How to setup Network attached Storage

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a dedicated data storage technology. The NAS server provides centralized data storage, which is easily accessible to users who belong to different networks over the Internet. There are different applications that can be implemented using NAS, such as data storage and file sharing. The purpose of the NAS server that I am going to set up, is that of data storage. It is to be used to provide remote backup of the data in clients’ servers.

The Operating System
Next step I have to do is to decide on an OS to setup the NAS server, which is free and easy to use.

I came across the site http://www.openfiler.com/
Openfiler is a project for a open source Network Attached Storage (NAS) OS distribution. It was developed by Xinit Systems and provides a file-based NAS system and block-based Storage Area Networking (SAN) in a single framework. Openfiler brings together almost all storage networking protocols into a single framework.
Installation via VMware :
Openfiler is a standalone Operating System, which requires access to all system resources in order to function. I got confused on how to install it remotely. Then I came to know that it can be installed in a virtual machine environment such as VMware. I decided to try out first in a test server which had a 40GB hard disk.
A VMware Server installs on any existing server hardware . It partitions a physical server into multiple virtual machines, and provides for more hardware utilization and flexibility. So my first task was to install the VMware server.
The following packages needs to be installed in the remote server – The VMware Server itself and also the Management Interface. Also install the VMware Server Linux client package, both in the server and your local machine. The rpms for the packages can be downloaded from the VMware site and the installation steps too are documented there. The installation guide can be obtained from http://pubs.vmware.com/server1/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm
Once the VMware installation is complete, you need to connect to the server remotely using the VMware Server client package. Login using the IP address of the server and root password.
Once you are connected to the VMware server, you need to create a new virtual machine. It would create a set of files that represent a new computer, with a blank, unformatted hard disk, onto which the new operating system can be installed. The virtual disk by default has its disk space preallocated at the time of creation. I created a virtual disk of about 20GB size. The virtual disks are physically located in the folder /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/ .
Now I have to obtain the iso image for the Openfiler OS. I got the latest one, Openfiler 2.1, from http://sourceforge.net/ The Images of CD-ROMs are usually .ISO files. The .iso image was downloaded to the folder that was created for the virtual disk in the remote server, using wget command in SSH. Now, use the virtual machine settings editor to connect the virtual machine’s CD-ROM drive to the .ISO image file, then Power ON the virtual machine. The Openfiler OS would start installing, and you would get a graphical installation screen as per the steps given here: http://www.openfiler.com/docs/install/graphical_install.html Once the installation is complete, you can start configuring Openfiler by pointing your browser at the host name or IP address of the Openfiler system. The interface is mounted on https port 446. e.g. https://test.myserver.com:446.
Installation via Installer :
Now that everything went fine in the test server, I decided to give a try in the real server. But the actual server had a 2 TB hard disk, which made my task difficult. I was not able to use VMware, as the hard disk size was really huge to create virtual disks. So, I started thinking of other options. There was still the restriction of no physical access to the server.
Luckily, I got IPMI access to the server. The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification has a set of common interfaces to computer hardware which can be used to monitor system health and to manage the system remotely. The IPMI provided a Text console, which I could make use of in the installation purposes.
But the server wasn’t configured to show the grub menu over the serial console. This would prevent us from selecting alternate kernels during the boot process. I could find that, for grub to work with IPMI, it has to be enabled for the serial console. Follow the steps given below to do this.
Find the serial port number and speed used on your server:
Code:

# grep agetty /etc/inittab

On my server the console is connected to serial port 1 with a speed of 19200:

co:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty
ttyS1 19200 vt100-nav

Now open /boot/grub/grub.conf, and add the following lines below “hiddenmenu”:

serial --unit=1 --speed=19200
terminal --timeout=80 console serial

Replace the port number , timeout and speed if necessary.

To test this out, reboot your server and then connect to the serial console as soon as possible using IPMIView. Eventually, after a minute or so, you should see the following message repeating:

Press any key to
continue.
Press any key to continue.
Pressing a key at
this point will launch GRUB on the serial console.

First off, you would need to download the network installation image for the Openfiler OS that you want to install. I was able to download one boot.iso for Openfiler from <A HREF=”http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/openfiler/release?id=5076″http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/openfiler/release?id=5076

I downloaded the boot.iso image to the server itself, using the wget command. Next, you need to create a temporary directory in which to mount the ISO image to get the files out of it:

mkdir /nas
mount -o loop
boot.iso /nas

You also need to create a directory in your /boot directory . The /boot should be on a partition of its own. Copy the boot files from the iso image to the folder created.

# mkdir /boot/nas
# cp -R /nas/* /boot/nas/

Next you need to find the appropriate initial RAM disk and kernel files amongst these boot files. These will generally be called “initrd-xxxxx” and “vmlinuz-xxxxxx” respectively. Now that you have the boot files in the boot partition, you need to configure GRUB to allow you to boot into the installation.
Add the following section to grub.conf file.

title NAS install
root (hd0,0)
 kernel
/nas/isolinux/vmlinuz console=ttyS1,19200
initrd /nas/isolinux/initrd.img

This assumes that your boot partition is /dev/sda1 (or /dev/hda1) as indicated by the “(hd0,0)” part. If your /boot partition is different, you can alter the device accordingly. The “console=ttyS1,19200″ part is very important as it tells the installation program to use the serial console accessible through the IPMI View program for the installation.
Now, you should get the iso image for the openfiler as mentioned earlier. I had a second hard disk of 50GB, in the server. I mounted that as another partition and downloaded the iso image for openfiler to that partition.
Now, reboot the server and choose the NAS install from the grub menu. The installer would start running. Fill in the details appropriately. The installer gives different options for installing the OS, such as NFS, FTP, HTTP, Hard Disk, CDRom etc. I elected the Hard Disk option as my OS image was on the second hard disk. I selected the appropriate hard disk and gave the path to the iso image. Please note that Openfiler does not exist with any other Operating System. The installer would format the entire drive on which its being installed, before installing the packages. The installer successfully completed installing the Openfiler in the 2TB drive of my server in about 4-5 hours. The installation steps are the same as given earlier, http://www.openfiler.com/docs/install/graphical_install.html. Only difference that it would be text based and not graphical in this case. You can partition the drive manually or automatically, as you prefer. Once the installation is over, Reboot the server and you would be able to get a new server with Openfiler OS installed.
Login to the Interface and configure the Openfiler as per your requirements. A very good manual is available here : http://www.openfiler.com/docs/manual/
The installation process was a Trial and Error method which took up a lot of my time . There may be other effective methods and there are other OS distributions available for NAS. The steps given above depict the way I set up my server .
References:
http://www.openfiler.com/
http://sourceforge.net/docman/?group_id=90725
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/server_pubs.html
http://www.znark.com/tech/serialconsole.html
http://www.cyberciti.biz/nixcraft/vivek/blogger/2004/03/how-to-mount-iso-image-under-linux.php

Tomorrow’s Virtualization hopes

 Sometimes, one is just not enough. When you’ve got one server with rocketing performance, you could very well make the maximum utilization of it. Obviously, I’m talking about Virtualization. We’ve had quite a lot of products out there in the market. Many of them proprietary and a few, free. I have read once, “A nice product which is free is better than a great product which costs.” But today, my choice is one awesome product which is free, and is absolutely fabulous. I’m going to talk about my own favorite Virtualization Solution- KVM.

KVM, Kernel-based Virtual Machine is a complete and perfect virtualization solution for Linux. With KVM, you can have multiple machines running anything they want, may it be Linux or Windows. To make things brighter, from 2.6.20, the mainline linux will have a kernel component of KVM. That means faster and more stable workloads.

One thing which grabbed our attention was, during the migration the KVM gave almost negligible down-time and completed the migration perfectly well. And guess what, the KVM reminded me of those days in college when we learned about the ACID properties of database. Upon success of migration, the whole set-up will continue to run on the new host. Upon failure, everything remains as it ever were. That is, it will continue to work on the source host, again without down-time.

Now, we’ve got plenty of Management tools available for working our way around up in here. One such tool is Virtual Machine Manager. This one is also known as virt-manager. It acts as desktop user interface for managing virtual machines. It is sweet, and acts as a complete tool kit for managing our resource. Virt-manager contains many tools like

• Virt Install- a cli interface for provisioning the various OS’s


• Virt Clone- a cli tool for cloning existing inactive guests


• Virt Image- a tool for installing guest operating systems based on a pre-defined master image.


• Virtual Machine Viewer- s a lightweight interface for interacting with the graphical display of virtualized guest OS.

KVM can very well be proclaimed as the immediate future of Virtualization, and rightfully so. With the kind of tools available for managing it, I feel the “immediate future” is going to extend for quite some time.

vyga rolls out Remote Infrastructure Management Service

Vyga, the largest outsourced web hosting support & service provider, has rolled out their “Remote Infrastructure Management Services”.

The Remote Infrastructure Management service model(RIMsm) offers customers an “one stop shop” for all their IT infrastructure management and customer care needs. RIMsm features round the clock e-mail, helpdesk, chat & phone support services, along with IT infrastructure provisioning/management, proactive and reactive server monitoring; and lots more…

The highlight of RIMsm, apart from it being a complete solution, is the level of customization a customer gets within this service model. RIMsm enables you to map its service deliverables against a standard set of acceptable service levels. Customer sets these service levels and the RIM team is built around such custom requirements specified by each customer. In short, RIMsm delivers results that a customer needs, at a service level he specifies!

RIMsm model suits small, medium and large enterprises, in need of IT infrastructure management, product support or customer care services. Some of the highlights of RIMsm are:


=> 24×7 e-mail, helpdesk, chat & phone support
=> Infrastructure provisioning and management
=> Customized service levels
=> Proactive and reactive server monitoring
=> Dedicated manager and QA to oversee operations

Panel less migrations

As we all know, server migration is the process of moving websites hosted on legacy systems to more robust and feature-rich systems. In most cases both the source and destination servers are installed with some control panels and many of these control panels provide tools in order to do this migration automatically. But there are times when we come across situations where both the source and destination servers are not installed with any control panels. Hmm, getting worried? No fear. I’ll guide you through this process and it will be as easy as breeze (well, literally!). 

There is no calculator in my Accessories folder!

Click Start>Settings>Control panel
in control panel click "add remove software"
on the right side click add remove windows components, new window will
open
click accessories and utilities, new window will open
click accessories > select calculator if not selected
click ok on all window

that should do it

alternatively if u think u deleted the link in the accessories try this
click start >run> enter "calc"
click ok
it should open calculator

enjoy :)
sandy