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shutdown SAN
I have a Promise 16TB san storage , how often I should try to shutdown my san storage and Xserve , or does it have to be on 24/7 ?
I have shut it down 3 times a week and now I get some LED errors and volumes wont mount ?Best,
M.Tavassoli -
4 Replies
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In general it’s better to leave running, especially if there’s no reason to shut down. Servers and RAID arrays are designed to run 24/7. Spinning the disks up and down will increase the risk of something going wrong.
Nate Cooper
Studio Network Solutions
ncooper@studionetworksolutions.com
818 209 1331 -
Yeah, I wholeheartedly second that motion. Keep it running. Starting up and shutting down is very abrasive for most RAIDs. I think I killed some old Medea RAIDs with our composers several years ago by shutting them down too often. They’ve haunted me ever since.
Also, as you probably know, the start up and shut down sequence is very important for most SAN system. If you do need to shut down, make sure to follow proper procedures and go in the right order — in a nutshell, the shutdown order is servers first, then storage, then switches. Starting up is the reverse with switches coming on first, then storage, then finally servers (allowing each level to fully boot up before starting the next).
A RAID (and especially a SAN) shut down should be a pretty big deal — not something to do on a regular basis. Hopefully your errors are just the result of a bad start up procedure and not anything permanent.
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what a bunch of old wives tales. RAID’s can be shut down whenever you want. Modern RAID arrays are stable, and modern hi quality disk drives (like Hitachi Enterprise series SATA drives) are very stable, and do not become corrupt when you do a shut down. I have no idea of what kind of crap you guys are using, (Apple XServe RAID perhaps ?), but when you use arrays from quality companies (JMR, Maxx Digital, Cal Digit, Sonnet, Dulce Systems, etc), if you power down your computer, and then power down your RAID array, you DO NOT corrupt your data. You guys sound like “gee, should I keep my AJA Kona running 24 hours a day” – as if this is using analog components that drift from heat.
A lot of crap and mis information that I get from common knowlege is INCORRECT information.
Bob Zelin
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I think it is mainly coming from the fear of the “filesystem.” If you see the volume on the desktop you are good, and any given restart could mean that it won’t come back up. (these are unfounded) but so many people are gun shy from earlier experiences with most first version filesystems (read: XSAN 1.0, early Metasan, Facilis 1.0, etc…) not so much HFS+ All of these have gotten much better, but the fear of past experience lingers.
-jw
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