[THIN] Re: Alternative fileservers (EMC Celerra)
- From: "Jim Kenzig ThinHelp.com" <jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:53:40 -0400
Rick do you have any thoughts on EMC's Centerra product with Disk Extender?
We are looking at this for archival purposes. Does this have the same
issues?
Jim
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 8:12 AM, Rick Mack <ulrich.mack@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> I have an active pain avoidance mechanism so once I get burned with a
> product I tend to avoid it, and advise others to do the same. Sometimes
> that's unfair because a product has actually improved in the interim but you
> genarally only get one chance with me.
>
> The deal with the Celerra was that despite EMC protestations that it ws
> optimally tuned, whatever that means in a heterogeneous environment, we were
> seeing system pauses that just had to be network i/o related with
> consistently high redirector current commands on the TS systems.
>
> If you've got a windows based file server, the default values (set at the
> file server end) are way too low for TS systems and will often result in TS
> pauses and even hangs. But you can tweak maxmpxct and maxworkitems on the
> file server to increase the resilience of the network i/o request mechanism
> and get rid of the hangs.
>
> Many NAS CIFS implementations use SAMBA or a derivative and with SAMBA you
> can tune the Max Mux value (equivalent to maxmpxct) to tailor it for a TS
> environment. But if the NAS implementation is a closed box then you've got a
> problem. Approaches to EMC about this issue didn't produce any results at
> the time so it was a choice of living with the pause issues or using
> something else.
>
> This may no longer be the case with EMC. Provided the Max Mux/(could also
> be MaxConnections) or MaxMPxCT equivalent may now be tunable so that
> everything will be fine. But if they aren't, then the Celerra remains as a
> possible bad choice for a busy TS environment, particularly if you're doing
> folder redirection and all that other fun stuff that increases network i/o
> requests.
>
> regards,
>
> Rick
>
> --
> Ulrich Mack
> Quest Software
> Provision Networks Division
>
>
> On 3/26/08, M <mathras@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hello Rick,
> >
> > Can you elaborate on your interesting comment.
> > "The Celerra style NAS approach can have throughput problems in a TS
> > environment. It's fine anywhere else"
> >
> > I am interested because we use this (it also cost a bomb so im told) and
> > have had real issues with pausing Citrix sessions. Our Citrix
> > team eventually pinpointed this to the way the disks were configured and the
> > way departmental data was distributed.
> >
> > Matt
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
--
Jim Kenzig
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Services
http://www.thinhelp.com
Citrix Technology Professional
CEO The Kenzig Group
http://www.kenzig.com
Blog: http://www.techblink.com
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