NetApp DS14MK4 noob post

Made an impulse purchase on a NetApp DS14MK4 14X144 GB X274B-R5

I'm just beginning to get familiar with storage/datacenter type applications and processes to enhance network engineering skills and job duties that will likely come sooner than later. I work in a Network operations center that will likely take on some data-center monitoring down the road, if my guess is right. I'll be running an Esxi box at some point, and so, may manage the storage through that. I'll be setting up different monitoring suites (Nagios/Cacti) to practice with that as well.

What kind of fun can I have with this ? I know I could have picked one up with larger drives some will say, but this isn't really for serious use, more for gaining the experience of setting it up, and doing some benchmarking. It apparently has the 4gb controller, and I'm hoping I can still use the two Qlogic 2gb FC cards I kept from an ill-fated Dell poweredge purchase, in a couple work stations I have, if at all.

From a you-tube video, I found that I probably have to set it up with a linux box to perform the formatting of the FC/HD.

If anyone is familiar with these ( I guess they are 5-7 years old ?) and could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

The DS14's I dealt with were even older (mark1/mark2). Anyway I forget what kind of FC controller (I think it was a qlogic one but I can't remember) the machine had. Yes we hooked the shelf up to a linux box first and used sg_format to convert regular fiber channel disks into 520 byte sector mode (with ECC for netapp use):

sg_format -e -F -s 520 /dev/sdX

In a loop running this command each time with X being values from the loop in a multiple of 14 (aa.zz (depending on how many shelves we were doing at once).

After that was done we would hook them up to a head running ontap with no other shelves hooked up to it and do:

label makespare X.Y
label keep all


Then halt/boot the machine and do:

disk zero spares

It would take a while to zero then we could use them in netapp machines like any other disk. Its been a while since I have had to do it now. All our netapp stuff is SAS instead of FC now.

If your not going to use them in a netapp machine then you can probably just use them as regular disks like any other HBA hooked up to a FC controller.

I hate to ask probably a really obvious question, MurphysLaww...

But did you ONLY buy a NetApp disk shelf or did you buy the NetApp controllers as well? You mention "4gb controller" but what model? FAS3000 series or what?

There are no obvious questions with this noob.

Anything I mention here, I just recently learned so take that with a grain of salt. I don't have much background in this. Talk to me like I'm a child... ;-)

I'm guessing I'll be setting this up as a JBOD, no external filer/controller. So this probably has limited use as training for Datacenter ops, but even the linux and disk mounting run-through will be useful.

If it works, it sounds like it will be relatively fast for what it is.

Working from this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGTbIenPxYM

You will need to reformat each disk to 512 bytes. You can do all the disks at the same time though. it will take an hour or so per disk.

After that, they will just show up as 14 different disks that you can use as you like. If you have both A and B loops, you can even multipath the disks if you want.

It works ok, going 2g will be kindof slow though. These shelfs are a large power drain, so I wouldn't recommend for home use.