[Lustre-discuss] mv_sata module for rhel5 and write through patch

[Kevin Van Maren]

Brock Palen wrote:
> We are (finally) updating our x4500's to rhel5 and luster 1.8.5 from rhel4 and 1.6.7
>
> On rhel4 we had used the patch from:
> https://bugzilla.lustre.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14040
>
> for the mv_sata  module.
>
> Is this still recommended on rhel5? To use the mv_sata module over the stock redhat sata_mv as well as applying this patch?  That patch is quite old is there a newer one?
>   

I don't know: the last I heard was that the "upcoming rhel 5.3" was to 
have an in-tree Marvell driver that worked.  If your system is still 
under support, I'd contact Oracle support for information about running 
RHEL5 on the x4500.

You do want to ensure the write-back cache is disabled on the drive, but 
you may be able to do that with udev scripts.  See Bug 17462 for an 
example for the J4400.

> What are other x4500/thumper users running?
>
> Also I will do some digging on the list but why is lustre 2.0 not the 'production' version? We are planning on 1.8.x for now but if 2.0 is stable we would install that one.
>   

Lustre 2.0 is not being widely used, and would not be covered by an 
Oracle support contract.  It is strongly recommended to run production 
systems on 1.8.x rather than 2.0.  If you really want to try Lustre 2.x, 
you will want to use something newer than 2.0: maybe check with 
lustre-21 at googlegroups.com for the current status of the whamcloud git 
repository?

> Can we upgrade directly from 1.6 to 2.0 if we did this?
>
> Brock Palen
> www.umich.edu/~brockp
> Center for Advanced Computing
> brockp at umich.edu
> (734)936-1985
>
>