Tag Archives: opensolaris

Virtualization hypervisor and containers all in one

Posted on January 8, 2017 | 1 comment

I’m a big fan of virtualization, the ability to run multiple platforms and operating systems (called guests) in a single server (called host) is probably one of the best computing technologies of the past 10 years.

Personally, I have been using virtualization circa 2004. It all took off after 2006 when chip manufacturer’s started bundling virtualization technologies in their processors (Intel VT-x or AMD-v). The reason why “cloud” computing is so popular can also be attributed to virtualization.

In a container world…

However, in the past couple of years a new technology has been making making the rounds everywhere, the words “containers”, “docker”, “orchestration” is picking up steam in the past year. They say that containers are changing the landscape for system administrators and application developers.

Claims that containers can be built and deployed in seconds, share a common storage layer and allow you to resize the container in real-time when you need more performance or capacity are really exciting concepts and I think the time is now for me to jump in and learn a thing of two about this new technology when its hot a new. Continue reading →

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Posted in Cloud, Linux, Proxmox, Virtualization

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Checking for Hard drive READ and WRITE Cache (onboard) on Solaris

Posted on May 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

To check for read and write cache for your hard drives do the following:

Giovanni@server:~# format -e
Searching for disks…done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c8t0d0 <DEFAULT cyl 60797 alt 2 hd 255 sec 252>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@0,0
1. c8t1d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@1,0
2. c8t2d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A28A-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@2,0
3. c8t3d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@3,0
4. c8t4d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@4,0
5. c8t5d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@5,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

Select a drive, lets pick 5 from the list.

Specify disk (enter its number): 5
selecting c8t5d0
[disk formatted]
/dev/dsk/c8t5d0s0 is part of active ZFS pool gpool. Please see zpool(1M).
FORMAT MENU:
disk       – select a disk
type       – select (define) a disk type
partition  – select (define) a partition table
current    – describe the current disk
format     – format and analyze the disk
fdisk      – run the fdisk program
repair     – repair a defective sector
label      – write label to the disk
analyze    – surface analysis
defect     – defect list management
backup     – search for backup labels
verify     – read and display labels
inquiry    – show vendor, product and revision
scsi       – independent SCSI mode selects
cache      – enable, disable or query SCSI disk cache
volname    – set 8-character volume name
!<cmd>     – execute <cmd>, then return
quit
format>

Now let’s do the checking

Enter “cache” to enter cache menu.

CACHE MENU:
write_cache – display or modify write cache settings
read_cache  – display or modify read cache settings
!<cmd>      – execute <cmd>, then return
quit
cache>

Type: “write_cache” or “read_cache” depending on what you would like to see, lets use write:

cache> write_cache
WRITE_CACHE MENU:
display     – display current setting of write cache
enable      – enable write cache
disable     – disable write cache
!<cmd>      – execute <cmd>, then return
quit
write_cache> display
Write Cache is enabled
write_cache>

Use the same for read_cache and to disable and enable.

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Setup Filebench on Solaris for benchmarking

Posted on May 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Like any other newbie on Solaris, I didn’t know how to install the packages, I am used to yum or apt-get install but anyway on Solaris I did:

Giovanni@server:~/Downloads/filebench-1.4.8# pkg install SUNWfilebench
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                    1/1       60/60     0.32/0.32

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                                  82/82
Giovanni@server:~/Downloads/filebench-1.4.8#

and it was installed 🙂 Use pkg search to search for packages.

Giovanni@server:/usr/benchmarks/filebench# bin/go_filebench
FileBench Version 1.4.4
filebench> load varmail
742: 3.707: Varmail Version 2.1 personality successfully loaded
742: 3.707: Usage: set $dir=<dir>
742: 3.707:        set $filesize=<size>    defaults to 16384
742: 3.707:        set $nfiles=<value>     defaults to 1000
742: 3.707:        set $nthreads=<value>   defaults to 16
742: 3.707:        set $meaniosize=<value> defaults to 16384
742: 3.707:        set $readiosize=<size>  defaults to 1048576
742: 3.707:        set $meandirwidth=<size> defaults to 1000000
742: 3.707: (sets mean dir width and dir depth is calculated as log (width, nfiles)
742: 3.707:  dirdepth therefore defaults to dir depth of 1 as in postmark
742: 3.707:  set $meandir lower to increase depth beyond 1 if desired)
742: 3.707:
742: 3.707:        run runtime (e.g. run 60)
filebench> set $dir=/gpool
filebench> run 60
742: 27.078: Creating/pre-allocating files and filesets
742: 27.081: Fileset bigfileset: 1000 files, 0 leafdirs avg dir = 1000000, avg depth = 0.5, mbytes=15
742: 27.096: Removed any existing fileset bigfileset in 1 seconds
742: 27.096: making tree for filset /gpool/bigfileset
742: 27.096: Creating fileset bigfileset…
742: 35.092: Preallocated 812 of 1000 of fileset bigfileset in 8 seconds
742: 35.092: waiting for fileset pre-allocation to finish
742: 35.092: Starting 1 filereader instances
744: 36.102: Starting 16 filereaderthread threads
742: 39.112: Running…
742: 99.712: Run took 60 seconds…
742: 99.713: Per-Operation Breakdown
closefile4                449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.0ms/op        3us/op-cpu
readfile4                 449ops/s   7.0mb/s      0.0ms/op       19us/op-cpu
openfile4                 449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.0ms/op       18us/op-cpu
closefile3                449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.0ms/op        3us/op-cpu
fsyncfile3                449ops/s   0.0mb/s     17.4ms/op       20us/op-cpu
appendfilerand3           449ops/s   3.5mb/s      0.0ms/op       27us/op-cpu
readfile3                 449ops/s   7.0mb/s      0.0ms/op       18us/op-cpu
openfile3                 449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.0ms/op       18us/op-cpu
closefile2                449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.0ms/op        3us/op-cpu
fsyncfile2                449ops/s   0.0mb/s     17.9ms/op       17us/op-cpu
appendfilerand2           449ops/s   3.5mb/s      0.0ms/op       23us/op-cpu
createfile2               449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.1ms/op       52us/op-cpu
deletefile1               449ops/s   0.0mb/s      0.0ms/op       33us/op-cpu

742: 99.713:
IO Summary:      353667 ops, 5836.1 ops/s, (898/898 r/w)  21.0mb/s,     78us cpu/op,   8.9ms latency
742: 99.713: Shutting down processes
filebench>
742: 110.144: Aborting…

Going back to normal

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Create a Storage Pool

Posted on May 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

This will create a pool named “gpool” using RAIDZ (raid5) with member drives  c8t1d0 c8t2d0 c8t3d0 c8t4d0 c8t5d0

Giovanni@server:~# zpool create gpool raidz c8t1d0 c8t2d0 c8t3d0 c8t4d0 c8t5d0
Giovanni@server:~# zpool status
pool: gpool
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
gpool       ONLINE       0     0     0
raidz1    ONLINE       0     0     0
c8t1d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c8t2d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c8t3d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c8t4d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
c8t5d0  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

pool: rpool
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
rpool       ONLINE       0     0     0
c8t0d0s0  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors
Giovanni@server:~#

OK.

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How to view available SATA hard drives

Posted on May 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

You will be able to view hardware ID’s for hard drives using ‘format’

Giovanni@server:~# format
Searching for disks…done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c8t0d0 <DEFAULT cyl 60797 alt 2 hd 255 sec 252>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@0,0
1. c8t1d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@1,0
2. c8t2d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A28A-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@2,0
3. c8t3d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@3,0
4. c8t4d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@4,0
5. c8t5d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@5,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

Hard drives are located on /dev/dsk in Opensolaris. Compare to the zpool status and add drives that are new to the system (not yet in any storage pools)

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