Mailing List Archive: Filer qtree configuration...

Filer qtree configuration...

Dec 11, 2002, 3:56 AM

Post #1 of 4 (1678 views)

Hello All,

What a great list - I found the archives very helpful!

I am setting up a Filer, an F760 with ONTAP 6.3 and both NFS and CIFS
licences. Based on what I have read I have configured our only shelf
as a single large volume (with one disk left unused or spare). I then
plan to use qtrees to implement the directory hierarchy seen by users.

What I would like to present to users is something like this:

filer:
/home/
srb/
bwk/
...

/ics/
sales/
products/
support/
...

Where "ics" is our company name. I'm sure you see what I mean. So, for
example, NFS users could mount either or both of "filer1:/home" and
"filer1:/ics". Windows users would probably setup network connections to
both "home" and "ics".

I have created a qtree "/vol/vol0/home" and copied some users home
directories into it, this seems to work well. But I am a bit puzzled
how to implement the company hierarchy. I think that ideally "sales",
"support", etc. would be separate qtrees - but it seems that qtrees
can only exist at the top level, so this is not possible?

Or, I could create "sales", "support", etc. as qtees directly at the top
level but then users would have to mount each tree individually?

Or, I could create a single "company" qtree with the various functional
directories under it... but then I would not be able to take advantage
of qtree features such as having separate quotas and dumps for these
different "functions".

Maybe I'm missing some key point here. Comments?

--

Yours,
Robert Watson.

Re: Filer qtree configuration... [ In reply to ]

cet1 at cus

Dec 11, 2002, 6:09 AM

Post #2 of 4 (1660 views)

Permalink

watson@ics.de (Robert Watson) writes:
[...]
> I have created a qtree "/vol/vol0/home" and copied some users home
> directories into it, this seems to work well. But I am a bit puzzled
> how to implement the company hierarchy. I think that ideally "sales",
> "support", etc. would be separate qtrees - but it seems that qtrees
> can only exist at the top level, so this is not possible?

You are right: this is not possible. Currently, anyway: "qtrees not at
top level" has been on the wish list for a long long time, but I don't
get any feeling that NetApp are about to implement it.

> Or, I could create "sales", "support", etc. as qtees directly at the top
> level but then users would have to mount each tree individually?

Yes. In the Unix/NFS world one typically does this by automounting, with
/isc/sales mapping to filer:/isc_sales, /isc/support to filer:/isc_support,
and so on. Easy for a fixed list, with most automounters not too difficult
with an open-ended one either.

I am not too familiar with the equivalent apparatus for Windows/CIFS.

> Or, I could create a single "company" qtree with the various functional
> directories under it... but then I would not be able to take advantage
> of qtree features such as having separate quotas and dumps for these
> different "functions".

Separate quota regimes do require separate qtrees, but the dumps don't.
You can backup any specific directory tree, or indeed any set of directory
trees in a volume, in a single dump: they don't have to be at top level.
There are some efficiency advantages to dumping whole qtrees at a time,
but this isn't likely to be a critical issue.

Chris Thompson
Email: cet1@cam.ac.uk

Re: Filer qtree configuration... [ In reply to ]

geoff.hardin at dalsemi

Dec 11, 2002, 8:32 AM

Post #3 of 4 (1685 views)

Permalink

Yeah, qtrees are a real life-saver, but you have to plan ahead on how
to use them or you end up where you would have been without the qtrees.

In your environment, you might want to consider separating out the
home directories and the corporate data into two separate volumes. This
will allow you to make sales, products, etc., top level qtrees. This
does require you to use a few more disks creating new, separate RAID
groups (in the form of parity disks), but it may be worth it to gain
that level of quota management.

Geoff Hardin
geoff.hardin@dalsemi.com
This space is for rent in order to increase company revenue.

Robert Watson wrote:
>
> Hello All,
>
> What a great list - I found the archives very helpful!
>
> I am setting up a Filer, an F760 with ONTAP 6.3 and both NFS and CIFS
> licences. Based on what I have read I have configured our only shelf
> as a single large volume (with one disk left unused or spare). I then
> plan to use qtrees to implement the directory hierarchy seen by users.
>
> What I would like to present to users is something like this:
>
> filer:
> /home/
> srb/
> bwk/
> ...
>
> /ics/
> sales/
> products/
> support/
> ...
>
> Where "ics" is our company name. I'm sure you see what I mean. So, for
> example, NFS users could mount either or both of "filer1:/home" and
> "filer1:/ics". Windows users would probably setup network connections to
> both "home" and "ics".
>
> I have created a qtree "/vol/vol0/home" and copied some users home
> directories into it, this seems to work well. But I am a bit puzzled
> how to implement the company hierarchy. I think that ideally "sales",
> "support", etc. would be separate qtrees - but it seems that qtrees
> can only exist at the top level, so this is not possible?
>
> Or, I could create "sales", "support", etc. as qtees directly at the top
> level but then users would have to mount each tree individually?
>
> Or, I could create a single "company" qtree with the various functional
> directories under it... but then I would not be able to take advantage
> of qtree features such as having separate quotas and dumps for these
> different "functions".
>
> Maybe I'm missing some key point here. Comments?
>
> --
>
> Yours,
> Robert Watson.

Re: Filer qtree configuration... [ In reply to ]

brilong at cisco

Dec 11, 2002, 11:49 AM

Post #4 of 4 (1664 views)

Permalink

Or you could use symlink tricks to accomplish what you want.

Set up a directory like /ics and make symlinks /ics/sales which point to
the /sales qtree. Then you share /ics and people can click on sales
which will take them to the proper qtree.

NFS follows symlinks as well. This is how we hide data during
migrations. We use automounter to mount filer:/export/qtreeX. qtreeX
is just a symlink to /vol/volX/qtreeX. Then we can move qtreeX to
another volume, update the symlink and no need to push an automounter
update to thousands of hosts.

/Brian/

On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 10:32, Geoff Hardin wrote:
> Yeah, qtrees are a real life-saver, but you have to plan ahead on how
> to use them or you end up where you would have been without the qtrees.
>
> In your environment, you might want to consider separating out the
> home directories and the corporate data into two separate volumes. This
> will allow you to make sales, products, etc., top level qtrees. This
> does require you to use a few more disks creating new, separate RAID
> groups (in the form of parity disks), but it may be worth it to gain
> that level of quota management.
>
> Geoff Hardin
> geoff.hardin@dalsemi.com
> This space is for rent in order to increase company revenue.
>
>
> Robert Watson wrote:
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > What a great list - I found the archives very helpful!
> >
> > I am setting up a Filer, an F760 with ONTAP 6.3 and both NFS and CIFS
> > licences. Based on what I have read I have configured our only shelf
> > as a single large volume (with one disk left unused or spare). I then
> > plan to use qtrees to implement the directory hierarchy seen by users.
> >
> > What I would like to present to users is something like this:
> >
> > filer:
> > /home/
> > srb/
> > bwk/
> > ...
> >
> > /ics/
> > sales/
> > products/
> > support/
> > ...
> >
> > Where "ics" is our company name. I'm sure you see what I mean. So, for
> > example, NFS users could mount either or both of "filer1:/home" and
> > "filer1:/ics". Windows users would probably setup network connections to
> > both "home" and "ics".
> >
> > I have created a qtree "/vol/vol0/home" and copied some users home
> > directories into it, this seems to work well. But I am a bit puzzled
> > how to implement the company hierarchy. I think that ideally "sales",
> > "support", etc. would be separate qtrees - but it seems that qtrees
> > can only exist at the top level, so this is not possible?
> >
> > Or, I could create "sales", "support", etc. as qtees directly at the top
> > level but then users would have to mount each tree individually?
> >
> > Or, I could create a single "company" qtree with the various functional
> > directories under it... but then I would not be able to take advantage
> > of qtree features such as having separate quotas and dumps for these
> > different "functions".
> >
> > Maybe I'm missing some key point here. Comments?
> >
> > --
> >
> > Yours,
> > Robert Watson.
--
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