[rescue] Sun - PrestoServe and Software RAID

[James Lockwood]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002, Loomis, Rip wrote:

> With that set of hardware, I think I'm limited to Solaris--unless
> anyone knows for sure that everything's supported by *BSD
> or Linux?  (No, from the docs I've found...)

I highly doubt it.

> The three questions are:
> 1.  What version of Solaris?  It's got Sol8 on it now and
>      boots okay/sees all disks, but I think that PrestoServe
>      is a separate piece of software.  What Solaris revs does
>      it support, or should I just not bother with the NVSIMMs?

8 works.  9 probably will, though I've not tried it.  Sun only officially
supports a single SS10/20 NVSIMM (they're 2MB each, by the way) per
system, but two work fine.

The NVSIMMs were very worth it with NFS v2, somewhat less so with v3.
They still help quite a lot versus vanilla UFS, and provide a milder
improvement versus Disksuite with logging on a separate spindle.

> 2.  Anyone have the PrestoServe software available, since
>     Sun has no longer "heard of it"?

Yes, but not here.  You need the software package and a patch.

>
> 3.  It looks as though the "Solaris Volume Manager" software
>      would do what I need (map a bunch of disks to a RAID5
>      array in software) but it's only in Solaris 9--otherwise I'd
>      need to pay for Veritas VX or find some other (low-cost?)
>      solution.  Any suggestions?

You want Disksuite, it should be bundled with Solaris.  I recommend
printing out the PDF documentation from docs.sun.com and reading it
_thoroughly_ before starting.  It's not hard but a good grasp of the
terminology Sun uses is essential.

-James