QoreStor 6.0.0 - User Guide

Best practices: Rapid CIFS

This topic introduces some recommended best practices for using Rapid CIFS operations with QoreStor.

• Containers must be of type NFS/CIFS
  • RDA containers cannot use Rapid CIFS. If you have existing NFS/CIFS containers, you do not need to create new containers to use Rapid CIFS; you can install the plug-in (driver) to existing clients.
• The Rapid CIFS plug-in (driver) must be installed on client systems

  After the plug-in is installed, write operations will go through Rapid CIFS while metadata operations such as file creates and permission changes will go through the standard CIFS protocol. Rapid CIFS can be disabled by uninstalling the plug-in.

• Your QoreStor system must meet the minimum configuration

  Rapid CIFS is available with a QoreStor system and a client with a minimum of 4 CPU cores running at a minimum of 4 GHz cumulative processing power and 2 GB memory. For a list of supported operating systems, see the QoreStor Interoperability Guide.

  If you update your operating system, you must update your Rapid CIFS plug-in as well. Updates are available on the Quest Support site.

• Rapid CIFS is stateful

  If the QoreStor system goes down, the connection will terminate. DMAs will restart from the last checkpoint.

• Rapid CIFS and passthrough mode

  If Rapid CIFS mode fails for any reason, the QoreStor system falls back to regular CIFS mode automatically.

• Rapid CIFS acceleration constraints

  Rapid CIFS does not support:

  • NAS functionality
    • Optlocks (but supported if a single client is writing)
    • Byte-range locks
  • Optimization of very small files (less than 10 MB). File size can be adjusted using configuration settings.
  • FILE_NO_IMMEDIATE_BUFFERING and FILEWRITE_THROUGH operations (sent via CIFS only).
  • File path size greater than 4096 characters

Installing the Rapid NFS plug-in

The QoreStor NFS plug-in must be installed on to the media server type you choose (for supported operating systems and DMAs, see the QoreStor Interoperability Guide). The plug-in software enables integration between QoreStor data storage operations and the supported data management applications (DMAs). Before you install, make sure you adhere to the Best Practices covered in another topic in this chapter.

The plug-in must be installed on the designated Linux-based media server in the following directory, /usr/openv/lib/. The plug-in is installed using a self-extracting installer that installs the Rapid NFS plug-in and all of its related components. The installer supports the following modes, with the default being Help (-h):

• Help (-h)
• Install (-install)
• Upgrade (-upgrade)
• Uninstall (-uninstall)
• Force (-force)

$> ./QuestRapidNFS-xxxxx-xxxxx-x86_64.bin -help
Quest plug-in installer/uninstaller
usage: QuestRapidNFS-xxxxx-xxxxx-x86_64.bin [ -h ] [ -install ] [ -uninstall ]
-h					: Displays help
-install		: Installs the plug-in
-upgrade		: Upgrades the plug-in
-uninstall	: Uninstalls the plug-in
-force			: Forces the installation of the plug-in

You can download the plug-in installer from the Quest website:

• Go to support.quest.com/qorestor, select your specific QoreStor version, and then navigate to Software Downloads.
• Locate the Rapid NFS plug-in and download it to your system.

After it is downloaded, follow the steps that follow to run the Plug-In Installer to install the plug-in on your designated Linux-based media server.

1. Download QuestRapidNFS-xxxxx-xxxxx-x86_64.bin.gz from the website, as detailed previously.
2. Unzip the package.

   unzip QuestRapidNFS-xxxxx-xxxxx-x86_64.bin.gz

3. Assign execute bit to change the permission of the binary package:

   chmod +x QuestRapidNFS-xxxxx-xxxxx-x86_64.bin

4. Install the Rapid NFS package. Before installing, remove the stale NFS entry.

   QuestRapidNFS-xxxxx-xxxxx-x86_64.bin -install

5. Load the file system in user space (FUSE) module, if not already loaded:

   modprobe fuse 
   

6. Create a directory on the client. For example:

   mkdir /mnt/backup

7. Mount Rapid NFS as a file system type using the mount command. For example:

   mount -t rdnfs 10.0.0.1:/containers/backup/mnt/backup

   If you are using a DMA that supports a marker, set the marker by using -o in the mount command. For example, if you wanted to set the CommVault marker (cv):

   mount -t rdnfs 10.0.0.1:/containers/backup /mnt/backup -o marker=cv

   NOTE: If you want to do a mount on AIX, you must set the nfs_use_reserved_ports and portcheck parameters first. The parameters cannot be set to 0. For example: root@aixhost1 / # nfso -po portcheck=1 root@aixhost1 / # nfso -po nfs_use_reserved_ports=1

Installing the Rapid CIFS plug-in

The Rapid CIFS plug-in must be installed on to the media server type you choose (for supported operating systems and DMAs, see the QoreStor Interoperability Guide). The plug-in software enables integration between QoreStor data storage operations and the supported data management applications (DMAs). Before you install, make sure you adhere to the Best Practices covered in another topic in this chapter.

You can download the plug-in installer from the Quest website as follows

• Go to support.quest.com/qorestor, select your specific QoreStor version, and then navigate to Software Downloads.
• Locate the Rapid CIFS plug-in and download it to your system.

After it is downloaded, follow the steps below to run the plug-in installer to install the plug-in on your designated media server.

1. On the media server, map a network share to your CIFS-enabled container.
2. Download the plug-in installer from the website, as detailed previously.
3. Open a command prompt with the “Run as Administrator” option selected. To do this using the Windows Start menu, click Start → All Programs → Accessories. Right-click Command Prompt and selectRun as Administrator.

   This gives all the required privileges to install/copy the driver files to the Windows drivers folder.

4. Run QuestRapidCIFS-xxxxx.msi.
5. Follow the installation prompts.

To ensure that the plug-in is running successfully, check the Windows Event log file.

Monitoring performance

This procedure describes how to monitor performance by viewing Rapid NFS and Rapid CIFS usage graphs.

Before you view usage graphs, make sure that the appropriate accelerator is active by viewing the Container Statistics in the QoreStor GUI.

1. In the QoreStor GUI, click Dashboard.
2. In the Actions menu in the upper right corner of the page, click Detailed Graphs.
3. Select a time range (if needed) and click Apply.
4. Click the Protocols tab.

   Under NFS Usage and CIFS Usage, there is an XWrite checkbox. This checkbox represents the accelerator activity.

5. In the desired usage graph pane, select the XWrite checkbox to view the accelerator performance over time.

If you have Rapid NFS enabled, you can use the command line to view statistics, throughput, and the plug-in version by running the ru utility on the client, as follows:

ru --mpt=[rdnfs mount point] | --pid=[process ID of rdnfs] --show=[name|version|parameters|stats|performance]

If you have Rapid CIFS enabled, you can use the command line to view aggregate statistics (even while a backup job is running) using the following command:

\Program Files\Quest\Rapid CIFS\rdcifsctl.exe stats -s