNext.
5 Select all the different roles you want the new user to have:
Download Client Software Manage Tickets

Manage File System Perform Storage Component Actions

Perform Media Actions Manage Email Modifications

Manage Scheduler Delete Log Files

Manage Drive Pools Manage Backups

Manage HA Stop/Start System Components

Manage Policies Perform File Actions

Manage Storage Disks Perform Library Operator Actions

Manage Email Server Run Capture State

Run Health Checks Manage User

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6 When you are satisfied with the permissions you have assigned,
click Apply to save your changes. (To exit without saving, click
Cancel.)
7 When a message informs you that the new user was successfully
added, click OK.

Viewing an Existing Follow this procedure to view an existing user’s profile.

User Profile 1 From the User Access screen, select the user whose information you
want to view, and then click View. A screen shows the parameters
for the selected user.

Figure 76 Edit User Screen

2 When you are finished viewing user profile information, click Back
to return to the User Access screen.

Modifying an Existing Follow this procedure to modify an existing user’s permission.

User 1 From the User Access screen, select the user whose information you
want to modify, and then click Edit. A screen similar to the one
where you added the user appears.

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Figure 77 Edit User Screen

2 As necessary, change the user’s password and modify permissions

by selecting or deselecting roles.
3 When you are satisfied with the changes you have made, click
Apply to save your changes. (To exit without saving, click Cancel.)
4 When a message informs you that the new user was successfully
modified, click OK.

Deleting an Existing Follow this procedure to delete an existing StorNext user.

User 1 From the User Access screen, select the user you want to delete,
and then click Delete. (See Figure 74.)
2 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to return to the User Access > [admin name] screen without
saving.

Note: NOTE: You cannot delete the admin. You can only change the
admin's password as described below.

3 When a message informs you that the new user was successfully
deleted, click OK.

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Client Download

Changing the Admin Follow this procedure to modify an existing user’s permission.
Password 1 If you have not already done so, choose User Access from the Tools
menu. The User Access screen appears. (See Figure 74.) All existing
users and the admin are shown.
2 Select the admin, and then click Edit. The User Access > [admin
name] screen appears.

Figure 78 Edit Admin Screen

3 In the Password field, type the new password for the admin.
4 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to return to the Setup > [admin name] screen without saving.
5 When a message informs you that the admin’s password was
successfully modified, click OK.

Client Download
The StorNext client software lets you mount and work with StorNext file
systems.

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To ensure successful operation, before you install the client software

verify that the client system meets all operating system and hardware
requirements listed below.
To install the StorNext client software, first download the client software
from the metadata controller (MDC) as described in Downloading Client
Software.
After downloading the client software, install and configure it using the
appropriate method for your operating system. For more information
about installing and configuring client software, see the instructions in
the StorNext Installation Guide.
To download client software:
1 Choose Client Download from the Tools menu. The Tools > Client
Download screen appears.

Figure 79 Client Download

Screen

2 Select from the Platform list the desired operating system.

3 Select from the OS Version list the desired operating system version
corresponding to the platform you selected.
4 When a window appears containing a link to the client software
download location, click the link to begin downloading.

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Figure 80 Client Download

Link

5 Click Download to begin the process.

6 When prompted, choose the Save to Disk option, and then click
OK.
7 Browse to the location where you want to save the file, and then
click Save.
8 After the client package has been saved, click Done.
9 Continue with the installation procedure for your operating system
as described in the StorNext Installation Guide or the online help.

System Control
The System Control screen enables you to tell at a glance whether
StorNext File System and StorNext Storage Manager are currently
started. In the case of Storage Manager, you can also see which
individual components are currently started or stopped. From this
screen you can start or stop File System and Storage Manager, and also
specify whether you want StorNext to start automatically whenever your
system is rebooted.
To access the System Control screen, choose System Control from the
Tools menu. The Tools > System Control screen appears.

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Figure 81 System Control

Screen

Starting or Stopping Most StorNext operations require that the StorNext File System be
StorNext File System started, although there may be times when you need to stop the File
System.
Click Start to start the File System, or Stop to stop the File System.

Starting or Stopping StorNext Storage Manager includes the following components:

StorNext Storage • Database
Manager
• Library Manager
• Policy Manager
• Ticket System
• Notification System
There are conditions which could cause one or more component to
stop. If this happens, starting the Storage Manager restarts these
stopped components.
Click Start to start the Storage Manager, or Stop to stop the Storage
Manager.

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File and Directory Actions

Refreshing System When there is a change in system status, sometimes there is a delay in
Status updating the status. Click Refresh to immediately update the GUI
system status.

Specifying Boot If you would like StorNext to automatically start File System and Storage
Options Manager whenever your system starts, select the option Automatically
start StorNext software at boot time? and then click Apply.

File and Directory Actions

The Tools menu's File and Directory Actions option enables you to
perform various actions on the files and directories in your library.
To access the Tools > File and Directory Actions screen, choose File
and Directory Actions from the Tools menu. The following information
is displayed for the available files:
• Name: The name of the file
• Owner: The file owner
• Group: The group to which the file belongs
• Size: The size (in bytes) of the file
• Last Modified: The date and time when the file was last modified
At the top of the screen is a dropdown list of Available Actions you can
perform for files. Select the file for which you want to perf om the
action, and then choose one of these options from the Available Actions
list:
• Store Files
• Change File Version
• Recover Files
• Recover Directories
• Retrieve Files
• Retrieve Directory

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• Truncate Files
• Move Files
• Modify File Attributes
• View File Information

Store Files Choose this option to store files by policy or custom parameters.
1 Choose File and Directory Actions from the Tools menu. The Tools
> File and Directory Actions screen appears.

Figure 82 File and Directory

Action Screen

2 Select the file you want to store. If necessary, click Browse and then
click All Managed Directories to view a list of the managed
directories. Select the directory containing the files to be stored.
Mark the files of interest and then click Continue to select them.
3 To store the selected file according to policy, at the Store
Parameters field, select By Policy.
a Click Apply.
b When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to store the
file, or No to abort.

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4 To store the selected file according to custom parameters, at the

Store Parameters field, select Custom.
a Enter the following fields:
• Number of Copies: Indicate the number of copies to store
• Truncate Files Immediately: Select this option to truncate
files immediately before storing
• Tape Drive Pool: Select the tape drive pool for the selected
file
• Minimum File Size: Specify the minimum file size
• Media Type: Specify the tape drive media type
b Click Apply.
When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to mount the store
the file, or No to abort.

Change File Version Choose this option to change the file version to a new version.
1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Change File Version from the Available Actions dropdown
menu.

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File and Directory Actions

Figure 83 Change File Version

Screen

3 Select the file whose version want to change. If necessary, click

Browse to navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 At the New File Version field, select the new version to which you
want to change for the selected file.
5 Click Apply.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to dismount the
media, or No to abort.
7 Repeat steps 2 - 6 to change versions for additional files.

Recover Files Choose this option to recover previously deleted files.

1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Recover Files from the Available Actions dropdown menu.

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File and Directory Actions

Figure 84 Recover Files Screen

3 Select the file you want to recover. If necessary, click Browse to

navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
6 Repeat steps 2 - 5 to recover additional files.

Recover Directories Choose this option to recover previously deleted directories.

1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Recover Directories from the Available Actions dropdown
menu.

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File and Directory Actions

Figure 85 Recover Directories

Screen

3 Select the directory you want to recover. If necessary, click Browse

to navigate to the directory location and then select the directory.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
6 Repeat steps 2 - 5 to recover additional directories.

Retrieve Files Choose this option to retrieve files.

1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Retrieve Files from the Available Actions dropdown menu.

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File and Directory Actions

Figure 86 Retrieve Files Screen

3 Select the file you want to retrieve. If necessary, click Browse to

navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 If desired, enter the following Optional Retrieve Parameters for
the selected file.
• New File Name: Enter a new name to assign to the selected file
upon retrieval
• Partial Retrieve Start Byte and End Byte: To do a partial file
retrieval, enter the file's starting and ending bytes.
When you enter these optional retrieve parameters, checksum is not
validated for the selected file.
5 Click Apply.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
7 Repeat steps 2 - 6 to retrieve additional files.

Retrieve Directory Choose this option to retrieve directories.

1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)

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File and Directory Actions

2 Choose Retrieve Directory from the Available Actions dropdown

menu.

Figure 87 Retrieve Directory

Screen

3 Select the directory you want to retrieve. If necessary, click Browse

to navigate to the directory location and then select the directory.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
6 Repeat steps 2 - 5 to retrieve additional directories.

Truncate Files Choose this option to truncate files.

1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Truncate Files from the Available Actions dropdown
menu.

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Figure 88 Truncate Files Screen

3 Select the file you want to truncate. If necessary, click Browse to

navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 Click Apply.
5 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
6 Repeat steps 2 - 5 to truncate additional files.

Move Files Choose this option to move files.

1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Move Files from the Available Actions dropdown menu.

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File and Directory Actions

Figure 89 Move Files Screen

3 Select the file you want to move. If necessary, click Browse to

navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 At the New Media field, select one of these options for the file:
• Media ID: Specify the unique identifier for the media to which
you are moving the selected file
• Media Type: Specify the media type for the media to which you
are moving the selected file
• Blank Media: Select this option if you are moving the selected
file to blank media
5 Click Apply.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
7 Repeat steps 2 - 6 to move additional files.

Modify File Attributes Choose this option to modify attributes for the selected file.
1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)
2 Choose Modify File Attributes from the Available Actions
dropdown menu.

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File and Directory Actions

Figure 90 Modify File

Attributes Screen

3 Select the file whose attributes you want to change. If necessary,

click Browse to navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 At the File Attributes field, enter these options. (For information
about what to enter at each field, see the online help.)
• Number of Copies
• Store
• Relocate
• Truncate
• Stub File Size
5 Click Apply.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed, or
No to abort.
7 Repeat steps 2 - 6 to apply attributes to additional files.

View File Information Choose this option to view detailed information about the selected file.
1 If you have not already done so, choose File and Directory Actions
from the Tools menu. The Tools > File and Directory Actions
screen appears. (See Figure 82.)

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File System

2 Choose View File Info from the Available Actions dropdown

menu.

Figure 91 View File Info Screen

3 Select the files whose attributes you want to view. If necessary, click
Browse to navigate to the file location and then select the file.
4 Click File Info to view information.
5 Click Done when you are finished viewing file information.

File System
The Tools > File System menu contains options that enable you to
perform the following file system-related tasks:
• Label Disks: Apply EFI or VTOC label names for disk devices in your
StorNext libraries
• Check File System: Run a check on StorNext files systems prior to
expanding or migrating the file system

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Storage Manager

• Affinities: Allocate additional storage to a file system by creating a

new stripe group in the file system configuration file, and assigning
new disks to the stripe group
• Migrate File System: Move data files from a source file system to a
destination stripe group, freeing stripe groups so they can be
removed from an existing StorNext file system
• Truncation Parameters: Enter truncation parameters for your file
systems in order to free up file storage that isn’t being actively used
These tasks are described in Chapter 4, File System Tasks

Storage Manager
The Tools > Storage Manager menu contains options that enable you
to perform the following Storage Manager-related tasks:
• Storage Components: View your system's libraries, storage disks,
and tape drives, and place those devices online or offline
• Drive Pool: View, add, edit, or delete drive pools (groups of tape
drives allocated for various administrator-defined storage tasks)
• Media Actions: Perform various actions on the storage media in
your library
• Library Operator Interface: The StorNext Library Operator Interface
allows you to perform media-related actions remotely from the
library
• Software Requests: View current software requests in progress or
cancel a request
• Scheduler: Schedule tasks to run automatically based on a specified
schedule
• Alternate Retrieval Location: Specify a remote retrieval location to
use in situations where files stored on tape or a storage disk.
• Distributed Data Mover: Spread the distribution of data across
several machines rather than the primary server.
These tasks are described in Chapter 5, Storage Manager Tasks

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Replication and Deduplication

Replication and Deduplication

The Tools > Replication/Deduplication menu options enable you to
perform the following tasks related to replication:
• Administration: View current progress for replication, data
deduplication, and truncation operations. Also pause or resume
replication, deduplication and truncation.
• Replication Targets: Add replication hosts and mount points to
your replication targets, and edit properties for existing hosts and
mount points. Also delete unwanted replication targets.
• Replication Bandwidth: Configure multilinks and bandwidth limits
for replication.
Replication and deduplication tasks are described in Chapter 6,
Replication and Deduplication

HA
The Tools > HA menu options enable you to perform the following HA-
related tasks:
• Convert: Convert a shared file system to high availability
configuration
• Manage: View the current status of the file systems on your HA
system and perform various HA-related functions such as starting or
stopping nodes on the HA cluster
These tasks are described in Chapter 7, Tools Menu Functions

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 Chapter 8
Service Menu Functions

The StorNext Service Menu contains the following options:

• Health Check: Perform one or more health checks on StorNext and
view recent health check results
• Capture State: Obtain and preserve detailed information about the
current StorNext system state
• System Backup: Run a backup of StorNext software
• Admin Alerts: View informational messages about system activities
• Tickets: View, edit, or close service tickets generated for the system

The Health Check Function

The Health Check feature enables you to run various diagnostic checks
on your StorNext system. This screen shows the available tests, as well
as the start time, finish time, and status for the last time each test ran.
Here are the diagnostic tests available:
• Archive: Verify that all configured archives are online

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The Health Check Function

• Config: Verify that affinities are configured correctly in SNSM for

managed file systems, and that SNSM-managed file systems are
identified and configured correctly
• Database: Verify database integrity.
• Disk Space: Verify that enough disk space exists for the SNSM
database tables, logging, and other functions
• Drive: Verify that all configured drives are online
• Media: Verify that there are enough media available for all policies
to store all file copies, and that SNSM media are configured
correctly
• Policies: Verify that SNSM is keeping up with file system events and
store candidate processing

Running a Health Check Use this procedure to run a health check.

6 Choose Health Check from the Service menu. The Service >
Health Check screen appears.

Figure 92 Health Check Screen

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The Health Check Function

7 Select one or more tests to run by clicking the desired check. (There
is no need to hold down the Control key while clicking.) To deselect
a test, click it again.
8 Click Run Selected to run the tests you selected. Or, to run all tests,
click Run All.

Viewing the Health After a test has been run successfully (as indicated by “Success” in the
Check Results Status column), you can view test results.
1 To view results for one or more tests, select the desired tests and
then click View Selected.
2 To view results for all successfully completed tests, click View All.
3 When you are finished viewing, click Done.
Regardless of which View option you choose, test results are shown for
the last successful tests completed regardless of the date on which they
ran. For example, if you select two tests and then click View Selected,
there might be an interval as long as a week or more between the finish
dates for the two tests.

Figure 93 Health Check >

View Selected Screen

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The Capture State Function

Viewing Health Check You can also view a history (up to five runs) of each health check test
Histories that has been run. This can be useful for comparing results over a time
span.
1 Select the tests whose history you want to view.
2 Click History. The Service > Health Check > View History screen
appears.

Figure 94 Health Check >

View History Screen

3 When you are finished viewing history information, click Done to

return to the Service > Health Check screen.

The Capture State Function

The StorNext Capture State feature enables you to create a log that
captures the current state of your system. This log assists Quantum
support personnel analyze and debug some problems in the storage
system.

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The Capture State Function

Running Capture State creates a log file named using the format
“snapshot-machinehostname-YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.tar.gz..”
This file contains a summary report that is produced by executing the
pse_snapshot command on all component config/filelist files.
If desired, you can download or delete a previously captured file.

Creating a Capture Follow this procedure to create a Capture State log:

State Log 1 Choose Capture State from the Service menu. The Service >
Capture State screen appears. Any previously captured snapshots
are shown.

Figure 95 Capture State

Screen

2 Click Capture. The Capture State Status window is shown. The

capture file appears after the process completes.
3 Click Download to save the generated file.
4 To view the file, choose the Open with option and then click
Browse to navigate to an application such as WinZip capable of
reading tar.gz files.
5 To save the file, choose the Save to Disk option and then navigate
to the location where you want to save the file.

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The System Backup Function

Deleting a Previous Follow this procedure to delete an unwanted Capture State file.
System State Capture 1 If you have not already done so, choose Capture State from the
Service menu. The Service > Capture State screen appears. (See
Figure 95 on page 181.) All previously captured snapshots are
shown.
2 Select the file you want to delete, and then click Delete.
3 When a confirmation screen prompts you to confirm that you want
to delete the file, click Yes to continue or No to abort.
4 After the status screen informs you that the file was successfully
deleted, click OK.

The System Backup Function

The Service menu's Backup option allows you to perform a full or partial
backup.
1 Choose Backups from the Service menu. The Service > Backup
screen appears.

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The Admin Alerts Function

Figure 96 Backup Screen

2 Click Full Backup to perform a full backup, or click Partial Backup

to perform a partial backup.
3 After a message informs you that the backup was initiated
successfully, click OK.

The Admin Alerts Function

Admin alerts are informational messages about system activities you
might want to be aware of, but are not necessarily an error condition.
For example, issues related to the Distributed Data Mover feature
generate admin alerts. Admin alerts typically do not require any action
from StorNext users.
There are different types of admin alerts. Here are some conditions that
could produce an admin alert:
• TSM Health Checks disk space warning
• TSM Intrusive Health Checks when drives are mounted
• MSM media console errors

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The Admin Alerts Function

• MSM drive dismount request when drive is already dismounted

• MSM media audit failures
1 To view admin alerts, select Admin Alerts from the Service menu.
The Service > Admin Alerts screen appears.

Figure 97 Admin Alerts Screen

2 On the Service > Admin Alerts screen you can do any of the
following:
• View a specific alert by scrolling to the right of the screen (if the
alert is longer than can be displayed on one screen)
• Refresh (update) the list by clicking the Refresh button
• Delete an individual alert by selecting the desired alert and then
clicking the Delete button
• Delete all alerts by clicking the Delete All button

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The Tickets Function

The Tickets Function

The Service menu's Tickets option allows you to view a list of RAS tickets
that relate to system faults or errors. Ticket details provide a summary of
the system fault, an area for Analysis notes, and contains a
Recommended Actions link to help you correct the fault. On this screen
you can view the ticket number, current status, priority, date and time
the ticket was last updated, and a brief summary of the error condition.
If desired, you can click the column headers to change the sorting. For
example, click the Ticket heading to display tickets in ascending or
descending numerical order.

Viewing Ticket 1 From the StorNext home page, choose Tickets from the Service
Information menu. The Service > Tickets screen appears.

Figure 98 Tickets Screen

The Service > Tickets screen provides the following information:

• Ticket: The RAS ticket number, displayed in the order in which it
was created

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• Status: The ticket’s current status: OPEN or CLOSED

• Priority: The ticket’s priority based on system impact: HIGH,
MEDIUM, or LOW
• Last Update: The date of the last system status update
• Summary: A short summary of the fault that triggered creating
the RAS ticket
2 If desired, change the display by choosing Show All Tickets, Show
Closed Tickets, or Show Open Tickets in the dropdown list at the
bottom of the screen.
3 Highlight the ticket you wish to view, and then click View. The
Service > Tickets > View Ticket > [number] screen appears.

Figure 99 Tickets > View

Ticket Screen

This screen provides the following information:

• Ticket Number: The number of the ticket in the displayed ticket
list
• Date Opened: The date and time the ticket was created
• Status: The current status of the ticket: OPEN or CLOSED
• Priority: The ticket’s priority based on system impact: HIGH,
MEDIUM, and LOW

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• Summaries: A brief description of the ticket.

• Event Details: Detailed information about event that triggered
the ticket, including a link that allows you to View
Recommended Actions which will help you correct the fault or
condition
• Analysis: Any user-entered comments pertaining to the fault or
condition, such as a recommended action
4 To see recommended actions for the ticket, click the View
Recommended Actions link. The Recommended Actions screen
appears provides information and steps to correct the condition or
fault that generated the RAS ticket. Follow the instructions on the
screen to correct the condition or fault. When you are finished
viewing the recommended actions, close the window.
5 When you are finished viewing ticket information, click Done to
return to the Service > Tickets screen.

Editing Ticket Follow this procedure to add comments or notes to the ticket in the
Information Analysis field:
1 Select the desired ticket and then click Edit. The Service > Tickets>
Edit Ticket > [number] screen appears.

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The Tickets Function

Figure 100 Tickets > Edit

Ticket Screen

2 Make your comments or notes in the Analysis field.

3 Click Apply to save your changes. When you are ready to return to
the previous screen, click Close. (To return to the previous screen
without saving your changes, click Cancel.)

Closing Tickets When you no longer need to retain ticket information, you can close
(delete) selected tickets or all tickets by following this procedure:
1 To close a specific ticket, select the desired ticket and then click
Close.
2 To delete all tickets, click Close All.

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Converting to HA

The StorNext High Availability (HA) feature allows you to operate a

redundant server that can quickly assume control of the primary server’s
operations in the event of software, hardware and network failures.
This chapter describes how to configure HA for StorNext. For a much
more detailed discussion about how HA works, see Appendix C, HA
Systems.

HA Overview
The StorNext HA feature is a special StorNext configuration with
improved availability and reliability. The configuration consists of two
similar servers, shared disks and possibly tape libraries. StorNext is
installed on both servers. One of the servers is dedicated as the initial
primary server and the other the initial standby server.
StorNext File System and Storage Manager run on the primary server.
The standby server runs StorNext File System and special HA supporting
software.
The StorNext failover mechanism allows the StorNext services to be
automatically transferred from the current active primary server to the
standby server in the event of the primary server failure. The roles of the
servers are reversed after a failover event. Only one of the two servers is

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HA Terms and Concepts

allowed to control and update StorNext metadata and databases at any

given time. The HA feature enforces this rule by monitoring for
conditions that might allow conflicts of control that could lead to data
corruption.
StorNext provides two main HA functions: Convert (to) HA and
Manage HA.

HA Terms and Concepts

This section defines key terms and concepts you should become familiar
with before converting to an HA system.

Failover Failover is the process of passing control of a file system from an FSM on
one MDC to a standby FSM on a redundant MDC. When that FSM is for
the HaShared file system, Primary status transfers to the redundant
MDC along with all the processing that occurs only on the Primary MDC.
This includes all the HaManaged FSMs, the Storage Manager processes,
and the blockpool server. When an FSM does not relinquish control
cleanly, an HA Reset can occur to protect against possible corruption of
file system metadata and Storage Manager databases. (See Primary
Node and Secondary Node.)

Primary Node The primary node is the main server in your configuration. Processing
occurs on this server until system failure makes it necessary to switch to
another server. Also known as the local node. The primary status is
transient and dynamic, not fixed to a specific machine.

Secondary Node The secondary node is the redundant or secondary server in your
configuration. If your primary server fails or shuts down, processing
automatically moves to this secondary server so there is not interruption
in processing. Like primary status, the secondary status is transient and
dynamic, not fixed to a specific machine. Also known as the peer node.

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HA Terms and Concepts

Virtual IP (vIP) Virtual IP or vIP is a fixed IP address that is automatically associated with
the Primary MDC to provide a static IP address for replication and
deduplication access to the target server in an HA cluster, and for access
to the blockpool.
Following are some general requirements for vIP addresses as they apply
to HA:
1 The vIP should be static (currently StorNext supports only static IP
for HA).
2 The NIC should have a physical IP address assigned.
3 The vIP should be a real and unique IP address.
4 The vIP should be reachable by other nodes, and you should also be
able to reach other node from the vIP address. For this reason,
Quantum recommends that the vIP address be on the same subnet
of the physical IP address of the same NIC.
When the NIC is also involved in multilink communication, the following
additional requirement applies:
1 The grouping address (taking the first configured maskbits of the IP
address) of the physical and vip IPs on the same NIC should be the
same, and unique on the node.
Your local Network Administrator should provide a reserved IP address
and netmask for this purpose.

Virtual Netmask This is a 32-bit mask used to divide a virtual IP address into subnets and
specify the network’s available hosts.

HA Reset This is the HA mechanism introduced in StorNext 4.0 to replace the

previous STONITH mechanism. Like STONITH, HA Reset also has two
nodes with one operating as primary or active node, and the other
operating as the secondary or standby node. The primary node can reset
itself on the hardware level. This new HA feature does not require a
power brick to reset a node.

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Preparing for HA Conversion

Preparing for HA Conversion

Before you convert to an HA system, you should assess your needs and
current configuration. At a minimum, both the primary and secondary
node should meet the minimum configuration requirements outlined in
the StorNext Installation Guide.
You will also need to reserve an IP address in your local domain for use
as the virtual IP addresses for using the HA cluster as a replication/
deduplication target, so obtain an IP address and netmask from your
network administrator.

Caution: Before you attempt this or any other major system

configuration change, you should make a complete backup
before proceeding.

Pre-Conversion Steps Before converting to HA, you should perform the following steps:
1 Identify two servers, which must have similar hardware running the
same version of Linux, and have identical LAN and SAN connectivity.
For example, on multiple Ethernet port connections, both systems
must be connected to the same Ethernet ports (eth0 on System A
and System B going LAN1, eht1 on System A and System B going to
LAN2, etc.)
2 Synchronize the clocks on both systems.
3 Install StorNext on both servers.
4 Enter StorNext license information on both server nodes.
5 Launch StorNext on one server.
6 Configure an unmanaged file system for use as the HA shared file
system. (For more information about creating a file system, see Step
4: File System.)

HA and Distributed LAN On a StorNext HA system using the StorNext Distributed LAN Client/
Clients Server (DLC) feature:

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Converting to HA

When configuring DLC Server on the MDCs of an HA cluster, it must be

configured by-hand on each MDC. Service will be lost when an HA
Reset occurs, so DLC clients should be configured to access the DLC file
systems through both MDCs.
This practice allows for the best and highest availability of the DLC
capability. Ideally, each node in the HA pair should have the same
number of NICs and be on the same networks. The dpserver
configuration should be done before converting an MDC pair into an HA
pair.

Converting to HA
This section describes the configuration steps necessary to convert a
node to a primary HA server. Converting to HA consists of selecting your
dedicated unmanaged StorNext file system for use as the controlling
shared file system, and then instructing StorNext to convert the node to
HA.

Note: The Convert menu option will be unavailable (grayed out)

on the Tools menu if you do not have a secondary system.
If you have not already done so, specify a secondary system
by using the Name Servers function. For more information,
see .Step 3: Name Servers on page 27.

Following are some other things you should be aware of concerning the
HA conversion process:
• The conversion process converts one node at a time. The second
node should be converted as soon as possible after the first node.
• StorNext operating files will be moved to the HaShared file system,
and this move cannot easily be reversed.
• Following conversion, the Primary server is identified by the vIP for
Replication/Deduplication.
• Replication/Deduplication policies must be changed to use the vIP:
• The global policy for each file system must use it as the “Address
for Replication and Deduplication”

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Converting to HA

• Replication policies must use it as the Target for Replication

Schedules
• If multilink is configured, the vIP address should be used.

HA Conversion Follow these steps to configure HA:

Procedure 1 Choose HA > Convert from the Tools menu. The Tools > HA
screen appears.

Figure 101 Tools > HA Screen

2 At the Shared File System field, select the shared file system you
want to convert to HA.
3 At the MDC Address field, select one IP address to be placed in the
ha_peer file for use in administrative operations between the
MDCs in the HA Cluster.
4 If your HA cluster also runs the blockpool, select Enable and then
enter the virtual IP address and virtual netmask. (Ask your network
administrator for the vIP address and netmask.)
5 Click Convert to convert the primary node to HA.

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Managing HA

6 Enter the IP address of the secondary system on the same LAN, and
then click Scan. The licenses will be populated for that secondary
system.
7 Click Convert to convert the secondary system.

Managing HA
The StorNext Manage HA screen is used to monitor the current statuses
of your primary and secondary servers.
The screen includes Enter Config Mode and Exit Config Mode buttons
to place the HA Cluster in a state that allows the Primary MDC to restart
CVFS and individual FSMs without incurring an HA Reset, failover of any
file systems, or transfer of Primary status to the peer MDC. This is
required for making certain types of configuration changes through the
GUI.
Follow these steps to lock the HA cluster and enter Config mode, and
subsequently to exit Config mode:
1 Choose HA > Manage from the Tools menu. The Manage HA
screen appears.

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HA Statuses and Reporting

Figure 102 Manage HA Screen

2 Click Enter Config Mode.

3 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
4 Click OK when a message informs you that the HA cluster was
successfully locked.
5 When you are ready to unlock the cluster and exit Config mode,
click Exit Config Mode.
6 When the confirmation message appears, click Yes to proceed or No
to abort.
7 Click OK when a message informs you that the HA cluster was
successfully unlocked.

HA Statuses and Reporting

StorNext does not currently have a report that monitors and tracks HA
activity. Also, because failover is an event and not an activity, HA status
is not recorded as a StorNext job.

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Troubleshooting HA

The best way to track HA status is through the HA Manage screen

previously described.

Troubleshooting HA
The Troubleshooting appendix in this guide contains simple
troubleshooting procedures pertaining to HA. For more information, see
Troubleshooting.

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Troubleshooting HA

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 Chapter 10
StorNext Reports

The Reports Menu contains the following options:

• Logs: Access logs of StorNext operations
• LAN Client Performance: View information about distributed LAN
clients and servers, including read and write speed
• Clients: View statistics for StorNext clients, including the number of
connected clients and distributed LAN clients, and client
performance
• File System: View file system statistics including active clients,
space, size, disks, and stripe groups
• Jobs: View a list of pending and completed jobs on the system
• SAN Devices: View information about devices currently attached to
your SAN, including disks/LUNs, libraries, and tape drives
• Replication/Deduplication
• Policy Activity: View replication and deduplication performance
statistics
• Policy Summary: View replication and deduplication
information for each policy
• Distributed Data Mover: View activity related to the Distributed
Data Mover feature.

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StorNext Logs

Report Navigation If a log or report spans more than one screen, navigation controls at the
Controls bottom of the screen allow you to select a page by number, or to view
one of these pages.

StorNext Logs
Report menu options enable you to access and view any of the
following types of logs:
• StorNext Logs: Logs about each configured file system
• File Manager Logs: Logs that track storage errors, etc. of the
Storage Manager
• Library Manager Logs: Logs that track library events and status
• Server Logs: Logs that record system messages
• StorNext Web Server Logs: Various logs related to the web server
• StorNext Database Logs: Logs that track changes to the internal
database

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StorNext Reports

Use the following procedure to access the StorNext log files. The process
is the same regardless of the type of log you are viewing.
8 Select Logs from the Reports menu. The Reports > Logs screen
appears.

Figure 103 Reports > Logs

Screen

9 On the left side of the screen, select the type of log you wish to
view.
10 If desired, select a file system different from the default one shown
beneath the log categories.
The log you selected automatically appears. (If the log does not
appear, click Refresh.) If the log spans more than one screen, use
the navigation controls at the bottom of the screen as described in
Report Navigation Controls on page 200.

StorNext Reports
The procedure for accessing StorNext reports is identical regardless of
the report name.

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StorNext Reports

The LAN Client The LAN Client Performance Report provides information about
Performance Report distributed LAN clients, including read and write speed.
Use the following procedure to run the LAN Client Performance Report.
1 Choose LAN Client Performance from the Reports menu. The
Reports > LAN Client Performance report appears.

Figure 104 LAN Client

Performance Report

The LAN Client Performance Report provides the following

information:
• File System: The name of the file system supporting the clients.
• Server: The name of the distributed LAN server on the indicated
file system.
• Client: The name of the distributed LAN client for the indicated
file system and distributed LAN server.
• Read Bytes: The number of bytes read by the distributed LAN
client.
• Write Bytes: The number of bytes written by the distributed
LAN client.
2 If desired, click Refresh to manually update (refresh) the report
data.

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3 Click Done when you are finished viewing the report.

The Clients Report The Clients Report provides statistics for StorNext clients, including the
number of StorNext SAN clients and distributed LAN clients, and client
performance.
Use the following procedure to run the Clients Report.
1 Choose Clients from the Reports menu. The Reports > Clients
report appears.

Figure 105 Clients Report

The Client Report provides the following information:

• File System: The name of the file system supporting the clients.
• Mounted on: The name of the file system mount point.
• Status: The file system's current status (Normal, Error, or
Warning)
• SAN Clients: The total number of physically connected StorNext
SAN clients, and the IP address of the current client.
• Distributed LAN Clients: The total number of StorNext
distributed LAN clients.

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• Distributed LAN Servers: The total number of distributed LAN

servers for the file system.
• Server: The names of the distributed LAN servers.
• Distributed LAN Clients: The names of distributed LAN clients.
• Listening Interface (IP:Port): The IP address and port
number through which the distributed LAN server
communicates with StorNext.
• TCP Window Size: The TCP window size (in KB) used by the
distributed LAN server. (Default: 64)
• Transfer Buffer Size: The transfer buffer size (in KB) used by
the distributed LAN server. A larger buffer may increase
performance for larger files. (Default: 256)
• Transfer Buffer Count: The number of transfer buffers used
by the distributed LAN server. This parameter is used only by
Windows servers and clients. Linux servers pass the value of
this parameter to Windows clients. (Default: 16)
• Server Buffer Count:
• Daemon Threads: The maximum number of daemon
threads used by the distributed LAN server. (Default: 8)
2 If desired, click Refresh to manually update (refresh) the report
data.
3 Click Done when you are finished viewing the report.

The File System Report The File System Report provides a list of parameters and statistics about
configured StorNext file systems.
Use the following procedure to run the File System Report.
1 Choose File System from the Reports menu. The Reports > File
System report appears.

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StorNext Reports

Figure 106 File System Report

The File System Report provides the following information about

your file systems.
• File System Name: The name of the file system
• Mount Point (“Mounted on”): The file system's mount point
location
• Status: The file system’s current status, indicated a green check
mark icon (Active), a yellow exclamation mark icon (Warning),
or a red X icon (Stopped).
2 When you finished viewing report information, click Done.

The Jobs Report The Jobs Report provides information about previously run jobs on your
file systems. Jobs include all actions performed for file systems, such as
make, stop, start, check, and so on. Use the navigation controls at the
bottom of the screen if there are multiple screens of jobs.
Use the following procedure to run the Jobs Report.
1 Choose Jobs from the Reports menu. The Reports > Jobs report
appears.

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StorNext Reports

Figure 107 Jobs Report

The Jobs Report includes the following information:

• ID: The job ID number.
• Job: The job name assigned by StorNext for the type of action
performed (for example, “FileSystem Make”).
• Attributes: The name of the related file system, mount point,
policy, etc. on which the job was performed. For example, if the
job was to start the file system, the name of that file system
appears in the Attributes column.
• User: The logged in user who initiated the job.
• Start and End Time: The times the job was started and ended.
• Status: The job's final or current status, such as Success or
Failure.

Viewing Detailed Job Information

To view detailed information about a specific job, select the desired job
and then click View to see the information on a new screen. When you
are finished viewing that job's information, click Done.

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Filter Options
The Status Filter at the bottom of the screen allows you to refine the
displayed list of jobs according to Success, Failure, Warning, Working,
Unknown, or All. Choose one of these criteria to restrict the displayed
list of jobs to your selection. After you select a Status Filter option, click
Refresh to resort and view the jobs list with your selected criteria.
The Type Filter works either together or separately from the Status
Filter. The Type Filter allows you to refine the displayed list of jobs
according to a specific job action:

All Tape Drive File System Start File System

Modify Metadump

Unknown Media Add File System Stop Cancel Request

Policy Add Media Delete File System System Service

Check Start

Policy Delete Media Modify File System System Service

Rename Stop

Policy Modify Media Move File System Convert to HA

Expand

Run Store Policy Media Remove File System Scan Store Files
For New Storage

Schedule Add Media Eject RAS Ticket Close Change File

Version

Schedule Delete Media Purge RAS Ticket Close Recover Files

All

Schedule Modify Media Mount RAS Ticket Recover

Analysis Update Directory

Schedule Reset Media Dismount Email Server Retrieve Files

Add

Storage Disk Media Reclassify Email Server Retrieve

Add Delete Directory

Storage Disk Media Assign to Email Server Truncate Files

Delete Policy Class Modify

Storage Disk Media Email Move Files

Modify Transcribe Notification Add

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File System Add Media State Email Modify File

Change Notification Attributes
Delete

File System Media Clean by Email Health Check

Delete Media ID Notification
Modify

File System Media Clean by NAS Share Add Capture State

Modify File System

File System Media Clean by NAS Share Add Drive Pool

Move Stripe Policy Class Delete
Groups

Library Add Media Import CIFS Shares Delete Drive

Mailbox Delete All Pool

Library Delete Media Import CIFS Windows Add Email

Bulk Load Domain Join Contact

Library Modify File System CIFS Windows Modify Email

Make Domain Leave Contact

Tape Drive Add File System CIFS Workgroup Delete Email

Mount User Add Contact

Tape Drive File System System Date/ System Backup

Delete Unmount Time Modify

Exiting the Jobs Report screen.

When you finished viewing the Jobs Report, click Done.

The SAN Devices Report The SAN Devices Report shows a list of details for all currently
configured devices attached to your SAN.
Use the following procedure to run the SAN Devices Report.
1 Choose SAN Devices from the Reports menu. The Reports > SAN
Devices report appears.

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Figure 108 SAN Devices Report

The SAN Devices Report provides the following information:

• Disks and LUNs
• Serial Number: The disk's or LUN's serial number or path
name.
• Type: The device type.
• Label: The label, if any, assigned to the device.
• Size: The total capacity for the device.
• Status: The device's current status. Statuses include:
• Used: Indicates whether the device is currently in use (true
or false).
• File System: The name of the file system with which the
device is associated.
• Libraries and Tapes Drives
• Serial Number: The serial number of the library or tape
drive.
• Product ID: The model number or product name of the
library or tape drive.
• Device Type: The type of device: Tape Library or Tape Drive.

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StorNext Reports

• Device Path: The path name for the device.

2 If desired, click Refresh to manually update (refresh) the report
data.

The Distributed Data The Distributed Data Mover Report shows a list of details pertaining to
Mover Report the Distributed Data Mover feature.
Use the following procedure to run the Distributed Data Mover Report.
1 Choose Distributed Data Mover from the Reports menu. The
Distributed Data Mover Report appears.

Figure 109 Distributed Data

Mover Report

The Distributed Data Mover Report provides the following

information:
• Host: The name of the machine on which the source data
resides.
• Request ID: The identification number for the move-data
request.
• Device Alias: The alias of the destination device to which data is
moved.

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Replication Deduplication Reports

• Run Time: The time the data movement occurred.

• Total Files: The total number of files moved.
• Files Copied: The total number of files copied in the move-data
process.
• Files Failed: The number of files that were not moved during
the move-data process
2 If desired, click Refresh to manually update (refresh) the report
data.
3 When you are finished viewing report information, click Done.

Replication Deduplication Reports

StorNext provides these reports that contain information pertaining to
replication and deduplication:
• Policy Activity: This report shows statistics related to replication
and deduplication. This report also provides statistics such as
savings realized by replication, and the current progress of ongoing
replications.
• Policy Summary: This report shows information about replication
storage policies created to support the data replication and
deduplication processes. This report also provides statistics such as
savings realized by replication, and the current progress of ongoing
replications.

Policy Activity Report Use the following procedure to run the Replication/ Deduplication Policy
Report.
1 Choose Replication/ Deduplication > Policy Activity from the
Reports menu. The Reports > Replication/ Deduplication >
Policy Activity report appears.

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Replication Deduplication Reports

Figure 110 Replication/

Deduplication Policy Activity
Report

The Replication/ Deduplication Policy Activity Report provides the

following information:
• Total Managed Data
• Source Directories: The number of source directories from
which StorNext checked for data to replicate.
• Replicated Bytes: The number of bytes of data replicated.
• Replicated Tags: The number of replication tags applied to files.
• Skipped Files: The number of files not included in the
replication process.
• Last Replication Complete: The date and time the last
replication was finished.
• Deduplication Activity
• Deduplicated Files: The number of files deduplicated.
• Deduplicated Bytes: The number of bytes of data
deduplicated.
• Size on Disk: The size (in bytes) of deduplicated data on disk.
• Network Sent: The number of bytes of deduplicated data sent
over the network.

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Replication Deduplication Reports

• Unique Files: The number of unique files included in the

deduplication process.
• Unique Bytes: The number of unique bytes included in the
deduplication process.
• Reclaimable Space: The amount of reclaimable space realized
by data deduplication.
• Network Received: The number of bytes of deduplicated data
received over the network.
• Data Savings: The percentage of data savings realized by data
deduplication.
2 If desired, click Refresh to manually update (refresh) the report
data.
3 To view a report showing replication policy summary information,
click Policy Summary.

Policy Summary Report Use the following procedure to run the Replication/ Deduplication Policy
Summary Report.
1 Choose Replication/ Deduplication > Policy Summary from the
Reports menu. The Reports > Replication/ Deduplication >
Policy Summary report appears.

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Replication Deduplication Reports

Figure 111 Replication/

Deduplication Policy Summary
Report

The Replication/ Deduplication Policy Summary Report provides the

following information:
• Policy: The name of the replication storage policy.
• File System: The name of the file system for which replication is
enabled.
• Source Directory: The name of the source directory from which
information is replicated.
• Replicated
• Directories: The number of replicated directories to date.
• Files: The number of replicated files to date.
• Skipped: The number of files skipped by the replication process.
• Bytes: The total number of data bytes replicated to date.
• Replication
• Average Rate: The approximate rate at which data was
replicated from the source to the target.
• Estimated Completion: The estimated time replication is
currently scheduled to complete.

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• Last Completed: The date and time the last replication was
finished.
• Network
• Sent: The amount of replicated data sent from the source.
• Received: The amount of replicated data received on the target.
2 To update report information, click Refresh.
3 To view details for a particular policy, select the desired policy and
then click Details.

Figure 112 Replication/

Deduplication Policy Details
Report

4 To view a report showing completed replication, click Completion

Report.

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Replication Deduplication Reports

Figure 113 Replication/

Deduplication Policy
Completion Report

5 To view the Policy Activity report, click Policy Activity.

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 Chapter 11
Customer Assistance

More information about this product is available on the Quantum

Service and Support website at www.quantum.com/ServiceandSupport.
The Quantum Service and Support website contains a collection of
information, including answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).
You can also access software, firmware, and drivers through this site.

Quantum Technical Assistance Center

For further assistance, or if training is desired, contact the Quantum
Technical Assistance Center:
North America 1+800-284-5101 Option 5

EMEA 00800 999 3822

Online Service and www.quantum.com/OSR

Support

Worldwide Web www.quantum.com/ServiceandSupport

(Local numbers for specific countries are listed on the Quantum Service
and Support Website.)

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Chapter 11: Customer Assistance
Quantum Technical Assistance Center

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 Appendix A
Operating Guidelines

This appendix contains information pertinent to operating StorNext, as

well as some operating guidelines and limitations you should consider.

The Reserved Space Parameter

As of StorNext 3.0, the method of accounting for reserved space has
changed. The MaxMBPerClientReserve parameter from the StorNext
file system configuration file (/usr/cvfs/config/*.cfg) has been
deprecated. All values except 0 are ignored for this parameter. In
addition, there is a new parameter, ReservedSpace.
The ReservedSpace parameter lets the administrator control the use
of delayed allocations on clients. ReservedSpace is a performance
feature that lets clients perform buffered writes on a file without first
obtaining real allocations from the metadata controller (MDC).
The ReservedSpace parameter can be set to Yes or No:
• Yes - (Default) The MDC reserves enough disk space so that delayed
allocations can be converted to real allocations (even when the MDC
is restarted and the client is not). The MDC reserves a minimum of
about 4GB for each stripe group and up to 280MBs per actively
writing client for each stripe group.

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Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
The Reserved Space Parameter

Note: The amount of reserved space is usually less than 280MB per
client. Reserved space is calculated as 110% of the buffer cache
size of each particular client. For example, a client with a 64MB
buffer cache is allocated 70MBs of reserved space by the MDC.
If the client closes all files that are open for write, the 70MBs of
space is no longer accounted for. It is important to remember
that reserved space is per stripe group.

• No - More disk space is available for use, but buffer cache

performance is affected, and fragmentation may occur.
If the MaxMBPerClientReserve parameter exists in the configuration
file and has a value of 0, ReservedSpace is set to No. Otherwise,
ReservedSpace defaults to Yes.

Note: In prior releases of StorNext, MaxMBPerClientReserve

defaulted to 100MBs, and reserved space was the product of
MaxMBPerClientReserve multiplied by MaxConnections –
1. In StorNext 3.0, the MDC tracks the actual amount of
reserved space that clients use but caps the value to about
280MBs per client.

In addition, the MDC maintains a “minimum level” of reserved

space. As a result, in some cases, more reserved space may be
visible. Reserved space appears as allocated disk space per data
stripe group.

The minimum reserved space is enough to accommodate 15

clients or MaxConnections – 1, whichever is lower. For
example, if a cluster has a MaxConnections of 3, the reserved
space total can be under 1GB.

Windows Configuration Beginning with StorNext 4.0, the configuration file for Windows is now
File Format in XML format. The Windows configuration file is now identified by a
.cfgx extension rather than .cfg for UNIX systems.
There are some differences between the XML and .cfg formats.
Specifically, the Reserved Space parameter is called reservedSpace in
the XML format, and its value must be either true or false.

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 Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
Distributed LAN Server/Client Network and Memory Tuning

For additional information and examples of both configuration file

formats, see the StorNext Installation Guide.

Distributed LAN Server/Client Network and Memory

Tuning
Using the Distributed LAN Server and Client feature places significant
additional demands on network capacity and system memory. Before
creating and using a Distributed LAN Server and Client, review the
following information:
• Distributed LAN Server and Client Network Tuning
• Distributed LAN Server Memory Tuning

Note: For additional information about Distributed LAN Client and

server performance tuning, see the StorNext File System Tuning
Guide.

Distributed LAN Server Due to significant demands placed on the network, the following
and Client Network network issues can occur when using Distributed LAN Servers and
Tuning clients:
• Configuring Dual NICs. If the Distributed LAN Server has two network
interface cards (NICs), each card must have a different address and
reside on a different subnet. In addition, to take advantage of a
second NIC in a Distributed LAN Server, the Distributed LAN Clients
must also have a second connected network interface.
• Dropped Packets. Some Ethernet switches may be unable to
accommodate the increased throughput demands required by the
Distributed LAN Server and client feature, and will drop packets.
This causes TCP retransmissions, resulting in a significant
performance loss. On Linux, this can be observed as an increase in
the Segments Retransmitted count in netstat -s output during
Distributed LAN Client write operations and Distributed LAN Server
read operations.

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Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
Distributed LAN Server/Client Network and Memory Tuning

To address this issue, edit the /usr/cvfs/config/dpserver configuration

file and reduce the Distributed LAN Server TCP window size from the
default value. (Remount the file system after making changes.) This
may reduce the amount of packet loss. However, some Ethernet
switches are unable to accommodate true GigE bandwidth,
especially when multiple ports are transmitting data at the same
time.
• Linux Network Drivers. For best performance and compatibility,
update Intel e1000 drivers to the latest version.
In some cases, enabling TCP offload can cause issues. (Identify these
issues by examining netstat -s output for bad segments.) If
necessary, use ethtool -K to disable the offload of checksum
calculations.
On some Linux 2.6 versions running on x86 64-bit systems, a
console message regarding noirq handler may appear followed
by a hard system hang. This is due to a bug in the kernel. To avoid
this error, disable the irqbalance service.
• Mismatched Server Configuration. Introducing a slower server onto
the network reduces overall throughput. This is because the slower
server receives some traffic from all clients. For example, adding a
server with one NIC in a network where other servers have two NICs,
or adding a server with less disk bandwidth or a bad network
connection, reduces throughput for the entire network.

Note: On Linux, use ping and the cvadmin latency test tools to
identify network connectivity or reliability problems. In
addition, use the netperf tool to identify bandwidth
limitations or problems.

On Windows, use the Networking tab of Windows Task Manager

to view network utilization.

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 Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
Distributed LAN Server/Client Network and Memory Tuning

Distributed LAN Server The minimum amount of memory required for a Distributed LAN Server
Memory Tuning depends on the configuration.
• Windows. For a Windows Distributed LAN Server, use the following
formula:
Required memory = 1GB +
(# of file systems served
* # of NICs per Distributed LAN Client
* # of Distributed LAN Clients
* transfer buffer count
* transfer buffer size)
For example, suppose a Windows Distributed LAN Server is serving
four file systems to 64 clients each using two NICs for data traffic.
Also assume the server uses the defaults of sixteen transfer buffers
and 256K per buffer. (On Windows, you can view and adjust the
transfer buffer settings using the Client Configuration tool’s
Distributed LAN tab.) Given this configuration, here is the result:
Required memory = 1GB + (4 * 2 * 64 * 16 * 256K) = 3GB

Note: This example assumes that a 64-bit version of Windows is

being used on the Server. 32-bit Windows Distributed LAN
Servers are restricted to small configurations using 16 or fewer
connections.

If not all clients mount all of the file systems, the memory
requirement is reduced accordingly. For example, suppose in the
previous example that half of the 64 LAN clients mount three of the
four file systems, and the other half of the LAN clients mount the
remaining file system. Given this configuration, here is the result:
Required memory = 1GB + (3 * 2 * 32 * 16 * 256K) + (1 * 2 * 32 *
16 * 256K) = 1GB + 768MB + 256MB = 2GB
The calculation also changes when the number of NICs used for
data traffic varies across clients. For example, in the previous
example if the clients that mount only one file system each use
three NICs for data instead of two, here is the result:
Required memory = 1GB + (3 * 2 * 32 * 16 * 256K) + (1 * 3 * 32 *
16 * 256K) = 1GB + 768MB + 384K = 2176MB

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Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
Configuring LDAP

• Linux. For a Linux Distributed LAN Server, use the following formula:
Required memory = 1GB +
(# of file systems served
* # of NICs on the Distributed LAN Server used for
Distributed LAN traffic
* server buffer count
* transfer buffer size)
For example, consider a Linux Distributed LAN Server that has two
NICs used for Distributed LAN traffic, serves four file systems, and
uses the default eight server buffers and 256K per buffer. (See the
dpserver and sndpscfg man pages for information about viewing
and modifying Distributed LAN buffer settings on Linux.) For this
case:
Required memory = 1GB + (4 * 2 * 8 * 256K) = 1040MB

Note: This example results in a memory requirement of less than 2GB.

However, Quantum recommends that all Distributed LAN
Servers contain a minimum of 2GB of RAM.

Configuring LDAP
This sections describes how to configure the StorNext LDAP functionality
and describes related features in the Windows configuration utilities.

Using LDAP StorNext 2.7 introduced support for Light Directory Access Protocol, or
LDAP (RFC 2307). This feature allows customers to use Active Directory/
LDAP for mapping Windows User IDs (SIDs) to UNIX User ID/Group IDs.

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Configuring LDAP

Changes to “Nobody” mapping

If a Windows user cannot be mapped to a UNIX ID, the user is mapped
to Nobody. StorNext allows administrators to change the value of
Nobody by using the file system configuration parameters:
UnixNobodyUidOnWindows 60001
UnixNobodyGidOnWindows 60001
These parameters are located in the file system configuration file on the
server and can be manually modified by the Windows or StorNext Web
GUI.

Note: Compatible Active Directory servers include Windows 2003

Server SP1 (with the Windows Services for Unix 3.5 extended
LDAP schema applied,) and Windows 2003 Server R2.

Note: Compatible Active Directory servers include Windows 2003

Server SP1 (with the Windows Services for Unix 3.5 extended
LDAP schema applied,) and Windows 2003 Server R2.

UNIX File and Directory When a file or directory is created on Windows, the UNIX modes are
Modes controlled by the following file system configuration parameters:
UnixDirectoryCreationModeOnWindowsDefault 0755
UnixFileCreationModeOnWindowsDefault 0644
StorNext allows one set of values for all users of each file system.

Note: Administrators can manually change these values in the file

system configuration file on the server or use the Windows or
Web GUI.

LDAP Refresh Timeout Due to the implementation of the Windows Active Directory user
mappings, services for UNIX can take up to 10 minutes to be
propagated to StorNext clients.

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Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
Setting Up Restrictive ACLs

Setting Up Restrictive ACLs

When setting up restrictive ACLs on a SNFS file system, it is important to
understand how SNFS system services are run, especially the account
under which the services are run. The Windows default account is the
local administrator account, but this can be changed on the Properties
tab of each system service.
When sharing restricted file systems, the account under which SNFS
system services are run must be included in the ACL for the root of the
file system and all other shares associated with the SNFS file system.
Doing this allows the shares to be re-shared upon reboot.

Default Single-Path I/O Retry Behavior

The I/O retry behavior has changed as of StorNext 3.1.2. In prior
releases, when only a single path to the storage existed and an I/O error
was returned by the disk device driver, StorNext failed the I/O operation.
Beginning with version 3.1.2, by default StorNext continuously retries I/
O operations until they succeed, regardless of the number of I/O paths.
If desired, you can override this new behavior by using the new I/O Retry
Time feature. For additional information about I/O Retry Time, consult
the mount_cvfs man page or the Windows help file.

Event Handles for fsm.exe on a Windows Metadata

Server
The metadata server (FSM) has many data structures that are used
internally. Each of the data structures has some locks
(pthread_mutex_lock). Each lock is initialized as “uninitialized.”
The first time the lock is used, a small amount of memory and an event
(i.e., handle) are allocated. The memory and event/handle are retained

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 Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
FSBlockSize, Metadata Disk Size, and JournalSize Settings

by the system until the data structure is destroyed. Some locks that are
part of structures are seldom used, and exist for rare conditions. If the
lock is not used, the memory/event for that structure will never be
allocated.
Some data structures are not destroyed during the life of the FSM. These
include in-memory inodes and buffers and others.
When the system starts, handle use is minimal. After the FSM has been
up for a while, the handle count increases as the inode and buffer cache
are used. After a while, the system stabilizes at some number of
handles. This occurs after all inodes and buffers have been used.
The maximum number of used handles can be reduced by shrinking the
inode and/or buffer cache. However, changing these variables could
significantly reduce system performance.

FSBlockSize, Metadata Disk Size, and JournalSize

Settings
The FsBlockSize (FSB), metadata disk size, and JournalSize
settings all work together. For example, the FsBlockSize must be set
correctly in order for the metadata sizing to be correct. JournalSize
is also dependent on the FsBlockSize.

Note: In the Windows XML format configuration file, the FS block

size parameter is called fsBlockSize. Regardless of the
difference in parameter names (fsBlockSize and
FSBlockSize) used in the Windows and UNIX configuration
files, the requirements are identical for Windows and UNIX
systems.

For FsBlockSize the optimal settings for both performance and space
utilization are in the range of 16K or 64K.
Settings greater than 64K are not recommended because performance
will be adversely impacted due to inefficient metadata I/O operations.
Values less than 16K are not recommended in most scenarios because
startup and failover time may be adversely impacted. Setting

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Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
FSBlockSize, Metadata Disk Size, and JournalSize Settings

FsBlockSize (FSB) to higher values is important for multi terabyte file

systems for optimal startup and failover time.

Note: This is particularly true for slow CPU clock speed metadata
servers such as Sparc. However, values greater than 16K can
severely consume metadata space in cases where the file-to-
directory ratio is low (e.g., less than 100 to 1).

For metadata disk size, you must have a minimum of 25 GB, with more
space allocated depending on the number of files per directory and the
size of your file system.
The following table shows suggested FsBlockSize (FSB) settings and
metadata disk space based on the average number of files per directory
and file system size. The amount of disk space listed for metadata is in
addition to the 25 GB minimum amount. Use this table to determine the
setting for your configuration.

Average No.
of Files Per File System Size: Less File System Size: 10TB
Directory Than 10TB or Larger

Less than 10 FSB: 16KB FSB: 64KB

Metadata: 32 GB per 1M Metadata: 128 GB per
files 1M files

10-100 FSB: 16KB FSB: 64KB

Metadata: 8 GB per 1M Metadata: 32 GB per 1M
files files

100-1000 FSB: 64KB FSB: 64KB

Metadata: 8 GB per 1M Metadata: 8 GB per 1M
files files

1000 + FSB: 64KB FSB: 64KB

Metadata: 4 GB per 1M Metadata: 4 GB per 1M
files files

The best rule of thumb is to use a 16K FsBlockSize unless other

requirements such as directory ratio dictate otherwise.
This setting is not adjustable after initial file system creation, so it is very
important to give it careful consideration during initial configuration.
Example: FsBlockSize 16K

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 Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
Disk Naming Requirements

JournalSize Setting
The optimal settings for JournalSize are in the range between 16M
and 64M, depending on the FsBlockSize. Avoid values greater than
64M due to potentially severe impacts on startup and failover times.
Values at the higher end of the 16M-64M range may improve
performance of metadata operations in some cases, although at the
cost of slower startup and failover time. New file systems must have a
journal size of at least 1024 times the fsBlockSize.

Note: In the Windows XML format configuration file, the journal size
parameter is called journalSize. Regardless of the difference
in parameter names (journalSize and JournalSize) used
in the Windows and UNIX configuration files, the requirements
are identical for Windows and UNIX systems.

The following table shows recommended settings. Choose the setting

that corresponds to your configuration.

FsBlockSize JournalSize

16KB 16MB

64KB 64MB

This setting is adjustable using the cvupdatefs utility. For more

information, see the cvupdatefs man page.
Example: JournalSize 16M

Disk Naming Requirements

When naming disks, names should be unique across all SANs. If a client
connects to more than one SAN, a conflict will arise if the client sees
two disks with the same name.

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Appendix A: Operating Guidelines
General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Table 1 lists updated information and guidelines for running StorNext,
as well as known limitations.

Table 1 Operating Guidelines

and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

HA configurations In HA (high availability) configurations, you cannot run adic_control

start on the standby server. Doing so may start StorNext Storage Manager
components on the standby server which are already running on the
primary server, and may result in database corruption.

Linux Linux Distributed Gateway (Proxy Server) Restrictions:

The dpserver file, used to configure network interfaces and addresses for
Distributed Gateways, has a counter-intuitive restriction. If an interface has
more than one address, an address must be specified in the dpserver file.
However, if the interface has only one address, an address cannot be
specified or the mount command will fail.

All UNIX and Linux The swapon command does not work on StorNext file systems. The Linux/
Unix swapon command is used to specify devices on which paging and
swapping take place. If swapon is run on a StorNext file system, the
command fails with an invalid argument error.

In a file system configuration file, if the Metadata parameter for a stripe

group was set to Yes when the file system was created, do not later change
the parameter to No. Doing so will cause the metadata to become
inaccessible and result in errors. Also, if the parameter is changed to No, the
cvupdatefs command might allow bandwidth expansion of the stripe
group, resulting in metadata corruption.

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

Solaris On Solaris, by default, the /usr/lib/fs/nfs/nfsfind script is run nightly by the

cron daemon. This script contains a find command that traverses any
local file system that is exported (shared) via NFS. If the running of this
script is interfering with the performance of processes accessing StorNext
file systems, it can be modified to skip them. To do so, add the following
line to the find command in the script:
'(' -type d -fstype cvfs -prune ')' -o
The final find command should look like this:
find $dir '(' -type d -fstype cvfs -prune ')' -o -type f -name .nfs\* -mtime +7 -
mount -exec rm -f {} \;

The Solaris Security Toolkit, formally known as JASS, causes the following
two issues:
• It disables RPC by renaming the RPC startup script, disrupting the
StorNext interprocess communication. To fix the communication
problem, rename the RPC startup script in /etc/init.d from rpc.<illegal
extension> to rpc.
• It turns on IPSec, causing numerous warning messages in the system log
file. Either disable IPSec by removing the IPSec startup file in /etc/init.d or
contact Sun Technical Support to find out how to reconfigure IPSec to
ignore local loopback connections.

Windows Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) supports only NTFS for NFS exports.
Because of this limitation, a Windows system cannot act as an NFS server
for StorNext File System.

On Windows systems, StorNext may log error messages after reboot if it

tries to start before some other services. For example, if the network is not
yet available, a StorNext client cannot contact a StorNext server and posts
an error in the logs. (The client will continue to retry the connection until it
is successful.)
To prevent this from occurring, make the startup of StorNext services
dependant on another Windows service (for example, the Workstation
service). For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article
Q193888, “How to delay loading of specific services.”

Windows-based SNFS clients do not support symbolic links that point to a

file system outside of SNFS. Symbolic links are created either by a UNIX/
Linux client or by a Windows client (and are referred to as junctions).

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

Windows Virus-checking software can severely degrade the performance of any file
system, including SNFS. If you have anti-virus software running on a
Windows Server 2003 or Windows machine, Quantum recommends
configuring the software so that it does NOT check SNFS.

For best performance and reliability, Quantum recommends running

Distributed LAN Servers on 64-bit versions of Windows (or on Linux).
Memory management limitations in 32-bit versions of Windows affect
Distributed LAN Server performance. Due to these limitations, Distributed
LAN Servers running on 32-bit versions of Windows are limited to 16
connections.
(Each file system and network interface represents a connection. For
example, if a Distributed LAN Server with 2 NICs serves 4 file systems to 4
Distributed LAN Clients, it has a total of 32 connections.)

Do not use Windows Backup (the application included with Windows

operating systems) to back up the directory on which a StorNext file system
is mounted.

As of StorNext release 3.5 the Authentication tab has been removed from
the Windows Configuration utility. (For several previous StorNext releases a
messaged warned that this tab would be removed in an upcoming release:
“WARNING: Active Directory will be the only mapping method supported in
a future release. This dialog will be deprecated.”)

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

Windows If you are using the StorNext client software with Windows Server 2003,
Windows XP, or Windows Vista, turn off the Recycle Bin in the StorNext file
systems mapped on the Windows machine, so the file systems will work
properly.
You must disable the Recycle Bin for the directory on which a StorNext file
system is mounted. You must also be sure to disable the Recycle Bin on
directories you have remapped. For example, if you mount a file system on
E: (and disable the Recycle Bin for that directory) and then remap the file
system to F:, you must then disable the Recycle Bin on the F: directory.
For Windows 2003 or Windows XP:
1 On the Windows client machine, right-click the Recycle Bin icon
on the desktop and then click Properties.
2 Click Global.
3 Click Configure drives independently.
4 Click the Local Disk tab that corresponds to the mapped file
system.
5 Select the Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files
immediately when deleted check box.
6 Click Apply, and then click OK.
For Windows Vista:
1 On the Windows client machine, right-click the Recycle Bin icon
on the desktop and then click Properties.
2 Click the General tab.
3 Click the mapped drive that corresponds to the StorNext mapped file
system.
4 Select the Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files
immediately when deleted check box.
5 Click Apply, and then click OK.

All To avoid parser errors, do not use “up” or “down” when naming items in
the configuration file. This applies especially to naming affinities or any
other string-type keyword. (This restriction does not apply to the Windows
XML format configuration file.)

StorNext file systems cannot be smaller than 5GB (unless the

reservedSpace parameter is set to false).

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

All Be aware of the following limitations regarding file systems and stripe
groups:
• The maximum number of disks per file system is 512
• The maximum number of disks per data stripe group is 128
• The maximum number of stripe groups per file system is 256
• The maximum number of tape drives is 256

To prevent data loss and aid disaster recovery, Quantum recommends

adjusting policy settings to retain two copies of critical data. In addition,
data stored to a storage disk should be stored on RAID (or, if only one copy
is retained, the RAID should be mirrored). This way, in the event of a disk
failure, no data is lost.

StorNext File System is incompatible with third-party portmappers.

Hot re-zoning of SAN fabrics is not supported.

The Move Stripe Group Data feature (part of Dynamic Resource Allocation)
does not support moving sparse files. Sparse files are files that lack on-disk
allocations for some of the data within the data range indicated by the size
of the file.
A stripe group is defragmented as part of the data moving process. Because
defragmenting a sparse file would make it unsparce (and increase disk
usage), snfsdefrag skips sparse files when defragmenting. Therefore, all
existing sparse files remain on the original stripe group after moving of
other files is complete.

As an example, the gnu “cp” command uses a heuristic to attempt

maintaining the “sparseness” of a file.
Because the file system in question has already had the source stripe group
marked read-only, the “cp” command has no choice but to move the file off
of the original stripe group.

Clients outside a NAT firewall can no longer access a metadata controller

inside the firewall.
Support for client access through non-NAT firewalls continues to be
supported via the fsports configuration file.

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

All If you have configured custom mount options in the /etc/fstab file other
than rw and diskproxy, if you subsequently add or remove the disk proxy
settings using the StorNext GUI, any custom mount options will be lost.
(Settings are added or removed in the StorNext GUI by navigating to the
SNFS home page and then choosing Filesystems > Modify from the Config
menu.)

In StorNext 3.0, the buffercachemin and buffercachemax parameters

are deprecated and are replaced by buffercachecap.
Also, in the Client Configuration Windows utility, the Buffer Cache Min and
Buffer Cache Max settings are replaced by Buffer Cache Cap. The Non-Paged
Pool Percentage setting has been removed.

In StorNext 3.0, the default buffer cache settings have been modified.
Previously, all reads/writes that were 64K or smaller went through the buffer
cache while larger I/O requests went direct. In StorNext 3.0, read/writes that
are 1MB or smaller go through the buffer cache, while larger I/O requests
go direct.
The new buffer cache settings may change the I/O behavior of some
applications. For example, on managed servers, I/O to and from tape now
goes through the buffer cache. To revert to the settings used in previous
releases, change the following mount options on StorNext clients:
auto_dma_read_length=65537
auto_dma_write_length=65537

In StorNext 3.0, obsolete methods of specifying FSS addresses are no longer

supported.
If the fsroutes configuration file is present, it is ignored and a warning is
generated. In addition, the FSM address field for each entry in the fsmlist
configuration file (the second column) is no longer supported and is
ignored if present. If the priority field (the third column) is specified, then a
period (.) must be used to take the place of the second column.
The correct way to specify the metadata network for a cluster is through the
addresses in the fsnameservers configuration file. If the address of a name
server in fsnameservers is on network <x>, then network <x> will be used as
a metadata network.

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

All Don't run multiple copies of fsqueue

The fsqueue command checks the request queue and displays status on
requests awaiting resources.
Care should be taken to execute only one fsqueue process at a time.
Invoking multiple simultaneous instances of fsqueue can consume system
resources.
The fsqueue process may take some time to complete if the file system
contains large directories. Invoking fsqueue directly from a cron job
frequently can result in multiple copies of fsqueue to be running at the
same time. To run fsqueue from a cron job, wrap it in a shell script that
checks to see if it is already running.

As a result of log rolling changes in StorNext 3.0, logs are now rolled every 6
hours. For each log, 28 instances (7 days of logs) are retained. Log instances
are retained in the same directory as the original log.
All log files which are rolled are affected by this change, including TSM logs
(tac_00, bp_*.log, hist_01, etc.), MSM logs (tac_00, hist_01, etc.),
and any other components configured for rolling. The <component>/config/
filelist file contains roll_log entries that determine which files are rolled
(where <component> is /usr/adic/TSM, /usr/adic/MSM/, etc.).

The StorNext Library Space Used Report (accessible from the StorNext home
page by choosing Library Space from the Reports menu,) shows the
amount of nearline space used.
The nearline space amount does not include dead space, but does include
the following:
• All used space on all media in all libraries except vaults
• All space used by files that were put on a storage disk or deduplicated
storage disk

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

Operating System /
Affected Component Description

All As of SNFS 2.7, a change was made to the way that the Reserved Extents
performance feature affects free space reporting. In the previous release,
SNFS would reserve a certain amount of disk space which would cause
applications to receive an out of space error before the disk capacity
reached 100%.
In the current release, this reserved space is treated as allocated space. This
allows applications to perform allocations until the file system is nearly full.
NOTE: Due to allocation rounding, applications may still receive a
premature out of space error, but only when there are just a few
megabytes of space remaining. In the worst case, the error will be returned
when the reported remaining space is:
(InodeExpandMax * #-of-data-stripe-groups)
One side effect of this change is that after creating a new file system, df
will show that space has been used, even though no user data has been
allocated.
The amount of reserved space varies according to client use but does not go
below a “floor” of a few gigabytes per data stripe group. The amount of
reserved space at any time can be seen using the cvadmin command,
selecting the file system, and using show long.
While not recommended, the Reserved Extents feature can be disabled by
applying the following setting to the Globals section of the FSM
configuration file:
ReservedSpace No
This will cause the file system to not reserve space for buffered I/O, thereby
reducing buffer cache performance and possibly causing severe
fragmentation.
For more information, see The Reserved Space Parameter on page 219 and
the cvfs_config(4) man page.

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General Operating Guidelines and Limitations

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 Appendix B
Replication and
Deduplication

This appendix contains detailed information about how replication and

deduplication work, and about the underlying processes.

Replication Configuration File

StorNext includes a configuration file called snpolicyd.conf located
at /usr/cvfs/config/snpolicyd.conf.
The snpolicyd.conf file provides a way to configure the snpolicyd
process, which handles most aspects of StorNext replication and
deduplication.
The man page for snpolicyd.conf contains detailed syntax,
examples and instructions for modifying this file.
The remaining sections in this appendix also make reference to this file.

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Appendix B: Replication and Deduplication
Replication Terminology and Conventions

Replication Terminology and Conventions

StorNext has two kinds of policy:
• Storage Manager (SM) policies
• Replication/Deduplication policies.
For the sake of simplicity, in this appendix Replication/Deduplication
policies will called "snpolicyd" policies. Snpolicyd is the name of the
Linux daemon that interprets and acts upon the policies.
StorNext users often talk about Storage Manager storing files to tape or
retrieving files from tape, but Storage Manager can also use storage
disk (called SDISK in SM) for storing files. In this appendix when we
mention writing to or reading from tape, it includes using SDISK.

Copies and Versions

It’s important to understand what "copies of a file or directory" means.
There are several meanings, and this section attempts to clarify where
StorNext supports additional copies and versions of a file or directory.
Context 1: "Number of copies to keep on target" is one property of an
snpolicyd policy. This parameter specifies the number of replicated
directories to keep on the target file system for a source directory.
Remember, the replication process involves replicating a source
directory and all of files and subdirectories that it contains. You can
create from 1 to 16 target directories, depending on the "Number of
copies to keep on target". Number of copies in this context means the
number of target directory instances. By default, the different
directories are differentiated by names like dir, dir.1, dir.2, and so
on.
Context 2: Number of target files systems for an snpolicyd replication
source policy. When configuring replication, you can specify up to three
target file systems. For example, you could specify file system /
stornext/bk on machine hist1, and file systems /snfs/backup
and /snfs/dr on machine host2. Each of these directories can be a
target of a replication source directory. The replication process is not

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 Appendix B: Replication and Deduplication
Replication Target Directories

complete until each of the three target file system targets have been
completely made.
If a replication source policy specified 10 for the "Number of copies to
keep on target" and specified 3 target file systems, you would eventually
have 30 replication directories: 3 after the first replication, 6 after the
second replication, etc.
Context 3: Storage Manager number of copies. Storage Manager stores
1 through 4 copies of a file. The number of files is configured under the
Steering tab when editing or creating a Storage Manager storage policy.
(Actually, 4 is the default maximum number of copies. The number can
be larger than 4.) Each of these copies is a copy of the same file
contents.
Context 4: Storage Manager version. Versions refer to changed
contents of the same file. By default, Storage Manager keeps ten
versions of a file. Unlike Storage Manager copies, Storage Manager
versions refers to different file contents. If there is a file called "log" that
changes every day, and Storage Manager stores "log" every day, after
ten days there would be ten versions of "log". The fsversion
command is used to examine and change the Storage Manager versions
of a file.
Context 5: Storage Manager File Recovery. When a file is removed from
a Storage Manager relation point, the previous copies stored by Storage
Manager are still on media and in the SM database. These previous
versions may be recovered using the fsrecover command. There is no
a limit to the number of SM instances which can be recovered in this
manner. Eventually the administrator may use the fsclean command
to clean up older versions of SM media. After running fsclean, files
that used to reside on the media can no longer be recovered with the
fsrecover command.

Replication Target Directories

Replication results in a directory on the target that represents the files
that were in the source directory at the time of the replication. The
source and target directories could be on the same machine (node) or
different machines. Also, StorNext can replicate either deduplicated
data or non-deduplicated data.

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Appendix B: Replication and Deduplication
Replication Target Directories

Number of Replication When a source directory is replicated to a target there can be from 1
Copies through 16 replicated target directories that reflect replications of the
source at different times. The number of copies is specified by the
"Copies to Keep on Target" parameter on the Inbound Replication tab or
Outbound Replication tab. You enter parameters on these tabs when
configuring a snpolicyd storage policy.
The "Copies to Keep on Target" selection allows values of 1 through 16,
and also a special case called in-place. We will not discuss the in-place
selection in this section.
First, let’s consider the case where "Copies to Keep on Target" is 2. Each
time a replication occurs a new target directory is created. This target
directory might have the same name as the previous target directory,
but it is actually a new directory. The new directory reflects files added,
deleted, and changed since the previous replication.
It is important to understand that in this example the target is a new
directory. This has implications that might not be immediately obvious.
For one thing, it means we cannot use the target directory in exactly the
same way as we might use the source directory. Following is an
explanation and examples.

Example: Copies on Target = 2

In this example, we replicate source directory /stornext/snfs1/
photos, a directory in file system /stornext/snfs1, to a target
directory /stornext/backup/photos in file system /stornext/
backup. (For this example it doesn’t matter whether the two file
systems are on the same node machine or on different machines.) Since
we are keeping two copies on the target, we will usually have two
directories on the target:
• /stornext/backup/photos - most recent replication
• /stornext/backup/photos.1 - previous replication
When the next replication occurs, the following directory changes Take
place:
• The previous replication /stornext/backup/photos.1 is
removed
• The most recent replication /stornext/backup/photos is
renamed /stornext/backup/photos.1
• The new replication appears in /stornext/backup/photos

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Replication Target Directories

Now consider a Linux shell process that is executing inside directory /

stornext/backup/photos. When the next replication occurs, the
directory still exists but is named /stornext/backup/photos.1. If
the Linux shell executes the command ls -l, the ls command lists the
previous contents of photos - the directory now named photos.1.
When the replication after that occurs, the original directory is removed.
When the shell executes ls -l, the command shows no files since the
original directory and its contents have been removed.
Thus, a process executing inside a replication directory may see files in
the directory at one time and see no files a while later. This is different
behavior than we would expect to see when a process is executing
inside the original source directory.
Similar surprising behavior occurs if the replicated directory is NFS
exported or Samba/CIFS shared. Suppose directory /stornext/
backup/photos is NFS exported on the target machine. The directory
can be NFS mounted on another Linux or Unix machine. The mounted
NFS file system can generate errors (input/output error, stale NFS file
handle) on the client when the original directory changes due to
replication.
The bottom line is that you must be aware that changes occur with the
replicated directory. The replicated directory should not be used as a
substitute for the original source directory unless you take precautions
to isolate the application from unexpected changes.

Isolating a Replication To isolate a replication target directory, use the snpolicy command’s
Target Directory -exportrepcopy option. This operation is available only from the
command line, not from the StorNext GUI.
First, use the -listrepcopies option on the target node to determine
the association between the target copy number and the target
directory to use. The -listrepcopies output provides the "key" value
for the policy used to implement this replication. For example, if the
target file system is /snfs/rep, use the command:
/usr/cvfs/bin/snpolicy -listrepcopies=/snfs/rep
Here is the relevant part of the command output:
source://snfs/[email protected]:/project?key=402 ->
target://snfs/rep@node2:?key=406

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Replication Target Directories

0 -> /snfs/rep/project
1 -> /snfs/rep/project.1
2 -> /snfs/rep/project.2
3 -> /snfs/rep/project.3
The copy number appears in the left column, and the realization
directory for that copy number is shown after the "->".
There are two "keys" shown in the sample output. The first key (402) is
the key value for the source policy controlling the replication. The
second key value (406) controls the replication realization of the target.
Let's say you want to copy files back from /snfs/rep/project.2. To
isolate /snfs/rep/project.2 you would use this command:
/usr/cvfs/bin/snpolicy -exportrepcopy=/snfs/rep/ --
key=406 -copy=2 --path /snfs/rep/project_temp
This command renames the directory /snfs/rep/project.2 to /
snfs/rep/project_temp and prevents the policy daemon from
affecting this directory, in case replications for this target policy become
activated again during the recovery process.
The -path argument is optional: you can do only the exportrepcopy
operation and use the directory name /snfs/rep/project.2 when
recovering replicated files.
The point of this is that using the -exportrepcopy option allows you
to use the directory without having to worry about it changing, or files
disappearing as you do your work.
Once a directory has been isolated in this manner, it can then be
transformed into a replication source directory for rereplication to
another file system and/or machine.

Final Recommendation You should not change the contents of a replication target directory. It
For Target Directories should be treated as a "read-only" replica, even though StorNext does
not enforce a read-only restriction.
If you change a file in a replication target directory you may be
changing the file contents in other target directories due to the "hard-
link" usage in replication. Furthermore, if you change or add files in a
directory, that directory may disappear due to subsequent replications.
(Using exportrepcopy avoids this second issue.)

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 Appendix B: Replication and Deduplication
StorNext snpolicyd Policies

What if you want to change an existing source directory into a target

directory? This can be done, but without special configuration care the
original source policy assignment will be lost. A directory can have only
one snpolicyd policy assigned to it (and all of the files and subdirectories
it contains.) If you change the policy assignment, the characteristics
specified in the previous policy are forgotten.

StorNext snpolicyd Policies

You can create and edit StorNext snpolicyd policies from the StorNext
GUI or with the snpolicy command. These snpolicyd policies differ
from StorNext Storage Manager (SM) policies in several respects.
Following is a summary of some of the similarities and differences
between these two kinds of policies.

Storage Policy Option Storage Manager Policy snpolicyd Policy

Configurable via the StorNExt Yes. Select the Storage Policy Yes. Select the Storage Policy
GUI? menu’s Storage Manager menu’s Replication /
option. Deduplication option.

Configurable via the command Yes. Use fs commands such as Yes. Use the snpolicy
line? fsaddclass and command.
fsmodclass

Where are policy internals In Storage Manager Database. In the managed file system, in
stored? One database per machine. a private directory.

Is the policy used across file Yes. One policy can be used in No. Policies apply to one file
systems? multiple directories and system, but can be applied to
multiple file systems. multiple directories.

Functions? Store (to tape or SDISK), Deduplicate, replicate,

retrieve, truncate files. truncate files.

How are truncated files The entire file must be Only portions of the file
retrieved? retrieved. containing needed regions
may be retrieved.

Schedules? fspolicy / schedules stored in Linux crontab scheduling.

Database.

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StorNext snpolicyd Policies

Storage Policy Option Storage Manager Policy snpolicyd Policy

Management daemon? multiple fs_... processes snpolicyd

Previous file versions Yes. Recover previous tape Yes. Previous replicated copies
recoverable? version with the fsrecover can be kept in previous
command. Up to 10 tape replication directories. Up to
versions. 16.

Example
You create an snpolicyd policy with the StorNext GUI or with the
snpolicy command. The snpolicy command is in directory /usr/
cvfs/bin. Command line configuration must be done by the Linux
root user.
Suppose you create directory /stornext/snfs1/photos in file
system /stornext/snfs1 on machine host1. You then use the
StorNext GUI to create a replication policy named photo_rep to
replicate this directory to file system /stornext/backup on machine
host2. (As in the previous example, the policy was configured to keep
two copies on the target.)
Now use the snpolicy command to see more internal details about
the policy called photo_rep.
Use this command:
/usr/cvfs/config/snpolicy -dumppol/stornext/snfs1/
photos
The command's output looks like this:
inherit=photo_rep
key=1720399
root=/stornext/snfs1/photos
dedup=off
dedup_filter=off
max_seg_size=1G
max_seg_age=5m
dedup_age=1m
dedup_min_size=4K
dedup_seg_size=1G
dedup_min_round=8M
dedup_max_round=256M

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StorNext snpolicyd Policies

dedup_bfst="localhost"
fencepost_gap=16M
trunc=off
trunc_age=365d
trunc_low_water=0
trunc_high_water=0
rep_output=true
rep_report=true
rep_target="target://stornext/backup@host2:"
rep_copies=2
There is a lot of output, most of which we don’t have to consider now.
Some of the important values are:
• inherit=photo_rep: This means the policy controlling this
directory receives its parameters from the policy named
photo_rep. Remember, when you create a policy you give it a
name, and the policy name belongs to the file system. There could
be a different policy named photo_rep in a different file system,
and there would be no connection between the two photo_rep
policies.
• rep_output=true: This means the policy is a source of replication.
• rep_copies=2: This means you want to keep two copies
(instances) of the replicated directory on the target file system.
• rep_target="target://stornext/backup@host2:": This
tells you the replication target directory is a directory in file system
/stornext/backup on machine host2. But which directory name
will be used in that file system? Since you did not specify anything
else, the source directory name will be used. In this case the source
directory name in the source file system is photos, so the target
directory names will be /stornext/backup/photos and
/stornext/backup/photos.1.
• dedup=off: This means the files in this directory are not
deduplicated before being replicated. Deduplication and replication
are discussed in another section.
One comment about a field not in the command output. Since there is
no line for rep_input=true, this means this directory is not a
replication target directory. This is not surprising. While it is true that a
replication target can also be a replication source, that is an advanced
case not covered here.

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Replication Copies = 2 (Detail)

Replication Copies = 2 (Detail)

In this section we’ll examine in more detail what two copies on the
target (rep_copies=2) means.
Assume that we begin with files file1, file2, and file3 in the
source directory. After the first replication, we expect to see three files in
the target directory /stornext/ backup/photos.
After running the command: ls -l /stornext/backup/photos, the
output looks like this:
total 4144
-rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11 file2
-rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
Notice the "link count" of 2 in front of the user name for each file. This
means that each of these files has two links - two names. One name is
the entry in directory /stornext/backup/photos. The other name is
a name in a subdirectory of /stornext/backup/.rep_private. As
its name suggests, directory .rep_private in the root of a managed
file system contains internal information used to manage replication
and deduplication.

Digression
Following is some additional detail which you may want to skip the first
time you read this section.
Below is output from the command ls -l /stornext/backup/
.rep_private:
total 144
drwx------ 19 root root 2057 Jan 26 10:12
00047DA110919C87
drwx------ 3 root root 2054 Jan 26 10:12 config
drwx------ 3 root root 2056 Jan 25 14:11 oldest
drwx------ 3 root root 2116 Jan 26 10:13 pending
drwx------ 3 root root 2132 Jan 26 10:13 queued
drwx------ 2 root root 2048 Jan 21 16:56 source_state
drwx------ 3 root root 2048 Jan 20 17:13 target
drwx------ 2 root root 2116 Jan 26 10:13 target_state

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Replication Copies = 2 (Detail)

drwx------ 2 root root 2255 Jan 26 10:13 tmp

This output shows a list of directories underneath .rep_private. The
directory we are interested in now is 00047DA110919C87. Where did
the directory name 00047DA110919C87 come from? It is the file
system ID of the source file system, a unique string which can be used to
identify that file system.
If you execute the command ls -l /stornext/backup/
.rep_private/00047DA110919C87
you would see one or more directories similar to this:
drwx------ 3 root root 2052 Jan 26 09:30 1720408
drwx------ 3 root root 2063 Jan 26 10:13 1720418
drwx------ 3 root root 2048 Jan 21 12:12 475
Here the directory names are 1720408, 1720418, and 475. Those
names actually reflect the inode number of the directories on the source
file system. In this case the directory we want is 1720418.
If you execute the command ls -l /stornext/backup/
.rep_private/00047DA110919C87/1720418
you would see the following:
total 4160
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 72 Jan 26 10:13
0x1a4062.0 -> /snfs/sn2/
__CVFS_Handle.00047DA10CB84CF8000E00000000000000000000
001A412B
-rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11
0x1a4065.0
-rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11
0x1a4066.0
-rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12
0x1a4067.0
drwx------ 2 root root 2051 Jan 26 10:13 copies
The important files are the three in the middle named 0x1a4065.0,
0x1a4066.0, and 0x1a4067.0. As you can see from the file owner
(testuser) and file lengths, these three files are the other three names
(links) of file1, file2, and file3.
(End of Digression)

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Replication Copies = 2 (Detail)

Second Replication
The "standard" case - when we have replicated files once - is that the link
count for the target file will be two.
Now let's say that we add file4 and file5 to the source directory and
replicate again. After the second replication, target directory
/stornext/backup/photos contains the following:
total 6864
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11 file2
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
-rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388994 Jan 26 11:02 file4
-rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
Target directory /stornext/backup/photos.1 contains the previous
replication:
total 4144
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11 file2
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
Notice that file1, file2, and file3 each have a link count of 3. One
link (name) is in directory photos, another link is in directory
photos.1, and the third is the snpolicyd "internal" link in the
.rep_private directory. The two new files, file4 and file5, appear
only in the new directory and in the .rep_private directory. They
have a link count of 2.
Since file1, file2, and file3 are really the same file in directories
photos and photos.1, no extra disk storage is needed for these files
when replicating again. In general, when you use replication with more
than one copy retained on the target, no additional storage is needed
for unchanged files. If a file is changed, both the old and the new
version are retained, so additional storage is needed in this case.
(Unless deduplication is also used, which is discussed later.)
Now let's make two changes. Say we remove file4 in the source
directory and modify file2. After the next replication, target directory
photos contains the following:
total 5200
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1123155 Jan 26 11:20 file2

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More About Replication Target Directories

-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3

-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
Target directory photos.1 contains:
total 6864
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11 file2
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
-rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388994 Jan 26 11:02 file4
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
The three files, file1, file3 and file5, were unchanged, so they
have the expected link count of 3. One name occurs in photos, one in
photos.1, and the third in a subdirectory of .rep_private. Since
file2 was changed in directory photos, it has a link count of 2: one
link in photos and one in .rep_private.
The file named file2 in photos.1 now has a link count of 1. It is not
the same file as the current file2 (notice the different length). The
file2 in photos.1 is there for "historical" or recovery purposes only. It
represents the previous replication of the directory.
Notice also that file4 in photos.1 has a link count of 2: one for the
photos.1 copy and one for the .rep_private copy. There is no file
named file4 in the current replication directory named photos.
File1, file3 and file5 share the same disk storage. The storage for
file4 is only shared with the .rep_private copy, and this storage
will be freed when the next replication occurs. The older version of
file2 exists only in photos.1, and its storage will be removed in the
next replication.

More About Replication Target Directories

In the previous replication example, source directory /stornext/
snfs1/photos on host1 was replicated to target directory /
stornext/backup/photos on host2. If the number of copies to
keep is more than 1, the previous replication directories are named
/stornext/backup/photos.1, /stornext/backup/photos.2,
etc. The default name on the target is the same pathname relative to

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More About Replication Target Directories

the file system mount point as the source directory name is relative to
the source file system mount point.

Examples
Suppose you apply a replication policy to directory /stornext/
snfs1/a/b/c/d/photos in file system /stornext/snfs1, and
replicate to file system /stornext/backup. The default target
replication directory name would be /stornext/backup/a/b/c/d/
photos, and previous replication directories would be stornext/
backup/a/b/c/d/photos.1, etc.
There are other options that can be specified on either the source policy
or on the target policy. Since we have been concentrating on the source
policy, following are examples of changes there.
When creating or editing a policy, specify the alternative path names in
the area of the screen labeled Pathname on Target on the Outbound
Replication tab. When you click the Override label, a field appears
where you can type some text. Some hints appear above that field,
showing special entry values such as %P and %D.
In all of the following examples, assume that the replication source
directory is /stornext/snfs/photos/ocean in directory photos/
ocean relative to the source file system /stornext/snfs1. For this
example we will replicate to file system /stornext/backup. We know
that if we do not override the "Pathname on Target" value, the
replication target directory name will be /stornext/backup/
photos/ocean.
• If you enter a string without any of the "%" formatting characters,
the replication directory will be the name you specify. For example,
if you specify open/sesame for Pathname on Target, the replication
directory would be /stornext/backup/open/sesame.
• %P means source pathname relative to the source file system. For
example, if you specify open/sesame/%P for Pathname on Target,
the replication directory would be /stornext/backup/open/
sesame/photos/ocean
• %D means today’s date. %T means the replication time. For
example, if you specify %D/%T/%P for Pathname on Target, the
replication directory would be /stornext/backup/2010-02-02/
16_30_22/photos/ocean (on February 2, 2010).

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Deduplication Overview

• %H means source hostname. This would be a good value to use

when more than one source machine is replicating files to the same
target machine and target file system.
There are a lot of ways the "%" characters, and name specifications can
be combined.
Note two important facts:
• It is possible to generate target name collisions by specifying the
same Pathname on Target for more than one policy. For example,
you might choose "daily" for Pathname on Target in two source
replication policies. In that case the first policy to replicate would
succeed, and the second would fail due to the name collision. Using
%H, %P, etc. can help you avoid these collisions.
• Specifying a Pathname on Target is required if you want to replicate
into a Storage Manager relation point. This will be discussed further
in another section.

Deduplication Overview
Here is the view from 100,000 feet. When StorNext deduplication is
enabled, a file is examined and logically split into data segments called
BLOBs (binary large objects). Each BLOB has a 128-bit BLOB tag. A file
can be reconstructed from the list of BLOBs that make up a file. The data
for each BLOB is stored in the blockpool for a machine. We can use the
command snpolicy -report file_pathname to see the list of
BLOB tags for a deduplicated file.
When a deduplicated file is replicated, the BLOBs are replicated from the
blockpool on the source machine to the blockpool on the target
machine. If the source file system and the target file system are both
hosted on the same machine, no data movement is needed. If the same
BLOB tag occurs several times (in one file or in many files) only one copy
of the data BLOB exists in the blockpool. During replication that one
copy must be copied to the target blockpool only once.
This is why deduplicated replication can be more efficient than non-
deduplicated replication. With non-deduplicated replication, any
change in a file requires that the entire file be recopied from the source
to the target. And, if the data is mostly the same in several files (or

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Deduplication Overview

exactly the same), non-deduplicated replication still copies each entire

file from the source file system to the target.
The following example uses these three files and their corresponding
sizes:
f.2m - 2 MB
f.4m - 4 MB
g.4m - 4 MB
The maximum segment size in this example is 1 MB. (That size is
artificially low for this example only.)
If we look at the "snpolicy -report" output for the directory
containing these files, we see the following:
./f.2m
policy: 1720449 inode: 1720468
flags: TAG
mtime: 2010-01-26 14:20:03.590665672 CST
ingest: 2010-01-26 14:20:03.590665672 CST
size: 2097152 disk blocks: 4096
seqno: 4 blk seqno: 2
offset: 0 length: 1048576 tag:
D03281B0629858844F20BB791A60BD67
offset: 1048576 length: 1048576 tag:
12665A8E440FC4EF2B0C28B5D5B28159
./f.4m
policy: 1720449 inode: 1720470
flags: TAG
mtime: 2010-01-26 14:22:56.798334104 CST
ingest: 2010-01-26 14:22:56.798334104 CST
size: 4194304 disk blocks: 8192
seqno: 4 blk seqno: 4
offset: 0 length: 1048576 tag:
D03281B0629858844F20BB791A60BD67
offset: 1048576 length: 1048576 tag:
12665A8E440FC4EF2B0C28B5D5B28159
offset: 2097152 length: 1048576 tag:
7F02E08B3D8C35541E80613142552316
offset: 3145728 length: 1048576 tag:
1FEC787120BEFA7E6685DF18110DF212
./g.4m

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Deduplication Overview

policy: 1720449 inode: 1720471

flags: TAG
mtime: 2010-01-26 14:23:28.957445176 CST
ingest: 2010-01-26 14:23:28.957445176 CST
size: 4194304 disk blocks: 8192
seqno: 5 blk seqno: 4
offset: 0 length: 1048576 tag:
D03281B0629858844F20BB791A60BD67
offset: 1048576 length: 1048576 tag:
DF54D6B832121A80FCB91EC0322CD5D3
offset: 2097152 length: 1048576 tag:
7F02E08B3D8C35541E80613142552316
offset: 3145728 length: 1048576 tag:
1FEC787120BEFA7E6685DF18110DF212
All three files have the same contents in the first megabyte starting at
offset 0. The tag for that BLOB is
D03281B0629858844F20BB791A60BD67, and that BLOB is stored only
once in the blockpool. The second megabyte is the same for files f.2m
and f.4m (tag 12665A8E440FC4EF2B0C28B5D5B28159) but file g.4m
has a different BLOB in those bytes. The final 2 megabytes of files f.4m
and g.4m are the same.
Remember that the above is an artificial example. In actual practice
BLOBs do not line up on 1 MByte boundaries and are not all the same
length.

Enabling Deduplication When creating or editing a policy through the StorNext GUI, select the
Deduplication tab and make sure deduplication is enabled (On). If you
use the snpolicy dumppol option, you will see dedup=on in the output
when the policy has deduplication enabled.

Deduplication Note that in the "snpolicy -dumppol" output shown earlier we also
Modification Time saw dedup_age=1m. This means the file may be deduplicated after it
has not changed for at least one minute. If a file is being written its file
modification time (mtime) will be updated as the file is being written.
Deduplication age specifies how far in the past the modification time
must be before a file can be considered for deduplication.

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Deduplication and Truncation

Deduplication and If replication is used, a blockpool is required even if deduplication is not

Blockpools used in any policy on a machine. However, in this situation the
blockpool does not store any BLOBs from any file system and can
therefore be small: several megabytes is all that is needed.
If you enable deduplication on any policy in the machine, StorNext
stores BLOBs in the blockpool and additional space is required. Make
sure you have enough space to store file system data if you enable
deduplication. You also need space for BLOBs in the blockpool if the
machine contains replication target directories for deduplicated
replication source directories on other machines.
The current StorNext release supports only one blockpool per machine.
Any file system on the machine that needs a blockpool will use that one
and only blockpool.

Deduplication and Truncation

Let's look again at the directory in the previous section that has the
three files f.2m, f.4m, and g.4m. Using the Linux command
ls -ls shows this in the directory:
total 10240
2048 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2097152 Jan 26 14:22 f.2m
4096 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4194304 Jan 26 14:22 f.4m
4096 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4194304 Jan 26 14:23 g.4m
The first column on the left shows the total number of blocks (1024
bytes per block) contained in each file. The column before the date
shows the file size in bytes.
StorNext can truncate files that have been deduplicated. By “truncate”
we mean that the disk blocks for the file have been freed. If the
deduplicated files shown above are truncated, the "ls -ls" command
shows this:
total 0
0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2097152 Jan 26 14:22 f.2m
0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4194304 Jan 26 14:22 f.4m
0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4194304 Jan 26 14:23 g.4m

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Deduplication and Truncation

There are no blocks in any of the three files, although each file retains its
correct size.
(As an exercise, in the previous "ls -l" and "ls -ls" examples, what
does the line that says "total some_number" tell us?)
When an application or command accesses any of the data in a
truncated file, StorNext retrieves the data it needs from the blockpool.
This may be the entire file for a small file. For a larger file, a portion of
the file would be retrieved: a portion at least large enough to contain
the file region required. If you read the entire file, the entire file will be
retrieved.
Truncation provides the mechanism by which file system storage space
may be reduced. When a file is truncated it takes no space in its file
system, but space for its BLOBs is required in the blockpool. If we receive
deduplication benefit (that is, if the same BLOB data occurs in more
than one place,) then we have less space used in the blockpool than
would be in the original file system.

Enabling Deduplication In order to enable truncation, both deduplication and truncation must
and Truncation be enabled in the storage policy. The StorNext GUI contains tabs for
both deduplication and truncation which allow you to enable
deduplication and truncation respectively.
Before a file is truncated it must pass a "Minimum Idle Time Before
Truncation" test. If this minimum age is ten minutes, then ten minutes
must elapse after the last file modification or file read before truncation
can occur. The default value for the minimum idle time is 365 days.
In the output from "snpolicy -dumppol" the parameters we have
been discussing are displayed like this:
trunc=on
trunc_age=365d

Storage Manager Storage Manager also truncates files. Storage Manager truncation is
Truncation similar to but not identical with the deduplication-based truncation we
have been discussing. Storage Manager truncation will be discussed
again when we consider deduplication / replication with Storage
Manager.

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Replication, Deduplication and Truncation

Replication, Deduplication and Truncation

Consider a directory which is being deduplicated and replicated. We
mentioned earlier that in this case data BLOBs move from the blockpool
on the source machine to the blockpool on the target machine. When
replication happens (the replication namespace realization,) the files
appear in the target directory as truncated files. This is true regardless of
whether or not the files were truncated in the source directory at
replication time.
Let’s look again at the example target directories photos and
photos.1 after the last replication. If the replication source directory
had deduplication enabled, then "ls -ls" in target directory photos
shows the following:
total 0
0 -rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
0 -rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1123155 Jan 27 11:20 file2
0 -rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
0 -rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
Target directory photos.1 contains the following:
total 0
0 -rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
0 -rw-r--r-- 1 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11 file2
0 -rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
0 -rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388994 Jan 26 11:02 file4
0 -rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
The file link counts (3, 2, or 1) are the same as in the earlier replication
example. The principle is the same: file1 in photos has 3 links. The
other two instances are file1 in photos.1 and a file underneath the
.rep_private directory. All the links are to a truncated file: a file
whose length is 1388936 bytes, but which contains no blocks. If we
read any of the three links, the file would be partially or fully retrieved.
The replicated files appear as truncated files even if deduplication is not
explicitly enabled in any policy on the target machine. Remember that
this means there must be blockpool space for the replicated BLOBs if a
deduplicated directory is replicated onto the machine.

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Replication, Deduplication and Storage Manager

Replication, Deduplication and Storage Manager

Both StorNext replication and StorNext deduplication can be used with
Storage Manager. The following discussion assumes you are already
familiar with replication and deduplication, and also with Storage
Manager.
Here are some interesting possibilities:
1 Replicate from a source directory into a target directory where the
target directory is within a Storage Manager relation point. Then the
replicated files will be stored to tape by Storage Manager. This can
be done with deduplicated or non-deduplicated replication.
2 Replicate from a source directory that is managed by Storage
Manager. This can be done with deduplicated or non-deduplicated
replication. It doesn’t matter for the source if the target directory is
also managed by Storage Manager.
3 Use deduplication within a Storage Manager relation point. This
means the files will be deduplicated, and the deduplicated data will
be stored in the blockpool. In addition, Storage Manager will make
tape copies of the files.
Let’s consider replicating into a Storage Manager relation point.

Replicating into a To replicate into a relation point, specify a target directory underneath a
Storage Manager Storage Manager relation point. Do this with the parameter "Pathname
Relation Point on Target" in the StorNext GUI, or with rep_realize=… when
configuring a policy with the snpolicy command.

Example
Suppose we are replicating to file system /stornext/backups on a
target machine, and /stornext/backups/sm1 is a Storage Manager
relation point in that file system.
Some possible choices for "Pathname on Target" would be
• sm1/%P
• sm1/mystuff

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• sm1/%H/%P
You shouldn’t specify something like /stornext/backups/sm1/
mystuff because "Pathname on Target" is relative to the target file
system mount point, which in this case is /stornext/backups.
If "Copies to Keep on Target" is more than 1, the rules discussed earlier
determine the names for the directories in subsequent replications.

Example
If we replicate the source directory named photos into a relation point
using the "Pathname on Target" sm1/%P, we end up with directories like
/stornext/backups/sm1/photos, /stornext/backups/sm1/
photos.1 and so on for the replicated directories when we are keeping
more than one copy on the target.
The directories photos and photos.1 are in the SM relation point.
Let's say we have the two directories photos and photos.1 with the
contents that we discussed earlier.
Target directory /stornext/backups/sm1/photos contains the
following:
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 2 testuser root 1123155 Jan 27 11:20 file2
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
Target directory /stornext/backups/sm1/photos.1 contains the
following:
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 testuser root 1430896 Jan 26 10:11 file2
-rw-r--r-- 3 testuser root 1397888 Jan 26 10:12 file3
-rwxr-xr-x 2 testuser root 1388994 Jan 26 11:02 file4
-rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388965 Jan 26 11:03 file5
Question: Will Storage Manager store all the files in photos after the
most recent replication? The answer is no. In this example, file2 is a
file that was modified since the previous replication. Thus file2 is the
only file that will be stored by Storage Manager after the most recent
replication.
When replication occurs we create store candidates for the new or
changed files that were included in the most recent replication within a
relation point. In this example, only file2 will be a store candidate

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after the latest replication. You can use the showc command to see the
new Storage Manager store candidates after a replication.

Note: Even if you created a store candidate for every file in the
replicated target directory, only the new or changed files would
be stored by SM. This is because the other files are links to files
that have already been stored by Storage Manager, or at least
files that were already on the Storage Manager store
candidates list.

Truncation and We have already mentioned how deduplication allows files to be

Deduplication / truncated. “Truncated” in this case means that the extents have been
Replication (with and partially or completely removed from disk, and that the snpolicyd
without SM) daemon must reconstitute the missing extents when a process wants to
access them.
We also discussed how we can use the "ls -ls" command to identify
truncated files. We looked for files with "0" in the first column of the
output of "ls -ls". The 0 means there are no blocks associated with
the file. The file size field in the "ls -l" or "ls -ls" output reflects the
real size of the file, and is not changed when the file is truncated.

Example
In the earlier example we this saw this output (for a truncated file) after
running "ls -ls":
0 -rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
For an untruncated file, the "ls -ls" output might look something like
this:
1360 -rwxr-xr-x 3 testuser root 1388936 Jan 26 10:11 file1
The 1360 blocks in this file are enough to contain a file of size 1388936
(since 1360 * 1024 = 1392640). However, we might also see a blocks
value that was non-zero but not enough to contain the entire file size.
This might indicate the following:
• A sparse file (this will not be discussed here)
• A file with a stub left on the disk
• A file that had been partially retrieved

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Both Storage Manager and snpolicyd (replication / deduplication) can

truncate files and can retrieve truncated files.
Both Storage Manager and snpolicyd can be configured to leave a stub
file on disk when a file is truncated. Using the StorNext GUI you can
configure the deduplication stub size on the Deduplication tab when
creating or editing a replication / deduplication policy. A non-zero stub
size must be a multiple of the file system block size.
Both Storage Manager and snpolicyd will retrieve a file when a portion
of the file is read that is not already on disk. For Storage Manager there
are really three different possibilities for a file’s truncation state:
• File is totally truncated. The file has no block in the file system.
Reading any byte of the file causes Storage Manager to retrieve the
entire file.
• File is truncated, but there is a stub. Reading within the stub causes
no retrieval. Reading anything not in the stub causes Storage
Manager to retrieve the entire file.
• File is completely on disk.
For a truncated file that was deduplicated by snpolicyd, there can be
partial file retrieval from the blockpool. In this situation there is one
more possibility in addition to the three previous possibilities:
• Partially retrieved. The file has some data on disk (besides the stub)
but the entire file is not on disk.

Example
Suppose you have a 100 GB file that is truncated. If a process reads a
few bytes (at the front or even in the middle of the file), several
megabytes of file data are retrieved from the blockpool and the process
continues. There is no need for the entire file to be retrieved. If more of
the file is read, even larger chunks of the file are retrieved.
You can see the snpolicyd state of a file by using the command
"snpolicy -report".

Example
Running the command snpolicy -report /stornext/sn1/dd1/
kcm2 gives us output similar to this:
/stornext/sn1/dd1/kcm2

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policy: 18 inode: 1704267

flags: TRUNC TAG
mtime: 2010-02-05 11:01:25.960012768 CST
ingest: 2010-02-05 11:01:25.960012768 CST
size: 1388936 disk blocks: 0
seqno: 16 blk seqno: 3
offset: 0 length: 1388936 tag:
0D4093057370DB4FA7EF8162C23AE416
The line beginning with "flags:" contains the keyword TRUNC. This
tells us that at least part of the file is not on disk in the file system and
must be retrieved to be used.
If only snpolicyd is managing a directory, snpolicyd can truncate files
when the snpolicyd rules are satisfied. This means that the
deduplication has happened and the file is bug enough and perhaps old
enough. “Large enough” and “old enough” are determined by the
deduplication policy parameters.
If only Storage Manager is managing a directory, the Storage Manager
truncation rules determine whether and when a file can be truncated.
This usually means that all Storage Manager copies have been made and
that the file is large enough and old enough. “Large enough” and “old
enough” are determined by the Storage Manager policy parameters.
If both Storage Manager and snpolicyd are managing a directory,
Storage Manager must do the truncation. Storage Manager can only
truncate a file when the Storage Manager rules are satisfied and any
snpolicyd data copies have been completed.
You will know that both Storage Manager and snpolicyd are managing
a directory if:
• The directory is a deduplicated directory and/or a replication source
directory, and the directory is a Storage Manager relation point or is
within a Storage Manager relation point.
• The directory is a replication target directory within a Storage
manager relation point.

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The table below summarizes some of the possibilities for snpolicyd

managed directories and when truncation is allowed.

Snpolocyd State of the Directory is in an SM Relation Directory is Not in an SM

Directory Point Relation Point

Non-deduplication SM can truncate when replica- No truncation

Replication Source tions are complete

SM can truncate when dedu- snpolicyd can truncate after

Deduplication Replication plication has happened - even deduplication
Source before replication

Deduplication Without SM can truncate when dedu- snpolicyd can truncate after
Replication plication has happened deduplication

Files are replicated as trun- Files are replicated as trun-

cated (0 blocks). However, SM cated (0 blocks)
will eventually store each repli-
cated file, causing it to be
retrieved by snpolicyd on the
target. Retrieved files must be
truncated by SM and can only
Target of Deduplication be truncated after all SM cop-
Source ies are made.

Files are replicated untrun- Files are replicated untrun-

cated and are not tagged cated and are not tagged
(deduplicated). Files can be (deduplicated). Not truncat-
Target of Deduplication truncated by SM after all SM able.
Source with "Replicate copies are made (normal SM
Deduplicated Content" Off rules).

Files are replicated untrun- Files are replicated untrun-

Target of Dedup source with cated and are not tagged cated and are not tagged
"Replicate Deduplicated (deduplicated). Files can be (deduplicated). Files can be
Content" off but truncated by SM when dedu- truncated by snpolicyd after
deduplication is on in the plicated by snpolicyd and deduplication.
target policy. stored by SM.

The following sections summarize some of the facts above (and add
some more information) in a "usage case" or “scenario” format.

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Replicating From an SM Relation Point and/or Deduplicating

the Relation Point
For a new configuration, create the relation point first. Then make it a
replication source by applying an snpolicyd policy with outbound
replication enabled.
From the command line, you could use the following commands.

Note: These commands assume that the Storage Manager relation

point and replication policy have already been configured.

faddrelation directory_path -c sm_policy_name

spolicy -assignpolicy directory_path -inherit
replication_policy_name
Remember that the directory should be empty before using
fsaddrelation, or else the command will try to unmount the file
system (which is often hard to do).
When a file is both an SM relation point and a replication source, the
files cannot be truncated by SM until:
1 Either all replications have been completed (non-deduplicated
replication)
OR
2 All files in the directory have been deduplicated (deduplicated
replication)
If a truncated file is both deduplicated and stored by SM, it can be
retrieved by either service. By default we retrieve using snpolicyd (from
the blockpool) and only use the SM copy if there is an error retrieving
from the blockpool.
You can use the fsretrieve command to force retrieval from Storage
Manager instead of from snpolicyd.

Adding Source Replication or Deduplication to an Existing SM

Relation Point
The following table summarizes the key points you should consider:

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When You Are Making a

Directory with Existing SM
Managed Files Into This: Then Expect This:

Snpolicyd deduplication policy • Untruncated files are

(no replication) deduplicated per snpolicyd
policy.
• SM truncated files will not be
deduplicated until SM retrieval
occurs. (snpolicyd will not
retrieve the files from SM.)
• Once retrieved from SM, files
cannot be re-truncated by SM
until deduplication is
complete.
Therefore files may not all be
deduplicated.

Snpolicyd deduplication policy About the same as above. SM

that is also a replication source truncated files are not
deduplicated or replicated until
something causes SM retrieval of
the file.
Thus there may be some files not
deduplicated and not replicated.

Snpolicyd policy that is a Similar to above. Files are not

replication source with no replicated until something causes
deduplication SM retrieval. Once retrieved SM
will not truncate the file again
until each target of the
replication policy has its copy.
Not all files will be deduplicated
unless retrieved.

Adding Target Replication to an SM Relation Point (New or

Existing)
When adding targets within an existing SM relation point, the concepts
are a little simpler because a new directory is created each time a

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Replication, Deduplication and Storage Manager

replication occurs. There are no existing files other than previously

replicated files.
Remember that you must specify a directory within a Storage Manager
relation point when you want replicated files to be stored by Storage
Manager.
When replication occurs into a directory in a Storage Manager relation
point, the replicated files become SM store candidates (unless they are
links to previously replicated files). Storage Manager can then store the
files based on age and size. Age is determined by the file's modification
time in the source directory because the access and modification times
are replicated when a file is replicated.
Storage Manager can store replicated files after they have passed the
minimum time, regardless of whether or not they have been truncated
by snpolicyd. Storage Manager retrieves a truncated file from snpolicyd
in order to store it to SM tape. Deduplicated replicated files are
replicated as truncated files, but they are retrieved by snpolicyd when
the replication is into a Storage Manager relation point.
Note the following implications:
1 This means that more file system space will be used when
replicating deduplicated files into an SM relation point than is used
when replicating deduplicated files into a directory that is not a
relation point. In the latter case there is no StorNext process that
will cause the file to be retrieved from the blockpool.
2 When the file is retrieved it can be re-truncated after all SM copies
have been made. Storage Manager will do the truncation. You can
configure the SM policy so that it truncates the file immediately
after all SM copies have been made.
3 This behavior is different than in the case where we add replication /
deduplication to a SM relation point. Truncated files are not
automatically retrieved from SM tape so that they can be replicated
or deduplicated, but deduplicated files from the blockpool are
retrieved so that they can be stored by SM.

Adding Storage Manager to an Existing snpolicyd Directory

You cannot add a Storage Manager relation point to an existing
replication target directory. You would have to create a new directory,
add the SM relation point to that directory, and then create or edit a

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The snpolicyd Debug Log

snpolicyd policy to realize to a directory or a set of directories inside that

relation point.
When adding a Storage Manager relation point to any existing directory,
one of the following must be true:
1 The directory must be empty.
2 You must be able to temporarily unmount the file system. (It gets
remounted as part of the add relation point process.)
If the directory is empty there is nothing to worry about. If it is not
empty you must make sure no process is working in the directory and
no files are open. The directory should not be NFS exported or Samba
shared.
Once the relation point has been added, Storage Manager makes copies
of the files according to the Storage Manager policy settings. As
mentioned earlier, Storage Manager retrieves a file from the blockpool if
it needs to in order to store the file.

The snpolicyd Debug Log

A log of snpolicyd actions and errors is maintained in directory /usr/
cvfs/debug. The log file is named snpolicy.out. Previous versions
of the log file are called snpolicyd.out.1, snpolicyd.out.2, and
so on.
Various debugging options can be enabled with the snpolicy command.
For example, the command snpolicy -debug=/stornext/sn1 -
dflags=events,replicate
turns on debug messages for events processed by snpolicyd and for
replication related activity. The -debug= option specifies any file system
managed by snpolicyd (any file system with replication / deduplication
enabled).
You can find the list of possible dflags options by using the following
command:
snpolicy -helpdebugflags

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The snpolicyd Debug Log

Here is some sample snpolicyd.out log for an ongoing replication:

(D) [0209 17:22:20.903918 3398] Sending rep_realize %H/%P
(D) [0209 17:22:20.934098 3398]
release_pending_rep_locked@1109 0x14f86e0 ref 1 state
started
(D) [0209 17:22:20.934552 18275] release_rep_target_locked
126540130333 ref 0 state sending metadata
(D) [0209 17:22:20.934582 18275]
release_rep_target_locked@827 0x14f86e0 ref 1 state started
(D) [0209 17:22:20.934597 18275] process successful
replication, cnt 9/9 space 1996232
(D) [0209 17:22:20.937694 18276] /stornext/sn3: replication
reply for key 1704023 stream 126540130333
(D) [0209 17:22:20.937720 18276] /stornext/sn3: metadata for
'/stornext/sn3/rep5' accepted by target://stornext/sn4@kcm-
rhel5464:
(D) [0209 17:22:20.938490 18276] update_rep_target_file
126540130333 0 => 3
(I) [0209 17:22:23] /stornext/sn3: data replication for '/
snfs/sn3/rep5'
completed to target://stornext/sn4@kcm-
rhel5464: in 2.276911 secs
9/9 files (Data/Meta) updated
1949 Kbytes in 1.741705 secs 1952/1 Kbytes
sent/received
(D) [0209 17:22:23.252035 18276]
post_process_pending_replication for stream 126540130332
(D) [0209 17:22:23.321761 18276] update_rep_target_file
126540130333 3 => 4
(D) [0209 17:22:23.328021 18276] release_rep_target_locked
126540130333 ref 0 state completed
(D) [0209 17:22:23.328088 18276]
release_rep_target_locked@827 0x14f86e0 ref 1 state started
(D) [0209 17:22:23.328109 18276] Freed target stream
126540130333

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The snpolicyd Debug Log

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 Appendix C
HA Systems

The StorNext High Availability (HA) feature allows you to configure and
operate a redundant server that can quickly assume control of the
StorNext file systems and management data in the event of certain
software, hardware and network failures on the primary server.
This appendix contains the following topics which provide an in-depth
look at HA systems and operation:
• HA Overview
• HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol
• Configuration and Conversion to HA
• Managing HA in the StorNext GUI
• HA Operation
• HA Resets
• HA Tracing and Log Files
• FSM failover in HA Environments
• Replacing an HA System

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HA Overview

HA Overview
The primary advantage of an HA system is file system availability,
because an HA configuration has redundant servers. During operation,
if one server fails, failover occurs automatically and operations are is
resumed on its peer server.
At any point in time, only one of the two servers is allowed to control
and update StorNext metadata and databases. The HA feature enforces
this rule by monitoring for conditions that might allow conflicts of
control that could lead to data corruption.
Before this so-called Split Brain Scenario would occur, the failing server
is reset at the hardware level, which causes it to immediately relinquish
all control. The redundant server is able to take control without any risk
of split-brain data corruption. The HA feature provides this protection
without requiring special hardware, and HA resets occur only when
necessary according to HA protection rules.
Arbitration block (ARB) updates by the controlling server for a file
system provide the most basic level of communication between the HA
servers. If updates stop, the controlling server must relinquish control
within a fixed amount of time. The server is reset automatically if control
has not been released within that time limit.
Starting after the last-observed update of the ARB, the redundant server
can assume control safely by waiting the prescribed amount of time. In
addition, the ARB has a protocol that ensures that only one server takes
control, and the updates of the ARB are the method of keeping control.
So, the ARB method of control and the HA method of ensuring release
of control combine to protect file system metadata from uncontrolled
updates.
Management data protection builds on the same basic HA mechanism
through the functions of the special shared file system, which contains
all the management data needing protection. To avoid an HA reset
when relinquishing control, the shared file system must be unmounted
within the fixed-time window after the last update of the ARB.
Management data is protected against control conflicts because it
cannot be accessed after the file system is unmounted. When the file
system is not unmounted within the time window, the automatic HA
reset relinquishes all control immediately.

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HA Overview

The HA system monitors each file system separately. Individual file

systems can be controlled by either server. However, StorNext Storage
Manager (SNSM) requires that all managed file systems be collocated
with the management processes. So, the shared file system and all
managed file systems are run together on one server. Unmanaged file
systems can run on either server, and they can fail over to the other
server as long as they perform failover according to the HA time rules
described above.
When it is necessary to make configuration changes or perform
administrative functions that might otherwise trigger an HA reset, the
HA Manager Subsystem (snhamgr) provides the necessary controls for
shutting down one server and operating the other server with HA
monitoring turned off. Snhamgr allows the individual servers to be
placed in one of several modes that regulate starting StorNext software
on each server. The restricted pairing of server modes into allowed
cluster states provides the control for preventing Split Brain Scenario.
The HA Manager Subsystem uses communicating daemons on each
server to collect the status of the cluster at every decision point in the
operation of the cluster. This is another one of the levels of
communication used in the HA feature.
An occasional delay in accessing the SAN or its disks might trigger an HA
reset while the server and File System Manager (FSM) are otherwise
functioning correctly. A LAN communication protocol between the
servers’ File System Portmapper (FSMPM) processes reduces the chance
of a server reset by negotiating the reset of HA timers outside of the
ARB-update timer-reset system.
When SAN delays are causing undesirable HA resets, the causes of the
delays must be investigated and resolved. Quantum support staff can
increase the timer duration as a temporary workaround, but this can
negatively impact availability by increasing the time required for some
failover instances.
The set of features comprising StorNext HA provides a highly automated
system that is easy to set up and operate. The system acts
autonomously at each server to continue protection in the event of LAN,
SAN, disk and software failures.
The timer mechanism operates at a very basic level of the host operating
system kernel, and is highly reliable. Protection against Split Brain
Scenario is the primary requirement for HA, and this requires the
possibility of some unnecessary system resets. But, when
communication channels are working, steps are taken to reduce the

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HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol

number of unnecessary resets and to eliminate them during

administrative procedures.

HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol

Control of StorNext file system metadata is regulated through the ARB
dedicated disk block. The protocol for getting and keeping control of
the ARB is meant to prevent simultaneous updates from more than one
FSM. The protocol depends on timed updates of the ARB, which is called
“branding”.
Loss of control of the timing of branding opens the possibility of
metadata corruption through split-brain scenario. The extra protection
provided by HAmon timers puts an upper limit on the range of timing
for ARB brand updates. Brand updates and HAmon timer resets are
synchronized. When branding stops, the timer can run out and trigger
an HA reset.
When taking control, an FSM uses the same timer value plus a small
amount starting from the last time it read a unique brand. This
combination of behaviors provides a fail-safe mechanism for preventing
split-brain scenario metadata corruption.

FSM Election, Usurpation and Activation

When a client computer needs to initiate or restore access to a file
system, it contacts the nameserver-coordinator system to get a LAN port
for the controlling FSM. The nameserver-coordinator system will
conduct an election if there is no active FSM or the active FSM is no
longer healthy.
This measures the connectivity between the possible server computers
and the clients. The nameserver-coordinator system uniquely chooses
one standby FSM to take control, and sends an activation command to
it. At this point, the cvadmin command will display an asterisk next to
the FSM to show that the FSM has been given an activation command.
The elected FSM begins a usurpation process for taking control of the
file system metadata. It reads the ARB to learn about the last FSM to
control the file system. It then watches to see if the brand is being

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HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol

updated. If the brand is not being updated or if the usurping FSM has
more votes than the current controlling FSM has connections, the
usurper writes its own brand in the ARB. The FSM then watches the
brand for a period of time to see if another FSM overwrites it. The
currently active FSM being usurped, if any, will exit if it reads a brand
other than its own (checked before write). If the brand stays, the FSM
begins a thread to maintain the brand on a regular period, and then the
FSM continues the process of activation.
At this point the usurping FSM has not modified any metadata other
than the ARB. This is where the HAmon timer interval has its effect. The
FSM waits until the interval period plus a small delta expires. The period
began when the FSM branded the ARB. The FSM continues to maintain
the brand during the delay so that another FSM cannot usurp before
activation has completed. The connection count in the ARB is set to a
very high value to block a competing usurpation during the activation
process.
When an FSM stops, it attempts to quiesce metadata writes. When
successful, it includes an indicator in its final ARB brand that tells the
next activating FSM that the file system stopped safely so the wait for
the HA timer interval can be skipped.

LAN Connectivity Interruptions

When one MDC loses LAN connectivity, clients lose access to that MDC's
active FSMs, which triggers elections to find other FSMs to serve those
file systems. StorNext attempts to determine which node should have
control, based on connectivity, but this effort results in a tie for the
HaShared file system because each node gets one vote from itself as a
client. In a tie, the activated shared FSM keeps control so long as it
keeps branding its ARB.
Managed FSMs are not redundant, so having clients on those file
systems does not break the tie. Similarly, unmanaged FSMs can fail over
without an HA reset, so clients on those file systems will not break the
tie for the shared file system either.
Therefore, a third client that has the shared file system mounted is
necessary to break the tie that occurs between the two nodes. The third
client makes it possible to determine which of the MDCs has the best
connectivity to the LAN.

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HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol

Note: The third-party client is not necessary for preventing metadata

corruption from split brain syndrome. The ARB plus the HAmon
timer to back it up does the whole job of protecting the
metadata. For more information about HAmon timer, see the
following section.

Autonomous Monitoring and HA Resets

When an HA reset is necessary, it occurs before usurpation could
complete. This is true because the start of the timer is based on the last
update of the ARB brand for both the active and activating FSMs. Brand
updating is the only communication between server computers that is
necessary for HA protection against split-brain scenario.
Note that there is no communication from an activating FSM to force an
HA reset at its peer server computer. The two servers act autonomously
when the ARB branding communication stops. The combination of an
HA reset when the brand cannot be maintained and the usurpation-
branding protocol guarantees protection from split-brain scenario.

Note: There could be a delay between the autonomous HA reset by

the active FSM’s server and the election of another FSM to take
control. These are not synchronized except by the election
protocol.

In the original method of HA resets, known as STONITH, a usurping FSM

synchronously reset the peer server at the end of usurpation before
modifying any metadata. There was no method for the failing FSM's
server to reset itself, so the reset would not happen if the usurping FSM
failed to brand the ARB. However, the STONITH method always reset its
peer the first time any FSM activated on a server regardless of whether it
was needed or not.
Both of these strategies result in some unnecessary system resets where
an omniscient system would not reset, but the current HA system has
fewer of these resets.

Setting the Timer Value

The HAmon timer interval can be changed to work around delays in the
access to ARB because of known behavior of a particular SAN
deployment. The feature is meant for temporary use only by Quantum

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HA Internals: HAmon Timers and the ARB Protocol

staff. It affects all the monitored FSMs and could add a significant delay
to the activation process. Quantum Software Engineering would like to
be notified of any long-term need for a non-default timer interval.
For very long HAmon interval values, there are likely to be re-elections
while an activating FSM waits for the time to pass before completing
activation. An additional usurpation attempt would fail because the ARB
brand is being maintained and the connection count is set to a value
that blocks additional usurpation attempts.
The optional configuration of this feature is in the following file:
<cvfs root>/config/ha_smith_interval
The information at the start of the file is as follows:
ha_smith_interval=<integer>
The file is read once when StorNext starts. The integer value for the
HAmon timer interval is expressed in seconds. The value can range from
3 to 1000, and the default is 5 seconds. The timer must be set identically
on both servers. This rule is checked on a server that has standby FSMs
when a server that has active FSMs communicates its timer value. When
there is a discrepancy, all the FSMs on the receiving end of that
communication are stopped and prevented from starting until StorNext
has been restarted. This status can be observed with the cvadmin tool in
the output of its FSMlist command.
In almost all cases of misconfigured timers, the mistake will be obvious
shortly after starting the HA cluster’s second server. The first server to
start StorNext will activate all of its FSMs. The second server should have
only standby FSMs. Once the second server detects the error, all of its
FSMs will stop. After this, there will be no standby FSMs, so the cluster
is protected against split-brain scenario. In the event that a server with
active FSMs resets for any reason, that server will have to reboot and
restart StorNext to provide started FSMs to serve the file systems.

Negotiated Timer Resets

When an FSM is healthy but cannot maintain its brand of the ARB
because of delays in the SAN or LUN, there is the possibility of an
undesirable HA reset. To address this problem there is a LAN-based
negotiation protocol between FSMPM processes on the two servers for
requesting permission to reset HAmon Timers.
The negotiation is initiated by an FSMPM on a server computer with
activated FSMs. Every two seconds it sends a list of active FSMs to its

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peer FSMPM on the other server to ask which of these standby FSMs are
not being activated. Implicit in the response is a promise not to activate
the FSMs for two seconds. When the response is received within one
second, the first FSMPM resets the timers for those FSMs for which
usurpation is not in progress. Obviously, both server computers must be
up and running StorNext for this to function.
This can postpone the impending HA reset for a while, but an election
could occur if this goes on too long. It is important to quickly
investigate the root cause of SAN or LUN delays and then engineer them
out of the system as soon as possible.

Primary and Secondary Databases and management data for StorNext Storage Manager or the
Server Status Linux GUI must also be protected against split-brain scenario
corruption. Protection is accomplished by tieing the startup of processes
that modify this data with the activation of the shared file system.
Activating the shared file system leads to setting a Primary status in the
local FSMPM, which is read and displayed by the snhamgr command.
Primary status and the implicit Secondary status of the peer server are
distinct from the Active and Standby status of the individual FSMs on
the servers.
Unmanaged file systems can be active on either server. When an HA
Cluster has no managed file systems and no shared file system, neither
server computer has Primary status-they are equals.

File System Types HA is turned on by default for all StorNext distributions, but has no
effect unless FSMs request to be monitored. File system monitoring is
controlled by a file-system configuration item named HaFsType. Each
file system is one of three types: HaUnmanaged, HaManaged or
HaShared. The HaFsType value is read by FSMs to direct them to set
up appropriate HAmon behaviors, and it is read by the FSMPM to
control how it starts FSMs.

HaUnmanaged
Each unmanaged-file-system FSM starts an instance of the HAmon timer
for itself when it first brands the ARB. Before it changes any metadata,
an activating FSM waits for the timer interval plus a small amount of

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time to elapse. The interval for a usurping FSM begins with the last time
the FSM reads new data in the ARB from a previously active FSM.
Unmanaged FSMs can be active on either server in the HA Cluster. They
can be usurped and fail over without a system reset if they exit before
the timer expires. The timer interval for an active FSM restarts with each
update of the ARB.

HaManaged
Managed-file-system FSMs do not start HAmon timers, and they do not
wait the HAmon interval when usurping. The FSMPMs only start
Managed FSMs on the Primary server, so there is no risk of split-brain
scenario. In the event that a Managed FSM exits without having been
stopped by the FSMPM, it is automatically restarted after a ten-second
delay and activated. The cvadmin tool's FSMlist command displays the
blocked FSMs on non-Primary servers. There can be zero or more
HaManaged file systems configured.

HaShared
The shared file system is an unmanaged StorNext file system that plays a
controlling role in protecting shared resources. It has the same HA
behavior as other unmanaged FSMs, but it also sets a flag that triggers
an HA reset when the cvfsioctl device is closed. This happens when the
process exits for any reason. However, if the shared file system has been
unmounted from the active server before the FSM exits, the reset-on-
close flag gets turned off. This allows ordinary shutdown of CVFS and
Linux without resetting the server.
When the HaShared FSM finishes activation, it sets the Primary status in
its FSMPM process.
Protected shared data resides on the shared file system. Since only one
FSM can activate at one time, the Primary status is able to limit the
starting of management processes to a single server, which protects the
data against split-brain scenario.
The starting of HaManaged FSMs is also tied to Primary status, which
guarantees collocation of the managed file-system FSMs and the
management processes. The GUI's data is also shared, and the GUI must
be able to manipulate configuration and operational data, which
requires that it be collocated with the management processes.

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The ha_peer and StorNext HA server software uses peer-to-peer communication between
fsnameservers File servers and needs to know the peer's IP address. The fsnameservers
configuration file is not a good source for the address because some
installations configure the nameservers outside of the metadata servers.
Instead, the following file provides that information:
<cvfs root>/config/ha_peer
Following are the uses of the peer IP address:
• Negotiating timer resets
• Comparing the HAmon timer value between servers
• HA Manager communications (only on StorNext Storage Manager
for Linux)
It is very important to have correct information in the ha_peer file, but
it is not a requirement that the peer be available for communication.
Basic HA functionality operates correctly without IP communication
between peers. The file's contents can be changed without restarting
StorNext. The new value will be read and used moments after it has
changed.
Here are some other points to consider about fsnameservers:
• For best practice, the fsnameservers file should contain IP
addresses, not names.
• All the addresses in the file must be reachable by all members of the
StorNext cluster. That is, servers, clients and distributed LAN clients.
• All members of the cluster should have the same nameservers
configuration.
• Both or neither of an HA Cluster’s MDCs must be included so that a
coordinator is always available when either server is running.
• Multiple StorNext Clusters can share coordinators, but every file
system name configured on any of the clusters must be unique
across all of the clusters.

HA Manager The HA Manager subsystem collects and reports the operating status of
an HA cluster and uses that to control operations. It is part of a Storage
Manager installation that has been converted to HA with the
cnvt2ha.sh script. For manually-configured HA clusters where the
cnvt2ha.sh script has not been run, the command-line interface (HA

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CLI) reports a default state that allows non-HA and File System Only HA
configurations to operate.
The HA Manager supports non-default HA Cluster functionality such as
suspending HA monitoring during administrative tasks. It attempts to
communicate with its peer at every decision point, so it is mostly
stateless and functions correctly regardless of what transpires between
decision points. Following every command, the snhamgr command line
interface reports the modes and statuses of both servers in the cluster,
which provide necessary information for the StorNext control scripts.

HA Manager Modes and Statuses

The HA Manager relies on a set of administrator-setable modes to
override the default behaviors of HA. Modes persist across reboots.
Following are the modes and descriptions of their purpose:
1 default: HA monitoring is turned on. When the peer server is not
available for communication, it is assumed to be in default mode.
2 single: HA monitoring is turned off. The peer server must be
communicating and in locked mode, or not communicating and
certified as peerdown (recommended). This mode is meant for
extended production operations without a redundant server such as
when one server is being repaired or replaced. When the peer server
is about to be restored to service, the operating server can be
transitioned from single to default mode without stopping
StorNext.
3 config: HA monitoring is turned off. The peer server must be
communicating and in locked mode (recommended), or not
communicating and certified as peerdown. The config mode is
meant for re-configuration and other non-production service
operations. When returning to production service and the default
mode, StorNext must be stopped. This ensures that all StorNext
processes are started correctly upon returning to default mode.
4 locked: StorNext is stopped and prevented from starting on the
local server. This mode allows the HA Manager to actively query the
peer server to ensure that it is stopped when the local peer is
operating in single or config mode. Communication with the locked
node must continue, so this mode is effective when StorNext is
stopped for a short period and the node will not be rebooted. If
communication is lost, the peer node assumes this node is in default
mode, which is necessary for avoiding split-brain scenario.

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5 peerdown: The peer server is turned off and must not be

communicating with the local server's HA Manager subsystem, so
this mode is effective when the server is powered down.
The mode is declared by the peerdown command on a working
server to give information about the non-working peer server. By
setting this mode, the administrator certifies the off status of the
peer, which the HA Manager cannot verify by itself. This allows the
local peer to be in single or config mode. If the peer starts
communicating while this mode is set, the setting is immediately
erased, the local mode is set to default to restore HA Monitoring,
and StorNext is shut down, which can trigger an HA reset.
The peerdown mode is changed to default mode with the peerup
command. The peerdown and peerup commands must never be
automated because they require external knowledge about the peer
server's condition and operator awareness of a requirement to keep
the peer server turned off.
6 ha_idle_failed_startup: A previous attempt to start StorNext with
'service cvfs start' has failed before completion. Attempts to
start StorNext are blocked until this status has been cleared by
running 'snhamgr clear'.
The HA Manager subsystem collects server statuses along with the
server modes to fully measure the operating condition of the HA Cluster.
The possible statuses are as follows:
• stopped: Running the 'DSM_control status' command has returned
a false code.
• running: Running the 'DSM_control status' command has returned
a true code.
• primary: The server's status is running and the FSMPM is in the
primary state, which indicates that the HaShared FSM has been
activated.
The HA Manager allows the cluster to be in one of the following
restricted set of operating states. When a server is in default mode, HA
monitoring is turned on.
• default-default
• default-locked
• default-peerdown
• single-peerdown

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• single-locked
• config-peerdown
• config-locked
• locked-*
The following states are prohibited and prevented from occurring by the
HA Manager, unless there is improper tampering. For example, the last
state listed below (peerdown-*), is the case when a node that is
designated as peerdown begins communicating with its peer. If any of
these is discovered by the HA Manager, it will take action to move the
cluster to a valid state, which may trigger an HA reset.
• single-default
• single-single
• single-config
• config-default
• config-single
• config-config
• peerdown-*

HA Manager Components
The following files and processes are some of the components of the HA
Manager Subsystem:
• snhamgr_daemon: If the cnvt2ha.sh script has been run, this
daemon is started after system boot and before StorNext, and
immediately attempts to communicate with its peer. It is stopped
after StorNext when Linux is shutting down. Otherwise, it should
always be running. A watcher process attempts to restart it when it
stops abnormally. Its status can be checked with 'service snhamgr
status'. It can be restarted with 'service snhamgr start' or 'service
snhamgr restart' if it is malfunctioning.
• snhamgr: CLI that communicates with the daemon to deliver
commands and report status, or to report a default status when the
cnvt2ha.sh script has not been run. This is the interface for
StorNext control scripts to regulate component starts.

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• /usr/cvfs/install/.ha_mgr: Stored mode value, which allows

the single, config, locked, and peerdown modes to persist across
reboots.
• SNSM_HA_CONFIGURED: Environment variable that points to a
touch file to indicate that cnvt2ha.sh has been run.
• /etc/init.d/snhamgr: Service control script for starting the
snhamgr_daemon.
• HA_IDLE_FAILED_STARTUP: Environment variable that points to a
touch file to indicate that a previous run of 'service cvfs start'
failed before completion. This blocks startup attempts to prevent
infinitely looping startup attempts.
• /usr/cvfs/debug/smithlog: When an HA Reset is imminent, a
descriptive line is added to the end of this file and the file is fsync'd
in an attempt to ensure that the information is available for
debugging the root cause of the reset. For example, when there is
less than one second remaining on the HA Monitor timer, a notice is
written in this file. It is likely that all other log files will lose some of
the newest information at the time of the reset because it is in
buffers that have not been written to disk.

HA Manager Operation
In addition to the setting of modes, there are some commands provided
by the HA Manager to simplify and automate the operation of an HA
Cluster.
1 status: Report cluster status. All commands report cluster status
on completion. This command does nothing else unless an invalid
cluster state is detected, in which case it will take steps to correct
the cluster state.
2 stop: Transition the non-Primary server to locked mode, which will
stop StorNext if it is running. Then transition the Primary server to
config mode, which will turn off HA monitoring. Stop StorNext on
the Primary server. Finally, transition both servers to default mode.
3 start: If either MDC is in config or single mode, transition it to
default mode (CVFS stops when transitioning from config mode). If
either MDC is in locked mode, transition it to default mode. If the
remote MDC is in peerdown mode, then run peerup. If the local
MDC is stopped, run 'service cvfs start'. If the remote MDC is

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accessible and in stopped status, run 'service cvfs start' on

the remote MDC.

Note: Running service cvfs start is the preferred method

of starting, so Quantum recommends using this command
rather than using other methods. Likewise, use service
cvfs stop to stop.

4 config: Transition the peer server to locked mode, then transition

the local server to config mode. This command must be run on the
Primary server or either server when both servers are stopped.
5 clear: Erase the HA_IDLE_FAILED_STARTUP touch file. This
should be used after correcting the condition that caused the failure
of the 'service cvfs start' command.
6 --primary: Set the Primary status in the FSMPM on the local
server. This is exclusively for use by system scripts. Improper use of
this command will violate HA protection rules and could result in
split-brain scenario.
7 force smith: Trigger an immediate HA reset. This is primarily for
use by system scripts.

Configuration and Conversion to HA

The following types of StorNext configurations can be run as HA Cluster
servers:
1 Windows
The StorNext GUI has a menu item for configuring HA: Tools > HA
> Convert. It automatically inserts the 'HaFsType HaUnmanaged'
configuration item in every file system configuration, and restarts
the FSMs to enable HA. This menu item must be selected separately
on each server. It is the operator's responsibility to ensure that HA is
running on both servers-there are no built-in tests to ensure that
this has been done.
2 Linux SNFS without GUI support

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Each FSM configuration file must be given the 'HaFsType

HaUnmanaged' configuration item, and the ha_peer file must be
given the numerical IP address of its peer. The FSM configuration
files and fsnameservers files must be identical on both servers.
When these things are done correctly, HA Monitoring is protecting
the metadata against split-brain scenario. It is on by default-there is
no means for turning it off other than removing the HaFsType item
from the FSM configuration files.
3 Linux Storage Manager with only unmanaged file systems
See Conversion to HA for more information.
4 Linux Storage Manager with managed and unmanaged file
systems
See Conversion to HA for more information.

Conversion to HA This section describes what happens in the conversion script.

When a StorNext Storage Manager single-server configuration has been
completed, the node is converted to HA by running the /usr/adic/
util/cnvt2ha.sh script. This script expects there to be one and only
one unmanaged file system that is configured with the 'HaFsType
HaShared' configuration item. It also expects the /usr/cvfs/
config/license.dat file to include licenses for both the configured
server and its unconfigured redundant peer. The configured server is
running StorNext when the cnvt2ha.sh script is run, so it becomes the
Primary on completion of the script.
The following command is invoked to start the conversion process:
/usr/adic/util/cnvt2ha.sh primary
Output for the operation is displayed to the screen and saved to the /
usr/adic/HA/cnvt2ha.sh.log file.
The script automatically finds the shared file system by its HaFsType
configuration item and moves its mount point to /usr/adic/HAM/
shared. It relocates several hundred configuration and database files
for Storage Manager to the /usr/adic/HAM/shared directory. SNFS
configuration items are copied from the /usr/cvfs/config directory to the
mirror subdirectory of the shared file system. Finally, it creates the
following touch file to indicate that conversion has completed:
/usr/adic/install/.snsm_ha_configured

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The existence of that file enables the running of the snhamgr service,
which starts the HA Manager daemon.
Before the conversion script is run on the secondary, the following file
must be copied from the Primary:
/usr/cvfs/config/fsnameservers
The arguments to the conversion command for the secondary server are
as follows:
/usr/adic/util/cnvt2ha.sh secondary <sharedfs name>
<peer IP address>
This gives the redundant peer server enough information to access the
shared file system as a client. It then copies the mirrored configuration
files into its own configuration directory and sets up the ha_peer file.
The database and management-components configuration files are
rerouted to the /usr/adic/HAM/shared shared file system mount
point. Finally, the .SNSM_ha_configured touch file is created, and
StorNext is restarted.

SyncHA process Before the shared file system is up, some configuration files must be
available. These are initially “mirrored” to the secondary server by the
cnvt2ha.sh script, and then maintained across the two server
computers by the syncHA process, which is run once per minute from
cron. On the Primary, the command stat's the mirrored files to see what
has changed, and copies these out to the /usr/adic/HAM/shared/
mirror folder. On the secondary server, the files that have changed are
copied in. The list of mirrored files is defined in the /usr/cvfs/
config/filelist and /usr/adic/gui/config/filelist tables
as follows.
In the /usr/cvfs/config directory:
• license.dat
• fsmlist
• fsnameservers
• fsroutes
• fsports
• *.cfg
• *.cfgx

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• *.opt
• nss_cctl.xml
• osnpolicyd.conf
• oblockpool_settings.txt
• oblockpool_root
• oblockpool_config.tmpl
• oblockpool_config.txt
• obp_settings
In the usr/adic/gui directory:
• odatabase/*
• oconfig/host_port.conf

Managing HA in the StorNext GUI

The StorNext Tools menu’s HA > Manage option enables you to view
the current status of the file systems on your HA system. Specifically,
you can view the primary and secondary node FSM statuses: Active,
Standby, or Unknown.
The Manage option is accessible by choosing HA > Manage from the
Tools menu. The HA Manage screen appears.

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Figure 114 HA Manage Screen

The Manage option also enables you to perform the following HA-
related actions:

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Enter Config Mode: Sets the peer (secondary) Exit Config Mode: Starts both nodes of the HA
node to locked mode and sets the local (primary) cluster in default mode.
node to config mode for administration purposes. 1 Click Exit Config Mode.
The locked mode stops CVFS on the peer, and is
2 When the confirmation message appears,
designed for automated short-duration stops of
click Yes to proceed or No to abort.
the secondary server to make configuration
changes and other modifications. This allows the 3 Click OK when a message informs you that
HA Manager to prevent HA resets while making the cluster was unlocked.
configuration changes or stopping the primary
server.
Note: In the event that TCP communication to
the secondary server is lost for any reason,
the primary server assumes the secondary
server is in default mode and transitions
the local server out of config mode. For
this reason, the locked mode is not
appropriate to use for extended secondary-
server outages, activities that might
include reboots of the secondary server,
etc. Best practice is to use Peerdown mode
when a server is turned off for an extended
period, or to simply keep the primary
server in default mode while the secondary
server is brought in and out of service in
short durations.
1 Click Enter Config Mode.
2 When the confirmation message appears, click
Yes to proceed or No to abort.
3 Click OK when a message informs you that the
cluster was locked.

HA Operation
Most of the information in this section is in regard to GUI-supported
configurations of StorNext on Linux servers; that is, those installations
having an HaShared FSM. There is very little difference for File System-

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only installations on Windows or Linux in administrating redundant HA

versus non-HA servers.
The supported method for starting StorNext on Linux is the 'service
cvfs start' command. This is the method used automatically by Linux
when the system enters multi-user mode. The script sets up a failure-
detection method that prevents looping starts as described in HA
Manager Components on page 283.
StorNext is automatically started as a service on Windows. If StorNext is
started more than once in a three-minute period, StorNext operation is
delayed for three minutes. This would allow an administrator to login
and stop an infinite cycle of HA resets at startup.
StorNext Server for Windows includes the Advanced File System
Configuration tool that automates the configuration of the HaFsType
parameter. Ensure that both servers have HA enabled when redundant
servers are operating. The ha_peer file must be manually configured.

Windows and Linux HA monitoring is turned on by default when FSM configurations include
SNFS Installations the HaFsType configuration parameter. There is no need to disable HA
Without the HaShared in almost all cases. The only mechanism for turning it off is to remove
File System the configuration parameter, but this should be done only after the
redundant server has been turned off.

Note: Instances of redundant StorNext servers without HA are not

supported.

The ha_peer and optional ha_smith_interval files are the only

additional configuration items for instances of HA without an HaShared
file system. These instances must be manually configured. FSM-
configuration and FSMlist files must be identical on both servers.
When stopping StorNext on one of these servers, all FSMs will stop.
Standby FSMs on the redundant server will activate and resume serving
their file systems. No HA reset will occur if every stopping FSM exits
before their HAmon timer expires after the final ARB brand update.
During operation, individual file systems could potentially fail over
between servers as the result of a hardware or software failure or
because an operator has directed it by the fail command in the
cvadmin tool. The fail command can be used for load balancing after
the HA cluster has completed startup.

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When making file system configuration changes, one of the servers

should be stopped and its FSM configurations deleted. This eliminates
the possible mistake of asymmetric configurations. After making all the
configuration changes on one server and updating the file systems with
those new configurations, the configuration files must be copied to the
redundant server. Then, the cluster can be operated with redundant
servers again.
When updating StorNext software, refer to the release notes and the
StorNext Upgrade Guide for current update instructions. These
documents address any special considerations for HA according to the
scope of the changes in the software release.

Linux SNMS and SNFS The HaShared file system is required for SNMS and GUI-supported
Installations with the installations. The shared file system holds operational information for
HaShared File System those components, which must be protected against split-brain
corruption. The additional complexity this entails is simplified and
automated by the HA Manger Subsystem.

Touch Files that Control StorNext and HA

Environment variables defined in the /usr/adic/.profile and /
usr/adic/.cshrc files reference touch files that are used in StorNext
to track state transitions. Some of these are unique to HA
configurations. The variables and their values are as follows:
1 ACTIVE_SNFS_SERVER=/usr/adic/install/
.active_snfs_server
The file is created following activation of the HaShared file system
to designate the local node as the Primary server.
2 HA_STARTING_UP=/usr/cvfs/install/.ha_starting_up
The file is created at the start of the 'service cvfs start' script,
and removed at the end of the activation script for the HaShared file
system. If it is found before it is created, that causes the creation of
the HA_IDLE_FAILED_STARTUP file as described in the next item.
3 HA_IDLE_FAILED_STARTUP=/usr/cvfs/install/
.ha_idle_failed_startup
When the HA_STARTING_UP file exists as the 'service cvfs
start' starts, it is assumed that the previous attempt to start failed

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before completing-possibly because an HA reset occurred. The

HA_IDLE_FAILED_STARTUP file is created to block future attempts
to start, and the current script exits. This avoids an infinitely looping
series of startup attempts, and allows an administrator to log in and
correct problems. The HA Manager reports the existence of this file
as a mode, and offers the clear command for removing the file.
4 SNSM_HA_CONFIGURED=/usr/adic/install/
.SNSM_ha_configured
The file is created by the cnvt2ha.sh script to indicate that the
system has been converted to HA. Its existence allows the
snhamgr_daemon to run.
5 START_SNFS_ONLY=/usr/adic/install/.start_snfs_only
The file is created by running one of the following commands: '/
usr/adic/bin/adic_control startonly snfs' or '/usr/
cvfs/bin/DSM_control startonly'.
Its existence indicates to the snactivated script that Storage
Manager components are not to be started. The file is removed by
using any of the following commands: 'DSM_control stop',
'service cvfs stop', or 'adic_control stop snfs'.

Starting a Single StorNext HA Server for Production

The 'service cvfs start' command sets in motion a sequence of
events that result in the starting of all the Storage Manager
components.

Note: The individual Storage Manager component scripts should not

be run by hand. There are safeguards in the control scripts to
preserve the HA protections against split-brain scenario in any
case, but StorNext can get into certain states that are tricky to
reconcile if component scripts are used in the wrong sequence.
The shared file system can make that reconciliation more
difficult.

The cvfs script (indirectly) starts the DSM_control script, which starts the
FSMPM, waits for it, and then repeatedly attempts to mount all of the
cvfs type file systems. The FSMPM reads the FSM configuration files and
the fsmlist file. It starts the HaShared and HaUnmanaged FSMs in the
fsmlist, but delays starting the HaManaged FSMs. The sub state of the
delayed FSMs can be displayed with the fsmlist command in the

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cvadmin tool. Meanwhile, the mounts taking place because of the

action of DSM_control are triggering elections that are activating the
locally started FSMs if they are not already being serviced by active FSMs
on the peer server.
When an FSM completes activation, it runs the snactivated script.
The script for the HaShared file system creates the
ACTIVE_SNFS_SERVER file, and then calls 'snhamgr - primary' to
set the Primary status for this server. That induces the FSMPM to start
the HaManaged FSMs. The HaShared activation script waits a limited
time for all of the managed file systems to be mounted, and then it calls
'adic control start' to start the other Storage Manager components.
Finally, the HaShared activation script removes the startup-failure-
detection touch file.
While all this is happening, the DSM_control script is monitoring
progress and reporting statuses of the mounts and the component
startups. It will wait a limited time for completion. When it finishes and
exits all the nested scripts and returns to the user, all of the Storage
Manager components should be up. But if it times out before that, the
background activities should continue bringing up Storage Manager.
The results of this can be observed a few moments later.

Starting and Stopping the StorNext HA Cluster

When starting or stopping StorNext HA, it is always helpful to first get
the cluster state from the HA Manager as follows:
snhamgr status
The status output indicates whether one or both servers are stopped, if
they are in non-default modes, and if either server has Primary status.
The typical first step in stopping an HA cluster is to stop the secondary
server and to lock it. This allows the other server to be put in config or
single mode to operate with HA monitoring turned off. Then, that server
can be stopped without incurring an HA reset. These steps are
automated in the following cluster command:
snhamgr stop
When starting the cluster into production, both servers must be in
default mode. The first server to start is likely to have its HaShared FSM
activated, which will result in that server becoming Primary. The
redundant server becomes Secondary when it starts operation, and its
FSM processes wait in Standby until they are elected to usurp control of
their file systems. These steps are automated in the following cluster

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command, which stops the cluster using the stop command, then starts
the local server to become Primary, followed by starting the Secondary
server:
snhamgr start
StorNext HA also has the ability to stop a Primary server while it is in
default mode without incurring an HA reset in most cases. It does this as
follows:
1 Stop Storage Manager processes, including the database
2 Unmount all CVFS file systems on the local server other than the
HaShared file system
3 Stop all FSMs on the local server other than the HaShared FSM
4 Unmount the HaShared file system
5 Stop the FSMPM
6 Stop the HaShared FSM
FSMs are elected and activate on the peer server as they are stopped on
the local server.
An HA reset can occur if step 4 fails. (That is, if the HaShared file system
cannot be unmounted for any reason.) This is the method for protecting
Storage Manager management data against split-brain-scenario
corruption. All of the at-risk data is contained on the shared file system,
so the unmount operation ensures that the local server cannot modify
the data.

Upgrading and Changing Configuration

Whenever configuration or software changes are made, a StorNext HA
cluster must be downgraded to one server with HA disabled. This avoids
the possibility of an HA reset being induced by the arbitrary starts and
stops of FSMs and other components as changes are made.
After changes have been made on one server, mirrored configuration
items must be copied to the peer server. Examples include the following
files:
• /usr/cvfs/config/*.cfgx
• /usr/cvfs/config/FSMlist
• /usr/cvfs/config/fsnameservers

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• /etc/fstab

Production Single-Server Operation

During extended outages of one server, it might not be productive to
incur an HA reset since there is no standby FSM to fail over to. However,
reconfiguring the remaining server to non-HA mode is not practical. The
single mode solves this dilemma.
Single mode can be entered from default mode, and default mode can
be entered from single mode without stopping StorNext. This makes it
easy to decommission and replace a failed server. Here are the steps for
doing this:
1 Power down the decommissioning server (if necessary)
2 On the working server, run the following two commands in order:
snhamgr peerdown
snhamgr mode=single
3 Replace the decommissioned server
4 Acquire licenses for the new server
5 Replace those license file entries on the working server
6 Install StorNext on the new server, but do not configure it
7 On the working server, run the following two commands in order:
snhamgr mode=default
snhamgr peerup
8 Run the conversion script on the new server as follows:
/usr/adic/util/cnvt2ha.sh secondary <shared fs>
<peer IP addr>

Non-production Operation
There is a method for starting the SNFS file systems without starting the
Storage Manager management components in the rare case that this is
needed. The following two commands accomplish the same goal:
• adic_control startonly snfs
• DSM_control startonly

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HA Resets

These commands create the /usr/adic/install/

start_snfs_only touch file, which signals to the snactivated.pl
script not to start the management components. The file exists until
StorNext is stopped, and has its effect whenever the FSMs activate.

HA Resets
After a suspected HA Reset, the first place to look is the /usr/cvfs/
debug/smithlog file, which contains one-line time-stamped
descriptions of probable causes for the reset.
There are three methods for producing an HA Reset:
1 Expiration of an HA Monitor timer
2 Exit of the active HaShared FSM while the shared file system is
mounted on the active MDC
3 Invocation of the 'snhamgr force smith' command by a script or
manually by an administrator

HA Resets of the First The first method of an HA Reset is explained by the following
Kind description of the FSM monitoring algorithm (patent pending). The
terms usurp and usurpation refer to the process of taking control of a
file system, either with or without contention. It involves the branding
of the arbitration block on the metadata disk to take control, and then
the timed rebranding of the block to maintain control. The HA Monitor
algorithm places an upper bound on the timing of the ARB branding
protocol to prevent two FSMs from simultaneously attempting to
control the metadata, even for an instant.
• When an activating HaUnmanaged or HaShared FSM usurps the
ARB, create a five-second timer that resets the computer if it expires
• Wait five seconds plus a small delta before completing usurpation
• Immediately after every ARB Brand update, reset the timer
• Delete the timer when the FSM exits
When there is a SAN, LUN, or FSM process failure that delays updates of
the ARB, the HA Monitor timer can run out. When it is less than one

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second from expiring, a one-line message describing this is written to

the /usr/cvfs/debug/smithlog file.
If SAN or LUN delays are suspected of occurring with regular frequency,
the following test can be run. This will significantly impact performance.
• Increase the timer value up to 999 seconds by creating the /usr/
cvfs/config/ha_smith_interval file on each MDC with only
this line: 'ha_smith_interval=<integer>'. This will allow the
delays to run their course without incurring a reset. The value must
match on both MDCs.
• Turn on debugging traces with 'cvdbset :ha'
• Display debugging traces with 'cvdb -g -C -D 500'
• Look for the lines like this example 'HAmonScheduleCheck
delta_time is 500136 usecs'
• When the value grows substantially beyond 500000 usecs, there are
abnormal delays occurring. When a standby FSM is running and the
LAN is working, the negotiated timer resets should limit the growth
of this value to two seconds.
• Turn off tracing with 'cvdbset - all'

HA Resets of the The second method of HA Reset can occur on shutdown of CVFS if there
Second Kind is an unkillable process or delayed process exit under the HaShared file
system mount point. This will keep the file system from being
unmounted. The smithlog entry indicates when this has happened, but
does not identify the process.

HA Resets of the Third The third method of HA Reset is the most common. It occurs when the
Kind snactivated script for the HaShared FSM experiences an error during
startup. The current implementation invokes the 'snhamgr force
smith' command to allow the peer MDC an opportunity to start up
StorNext if it can. A similar strategy was used in previous releases. In this
release, the failure to start will cause the /usr/cvfs/install/
.ha_idle_failed_startup touch file to be created, and this will
prevent startup of CVFS on this MDC until the file is erased with the
'snhamgr clear' command.

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HA Tracing and Log Files

Using HA Manager The snhamgr rules for mode pairings are easier to understand by
Modes following a BAAB strategy for transitioning into and out of config or
single mode. In this strategy, B stands for the redundant node, and A
stands for the node to be placed into config or single mode. Enter the
desired cluster state by transitioning B's mode first, then A's. Reverse this
when exiting the cluster state by transitioning A's mode, then B's.
For the configuration-session example, place B in locked mode, then
place A in config mode to start a configuration session. At the end of
the session, place A in default mode, then place B in default mode.
For the single-server cluster example, shut down Linux and power off B,
then designate it peerdown with the 'snhamgr peerdown' command on
A, then place A in single mode. At the end of the session, place A in
default mode, then designate B as up with the 'snhamgr peerup'
command on A, then power on B.

HA Tracing and Log Files

The following log files contain HA related debugging information:
• /usr/cvfs/debug/ha_mgr.out
Log messages from the snhamgr_daemon
• /usr/cvfs/debug/hamgr_cmds_trace
Output from commands run by the snhamgr_daemon. Typically,
several commands are run simultaneously. Their output becomes
intertwined-this is normal.
• /usr/cvfs/debug/snactivated.<fs name>.log
Output from the snactivated.pl command per file system.
• /usr/cvfs/debug/nssdbg.out
Log messages from the FSMPM daemon. HA related messages
include: the HAmon timer interval, anomalies in negotiations for the
resetting of HAmon timers, setting of Primary status, activations of
FSMs etc.
• /usr/cvfs/data/<fs name>/log/cvlog

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Single (Singleton) Mode

Log messages from FSM processes. HA related messages include:

the last write of the ARB after quiescing the metadata writes,
waiting the HA interval after branding the ARB, launching of the
snactivated script etc.
• /usr/adic/HA/cnvt2ha.sh.log
Output of the cnvt2ha.sh script.
• /var/log/messages
Mounts of cvfs file systems.
• /usr/cvfs/debug/smithlog
When an HA Reset is imminent, a descriptive line is added to the end of
this file and the file is sync'd to ensure that the information is available
for debugging the root cause of the reset. For example, when there is
less than one second remaining on the HA Monitor timer, a notice is
written in this file. It is likely that all other log files will lose some of the
newest information at the time of the reset because it is in buffers that
have not been written to disk

Single (Singleton) Mode

Single mode (also known as Singleton mode) allows for extended
operation without the risk of incurring an HA Reset. In this state HA is
disabled, but with the possibility of reduced availability because the
redundant server is missing. Use of the “snhamgr force smith”
command produces an error message, and the server continues to run.
This and other instances where an HA reset would have occurred under
Default mode are still logged in the /usr/cvfs/debug/smithlog
diagnostic file.
In Single mode the Secondary must be either “Offline” (peerdown) or
“Locked”. When in peerdown mode, the Secondary is truly
incommunicado. When locked, Web services are still running on the
Secondary.

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FSM failover in HA Environments

There is no way in the StorNext GUI to go directly from Singleton/Locked

to Default/Default, but it is possible to “Enter Config Mode” and then
“Exit Config Mode” to get to Default/Default.
When in Singleton/Peerdown, the “Enter Config Mode” and “Exit Config
Mode” sequence transitions the cluster as follows: Single/Peerdown ->
Config/Peerdown -> Single/Peerdown.
Between the initial conversions of the Primary and Secondary servers,
the GUI sets the cluster to Single/Peerdown. Quantum recommend that
conversions be done one right after the other; there is no benefit to
remaining in this half-converted state for any length of time. If the
Secondary must be replaced (or when it is uninstalled during an
upgrade), the StorNext GUI leaves the cluster in Default/Default
(Unknown) state.
When leaving Config or Single mode to return to the Default/Default
state, it is a best practice to have the same server be the Primary before
and after the transition. This allows any configuration changes to be
transferred to the Secondary before it activates any FSMs.

FSM failover in HA Environments

When a failover of any file system occurs, the new FSM notices if any
clients had a file exclusively opened for writes, and waits up to 35
seconds for those clients to reconnect. In the case of an HA Reset of the
Primary MDC, that MDC is not going to reconnect, so the failover to
FSMs on the Secondary MDC and the promotion of that MDC to Primary
status can be delayed by 35 seconds.
The StorNext system exclusively opens files on the HaShared file system,
but assumes that only the Primary MDC does this and waives the delay
for that one file system. Quantum advises against running user
processes other than StorNext processes on HA MDCs for performance,
reliability and availability reasons. In the event that processes running
on the Primary MDC have files exclusively open for writes on other file
systems, the availability of those file systems to all clients will be delayed
by 35 seconds following an HA Reset event.

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Failover Timing The following illustration shows approximate timings of the FSM
failover in an HA cluster. The numbers in the notes correspond to the
numbers in the illustration.
In this description, both MDCs in an HA Cluster are fully started and the
Secondary MDC is ready to assume the Primary role if needed. At time
T0, an HA Reset of the Primary occurs.

Figure 115 FSM Failover in an

HA Cluster

0 Not shown in this diagram are the state transitions of the peer MDC
when it incurs an HA Reset. The HA Reset is not directly tied to the
failover of control to a standby FSM, but rather the detection of a
loss of services triggers failovers. The HA Reset may come before or
after the loss of services, or not at all. It is only important to know
that by the end of state 8, no FSM on the peer MDC is controlling
the arbitration block (ARB). The HA Reset mechanism guarantees
that to be true.
The example failures shown here (System Crash, Fabric Outage,
Network Outage) can result in a failover. Typically, the loss of
heartbeat from the peer MDC's FSMPM is the first indication that an
HA Reset has occurred.
1 Triggering Event: The loss of heartbeat is detected and triggers an
election at approximate time T3.5 seconds. Note that failover of a

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FSM failover in HA Environments

single unmanaged file system could also be forced with the cvadmin
command without causing an HA Reset.
2 Vote Initiation: A quorum-vote election is started where the clients
of the file system identify the best-connected MDC having a standby
FSM for the file system.
3 Connectivity Tests: Each live client runs a connectivity test
sequence to each server. Connections are tested in less than .5
seconds per server, when successful, and can be repeated up to four
times (two seconds) when unsuccessful. At completion of the
election, the time is approximately T5.5.
4 Election and Start Activation: The election is completed, and an
activation message is sent to one server’s standby FSM.
5 Delayed Activation: When a server has active FSMs, its FSMPM
process sends a request to the FSMPM of its peer server to ask if the
corresponding Standby FSMs are being activated. If not, the local
FSMPM can reset the HA timer of that file system's active FSM,
which reduces the chance of an unnecessary HA Reset. When the
peer FSMPM gives permission, it is constrained from activating the
standby FSM for two seconds. Step 5 is for that delay of up to two
seconds. The delay completes at approximately T6.5.
6 Usurpation Attempts: To prevent false takeovers, the ARB is polled
to determine whether another FSM is active and must be "usurped".
Usurpation is averted if the activating FSM detects activity in the
ARB and its vote count does not exceed the active FSM's client-
connection count. A typical successful poll after an HA Reset lasts
two seconds. When the previously active FSM exits gracefully, the
usurpation takes one second.
The activating FSM then performs a sequence of I/Os to "brand" the
arbitration block to signal takeover to the peer FSM. An active FSM
is required to exit when it sees that its brand has been overwritten.
These operations take two seconds. The HAmon timer is started at
this point if the HaFsType is HaShared or HaUnmanaged. This step
completes at approximately T9.5.
7 FSM Restart: After five failed attempts to usurp control, an
activating FSM exits. The fsmpm restarts a standby FSM ten seconds
later.
8 Wait for HA Delay: When an active FSM is configured for HA
Monitoring (HaShared or HaUnmanaged), and the ARB brand is not
maintained for more than the HA Timer Interval (five seconds by

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default), the FSM's server computer is reset. After an activating FSM

writes its brand, it waits one second longer than the HA Timer while
monitoring its brand (HA Delay = six seconds by default), to be
certain that the formerly active FSM has not resumed control of the
ARB. The delay completes at approximately T13.5.
9 Journal Replay: Any outstanding journal entries are replayed in
order to achieve consistent metadata state. The time required for
this step can vary due to several factors, but typically completes
within seconds. A possible time for completion of this step is T18.5.
10 Accept Connection Requests: The FSM begins to listen for client
(re)connects. It waits up to 35 seconds for reconnections from any
clients that have files open exclusively for writing, but this delay
does not apply to the formerly active FSM's server computer.
Approximate time at completion of this step is T20.5.
11 Client Reconnects: The FSM begins servicing reconnects from the
live clients. The clients perform a sequence of attribute state
synchronization to ensure consistency with the server. Approximate
time at completion of this step is T22.5.
12 Start Managed FSMs: When the HaShared FSM reaches this step, it
sets the Primary status for the server, which signals the FSMPM to
start the HaManaged FSMs. Those FSMs then proceed through steps
1 through 14, but without the initial 3.5 second delay in step 1, and
without the delay in step 8, since they are not HA Monitored.
Activation or the HaManaged file systems can complete in seconds,
completing at approximately T27.5.
13 Client Service Restored: The clients reinitiate any outstanding RPCs
to the server and restore full service to the applications. This runs in
parallel with starting HaManaged FSMs.
14 Done: At this point, processes on clients can create, read, write etc.
files in StorNext file systems unless Storage Manager Services are
needed. In that case there can be a delay of several minutes as those
services are restarted before certain file system operations can be
completed.
15 The approximate time of 27.5 seconds to complete a failover is
variable and could take less or significantly more time.
It is important to note that an HA Reset is possible on the Secondary
server if an HaUnmanaged FSM is active there and fails to maintain its
brand on the ARB within the timing constraints of the HA system.

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Replacing an HA System

The following table presents common timing estimates for failover of all
file systems following an HA Reset of the Primary server. Actual
performance will vary according to: differences in configurations; file
system activities in progress at the time of failover; CPU, SAN and LAN
loads, latency and health; and the nature of the conditions that caused
the failover. The optimal estimates are for a forced failover at the
command line of a single unmanaged file system without an HA Reset.

Replacing an HA System
This section describes how to replace an HA server. Before beginning
this procedure make sure you have obtained the proper licenses
required for the new HA MDC.

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Note: This procedure requires a certain level of technical expertise. Do

not attempt performing this procedure unless you are
confident you can complete the steps successfully.

If you are unsure about your ability to complete these steps,

contact the Quantum Technical Assistance Center for help.

Pre-Conversion Steps
1 If both HA MDCs are currently up and running, make sure the
system you want to replace is designated as the secondary MDC.
This can be accomplished by running “service cvfs stop” on
the designated machine.
2 Run a manual backup to tape from the StorNext GUI.
3 Make sure all store/retrieve requests have finished.
4 If you are using the Distributed Data Mover (DDM) feature, note the
value of the DISTRIBUTED_MOVING parameter (either All or
Threshold) in /usr/adic/TSM/config/fs_sysparm (or
fs_sysparm_override).
Use a text editor to set the DISTRIBUTED_MOVING value to None.
Use the adic_control restart TSM command to put this
change into effect.
5 Unmount all file systems from all clients, and then stop the SNFS
processes on each client machine. (On the Linux platform, do this by
running service cvfs stop).
6 Uninstall StorNext from the secondary server, but retain the log files.
Do this by running the command install.stornext -remove.
7 Power down the uninstalled secondary server.

Conversion Steps
1 Set the primary node to “Config” mode and the peer node to
“Peerdown” mode by running the following commands:
snhamgr peerdown
snhamgr mode=config

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2 Check the StorNext HA Manager (snhamgr) status by running the

command snhamgr status. The status should look similar to this:
LocalMode=config
LocalStatus=primary
RemoteMode=peerdown
RemoteStatus=unknown
3 Change the /usr/cvfs/config/ha_peer file on the primary
MDC to the new MDC IP address.
4 If the /usr/cvfs/config/fsnameserver file includes the old
MDC IP address, replace it with the new MDC IP address on the
primary MDC and all the clients.
5 In the primary MDC’s /usr/cvfs/config/license.dat file,
remove all the old MDC licenses by commenting out the lines you
want removed. Keep only the primary MDC licenses.
6 Push those changes to the synchronization mirror directory by
running this command: /usr/adic/util/syncha.sh -primary
7 Install StorNext 4.0.0 build on the NEW secondary server by running
this command: install.stornext
8 Put the new licenses on the NEW secondary servers into /usr/
cvfs/config/license.dat.
9 From the primary MDC GUI, verify that the primary and secondary
licenses match. (The StorNext GUI will do this automatically in the
next step.)
10 In the StorNext GUI, go to the Tools> HA > Convert screen and
convert the secondary MDC to HA.

Post-Conversion Steps
1 After the conversion is complete, check the snhamgr status on both
MDCs. Run the cvadmin command to verify that all file systems are
listed correctly.
2 Perform a system backup by running the snbackup command. This
process may take substantial time depending on the number of
managed files in the system.
3 Start and mount StorNext file systems on the clients, and then verify
that all clients have full access

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4 Conduct a failover to confirm that the secondary MDC has

converted correctly. Confirm this by testing access to all file systems,
moving files to/from tapes, and reviewing GUI configuration
information.
5 If you conducted a failover to the secondary server, fail back to the
original primary server.
6 Verify that all clients still have full access.
7 If you are using the DDM feature and if you use the secondary server
as a DDM mover, make sure the file systems are mounted.
8 If you are using DDM, edit fs_sysparm or
fs_sysparm_override to use your preferred DDM mode, (All or
Threshold).
Use the command adic_control restart TSM to put this
change into effect.

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 Appendix D
Web Services API

Beginning with StorNext 4.0, a Web Services version of StorNext API

(WS-API) is installed along with the StorNext 4.0 Linux GUI binary, which
is installed by default.
WS-API provides basic control over StorNext Storage Manager systems
to track media and drives and to store/truncate/retrieve files from any
computer capable of creating a Web Services connection, which
includes Windows, Macintosh, and Linux based systems, among others.
WS-API is different from the StorNext API (SNAPI) product, which allows
you to run APIs for StorNext File System and Storage Manager. For more
information about SNAPI, contact your Quantum Sales representative.

Enabling WS-API
In order to perform any command on the remote server (except for the
getSNAPIVersion call), the correct password must be specified with
the call.
The server verifies this password against the one stored in the /usr/
adic/.snapipassword file on the server. Make sure this file is the
same on all metadata controllers (MDCs) you will be accessing. This is
especially important if you are using virtual IP (vIP) addresses, because

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WS-API APIs

you can be communicating to different machines across different API

calls or even retries of the same call.
The .snapipassword file is stored as clear text and it should be set to
be readable only by root. If this file does not exist, no calls other than
getSNAPIVersion will succeed.
Sample WS-API code is included in the phdist directory. This code is
ready to be copied to your Windows development machine.

WS-API APIs
This section provides descriptions and syntax for the APIs included with
WS-API. Examples of each API are also provided.

The doCancel API Given a requestID (which can be retrieved by running the getSMQueue
API), running the doCancel API aborts an operation in progress.
Running this API is equivalent to running the fscancel command.

Syntax
public string[] doCancel(string password, string requestID);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.doCancel(password, requestID);

The doMediaMove API Use the doMediaMove API to move media from one archive to another.
Running this API is equivalent to running the vsmove command.
Syntax
public string[] doMediaMove(string password, string[]
mediaIDs, string archiveName, bool interactive, bool
interactiveSpecified, string remoteHost);

Example

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WS-API APIs

String[] result = snapiClient.doMediaMove(password,

mediaList, archiveNameBox.Text.ToString(),
interactiveCheckBox.Checked, true,
remoteHostBox.Text.ToString());

The doRetrieve API Use the doRetrieve API to retrieve the data in files that have been
stored and then truncated. Running this API is equivalent to running the
fsretrieve command.
Syntax
public string[] doRetrieve(string password, string[] files,
bool updateATime, bool updateATimeSpecified, string copy,
string newFileName, string startByte, string endByte, string
directory);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.doRetrieve(password, fileList,
updateATimeCheckBox.Checked, true, copy, newFileName,
startByte, endByte, directory);

The doStore API Use the doStore API to store files as specified by its respective policy.
Running this API is equivalent to running the fsstore command.
Syntax
public string[] doStore(string password, string[] files,
string mediaType, string copies, string retention, string
drivePool, string minSize, string runTime);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.doStore(password, fileList,
mediaType, numCopies, retention, drivePool, minSize,
runTime);

The doTruncate API Use the doTruncate API to truncate files that have been stored, thus
freeing their allocated space on disk for reuse. Running this API is
equivalent to running the fstruncate command.
Syntax
public string[] doTruncate(string password, string[] files);

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Example
String[] result = snapiClient.doTruncate(password,
fileList);

The getDriveReport API Use the getDriveReport API to generate a report about the state of
all storage subsystem drive components. Running this API is equivalent
to running the fsstate command.
Syntax
public string[] getDriveReport(string password, string
componentAlias);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.getDriveReport(password,
componentAlias);

The getFileLocation API Use the getFileLocation API to generate a report about files known
to TSM. Running this API is equivalent to running the fsfileinfo
command.
Syntax
public string[] getFileLocation(string password, string[]
files, bool checksum, bool checksumSpecified);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.getFileLocation(password,
fileList, checksumBox.Checked, true);

The getMediaInfo API Use the getMediaInfo API to produce a list of media in a data and/or
storage area. Running this API is equivalent to running the fsmedlist
command.
Syntax
public string[] getMediaInfo(string password, bool
scratchPoolOnly);

Example

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String[] result = snapiClient.getMediaInfo(password,

genPoolCheckBox.Checked);

The getMediaReport Use the getMediaReport API to generate a report on media based on
API its current status. Running this API is equivalent to running the
fsmedinfo and vsmedqry commands.
Syntax
public string[] getMediaReport(string password, string[]
mediaIDs, bool longReport, bool longReportSpecified);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.getMediaReport(password,
mediaList, longReportBox.Checked, true);

The getSMQueue API Use the getSMQueue API to produce a list of currently executing
Storage Manager commands (retreives, stores, etc.). Running this API is
equivalent to running the fsqueue command.
Syntax
public string[] getSMQueue(string password);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.getSMQueue(password);

The getSNAPIVersion Call the getSNAPIVersion API to obtain the version number of the
API currently running WS-API implementation.
Syntax
public string[] getSNAPIVersion(string @in);
This function takes one string as an argument, but that string is
currently ignored and can be blank, and returns a string which is the
version number of Web Services SNAPI running on the server.
Example
String[] result = snapiClient.getSNAPIVersion("");

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Appendix D: Web Services API
WS-API APIs

The setMediaMoveInfo Use the setMediaMoveInfo API to complete a media move, letting
API TSM know whether it was successful or not. Running this API is
equivalent to running the mmconsoleinfo and mmportinfo
commands.
Syntax
public string[] setMediaMoveInfo(string password, string
archiveName, bool success, bool successSpecified, string[]
operations);

Example
String[] result = snapiClient.setMediaMoveInfo(password,
archiveNameBox.Text, successBox.Checked, true, operations);

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 Appendix E
Storage Manager
Truncation

Truncation is a StorNext feature that results in removing data blocks

from disk. This process frees up space for additional files to be stored on
the disk. This appendix contains an overview of how Storage Manager
truncation works, and how to perform simple troubleshooting.

Truncation Overview
Truncation operations fall into two categories. The first category is the
truncation that is performed as part of the normal StorNext processing.
The second category is the “space management” truncation policies
that are run only when the disk usage reaches certain key points.
For each file system defined on the MDC, there must be an entry in the
/usr/adic/TSM/config/filesystems file.
There are five variables specified for each file system:
1 Low-water mark (default value is 75%)
2 High-water mark (default value is 85%)
3 Min-Use mark (default value is 75%)
4 Min-Use enable (default is true)
5 Truncation enable (default is true)

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Truncation Overview

If truncation is not enabled on a file system, no files residing within that

file system will ever be truncated.
If truncation is enabled on a file system, as files are stored to media they
automatically become truncation candidates unless they are marked for
immediate truncation. (See below for more details).
Thus, a file can be truncated during one these operations:
1 Immediately after store (only if policy class is configured)
2 Daily truncation
3 LoSpace truncation
4 Emergency truncation

Normal Truncation These truncations are performed as part of the normal processing done
by StorNext.

Immediate Truncation This refers to truncation performed immediately after all copies of a file
are stored to media. This is enabled on a policy class basis and can be
enabled with this command:
fsmodclass -c <classname> -f i
The default is that a stored file becomes a truncation candidate. The file
will be dealt with through normal truncation processing.
Immediate Truncation can also be enabled on a file-by-file basis by using
the fschfiat command: fschfiat -t i filename...

Daily Truncation The fs_tierman TSM daemon kicks off policy-based truncations each
day after midnight.
In this case the call is: fspolicy -t -c <class> -m <class-
trunc-min-time> -z 1
This processes each defined policy class within StorNext until all policy
classes have been completed. After the fspolicy has been run against
all policy classes, the daemon waits until the next day to run them
again.

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Space Management

Each of these class-based truncation policies truncates eligible

candidates until either the min-use mark, if enabled, or the low-water
mark is reached or it runs out of truncation candidates. At that time it
terminates execution.
An eligible truncation candidate is a file that has not been accessed
during the truncation mintime interval.

Space Management
The two main space management cycles are described below. They will
continue to run as long as one of the conditions for a particular cycle is
met. Both the LOSPACE and "Emergency Space" conditions are handled
by the fs_space TSM daemon.

LOSPACE Cycle This cycle is activated when the disk usage of one or more file systems
exceeds the percentage full defined by the high-water value. When
reached, LOSPACE policies are executed in an attempt to reach the low-
water mark on each affected file system.
By default, the policies are executed once in this order on all affected file
systems:
• relocation policy
• truncation policy
The high-water and low-water values are displayed by the GUI File
System Monitor and can be modified via the StorNext GUI. By default,
these values are set to 85% and 75%, respectively.
In contrast to the Emergency policies described in the next section,
what's different in the behavior of the LOSPACE policies is that
MINTRUNCTIME and MINRELOCTIME are not ignored. Only files that
can be truly relocated and truncated are affected.
First, the relocation policy is executed and it continues until there are no
more relocation candidates available at which time it terminates.
The call made to perform the LOSPACE relocation is:
fspolicy -r -y <mountpoint>

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Space Management

If the file system usage still exceeds the high-water mark, the truncation
policy is executed and it truncates all candidates until no further
candidates are available, at which time it terminates.
The call made to perform the LOSPACE truncation is:
fspolicy -t -y <mountpoint> -z <mintruncsize>
At this time the LOSPACE Space Cycle is complete for this file system. All
other affected file systems are then processed in the same manner, first
by running the relocation policy and then the truncation policy, if
needed.
After all file systems have been processed, if any of them still exceed the
high-water mark, a new LOSPACE cycle is started after a one-minute
wait.
Thus, the low-water percentage may or may not be reached on any
given file system. It depends solely on whether there are enough
candidates available for relocation and/or truncation for that file system.

Emergency Cycle Emergency policies are executed when either of the following
conditions is met for a file system:
1 When a file system encounters the NOSPACE event, i.e. a file write
has failed because of lack of space.
2 When the file system usage is greater than 99%.
By default, the policies are executed once in this order:
1 emergency truncation policy
2 emergency relocation policy
3 emergency store policy
The emergency truncation policy finds up to the 3000 largest files that
can be truncated, ignoring MINTRUNCTIME, and performs the
truncation. This is executed once each time the NOSPACE condition is
reached.
The call made to perform this emergency truncation is:
fspolicy -t -y <mountpoint> -e
If the file system usage has not dropped below 100% after the
emergency truncation, the emergency relocation policy is now run.

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Disabling Truncation

When the emergency relocation policy is run, it finds all files that can be
relocated, ignoring MINRELOCTIME, and performs the relocation. As
with the emergency truncation policy, this is executed once each time
the EMERGENCY condition is reached.
The call made to perform the emergency truncation is:
fspolicy -r -y <mountpoint> -e
If the file system usage is still not below 100% after the emergency
relocation, an emergency store policy on the file system is performed.
An emergency store means that the request is placed first in the queue,
and that any files in the file system which can be stored will be stored
regardless of policy. As with the other emergency policies, it is run only
once.
The call made to perform the emergency store is:
fspolicy -s -y <mountpoint> -e
At this point the Emergency Space Cycle is complete.

Disabling Truncation
There are two ways to disable truncation: by using truncation feature
locking, and by running commands that disable truncation.

Truncation Feature Truncation operations can be locked, i.e. prevented from running, by
Locking using the fsschedlock command.
The feature name for each truncation operation is:
• mintime: Daily truncation
• lospace: LoSpace Cycle

Disable Truncation Truncation can be disabled for files by using one of the following
Commands commands:
fschfiat -t e <filename>

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Appendix E: Storage Manager Truncation
Common Problems

fschdiat -t e <directory name>

Running fschfiat sets an attribute on the file which will prevent it
from ever being truncated. Likewise, running fschdiat causes the
attribute to be set on files when they are created in the directory, but
will not have any effect on files that already exist in the directory.

Common Problems
This section describes some common truncation problems and how to
address them.

Files Are Not Truncated Even if the truncation mintime requirement is met, files may not be
as Expected truncated. Files are truncated only to keep the file system below the
low-water mark (by default 75% of the capacity). When the daily
truncation policies run, the oldest files are truncated first in an effort to
bring the file system usage below the low-water mark. Thus, files may
remain on disk even though their truncation mintime requirement has
been met if the disk space is not required.
You can use the StorNext GUI to adjust the low-water and high-water
marks on each file system if more free disk space is desired. A temporary
option to free up disk space is to run the following command:
fspolicy -t -c <policyclass> -o <goal>
The goal argument is a disk usage percentage. For example specifying
"-o 65" will truncate files until the disk usage either reaches 65% or
there are no more valid truncation candidates, i.e. the mintime
requirement has been satisfied.

"Old" Files Not Truncation uses the file access time to determine if the truncation
Truncating According to mintime requirement has been satisfied. If any application changes the
Policy Class access time of a file, the aging of the file restarts.
An example of this is where image files are listed using the thumbnail
mode on an Apple Macintosh. This causes the OS to read the file to
present this thumbnail, and the access time of the file gets updated to

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Miscellaneous Usage Notes

the current time. This in turn results in StorNext determining this file has
not satisfied the truncation mintime requirement.
Emergency truncation ignores mintime so the files could still be
truncating if the file system fills up. However, the best solution is to
modify the way files are accessed so as to not update the access time.
In the above example, this would mean not using the thumbnail view.

Small Files Not If a policy class has been configured to use stub files, files with a size
Truncating that is less then or equal to the stub size will not get truncated.

Miscellaneous Usage Notes

If you ingest lots of data per day relative to the size of the file system,
(for example, more than 80%), the file system disk usage can stay at a
high level of 90% or even higher. The main reason is that the truncation
mintime is a minimum of one day, so that neither the LoSpace nor the
daily truncation will truncate any files until the next day.
Also the emergency truncation only works to get the disk usage less
than 100% and no lower. If this is the case and the disk usage is a
concern, you should consider using immediate truncattion on the policy
classes within this file system.
Truncation performance is typically from 1500-2000 files per second.
This depends on the metadata controller (MDC) hardware configuration
and other activity on the MDC.
The rebuild policy checks for truncation candidates.

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Miscellaneous Usage Notes

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 Appendix F
Security

This appendix contains an in-depth overview security in general.

StorNext Security
There are two predominate security models in modern file systems:
POSIX and Access Control Lists (ACLs). ACLs are actually “Lists”
composed of Access Control Entries. These lists may be quite simple or
quite complicated, depending on the user's requirements.
The POSIX model is the older and less flexible of the two, having just
three main security groups: “User,” “Group” and “Other,” and three
operation categories: “Read,” “Write,” and “Execute”. For a directory,
“Execute” translates to the ability to change into that directory, while
“Read” and “Write” control directory listings and file creation and
deletion.
POSIX permissions are kept in the file's inode information and are read
from the file system on Unix/Linux systems by calls to stat().
In order to know what kind of restriction to place on a file or directory,
the OS first has to be able to track users and groups so it can later be
matched up with its associated information in files and directories. On
Windows, all users have two unique Security Identifiers (SIDs): one for
their user identification and one for the groups they belong to. On Unix/

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Linux and Mac OS X, every user has a User IDentifier (UID) and that user
is assigned to a group which has its own Group IDentifier (GID).
This is the model that's built into StorNext and used by all StorNext
clients on all operating systems unless it's overridden by the use of ACLs.
ACLs are currently supported only on Windows and Mac OS X. ACLs give
fine-grained control over file access and do things POSIX permissions
can't, such as allow for writes to a file while not allowing the file to be
deleted. ACLs also offer the benefit of “inheritance”, which allows a
directory to specify the default set of ACLs for all files created inside of
it.
ACLs are kept in the Extended Attributes for a file, which is an internal
data structure attached to the file's first inode that contains additional
information associated with the file. Only operating systems that know
to ask for the extended information with the proper key will understand
these ACLs. Currently, only Mac OS X and Windows know to use this
information.
The StorNext File System implements both the Unix POSIX model, and
on its Windows clients it implements the Windows Security Reference
Model (SRM) to a level compatible with Microsoft's NTFS file system.
Quantum attempts to marry the two models in a very simplistic way to
allow a common user to bridge file objects between Unix and Windows.
StorNext does not implement any of the Unix ACLs models or the NFSv4
ACLs model.

ACLs on Windows Each mapped drive, file, or folder on Windows contains a Windows
Security Descriptor. This descriptor contains the owner, primary group,
DACLs, and SACLs. Windows uses the Security Descriptor to control
access to each object. Windows Administrators and Users typically use
Windows Explorer to view, change, and create ACLs on files. This is done
in Explorer by first selecting the file or folder, displaying its properties,
and then clicking on the Security tab.
Each file/folder can have zero or more ACLs that specify how a user or
group can access or not access the file or folder. The possible controls in
each ACE are:

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Folders Files

Full control (all of the following) Full control (all of the following)

Traverse Folder Execute File

List Folder Read Data

Read Attributes Read Attributes

Read Extended Attributes Read Extended Attributes

Create Files Write Data

Create Folders Append Data

Write Attributes Write Attributes

Write Extended Attributes Write Extended Attributes

Delete Subfolders and Files

Delete Delete

Read Permissions Read Permissions

Change Permissions Change Permissions

Take Ownership Take Ownership

Each Item can be selected as: Allow, Deny, or not selected. If Full Control
is selected as Allow or Deny, all the other attributes are set to either
Allow or Deny.
In addition, each ACE on Windows is indicated to apply as follows:
• Folder
• This folder only
• This folder, subfolders, and files
• This folder and subfolders
• This folder and files
• Subfolder and files only
• Subfolder only

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• Files only
• File
• This object only
An individual object can also be set to disallow or allow inheritable ACLs
from a parent, parent's parent, etc.
A folder can be created and it can be marked such that all of its ACLs
will pass to any children. This process is called propagation. Individual
ACLs on a folder can be propagated as indicated in the above list. File
and sub-folders of a folder can have all or some of the “inherited” ACLs
removed.
The propagation/inheritance information is contained in the Windows
Security Descriptor. Users and administrators on Windows platforms use
this capability extensively.
ACEs are ordered in an ACL. Explicit ACEs come first. An explicit ACE is
one that is not inherited. Explicit ACEs which deny come before explicit
ACEs which allow. Inherited ACEs are ordered such that the closer the
parent, the sooner they appear. Each level of inherited ACEs contain
deny before allow.
All file and folder access is determined by matching a user and group to
the DACL of the object being accessed. The SACL is not used to perform
the access check. The ACEs in the DACL are compared in order with the
accessing user and group for the requesting access mode. If a “deny
ACE” matches, access is denied. If an “allow ACE” matches all requested
access bits, access is allowed. It is possible to have a “deny ACE”
inherited after an “allow ACE” which will not take effect. This can
happen because explicit ACEs take precedence as do inherited ACEs
from a closer parent. See the examples in the Microsoft document “How
Security Descriptors and Access Control Lists Work.”
There is an “everyone ACL” that can be added to objects such that all
users are granted certain privileges if they do not match any other ACE.
When a Windows user creates a file on SNFS the Security Descriptor (SD)
is kept as an attribute of the file object. The SD contains a primary SID, a
group SID and a list of discrete ACLS (also know as the DACL). The SNFS
file object also contains the Unix UID, GID and permissions fields. By
default SNFS inserts user identifier “nobody” into both UID and GID
containers. Then it modifies the Unix mode (permissions) container
based on the following two rules.

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1 If the file object contains the Windows access control entry (ACE) for
the everyone SID (which equals S-1-1-0, equivalent to “world” or
“all others” on Unix), then it will apply specific permissions using
the following guidelines. If the object is a container object
(directory) and the FILE_LIST_DIRECTORY access bit is set, mode
O+R (4) is set, else it is clear.
a If the object is a container object and the FILE_TRAVERSE
access bit is set, mode O+X (1); otherwise it is clear.
b If the object is a container object and the DELETE bit is set,
mode O+W (2) is set; otherwise it is clear.
c If the object is a file and the FILE_READ_DATA bit is set, mode
O+R (4) is set; otherwise it is clear.
d If the object is a file and the FILE_WRITE_DATA bit is set, mode
O+W (2) is set; otherwise it is clear.
e If the object is a file and the FILE_EXECUTE bit is set, mode
O+X (1) is set; otherwise it is clear.
2 If there is no everyone ACE, the Unix permissions for the file object
will be NONE (---------).
If it is an existing file, when a user changes the Security Descriptor on a
file or directory, the change can affect Posix Permissions as well:
If the owner of the file or directory is not being changed, then SNFS
checks for a missing DACL or Everyone ACE within the DACL.
If there is no DACL, set the new mode to allow the owner to read/write/
execute.
If there is a DACL, scan the ACEs for the “Everyone” SID, either in the
Allow or Deny state:
1 Check the ACE mask to see if READ_DATA/WRITE_DATA/
EXECUTE_FILE is set, and adjust the Other mode of the Posix
permissions accordingly.
2 The User and Group mode bits are left untouched.
3 The Unix*FileCreationOnWindows configuration options are
ignored for the Everyone SID
If the owner is changing:
1 map the SID owner to unix User/Group ownership via active
directory - store this for later application

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• If the SID does not have a UID associated with it, map the UID to
the value of the MDCs configuration option,
UnixNobodyUidOnWindows.
• If the SID does not have a GID associated with it, map the GID
to the value of the MDCs configuration option,
UnixNobodyGidOnWindows.
2 Convert the mode bits for the Group and User - apply the
Unix*CreationModeOnWindows config option masks to these.
3 Apply the Everyone bits per step 1.2 above - again note that the
Everyone ACE conversion to Posix Permissions ignores the
Unix*CreationModeOnWindows configuration options
4 Check to see if the DOSMODE READONLY flag is set, and mask out
the User/Group/Owner write bits if it is.
5 If the UID is different from what is currently stored, change it (it is
possible to have multiple SIDs mapped to the same UID)
6 If the GID is different from what is currently stored, change it (it is
possible to have multiple SIDs mapped to the same GID)

Note: The Standard Posix Permissions Other bits get set via the
Everyone ACE regardless of the
UnixFileCreationModeOnWindows and
UnixDirectoryCreationModeOnWindows settings.

ACLs on Mac OS X With Mac OS X 10.3 (Tiger), ACLs were introduced. This ACL
implementation is very close to the Windows ACLs implementation.
The chmod(1) and ls(1) commands have been modified to handle ACLs.
There is also a library API for applications, acl(3) that allows programs to
operate on ACLs.
For a detailed description of Mac OS X ACLs, see “Security Overview:
Permissions” from Apples web sites and click on ACLs.
ACLs take precedence over regular UNIX permissions. If no ACE match is
found for a user's requested access, UNIX permissions are checked.
Therefore, a user may not match any ACE but still have access if UNIX
permissions allow.
Each ACE on Mac OS X has the same 13 possible permission bits as a
Windows ACE:

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Directories Files

Search Through Execute File

List Contents Read Data

Read Attributes Read Attributes

Read Extended (named) Read Extended (named)

Attributes Attributes

Create Files Write Data

Create Subdirectories Append Data

Write Attributes Write Attributes

Delete Subdirectories and Files

Delete this Directory Delete this Directory

Read Permissions (ACL) Read Permissions (ACL)

Change Permissions (ACL) Change Permissions (ACL)

Take Ownership Take Ownership

Inheritance on Mac OS X is similar but does vary from Windows

propagation and inheritance. Each ACE applied to a directory can be
“propagated” by indicating one of 4 tags:
1 file_inherit: Propagate this ACE to files created in this directory.
2 directory_inherit: Propagate this ACE to subdirectories
created in this directory.
3 limit_inherit: After propagating this ACE to a new subdirectory,
do not let its subdirectories inherit this ACE.
4 only_inherit: Do not apply this ACE to this directory, just to files
and/or directories created below it.
The “limit_inherit” exists in Windows as a check box when creating
an ACE on a folder that propagates. The mapping of the 3 remaining
tags to the 7 Windows propagation pull down menu options are as
follows:

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Windows Mac OS X

This folder only (none)

This folder, subfolders, and files directory_inherit,

files_inherit

This folder and subfolders directory_inherit

Subfolders and files only files_inherit

Subfolders and files only files_inherit,

directory_inherit,
only_inherit

Subfolders only directory_inherit, only

_inherit

Files only files_inherit,

only_inherit

On Mac OS X, propagation/inheritance is typically applied only when a

file or directory is created. That is, when an object is created, its parent's
list of ACEs is checked and any that apply are “inherited.” When an ACE
is added to a parent directory, it is not “automatically” propagated to
any existing files or directories. Window's has a check box to cause some
of this action when creating an ACE. On Mac OS X, the “chmod”
command with the “+ai” option can be used to cause children to
inherit an ACE. This can be done for large sub-trees with the chmod -R
option.
Order of ACE entries is important because some ACEs might explicitly
deny while others allow. Local ACEs are entries which are not inherited
and by default are inserted before inherited ACEs. ACEs are checked in
order for the requesting user/group and the requested access. The first
ACE that denies or allows all the requested access stops permission
determination. If there is a subsequent opposing deny or allow ACE, it
will be ignored.
ACLs can be explicitly ordered with the chmod command which can lead
to “non-canonical” ordering of ACLs. See Apple documentation for
more details.

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StorNext Security

“Central Control” With StorNext 4.0, there is now support for cluster-wide central control
to restrict the behavior of SNFS cluster nodes (fsm server, file system
client and cvadmin client) from a central place. A central control file,
nss_cctl.xml, is used to specify the desired controls on the cluster
nodes. This file resides under /usr/cvfs/config on an nss
coordinator server.
This control file is in xml format and has a hierarchical structure. The top
level element is “snfsControl”. It contains the control element
“securityControl” for certain file systems. If you have different
controls for different file systems, each file system should have its own
control definition. A special virtual file system “#SNFS_ALL#” is used as
the default control for file systems not defined in this control file. It is
also used to define the cvadmin related controls on clients.

Note: You cannot have a real file system named “#SNFS_ALL#”.

Each file system related control element (i.e., securityControl) has a

list of “controlEntry” entries. Each “controlEntry” defines the
client and the intended controls. A client can be of type “host” or
“netgrp”. For the “host” type, “hostName” can be either an IP
address or a host name. Both IP V4 and IP V6 are supported.
The “netgrp” entry specifies a group of consecutive IP addresses.
“netgrp” has two sub-elements: “network” defines the IP address
(either V4 or V6) of the network group, and “maskbits” defines the
network mask bits.
Overlap is possible between the IP addresses in the “host” section and
the “netgrp” section, and the “host” entries should be defined before
“netgrp” entries. In this case, the netgrp control is considered to be a
generic case, while the controls for individual hosts are considered to be
a special case. A special case takes precedence.

Controls
Currently seven controls are supported. Each control has this format:
<control value="true|false"/>
The “value” can be either “true” or “false”. The control is one of the
following controls:
mountReadOnly

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Controls whether the client should mount the given file system as read
only. Value “true” means the file system is mounted as read only. Value
“false” means the file system is mounted as read/write. If this control
is not specified, the default is read/write.
mountDlanClient
Controls whether the client can mount the given file system via proxy
client. Value “true” means the file system is allowed to mount via proxy
client. Value “false” means the file system is not allowed to mount via
proxy client. The default is “mount via proxy client not allowed”.
takeOwnership
Controls whether users on a Windows client are allowed to take
ownership of files or directories of the file system. Value “true” means
Windows clients are allowed to take ownership of files or directories.
Value “false” means Windows clients are not allowed to take ownership
of files or directories. The default is that “take ownership is not
allowed”.

Note: This control only applies to the clients running on Windows

platforms.

snfsAdmin
Controls whether cvadmin running on a host is allowed to have super
admin privilege to run privileged commands such as starting or
stopping a file system. Value “true” means the host is allowed to run
privileged commands. Value “false” means the host is not allowed to
run privileged commands. If this control is not specified, the default is
that super admin privilege is not honored.
snfsAdminConnect
Controls whether cvadmin running on a client is allowed to connect to
another fsm host via “-H” option. Value “true” means the client is
allowed to connect to another fsm host. Value “false” means the client
is not allowed to connect to another fsm host. The default is that “-H” is
not allowed.
exec
Controls whether binary files on the file system are allowed to be
executed. Value “true” means their execution is allowed. Value “false”
means their execution is not allowed. The default is that their execution
is allowed.

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suid
Controls whether set-user-identifier bit is allowed to take effect. Value
“true” means the set-user-identifier bit is honored. Value “false” means
the set-user-identifier bit is not honored. The default is that suid bit is
honored.

Note: If no match is found for a given client's IP address, then the

client has no privilege to access a SNFS cluster. If a file system
has been defined, but the client is not defined in that file
system's control (securityControl), then the client has no
access privilege to the specified file system.

Limitations Currently only the Linux platform is supported to be a nss coordinator

server capable of parsing this xml file. If you have a non-Linux machine
as the fsm server, in order to enforce this cluster-wide central control,
you must use a Linux machine as your nss coordinator with this central
control file in place. The nss coordinator typically can be a very low-end
machine as it is not stressed heavily.

Example Following is an example of a nss_cctl.xml file. In the example this file

defines control of file system “snfs1,” and also the special virtual file
system “#SNFS_ALL#”.
<snfsControl xmlns=”http://www.quantum.com/snfs/
cctl/v1.0”>
<securityControl fileSystem=”snfs1”>
<controlEntry>
<client type=”host”>
<hostName value=”192.168.230.132”/>
</client>
<controls>
<mountReadOnly value=”true”/>
<mountDlanClient value=”true”/>
<takeOwnership value=”false”/>
<exec value=”true”/>
<suid value=”false”/>
</controls>
</controlEntry>

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Appendix F: Security
StorNext Security

<controlEntry>
<client type=”netgrp”>
<network value=”192.168.1.0”/>
<maskbits value=”24”/>
</client>
<controls>
<takeOwnership value=”true”/>
<mountReadOnly value=”true”/>
</controls>
</controlEntry>
</securityControl>
<securityControl fileSystem=”#SNFS_ALL#”>
<controlEntry>
<client type=”host”>
<hostName value=”linux_ludev”/>
</client>
<controls>
<snfsAdmin value=”true”/>
<snfsAdminConnect value=”true”/>
</controls>
</controlEntry>
</securityControl>
</snfsControl>

Cross-Platform In a homogenous environment permissions aren't a problem because

Permissions they are either all POSIX, all Windows ACLs, or all Mac OS X POSIX/ACLs.
However, when moving to a heterogeneous environment with, say,
Macs and Linux, or Windows and Macs, the interaction between POSIX
and ACLs can become complicated.

Config (.cfg) File The StorNext config file has the following options that relate directly or
Options indirectly to security or permissions:
• GlobalSuperUser
• Quotas
• UnixDirectoryCreationModeOnWindows
• UnixFileCreationModeOnWindows

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StorNext Security

• UnixIdFabricationOnWindows
• UnixNobodyGidOnWindows
• UnixNobodyUidOnWindows
• WindowsSecurity
GlobalSuperUser defines whether or not the global super user (root)
privileges on the file system. It allows the administrator to decide if any
user with super-user privileges may use those privileges on the file
system. When this variable is set to “Yes”, any super-user has global
access rights on the file system. This may be equated to the maproot=0
directive in NFS. When the GlobalSuperUser variable is set to “No”, a
super-user may modify files only where he has access rights as a normal
user. This value may be modified for existing file systems.
Quotas has an indirect relationship with security in that it requires a
Windows Security Descriptor (SD) to track the owner of a file to
correctly maintain their quota allotment. Currently quotas in StorNext
File System-only systems work correctly in either all-Windows or all-non-
Windows environments. This is because of the way quotas are tracked;
when the meta-data server is deciding how an allocation should be
charged, it uses either the SD, if one exists, or the UID/GID.
Files created on Windows with WindowsSecurity ON always have an
SD. Files created on non-Windows never have an SD. If a file that was
created and allocated on a non-Windows platform is simply viewed on
Windows, it gets assigned an SD as described above. At that point the
quota will be wrong. Subsequent allocations of that file will be charged
to the SD and not the UID/GID.
To fix this problem, the UID/GID “space” and SD “space” must be
consolidated into one “space”.
UnixDirectoryCreationModeOnWindows controls which initial
permissions directories have. Typically this is set to 755, but might be set
to 700 to prevent access by anyone other than the owner on Unix
systems, and on Windows require the use of ACLs to allow the directory
to be accessed by anyone other than the owner.
UnixFileCreationModeOnWindows controls which initial
permissions files have. Typically this is set to 644, but might be set to
600 to prevent access by anyone other than the owner on Unix systems,
and on Windows require the use of ACLs to allow the file to be accessed
by anyone other than the owner.

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StorNext Security

UnixIdFabricationOnWindows prevents (when set to “no,”) or

allows (when set to “yes”) fabricating a UID/GID for a GUID returned
from a Microsoft Active Directory Server. When set to “yes”, the client
overrides any UID/GID for that user, and instead fabricates its own UID/
GID. Typically this setting is only set to “yes” if you have a Mac OS MDC.
UnixNobodyGidOnWindows/UnixNobodyUidOnWindows instructs
the client to use this ID on Windows if an ID can't be found using
Microsoft Active Directory.
WindowsSecurity enables or disables using Windows ACLs on
Windows clients. Once turned on (provide a Windows security
descriptor is created), it is always on, even if the .cfg is changed to
“off”. In a Unix/Windows environment, if there isn't a specific
Windows- User-to-Unix-User mapping, files created on Windows will be
owned by “nobody” on Unix clients.

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 Appendix G
Troubleshooting

This appendix contains some basic troubleshooting remedies for

common error conditions that may occur. Please see if your particular
issue is listed, and then try the recommended solution before calling the
Quantum Technical Assistance Center.
Another good troubleshooting resource is the Quantum Knowledge
Base, which contains articles about issues pertaining to StorNext. Access
the Knowledge Base from Quantum.com.
This appendix contains the following troubleshooting topics:
• Troubleshooting StorNext File System
• Troubleshooting StorNext Storage Manager
• Troubleshooting OS Issues
• Troubleshooting Replication
• Troubleshooting HA
• Troubleshooting StorNext Installation and Upgrade Issues
• Troubleshooting Other Issues

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Troubleshooting This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for issues which

StorNext File System pertain to StorNext File System.

Question: How do I rename a standalone (unmanaged) StorNext file

system?
Answer: Use the following procedure to change the name of a StorNext
file system:

Note: This procedure is only for StorNext file systems that do not
have the Tertiary Storage Manager (TSM) component installed.

1 Unmount the file system from all the client systems using it.
2 Stop the file system in cvadmin.
3 Run cvfsck with the following parameters:
cvfsck -jfile_system_name
cvfsck -nfile_system_name
where file_system_name is the actual name of your file system.
Make sure that cvfsck says that the file system is clean.
4 Do one of the following:
* If cvfsck detects no file system errors, go to the next step.
* If cvfsck detects file system errors, run it in a "fix" mode
cvfsckfile_system_name
5 Rename the file_system_name.cfg file and edit the fsmlist file to
reflect the new file system name.
By default, these files reside in the /usr/cvfs/config directory
on UNIX systems and in the C:\SNFS\config folder on Windows
systems.
6 Run cvfsck in interactive mode to remake icb by typing cvfsck
without double quotation marks. You will be asked which file
system to check.

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Here is a command example:

[root@testbox]# cvfsck
StorNext File System File Systems on host testbox:
1) *snfs1
2) *snfs2
The asterisk (*) denotes the file system is active.
Choose a file system by number (1-2) or zero (0) to
exit
Run the command against the file system that has a new name.
7 During its run, cvfsck senses that there is an icb mismatch and asks
if you want to fix the mismatch. Type yes.
8 Make adjustments to the /etc/vstab and /etc/fstab files, as
well as in the Windows StorNext User Interface to reflect the new
file system name on all the systems involved.
9 Start the file system and make it active (cvadmin).
10 Mount the file system.

Question: What can I do when a StorNext File System client fails to

mount a StorNext file system? I receive the following error:
'install path'\debug\mount..out
mount.cvfs: Can't mount filesystem 'FILESYSTEMNAME'.
Check system log for details. Invalid argument
Answer: This condition occurs when the system cannot resolve the IP
address or hostname defined in the fsnameservers file.
Use the following procedure to troubleshoot this problem.
1 Find the failure reported in the file install_path/debug/
nssdbg.out.
ERR NSS: Establish Coordinator failed GetHostByName
of '[HOST01]'
No such file or directory)
INFO NSS: Primary Name Server is 'HOST01' (unknown
IP)
ERR NSS: Establish Coordinator failed GetHostByName
of '[HOST02]'
(No such file or directory)
INFO NSS: Secondary #1 Name Server is '[HOST02]'
(unknown IP)

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2 If it is similar to the events reported above, please check the file

fsnameservers for proper setup.
The file is located in the following directory, depending upon the
product and operating system:
* For Windows StorNext File System 2.x: C:\SNFS\config
* For Windows StorNext File System 3.x: C:\Program
Files\Stornext\config
* For Linux or UNIX: /usr/cvfs/config
For this example, the hostname definition line was set up
incorrectly:
# Primary FS Name Sserver is rock # HOST01#
# Secondary FS Name Server
#1 is crag
# [HOST02]
The format for the fsnameservers file should contain the name of
the IP address or hostname to use as either a primary or a secondary
coordinator. Using the IP addresses is preferred to avoid problems
associated with lookup system (DNS or NIS) failures. The format of
an fsnameservers file line is either:
IP_address or HOSTNAME
3 Correct the fsnameservers file so that it looks like this:
10.65.160.42
10.65.160.78
4 If the same error reoccurs, contact Quantum Technical Support.

Question: I have trouble with StorNext clients connecting to the

StorNext metadata controller. What can I do?
Answer: One of the common issues in working with StorNext clients is
the inability to connect to the StorNext metadata controllers (MDCs).
Usually you can show this problem either by running cvadmin on a
UNIX-based client or by clicking Device Mappings>StorNext File System
Client Properties for a Windows-based client, and not being able to see
the file systems from the StorNext MDC(s). If file systems are not visible
at this level, the client is not connected to the MDC(s).
As described in the StorNext documentation, the MDC(s) and all clients
should be on a dedicated and isolated metadata network. The
dedicated metadata network should be open to all ports for UDP and
TCP traffic. In addition, the metadata controller(s) and network switches

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should not have firewalling enabled for the dedicated metadata

network.
If the client is still not able to connect to the MDCs through the
dedicated metadata network, check for the following:
• Is the hostname or IP address of the correct MDC(s) listed in the
fsnameservers file (found in /user/cvfs/config for UNIX-based
clients and c:\SNFS\config for Windows-based clients)?
• If the hostname (rather than the IP address) is listed in
fsnameservers, can the client resolve the hostname (using
nslookup at the UNIX prompt or at the command prompt on a
Windows-based client)?
If the client cannot resolve the hostname, do one of the following:
• Resolve either the DNS setup or hosts file setup
• Enter the IP address of the MDC(s) in the fsnameservers file
instead of the hostname.
• Can the client ping the metadata controller?
If the client cannot ping the metadata controller, resolve the
networking issue to make sure the client is on the same dedicated
metadata network and can ping the MDC(s).
• If the client can ping the MDC(s), can the client either telnet, ftp, or
ssh from the client to the MDC(s)?
If the client cannot run telnet, ftp or ssh from the client to the
MDC(s), it is likely that there is some manner of firewalling set up
between the client and the MDC(s). If possible, disable this
firewalling.
• If firewalling is set up on the dedicated metadata network and it is
not possible to disable it due to some internal policy (the metadata
network should be a dedicated and isolated network), the client can
specify a range of ports to be used for metadata traffic.
By creating an fsports file (located in /user/cvfs/config for
UNIX-based clients and c:\SNFS\config for Windows-based
clients), you can specify a range of ports, both UDP and TCP, that
can be allowed to pass through the firewall between the client and
the MDC(s).
If other clients are having problems connecting to the MDC(s), they
must also use their own copy of the fsports file.

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Sample fsports File

#
# File System Port Restriction File
#
# The fsports file provides a way to constrain the TCP
# and UDP ports used by the SNFS server processes.
# This is usually only necessary when the SNFS
# control network configuration must pass through
# a firewall. Use of the fsports file permits
# firewall 'pin-holing' for improved security.
# If no fsports file is used, then port assignment
# is operating system dependent.
#
# If an fsports file exists in the SNFS 'config'
directory it
# restricts the TCP and UDP port bindings to the user
specified
# window. The format of the fsports file consists of
two lines.
# Comments starting with pound-sign (#) in column one
# are skipped.
#
# MinPort VALUE
# MaxPort VALUE
#
# where VALUE is a number. The MinPort to MaxPort
values define
# a range of ports that the SNFS server processes can
use.
#
#
# Example:
#
# Restrict SNFS server processes to port range 22,000
to 22,100:
#
# MinPort 22000
# MaxPort 22100
#

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Question: Does StorNext support dynamic file system growth? How can
I grow a file system?
Answer: StorNext does not support dynamic growth. You can grow a
file system by adding stripe groups, but this is a manual process.
The process takes only a few minutes, with the exception of running the
cvfsck command, which can take a long time depending on the size
and number of files in the existing file system.
Use this procedure to grow a file system.
1 Unmount all clients.
2 On the Metadata Controller (MDC) go into cvadmin and stop the
active file system.
3 Run a cvfsck command in active mode.
4 Label new disks.
5 Create a new Stripe Group at the bottom of the existing Stripe
Group Section in your file_system_name.cfg file.

Caution: Make sure you put the new stripe group at the bottom
of the configuration file. Putting the new stripe group
elsewhere in the file can cause either data loss or data
corruption.

6 Run the cvupdatefs command from the /usr/cvfs/bin directory.

7 Start file system in cvadmin.
8 Mount clients.

Question: How much data is reserved for StorNext disk labels, and what
is the process for recovering damaged labels?
Answer: StorNext reserves the first 1 MB of the disk for the label.
• For VTOC disk labels, the critical area of the label is the first 1,536
bytes (three 512-byte sectors).
VTOC is the only label type used by StorNext Version 2.6 and earlier,
and is the default type used for LUNs with less than 2GB sectors by
StorNext Version 2.7.
• For EFI disk labels, the critical area of the label varies with the disk
sector size:

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• For 512-byte sectors it is the first 18,432 bytes (36 sectors).

• EFI is used by StorNext 2.7 for LUNs larger than 2GB sectors.
If a StorNext disk label is ever inadvertently overwritten or otherwise
damaged, the only method of recovery is to run the cvlabel utility
with the original parameters used when the disk was initially labeled.
The nssdbg.out log file for the system often proves useful in
determining what label each disk device on the system had before the
problem occurred.
Contact Quantum technical support for assistance recovering damaged
disk labels.

Question: Umount hangs or fails for StorNext File Systems even though
the fuser shows nothing. What’s going on?
Answer: If a process opens a UNIX domain socket in a StorNext File
System and does not close it, umount hangs or fails even though fuser
does not show anyone using the file system.
Use the "lsof -U" command to show the UNIX domain socket. The
process can be killed with the socket open.

Question: Why can I mount only 16 StorNext file systems on systems

running Linux?
Answer: A pseudo device must be created in /dev for each file system
to be mounted. By default, only 16 pseudo devices are created.
To increase that number, edit /etc/init.d/cvfs and change the line
that says "NumDevs=16" to reflect the desired number of file systems.

Question: How do I resolve invalid inode errors

Answer: You may receive the error File System FSS 'File System
Name[0]': Invalid inode lookup: 0x2a5b9f markers 0x0/
0x0 gen 0x0 nextiel 0x0
Deleting an old file system while an NFS client is still mounted leaves
legacy data about inodes that no longer exist on that client. The client is
out of sync with the file system and calls for inodes that no longer exist.
This leaves StorNext users with the concern that they have lost files that
can't be recovered. Because of this issue, the MDC generates alarming
messages about metadata corruption.
Checking the "epoch" field of the NFS request and the file system will
show that these inodes are all zeros and thus invalid. Code can be

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changed in the NFS handles so they include a unique identifier such as

the “epoch” (microsecond creation time) for the file system.

Question: What happens when a file is moved from one managed

directory to another?
Answer: Here are three possible scenarios, which assume that the file
data is no longer on disk and only exists on tape:
• Scenario 1: If the managed directories are on the same file system
and have the same policy class, then tape is not accessed.
• Scenario 2: If the managed directories are on different file systems
and have the same policy class, the data is retrieved from tape so it
can be moved to the new file system, but it does not get stored
again.
• Scenario 3: If the managed directories have different policy classes,
then the data is retrieved, moved, and then gets stored to media
associated with the new policy class.
You might receive the following error message if a StorNext file system
client system continuously reports restarting the file system and fills up
the nssdbg.out file (excerpted from logfile </usr/cvfs/debug/
nssdbg.out>):
:
[0327 14:40:59] 0x40305960 NOTICE PortMapper: RESTART
FSS service 'stornext-fs1[0]' on host stornext-client.
[0327 14:40:59] 0x40305960 NOTICE PortMapper: Starting
FSS service 'stornext-fs1[0]' on stornext-client.
[0327 14:40:59] 0x40305960 (debug) Portmapper: FSS
'stornext-fs1' (pid 8666) exited with status 2
(unknown)
[0327 14:40:59] 0x40305960 (debug) FSS 'stornext-fs1'
LAUNCHED -> RELAUNCH, next event in 60s
[0327 14:41:59] 0x40305960 (debug) FSS 'stornext-fs1'
RELAUNCH -> LAUNCHED, next event in 60s
[0327 14:41:59] 0x40305960 NOTICE PortMapper: RESTART
FSS service 'stornext-fs1[0]' on host stornext-client.
[0327 14:41:59] 0x40305960 NOTICE PortMapper: Starting
FSS service 'stornext-fs1[0]' on stornext-client.
[0327 14:41:59] 0x40305960 (debug) Portmapper: FSS
'stornext-fs1' (pid 8667) exited with status 2
(unknown)
[0327 14:41:59] 0x40305960 (debug) FSS 'stornext-fs1'
LAUNCHED -> RELAUNCH, next event in 60s

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[0327 14:42:59] 0x40305960 (debug) FSS 'stornext-fs1'

RELAUNCH -> LAUNCHED, next event in 60s
:
This error occurs because on the StorNext client system the file /usr/cvfs/
config/fsmlist was set up and configured. However, the 'fsmlist' file
belongs to the server components of StorNext and is set up on the MDC
only.
Verify this by running the command <ls-l/usr/cvfs/config/
fsmlist> on the client: stornext-fs1
On the StorNext client, only the client portion of the StorNext product
suite is installed. Verify this by running the command # cvversions.
The following output appears:
Server not installed.
File System Client:
Built in /scmbld/phxbld/cvfs
Created on Wed Jun 4 23:11:32 MDT 2008
Built for Linux 2.6.9-67.ELsmp x86_64 -- RHEL 4.6
Client Revision 3.1.2 Build 10
To resolve this issue, delete /usr/cvfs/config/fsmlist and then
restart the StorNext services.
Before you restart the StorNext services, verify the size of the /usr/
cvfs/debug/nssdbg.out.
If the output file is considerably large, delete or rename the file and
then restart StorNext.
If the problem persists, contact Quantum Technical Support.

Troubleshooting This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for issues which

StorNext Storage pertain to StorNext Storage Manager.
Manager Question: What should I do if StorNext fails to write to a tape drive and
varies it to 'off-line' after the drive has been replaced?

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Answer: In this situation you might receive the following error message
after the write fails and the replaced drive has been placed off-line:
fs_resource[6609]: E1004(4)<00000>:{3}: Drive 2
SN:1310012345 has invalid device path and is being
taken off-line.
The message indicates that the device configuration was not updated
and the replacement tape drive has a different serial number. Compare
the serial numbers of the configured tape drives against which tape
drives are seen by the operating system.
In this example, the system has two tape drives configured. Run the -
fsconfig command and check the command output. It should look
similar to the following:
Component ID: V0,1
------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
Device pathname: /dev/sg6
Compression: On
User Alias: scsi_archive1_dr1
Component Type: DRIVE
Device serial #: 1310999999
Drive Type: LTO
Drive ID: 1

Component ID: V0,2 <--- this is Drive 2

------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
Device pathname: /dev/sg2
Compression: On
User Alias: scsi_archive1_dr2
Component Type: DRIVE
Device serial #: 1310012345 <--- the serial number
no longer matches with the new tape drive
Drive Type: LTO
Drive ID: 2 <--- this is Drive 2

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Compare the results with the output of the 'fs_scsi -p' command.
ADICA0C012345_LLA | Scalar i500 | medium changer | /
dev/sg5
1310999999 | ULTRIUM-TD4 | sequential access | /
dev/sg6 <--- scsi_archive_dr1
1310888888 | ULTRIUM-TD4 | sequential access | /
dev/sg4 <--- device path and serial number is not
known.
A new tape drive has a new serial number. If a drive is replaced, the
special device file (/dev/sg2) is no longer valid.
To resolve the issue, follow these steps:
• Delete the original removed tape drive using the StorNext GUI. (See
the StorNext User Guide for more information about this
procedure.)
• Add the replacement tape drive using the StorNext GUI. (Again,
consult the StorNext User Guide for more information about this
procedure.)
If the issue persists, contact Quantum Technical Support. Refer to the
Worldwide Service and Support page for more information.

Troubleshooting OS This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for issues pertaining

Issues to the operating system on which StorNext runs.

Question: When I updated the OS, all connected LUNs were

reformatted and data lost. Is there anything I can do to prevent this
from happening?
Answer: If you are not careful when performing an operating system
update or reload, all attached LUNs can be reformatted and data on
those LUNs will be removed. If the updated system includes StorNext,
this could cause StorNext to no longer function.
When performing an operating system update or reload, disconnect any
fibre-attached media from the system and have only local operating
system-required LUNs visible. This will make sure only the required LUNs
are affected.

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Question: I’ve discovered that StorNext cannot see all disks when
running Red Hat Linux. What should I do?
Answer: StorNext File System cannot see all the drives you want to
configure in Red Hat Linux. When Linux is installed, it defaults to only 40
disk devices when it boots up.
To address this limitation, modify the CONFIG_SD_EXTRA_DEVS setting
in your Linux config file (or use xconfig under the SCSI Support tab).
Then, rebuild the kernel and reboot the system.
If you require assistance rebuilding a Linux kernel, contact the Linux
support resources for your installation.

Question: What does the 'heartbeat lost' message from a Solaris client
mean?
Answer: On a Solaris client, you may see the following error:
fsmpm[3866]: [ID 702911 daemon.warning] NSS: Name
Server 'StorNext hostname' (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) heartbeat
lost, unable to send message.
In StorNext, the metadata controller and clients use an Ethernet
network to exchange file system metadata. The fsmpm is a portmapper
daemon residing on each StorNext File System client and server
computer. Its purpose is to register an RPC identifier to the system's
portmap daemon. The fsmpm publishes a well-known port where the
file system (fsm) daemons register their file system name and port
access number. All clients then talk to their local fsmpm to discover
access information for their associated service.
Because of the importance of maintaining this connection, a heartbeat
is performed over the metadata network, so if this connection is lost, a
message is sent indicating a network communication problem to the
fsnameserver (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx).
Portmapper messages are logged in the nssdbg.out log file located in
/usr/cvfs/debug.
System administrators should monitor the log files to make sure that
connectivity is maintained.

Question: Why does StorNext fail to write to an LTO-4 tape drive and
varies media to suspect on my Red Hat 5 and SuSE 10 system?
Answer: StorNext Storage Manager fails to write to a tape drive and
marks the medium as 'suspect'.

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Note: This is applicable only to Red Hat RHEL 5 and SuSE SLES 10
operating systems and StorNext 3.1.x (not to 3.5.0).

When a medium is marked as 'suspect,' check if the below messages are

reported in the TSM log files:
Received check condition with no error data. op=0A
Flush residue write to destination failed: errno 0
Unable flush all of residue buffer to destination.
Write error occurred - marking media suspect.
Medium XXXXXX was marked as suspect.
If you receive this error message, the default settings of the SCSI generic
driver of RHEL 5 and SLES 10 must be adjusted. (For more information
about the default settings, visit the following web site: http://
www.linux.org/.)
Following is a description of the parameters in question:
allow_dio: 0 indicates direct I/O disable, 1 indicates enabled
def_reserved_size: This is the default buffer size reserved for each
file descriptor. Values between 0 and 1048576 are supported.
allow_dio: Quantum recommends setting this parameter to 1.
def_reserved_size: Quantum recommends setting this parameter
to 524288 (= 512kB)
To verify, run these commands:
cat /proc/scsi/sg/allow_dio
cat /sys/module/sg/parameters/allow_dio
If the above commands return a value of '0', this means direct I/O is
disabled. Run these commands:
cat /proc/scsi/sg/def_reserved_size
cat /sys/module/sg/parameters/def_reserved_size
If the above commands return a value less than '524288', this means the
buffer size is not appropriate for LTO-4 tape drives.
Verify if the TSM startup file /usr/adic/TSM/bin/TSM_control
defines any of the above parameters.

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Substitute the settings as seen below or add them to the startup script
after the shell declaration ( #!/bin/sh) and the initial comments.
if echo RedHat50AS_26x86 | egrep "RedHat5|SuSE10" > /
dev/null; then
echo 1 > /proc/scsi/sg/allow_dio
echo 524288 > /proc/scsi/sg/def_reserved_size
echo 1 > /sys/module/sg/parameters/allow_dio
echo 524288 > /sys/module/sg/parameters/
def_reserved_size
fi
If the issue persists after making the above changes, contact Quantum
Technical Support from the Worldwide Service and Support page.

Troubleshooting This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for issues which

Replication pertain to replication.
Question: After completing the steps to set up replication, I received
this message: “Replication disabled on target.” What went wrong?
Answer: You will receive this message if you fail to turn on inbound
replication. To do this, edit the replication policy named “target” and
then click the Inbound Replication tab. At the Inbound Replication
field, select On from the pulldown list of options.
Question: What should I do if something happens to my replication
source, such as if the source directory or its contents becomes
damaged?
Answer: If there is a failure on the source, the system administrator
must reconfigure both the replication source and target hosts.
Specifically, the administrator must turn the former replication target
into a replication source, and then reconfigure the former source (once
it is repaired) as a replication target.
Question: I upgraded to StorNext 4.0 from a previous release. How do I
replicate files that were previously truncated by Storage Manager in that
previous release?
Answer: One solution would be to retrieve the files from the original
managed source location, and then replicate and truncate the files.

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Appendix G: Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting HA This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for issues which

pertain to StorNext HA (high availability) systems.

Question: How can I restart a file system without causing an HA

failover?
Answer: To be clear, individual file-system failover must be
distinguished from HA Reset of an entire MDC. When redundant FSMs
are running on both MDCs in an HA Cluster, the active FSM can be on
either MDC. In the case of managed file systems, the FSMs are started
only on the Primary MDC, so these can be stopped and started at will
without causing an HA Reset. Unmanaged file-system FSMs are started
on both MDCs, so stopping an active unmanaged FSM will result in a
single file system failover to the standby FSM on the peer MDC. An HA
Reset occurs only when the failover is putting the file system in danger
of data corruption from simultaneous write access to StorNext
metadata and databases. This is typically the case for the HaShared file
system, so take extra care with its FSM.
The recommended way for making configuration changes and
restarting FSMs is to use the 'config' mode, which stops CVFS on one
MDC and disables HA Reset on the other. CVFS will be restarted when
returning to 'default' mode with both MDCs operating redundantly. Use
the following steps to do this at the CLI:
snhamgr config
<make configuration changes>
snhamgr start
If you are only restarting FSMs without making configuration changes,
the following steps will restart an FSM:
To restart an HaManaged FSM, use this cvadmin command:
fail <file system name>
To restart an HaUnmanaged FSM or the HaShared FSM:
snhamgr mode=locked # on the secondary
snhamgr mode=single # on the primary
cvadmin # on the primary
fail <file system name>
select # repeat until you observe the FSM has started
and activated
snhamgr start # on the primary
snhamgr mode=default # on the secondary

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Question: What Conditions Trigger a Failover in StorNext (File System

only)
Answer: There could be several reasons why a failover is triggered. See
HA Resets on page 297 in the HA appendix.

Question: What conditions trigger the voting process for StorNext file
system failover?
Answer: Either a StorNext File System client or a Node Status Service
(NSS) coordinator (the systems listed in the fsnameservers file) can
initiate a vote.
An SNFS client triggers a vote when its TCP connection to a File System
Manager (FSM) is disconnected. In many failure scenarios this loss of
TCP connectivity is immediate, so it is often the primary initiator of a
vote.
On Windows systems, StorNext provides a configuration option called
Fast Failover that triggers a vote as a result of a 3 second FSM heartbeat
loss. Occasionally, this is necessary because TCP disconnects can be
delayed. There is also an NSS heartbeat between members and
coordinators every half second. The NSS coordinator triggers a vote if
the NSS heartbeat is absent for an FSM server for three seconds.
Because the client triggers usually occur first, the coordinator trigger is
not commonly seen.

Question: Why does the Primary MDC keep running without the
HaShared file system failing over and without an HA Reset when I pull
its only Ethernet cable? The HA Cluster appears to be hung.

In this situation the lab configuration is as follows

MDC 1:
Hostname Shasta
10.35.1.110

MDC 2:
Hostname Tahoe
10.35.1.12

Two File Systems:

HaShared type: HAFS
HaManaged type: Reno3

There are no other client computers.

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Appendix G: Troubleshooting

Shasta is the Primary MDC before the Ethernet cable is

pulled.

At one point after the Ethernet was pulled, cvadmin on Tahoe

showed:

Tahoe:/usr/cvfs/config # cvadmin
StorNext Administrator
Enter command(s)
For command help, enter "help" or "?".

List FSS
File System Services (* indicates service is in control of
FS):
1>*HAFS[0] located on tahoe:50139 (pid 13326)

snadmin> select FSM "HAFS"

Admin Tap Connection to FSM failed: [errno 104]: Connection
reset by peer
FSM may have too many connections active.
Cannot select FSS "HAFS"

snadmin> start reno3

Start FSS "reno3"
Cannot start FSS 'reno3' - failed (FSM cannot start on non-
Primary server)

snadmin> activate reno3

Activate FSM "reno3"
Could not find File System Manager for "reno3" on Tahoe.
Cannot activate FSS reno3

Answer: The reason the failover and HA Reset did not occur is because
the HaShared FSM on Shasta continues to be active, and this was
detected in the ARB block through the SAN by the FSM on Tahoe.

Here's why. When the LAN connection is lost on Shasta, its active
HaShared FSM continues to have one client: the Shasta MDC itself. On
Tahoe, an election is held when the LAN heartbeats from Shasta's HAFS
FSM stop, and Tahoe's FSM gets one vote from the client on Tahoe. The
Tahoe FSM is told to activate, but cannot usurp the ARB with a 1-to-1
tie. So, it tries five times, then exits, and a new FSM is started in its
place. You can observe this by running the cvadmin command and
watching the FSM's PID change every 20 seconds or so.

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 Appendix G: Troubleshooting

With the StorNext 3.5.1 and earlier STONITH HA implementation, other

FSMs (not the HaShared FSM) would get tie-breaking votes from the
non-MDC clients and activate, and the first of these to activate would
trigger the STONITH reset of the disconnected MDC. In StorNext 4.0 HA
allows HaUnmanaged FSMs to failover without resetting the MDC if
possible, and HaManaged FSMs do not fail over because they are only
started on the primary MDC.

StorNext HA in 4.0 requires configuring at least one more client (other

than the MDCs) of the HaShared file system to break the tie. This allows
StorNext to determine which MDC has LAN connectivity, and to elect its
HaShared FSM with enough votes to usurp control. When an HA Cluster
is configured this way, the disconnected MDC (Shasta) will reset because
of the usurpation of the HaShared ARB.

After the reboot, CVFS will restart and attempt to elect its HaShared
FSM because it is not getting heartbeats from its peer. However, these
activation attempts fail to cause a second reset because the HaShared
FSM never has enough votes to have a successful usurpation. (You can
watch it repeatedly fail to usurp if you can get on the console and run
the cvadmin command).

But what about the HaManaged Reno3 FSM? HaManaged FSMs are not
started until the HaShared FSM activates and puts the MDC in Primary
status. You can observe these blocked HaManaged FSMs with the
cvadmin 'fsmlist' command, which displays the local FSMPM's internal
FSM and process table. A remote FSMPM's table can also be viewed with
'fsmlist on <MDC name or address>'.

Finally, the message: 'Admin Tap Connection to FSM failed', is

an intermittent response that occurred because the timing of the
cvadmin select command was during the period after the FSM failed
the fifth usurpation attempt and before the FSM was restarted (a ten-
second delay). At other times, the response will show an activating FSM.
Note that the cvadmin-displayed asterisk simply indicates that the FSM
has been told to activate, not that is has been successful at usurpation
and activation.

Question: Using the same configuration above (Shasta and Tahoe), an

HA Reset occurs if I pull the fibre connection from Shasta when it is the
Primary MDC, but it takes 30-40 seconds. Why does it take so long?
Answer: When the fibre connection is lost, Shasta's FSMs cannot
maintain their brands on their ARB blocks, so the HA timers do not get

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Appendix G: Troubleshooting

restarted in the read, write, restart-timer ARB branding loop. After five
seconds the timers would expire and reset the MDC. However, there is a
second method for resetting the timers that uses the LAN.

Every two seconds, the FSMPM on an MDC with active HA monitored

FSMs sends a request to its peer FSMPM with the list of locally active
FSMs. The peer gives permission to reset those FSMs' HA timers if it is
not activating them, and promises not to activate them for two
seconds. When the reply returns within one second of the request, the
timers are reset by the FSMPM. This allows the cluster to ride through
brief periods when LUNs are too busy to maintain the ARB brand, but
otherwise are operating correctly.

So why does the reset occur after 30-40 seconds? After this delay, the
HBA returns errors to the FSM, and the FSM quits. When the HaShared
FSM quits with the file system mounted locally, an HA Reset occurs to
protect databases for the Storage Manager etc.

Question: How do I resolve a StorNext GUI login issue in my high

availability environment?
Answer: When CVFS is running on only one MDC of an HA Cluster,
attempting to connect a browser to the down MDC’s GUI produces a
single page with a URL to the running MDC. Simply click the URL and
login again.
When CVFS is down on both MDCs, the GUIs on both MDCs present a
set of four troubleshooting pages. You can start CVFS from the CLI by
running the following command: service cvfs start
Or, you can use the StorNext GUI’s Manage HA page and click the Enter
Config Mode button, and then click the Exit Config Mode button.
When the second step has completed, the HA Cluster will be running in
Default-Default mode with MDC redundancy.

Troubleshooting This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for issues which

StorNext Installation pertain to installing or upgrading StorNext.
and Upgrade Issues Question: Does a StorNext installation only support a single ACSLS
server?
Answer: If there are multiple libraries that will be accessed by a
StorNext instance, they are not controlled by the same ACSLS server.

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 Appendix G: Troubleshooting

StorNext supports multiple ACSLS servers, but only one library on each
server.

Troubleshooting Other This section contains troubleshooting suggestions for general StorNext
Issues issues and other issues which do not fall into another category.
Question: How can I find the Product Serial Number?
Answer: The serial number for StorNext Storage Manager is physically
located on the front side of the media kit box. In addition, the
administrator initially responsible for the software may have received
the serial number through email when either he or she requested license
information.
Both StorNext Storage Manager and StorNext File System have serial
numbers in the format S/N SN000123 (for example, SN02728).

Note: The serial number is not available through the StorNext

application.

Question: A system panic caused connectivity loss to metadata. Is there

anything I can do to prevent this from happening?
Answer: Quantum testing has determined that there is an extremely
small chance of the metadata controller causing a system failure if
metadata or journal activity is interrupted by the loss of connectivity to
the metadata LUN (one occurrence during a week of testing by
unplugging disk devices from the metadata controller every five
minutes).
If a metadata write exceeds the space allocated (due to loss of disk),
StorNext may stop all kernel activity on the metadata controller to avoid
potential data corruption. This is a timing issue when metadata IO
activity is attempted during a tear-down of internal data structures as a
result of losing disk space.
You can avoid downtime from this system failure by configuring a
redundant metadata controller with the High Availability (HA) feature.
You should recover from this particular failure by bringing the metadata
controller back online and running the cvfsck command to repair the
metadata before allowing clients to remount the file system.
Question: My backups failed with database errors. What caused the
failure?

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Appendix G: Troubleshooting

Answer: Check the error logs for possible causes of backup failure.
Errors in logs might look similar to this:
*
Error while executing select statement; code:
1069, message: HY000 ERR# 1069 : [Relex][Linter ODBC
Driver] SQLExecDirect: native error #1069, STMT:
select count(*).
*
2008-10-25-23:00:24: ERR: /usr/adic/DSM/bin/
snmetadump error at line 1490 of snmetadump.c: System
call failed (1): File exists (17): Failed to acquire
snmetadump lock.
*
ERR: snmetadump returned exit status 2.
To remedy the situation, remove all the lock files under “/usr/adic/
TSM/internal/locks/”. .

Question: What should I do after a database (Linter) crash?

Answer: After a planned or unplanned sudden stoppage of the Linter
database (due to a system crash, power outage, etc.), the database is
left in an inconsistent state. This is due to an uncompleted recovery
based on the Incomplete Transaction Log. Thus, tools such as testdb will
return an errant or misleading error status.
The database recovery process is automatically initiated the next time
the Linter Database starts up. Linter must replay the incomplete
transactions, after which the database can be gracefully stopped and
checked via testdb if desired.

Note: After replaying the Incomplete Transaction Log, the database

SHOULD be in a consistent state, eliminating the need for
testdb to be initiated.

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 Appendix H
RAS Messages

RAS messages appear when StorNext encounters an error condition. The

RAS window shows symptoms of the condition, plus workarounds you
can try to resolve the condition before calling the Quantum Technical
Assistance Center.
This appendix shows the different RAS messages you might see.
Messages are separated into the following categories:
• Media and Drive RAS Messages
• SNFS RAS Messages
• Other RAS Messages

Media and Drive RAS Messages

This section describes RAS messages that might appear as a result of a
media-related error condition, such as no media detected or media
format failure.

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 116 Possible Drive/

Media Mount Discrepancy RAS

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 117 Tape Drive Alerts

RAS part 1

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 118 Tape Drive Alerts

RAS part 2

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 119 Tape Drive Alerts

RAS part 3

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 120 Drive Reported

Drive Error RAS

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 121 Cleaning of Drive

Failed RAS

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 122 Wrong Firmware

Level/Invalid Drive Type RAS

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 123 Tape Drive -

Reported Media Error RAS

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Media and Drive RAS Messages

Figure 124 Cleaning Media

Expired RAS

Figure 125 Duplicate Physical

Media Found RAS

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 Appendix H: RAS Messages
SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 126 Storage Disk Taken

Offline RAS

SNFS RAS Messages

This section describes RAS messages that might appear as a result of a
file system-related error condition, such as an I/O error or a missing LUN.

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Appendix H: RAS Messages
SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 127 Configuration Not

Supported RAS

Figure 128 Label Validation

Failure RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 129 Connection

Rejected RAS

Figure 130 File System Failover

RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 131 I/O Error RAS

Figure 132 Journaling Error

Detected RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 133 SNFS License

Required RAS

Figure 134 SNFS License

Failure RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 135 LUN Mapping

Changed RAS

Figure 136 Communication

Failure RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 137 Metadata

Inconsistency Detected RAS

Figure 138 Bad File System

Metadata Dump RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 139 Metadata Dump

Failure RAS

Figure 140 File System or

Metadata Capacity Warning
RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 141 File Processing

Failure RAS

Figure 142 Missing LUNs RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 143 Disk Space

Allocation Failure RAS

Figure 144 System Resource

Failure RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 145 Affinity

Configuration Violations RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 146 Quota Limit or

Fragmentation Warnings RAS

Figure 147 Shutdown Error

RAS

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SNFS RAS Messages

Figure 148 Initialization Failure

RAS

Figure 149 SNFS I/O Error RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 150 Port Failure

Other RAS Messages

This section describes RAS messages that might appear as a result of an
error condition that is not related to media or the file system.

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 Appendix H: RAS Messages
Other RAS Messages

Figure 151 Checksum Error

RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 152 Troubleshooting

the StorNext Software RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 153 Software Resource

Violations RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 154 Vault Failure RAS

Figure 155 Robotics - Not

Ready RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 156 Robotics - Move

Failure RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 157 Robotics - Wrong

Firmware Level/Invalid Library
Type RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 158 Backup Errors RAS

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 159 Invalid

Configuration RAS part 1

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Other RAS Messages

Figure 160 Invalid

Configuration RAS part 2

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Other RAS Messages

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