2009.Q3.0.0

This major software update for the Sun Storage 7000 series appliances contains numerous features and bug fixes. As such, we strongly encourage administrators to apply this upgrade at their earliest convenience. Customers with clustered systems should see RN019 at the bottom of this page before upgrading their systems. Customers using iSCSI should read the section on "Enhanced iSCSI support" below before upgrading.

Supported Platforms

• Sun Storage 7110
• Sun Storage 7210
• Sun Storage 7310
• Sun Storage 7410
• Sun Storage 7000 Simulator

Bug fixes

There have been a number of bug fixes across all parts of the product. The following areas in particular have experienced significant improvements:

• Clustering
• iSCSI
• Networking
• Core I/O path

If you have encountered a specific issue with a current software release, support personnel can determine whether the problem is fixed in this release.

Features

See the appliance documentation for details about the following new features.

Data Protocols

Infiniband support

IP over Infiniband is now supported for client connectivity using supported HCAs. IPoIB interfaces can be configured on the Configuration -> Networking screen.

NFS/RDMA is provided for early adopters, but see the release notes below for known issues. There are currently no supported NFS/RDMA clients.

Enhanced iSCSI support

iSCSI management has been enhanced for fine-grained control over target groups and to support multiple LUNs per target. These enhancements have changed the management model for iSCSI LUNs and older configurations will not be migrated.

In previous releases, each iSCSI LUN was assigned its own target, and all targets were exported over all network interfaces. In this release, no targets are created by default. Administrators must define targets and target groups and then assign LUNs to those groups. These operations are described in the appliance documentation. LUNs created on earlier releases will be unavailable to iSCSI clients until this configuration update is performed.

Target and initiator groups can be configured on the Configuration -> SAN screen. LUNs continue to be managed on the Shares screen.

Data Services

User quotas and space accounting

Per-filesystem quotas based on POSIX users and groups and Windows identities are now supported. User and group quotas are configured on the Shares screen.

Shadow migration

Shadow migration is a new feature for moving data from other NAS systems with little downtime by setting up "shadow" shares which migrate data in the background while synchronously retrieving data when requested by clients. Shadow migration can be setup when creating new shares, and background migration can be configured in the Configuration -> Services -> Shadow migration service.

Storage profile changes

Triple-parity RAID replaces double-parity RAID for wide stripe storage configurations. The additional parity improves resilience against hard drive failures, increasing overall availability.

Triple-mirroring is now supported for high performance with increased availability (at the expense of capacity).

Both of these profiles are available when configuring a new storage pool. Customers with existing wide stripe double-parity RAID pools are unaffected by this change.

Nested mountpoints

Filesystem mountpoints can now be nested within other filesystems.

Sharing by netgroup

NFS share configuration can now refer to netgroups (groups of hostnames stored in a directory service).

Enable/disable Logzilla for each share

Logzilla (SSD write cache) usage can now be enabled or disabled on a per-share basis under the General properties for the share.

Software Features

Enhanced MMC support

The appliance supports additional management from the Microsoft Management Console, including:

• listing open files and connections
• closing open connections
• viewing service status
• viewing administrative users

Configuration backup/restore

The appliance configuration can be saved and exported to a file for later restore in the event of disaster recovery. Such saved configurations can also be applied on other appliances to distribute common configurations. Saved configurations are managed on the Maintenance -> System screen.

Faster cluster takeover time

This release includes several changes to greatly improve performance as well as reliability of cluster takeover.

Non-DNS hostname resolution

Resolution of hostnames through NIS and LDAP is now supported by enabling non-DNS hostname resolution on the Configuration -> Services -> DNS screen.

IPMP standby interfaces

IPMP interfaces can now be marked 'standby' under Configuration -> Networking. Standby interfaces will be brought into service as active interfaces fail.

Syslog relay service

The new syslog relay service distributes messages to remote syslog receivers. Receivers can be configured under Configuration -> Services -> Syslog.

Administrators can configure alerts to send syslog messages under Configuration -> Alerts.

Known issues

The Configuration/Network view permits a wide variety of networking configuration changes on the Sun Storage system. One such change is taking an existing network interface and associating it with a different network datalink, effectively moving the interface's IP addresses to a different physical link (or links, in the case of an aggregation). In this scenario, the network routes associated with the original interface are automatically deleted, and must be re-added by the administrator to the new interface. In some situations this may imply loss of a path to particular hosts until those routes are restored.

The Configuration/Network view permits a wide variety of networking configuration changes on the Sun Storage system. One such change is modifying or deleting the active administrative interface over which the administrator is connected to the web browser or command-line interface itself, which may also be providing the default route for the system. The appliance software attempts to detect such modifications and warn the administrator first. If such a reconfiguration is confirmed or not detected in advance, the administrator will lose contact with the appliance during the network reconfiguration. The network reconfiguration will complete, but if contact cannot be restored with the appliance (by reloading the web address or reconnecting using ssh) due to an error in the configuration applied by the administrator or the loss of the default route, the administrator should log in using the service processor console and correct the configuration using the command-line.

In the current version of J4400 Array firmware, used in the disk enclosures for the Sun Storage 7410, the J4400 emits an audible alarm when a disk drive is hot-unplugged. The alarm warns the operator that a drive has been removed, and the alarm is silenced when the drive is replaced, either by the original drive or by a new replacement. In some operator scenarios, it may be preferable to not emit such an alarm, particularly if a spare drive is not immediately available. The operator can manually silence the alarm by depressing a button on the J4400 front panel. Future versions of the J4400 firmware and appliance software will disable this behavior and/or permit it to be configured by the administrator.

When reconfiguring the Active Directory service to participate in a different domain, restart the CIFS service before attempting to reconfigure the Active Directory service.

In a 7210 System, removing the first system disk will make the system unbootable, despite the presence of a second mirrored disk. To workaround this issue, break into the BIOS boot menu, under 'HDD boot order', modify the list so the first item is "[SCSI:#0300 ID00 LU]".

With a large number of network interfaces, the CIFS service NetBIOS registration mechanism can time out, causing the CIFS service to fail. If you encounter this situation, please contact Sun support to work around the issue.

Under heavy load in large configurations, the first SIM card (SIM 0) can fail. The symptoms are a blue LED on the card itself and an audible alarm, with possible alerts in the UI regarding paths and/or power supplies being removed from the chassis. I/O will continue down other available paths, and there no impact to availability, though performance may suffer. Re-seating the SIM card (removing it and inserting it) should fix the problem. If this problem persists, please contact Sun Support.

If an automatic snapshot is deleted during replication of the same project, it's possible for the replication to fail. The safest workaround is to disable automatic snapshots if a project is being replicated. Alternatively, picking a schedule that is guaranteed to not interfere with ongoing replication may work, but is dependent on each incremental replication stream being sent in a well-defined period of time.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is currently not supported for the web-based management interface.

When modifying the properties of an existing IPMP interface via the CLI, all of the interfaces in the IPMP group may be marked 'active', even if some were previously marked 'standby'. Use the BUI to modify existing IPMP interfaces until this issue is resolved.

NDMP backups of appliance data includes share metadata, including projects, shares, and share properties (see the documentation for details). However, user quotas (new to the 2009.Q3 release) are currently not backed up with NDMP. This configuration will have to be manually restored.

NDMP does not backup nested filesystems (new to 2009.Q3). When creating filesystems mounted within other filesystems, be sure to specify each mountpoint separately in the NDMP DMA backup configuration.

LSO is disabled in 2009.Q3 in order to address certain data integrity issues. This has a noticeable adverse effect on IPoIB performance. LSO will be reenabled in a minor update once the integrity issues have been resolved.

The NFS/RDMA support in 2009.Q3 is a preview for early adopters and should not be used on production systems. There are currently no supported clients. Linux clients still under development have experienced data validation errors and loss of access to NFS/RDMA shares on the appliance.

The 2009.Q3 release introduces target groups and initiator groups on which individual iSCSI LUNs are exported. When replicating projects containing iSCSI LUNs using the built-in remote replication feature, ensure that the target groups and initiator groups used by LUNs within the project also exist on the replication target. It's only required that groups exist with the same name, not that they define the same configuration. Failure to ensure this can result in failure to clone and
export replicated LUNs.

In systems with large numbers of network interfaces using jumbo frames, some network interfaces may fail to come up due to hardware resource limitations. Such network interfaces will be unavailable, but will not be shown as faulted in the BUI or CLI. If this occurs, turn off jumbo frames on some of the network interfaces.

Live cable and/or subnet manager partition re-configuration may result in mis-configured IPoIB network devices, datalinks or interfaces. If this happens, delete the affected IPoIB interfaces and partition datalinks on the affected controller. To recover the underlying IPoIB device, make sure that all IB cables are properly configured and the subnet manager is up and running with a valid partition table. Next, reboot the controller with the mis-configured IPoIB device.

After performing a configuration restore, the default route may become inactive. It may need to be reconfigured.

Clustered systems must be updated to the 2009.Q2.5.0 release before being updated to the 2009.Q3.0.0 release. The 2009.Q2.5.0 update can be downloaded from the Software updates page.