Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Johnny Hughes
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 at 8:58am, Akemi Yagi wrote
> 
>> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Joshua Baker-LePain
>> wrote:
>>
>>> You do not have to switch to 64bit, and your setup should be fully
>>> supported.  Other folks have mentioned XFS, and that's an option.
>>>  But if
>>> you want to stay fully compatible with upstream, then ext3 is your only
>>> option.
>>
>> Support for xfs has been added to RHEL 5.4 which will be released any
>> day now.
> 
> So it has.  I recall looking in the beta release notes when they first
> came out and not seeing it.  So either I just plain missed it or it's
> been added there since then.  In any case, that's great news and
> something that is *long* overdue.
> 

Please note that it is not unheard of for them to PULL things that they
have in the beta when rolling out the release.

In this case, I certainly hope that they do not do this, but it is possible.

Lets hope they do keep XFS in there.



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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Akemi Yagi
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 at 8:58am, Akemi Yagi wrote

>> Support for xfs has been added to RHEL 5.4 which will be released any day
>> now.
>
> So it has.  I recall looking in the beta release notes when they first came
> out and not seeing it.  So either I just plain missed it or it's been added
> there since then.  In any case, that's great news and something that is
> *long* overdue.

Indeed. I believe the beta release notes did not mention xfs. But it is here:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html-single/Release_Notes/

and the 5.4beta kernel does/did have xfs.ko.

Akemi
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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Joshua Baker-LePain

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 at 8:58am, Akemi Yagi wrote


On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:


You do not have to switch to 64bit, and your setup should be fully
supported.  Other folks have mentioned XFS, and that's an option.  But if
you want to stay fully compatible with upstream, then ext3 is your only
option.


Support for xfs has been added to RHEL 5.4 which will be released any day now.


So it has.  I recall looking in the beta release notes when they first 
came out and not seeing it.  So either I just plain missed it or it's been 
added there since then.  In any case, that's great news and something that 
is *long* overdue.


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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Akemi Yagi
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:53 AM, David Fix wrote:
> And just to add to the discussion...
>
> We use JFS here for large filesystems.  :)  (We have some 24TB filesystems
> in place here using JFS, with no problems like XFS has when it gets
> corrupted).

Because the distro kernel does not have support fort JFS, people who
are looking into using JFS would need to install either the centosplus
kernel or the jfs kernel module provided by ELRepo (
http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-jfs ).

Akemi
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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread David Fix
And just to add to the discussion... 

We use JFS here for large filesystems. :) (We have some 24TB filesystems in 
place here using JFS, with no problems like XFS has when it gets corrupted). 

-- 
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Senior Systems Administrator 
Mr. X Inc. 
35 McCaul Street, Ste. #100 
Toronto, ON M5T 1V7 
T: (416) 595-6222, x 241 
F: (416) 595-9122 
E: dav...@mrxfx.com 


- Original Message - 
From: "Akemi Yagi"  
To: "CentOS mailing list"  
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 11:58:27 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto? 

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: 

> You do not have to switch to 64bit, and your setup should be fully 
> supported. Other folks have mentioned XFS, and that's an option. But if 
> you want to stay fully compatible with upstream, then ext3 is your only 
> option. 

Support for xfs has been added to RHEL 5.4 which will be released any day now. 

Akemi 
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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Akemi Yagi
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:

> You do not have to switch to 64bit, and your setup should be fully
> supported.  Other folks have mentioned XFS, and that's an option.  But if
> you want to stay fully compatible with upstream, then ext3 is your only
> option.

Support for xfs has been added to RHEL 5.4 which will be released any day now.

Akemi
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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Joshua Baker-LePain

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 at 1:03pm, Götz Reinicke - IT-Koordinator wrote


fdisk and parted fail to create any information on the device or fail
completely.


You can't use fdisk on a volume that large.  parted should work fine. 
What was the error you were getting (exactly)?  For a volume that large, 
you must use a GPT disk label, not the default msdos one.



But, I can't create a filesystem on it:

mkfs.ext3 -m 2 -j -O dir_index -v -b 4096 -L iscsi2lvol0
/dev/mapper/VolGroup02-lvol0


mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
mkfs.ext3: Filesystem too large.  No more than 2**31-1 blocks
 (8TB using a blocksize of 4k) are currently supported.


As has been pointed out, you need to use "-F" to force mkfs.ext3 to make a 
filesystem bigger than 8TB.  IMHO, this is misleading.  Filesystems up to 
16TB are fully supported in centos >5.1, so I don't see why the upstream 
vendor left the requirement for "-F" in mkfs.ext3.



So my question: What is my missunderstanding or what's wrong with my
system? Where are the real limits? Do I have to switch the OS to 64 Bit?


You do not have to switch to 64bit, and your setup should be fully 
supported.  Other folks have mentioned XFS, and that's an option.  But if 
you want to stay fully compatible with upstream, then ext3 is your only 
option.


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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Monty Shinn
Götz Reinicke - IT-Koordinator wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to set up an iscsi 12.5 TB storage for some data backup.
> 
> Doing so, I had some difficulties to find the right tool, maybe it's
> also a question of the system settings...
> 
> The server is a 32Bit CentOS 5.3 with the recent updates. Ths iscsi
> connection can be establised.
> 
> fdisk and parted fail to create any information on the device or fail
> completely.
> 
> using the lvm tools (pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate), I could finaly
> create a logical volume:
> 
> lvdisplay /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
>   --- Logical volume ---
>   LV Name/dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
>   VG NameVolGroup02
>   LV UUIDh7T6tD-JZw2-UEdb-q1ml-BDqp-9E0u-mAop6x
>   LV Write Accessread/write
>   LV Status  available
>   # open 0
>   LV Size12,73 TB
>   Current LE 3337487
>   Segments   1
>   Allocation inherit
>   Read ahead sectors auto
>   - currently set to 256
>   Block device   253:4
> 
> 
> But, I can't create a filesystem on it:
> 
> mkfs.ext3 -m 2 -j -O dir_index -v -b 4096 -L iscsi2lvol0
> /dev/mapper/VolGroup02-lvol0
> 
> 
> mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
> mkfs.ext3: Filesystem too large.  No more than 2**31-1 blocks
>(8TB using a blocksize of 4k) are currently supported.
> 
> 
> The limits information provided by red hat say, that RH EL 5.1 supports
> 16 TB filesystems:
> 
> http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/
> 
>   -> Maximum filesystem size (Ext3): 16TB in 5.1
> 
> Using a block size of 8192 gives a warning, that this size is to large
> for that system.
> 
> 
> So my question: What is my missunderstanding or what's wrong with my
> system? Where are the real limits? Do I have to switch the OS to 64 Bit?
> 
> Setting up large Filesystems isn't my staff of life  :-)
> 
> 
> Thanks for amy how to or help of any kind - Best regards,
> 
>   Götz
> 
> 

Gotz,

YMMV, but XFS is what I would use (and do use) as a filesystem in this 
instance.  There are caveats, some of which are listed here:

1)  Server/storage must be on stable power, backed up by a ups.  I have 
never dealt with XFS filesystem corruption, but I have read anecdotal 
horror stories.
2)  You need to run 64 bit, if for no other reason than memory requirements.
3)  You will need to have a partition that can be used as swap space.  I 
have not found any consistent formula, but I am running multiple servers 
using XFS, with 12gig of ram, 9TB filesystem, and 12 gigs was not enough 
memory to run xfs_check, which you should do on occasion.  I wound up 
making a 20gig swap space on a separate partition while I was running 
xfs_check.  That may have been excessively large, but it worked...
4)  XFS is not (or has not been) part of the standard RHEL distro, so 
you lose the 1:1 aspects of running CentOS when you implement XFS.

My experience has been that XFS is quite a bit faster than ext3, 
especially during file manipulation procedures.  Others may not agree. 
It has proven rock-solid for me, both in the linux world and IRIX.

Below is a link discussing the need for 64bit vs. 32bit (a bit old but 
still relevant):

http://oss.sgi.com/archives/xfs/2005-08/msg00391.html

Hope this helps.

Monty
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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Neil Muller
On 28/08/2009, at 10:59 PM, Jim Perrin wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:03 AM, Götz Reinicke -
> IT-Koordinator wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm trying to set up an iscsi 12.5 TB storage for some data backup.
>>
>> Doing so, I had some difficulties to find the right tool, maybe it's
>> also a question of the system settings...
>>
>> The server is a 32Bit CentOS 5.3 with the recent updates. Ths iscsi
>> connection can be establised.
>>
>> fdisk and parted fail to create any information on the device or fail
>> completely.
>>
>> using the lvm tools (pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate), I could finaly
>> create a logical volume:
>>
>> lvdisplay /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
>>  --- Logical volume ---
>>  LV Name/dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
>>  VG NameVolGroup02
>>  LV UUIDh7T6tD-JZw2-UEdb-q1ml-BDqp-9E0u-mAop6x
>>  LV Write Accessread/write
>>  LV Status  available
>>  # open 0
>>  LV Size12,73 TB
>>  Current LE 3337487
>>  Segments   1
>>  Allocation inherit
>>  Read ahead sectors auto
>>  - currently set to 256
>>  Block device   253:4
>>
>>
>> But, I can't create a filesystem on it:
>>
>> mkfs.ext3 -m 2 -j -O dir_index -v -b 4096 -L iscsi2lvol0
>> /dev/mapper/VolGroup02-lvol0
>
> You have to smack mkfs around a bit to get it to work.
> The incantations are listed here, along with the various limitations.
> The long and short of it is that you have to use -F to tell mkfs that
> you're really, REALLY sure.
> http://www.bofh-hunter.com/2008/02/11/large-filesystem-creation/
>


For a 4K block size I think the maximum ext3 filesystem size is 8TB.  
You may need to use an 8K block size which gives a maximum filesystem  
size of 16TB.

Neil




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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Jim Perrin
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:03 AM, Götz Reinicke -
IT-Koordinator wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to set up an iscsi 12.5 TB storage for some data backup.
>
> Doing so, I had some difficulties to find the right tool, maybe it's
> also a question of the system settings...
>
> The server is a 32Bit CentOS 5.3 with the recent updates. Ths iscsi
> connection can be establised.
>
> fdisk and parted fail to create any information on the device or fail
> completely.
>
> using the lvm tools (pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate), I could finaly
> create a logical volume:
>
> lvdisplay /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
>  --- Logical volume ---
>  LV Name                /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
>  VG Name                VolGroup02
>  LV UUID                h7T6tD-JZw2-UEdb-q1ml-BDqp-9E0u-mAop6x
>  LV Write Access        read/write
>  LV Status              available
>  # open                 0
>  LV Size                12,73 TB
>  Current LE             3337487
>  Segments               1
>  Allocation             inherit
>  Read ahead sectors     auto
>  - currently set to     256
>  Block device           253:4
>
>
> But, I can't create a filesystem on it:
>
> mkfs.ext3 -m 2 -j -O dir_index -v -b 4096 -L iscsi2lvol0
> /dev/mapper/VolGroup02-lvol0

You have to smack mkfs around a bit to get it to work.
The incantations are listed here, along with the various limitations.
The long and short of it is that you have to use -F to tell mkfs that
you're really, REALLY sure.
http://www.bofh-hunter.com/2008/02/11/large-filesystem-creation/



-- 
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
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Re: [CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Tim Verhoeven
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Götz Reinicke -
IT-Koordinator wrote:
>
> I'm trying to set up an iscsi 12.5 TB storage for some data backup.
>
> Doing so, I had some difficulties to find the right tool, maybe it's
> also a question of the system settings...
>
> The server is a 32Bit CentOS 5.3 with the recent updates. Ths iscsi
> connection can be establised.
>
...snip...
>
> The limits information provided by red hat say, that RH EL 5.1 supports
> 16 TB filesystems:
>
> http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/
>
>        -> Maximum filesystem size (Ext3): 16TB in 5.1
>
> Using a block size of 8192 gives a warning, that this size is to large
> for that system.
>
> So my question: What is my missunderstanding or what's wrong with my
> system? Where are the real limits? Do I have to switch the OS to 64 Bit?
>

That was discussed not so long ago. But I can't remember if it was
here in the mailing list or on IRC (or somewhere else). But the
conclusion was that you are better of using 64 bit and XFS for such
large filesystems, and that you need a 64 bit system anyway for ext3/4
to go over 8TB. Well, that is what I remember the conclusion to be :-)

Regards,
Tim

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Hoping the problem  magically goes away  by ignoring it is the
"microsoft approach to programming" and should never be allowed.
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[CentOS] Setting up large (12.5 TB) filesystem howto?

2009-08-28 Thread Götz Reinicke - IT-Koordinator
Hi,

I'm trying to set up an iscsi 12.5 TB storage for some data backup.

Doing so, I had some difficulties to find the right tool, maybe it's
also a question of the system settings...

The server is a 32Bit CentOS 5.3 with the recent updates. Ths iscsi
connection can be establised.

fdisk and parted fail to create any information on the device or fail
completely.

using the lvm tools (pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate), I could finaly
create a logical volume:

lvdisplay /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name/dev/VolGroup02/lvol0
  VG NameVolGroup02
  LV UUIDh7T6tD-JZw2-UEdb-q1ml-BDqp-9E0u-mAop6x
  LV Write Accessread/write
  LV Status  available
  # open 0
  LV Size12,73 TB
  Current LE 3337487
  Segments   1
  Allocation inherit
  Read ahead sectors auto
  - currently set to 256
  Block device   253:4


But, I can't create a filesystem on it:

mkfs.ext3 -m 2 -j -O dir_index -v -b 4096 -L iscsi2lvol0
/dev/mapper/VolGroup02-lvol0


mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
mkfs.ext3: Filesystem too large.  No more than 2**31-1 blocks
 (8TB using a blocksize of 4k) are currently supported.


The limits information provided by red hat say, that RH EL 5.1 supports
16 TB filesystems:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/

-> Maximum filesystem size (Ext3): 16TB in 5.1

Using a block size of 8192 gives a warning, that this size is to large
for that system.


So my question: What is my missunderstanding or what's wrong with my
system? Where are the real limits? Do I have to switch the OS to 64 Bit?

Setting up large Filesystems isn't my staff of life  :-)


Thanks for amy how to or help of any kind - Best regards,

Götz


-- 
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IT-Koordinator

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Fax  +49 7141 969 55 420
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