LaoTsao's Weblog (老曹的網路記)

setup client with NFS server with multiple NIC

NFS server, Automount

In a data intensive NFS environment, in order to get better NFS server performance, one approach is to use multiple NIC in the NFS server.

We will configure clients only to mount on a specific NIC that server on a specific subnet.

The standard requirement is that clients will need to have access to all data on the NFS server.

Lets' assumed that there are 16 NIC in the server, and we have setup 16 subnet ( or VLAN in modern term) and we only want subset of clients to be in one subnet, say 16 in 100baseT world.

Let's assume that the mount point is /global/data on the server and each NIC is associated with suffix to the server name nfs-server-xx.

the clients are client-xx-yy for each xx subnet.

Our goal is for client-xx-yy to mount the /global/data by using nfs-server-xx:/global/data.

How can we achive this?

The trick is in the setup of the automount map, we use the direct-map as an example auto_data the entry should look like the following

/global/data $(nfsserver):/global/data

In the /etc/init.d/autofs script one need to add a few line before the automount command to set "nfsserver" accounting to the client HOSTNAME

Something like

HOST=`hostname`
nfsserver=nfs-server-`echo $HOST|nawk -F- '{print $2}'`
will do.

Of course we will use Jumpstart to modify the auto_direct and autofs files

Posted at 11:27PM Jul 13, 2004 by hstsao in jumpstart  | 

Solaris Jumpstart using ufsdump and ufsrestore

Jumpstart

Solaris Jumpstart is one popular method to install Solaris OS, It has evolued from just install individual Solaris pkg to install with Flash archive(flar). and from installed based oncdrom, NFS to http, ftp and from LAN to WAN.

The flar is based on cpio archive and some manifist to descript the flar

We discuss another possibility, use the ufsdump and ufsrestore in place of cpio.

We had use this method many years ago before feature of flar.

The steps

• Install Solaris interactively, add patches, add new local SW etc
• create ufsdump of the installed Solaris + SW
• usee add_install_server to setup jumpstart server
• use add_install_client to setup client to be jumpstarted
• add the profile to rule and this profile only install SUNWcore
• create post-script and in this post-script
  1. one will save all the files referenced by the sys-unconfig man page
  2. use ufsrestore to restore the ufssdump image to /a
  3. copy back the saved files from step 1

Posted at 11:05PM Jul 13, 2004 by hstsao in jumpstart  |  Comments[1]