To NSS or not to NSS

[LawnBoy]

...that is the question.
We're about to upgrade a couple of NW5 servers to NW6.5. We've run into some obscure problems with backing up NSS volumes in the past, and I'm wondering what real advantage it has over traditional volumes.

I know that NSS will let you span a volume across different disks, but I consider that to be bad practice as it leaves the volume twice as vulnerable to hardware failure.

So, what practical good can NSS give me?

I have my asbestos suit on, flame away.

 

[terry712]

definately go with nss

traditionals arent really supported with 6 and above
nss did suck on the 5.x but it's solid now on 6 and assume better on 6.5

i never use software raid's - i'm hardware or nothing so the failure is just the same as traditional

backups - never had a prob

i've only used uncompressed nss though - most horror tids seem to start off - user had a compressed nns blah blah

 

[LawnBoy]

I agree on the RAID. If it ain't hardware, it ain't RAID. I'll take your word on the compression.

Thanks for the info.

 

[marvhuffaker]

Yes, I've seen a handful of problems with various clients using compression and NSS. Novell fixes it and then breaks it again with the next service pack.

NSS gives you lots more flexibility with your volumes. You can create volumes at will without having to have any additional available disk space. That is the best part in my opinion.

Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[Provogeek]

Also, only NSS volumes are supported for cluster enabled volumes if you choose to go that route.

Don't toos traditional out the window however. You may run into some database applications that are only supported on traditional volumes. Novell hasn't stopped support for traditional volumes, they just don't give you the kewl features NSS does.

One fo the biggest advantages you will notice when you use traditional is that 80gig volume that took close to 10 minutes to mount will only take 8 seconds in NSS.

Are you doing in place upgrades or across the wire migrations? If you do inplace, the upgrade will not convert your traditional to NSS, that would have to be another step in the upgrade. You would also need to have unalocated disk space equal to the traditional volume space to migrate traditional to NSS.

One gotcha I have found is user space restriction. In NW6 SP3 Novell made User Space Restriction set to on by defualt. A client of mine migrated from 5.1 to 6.0SP3 across the wire. When you migrate files, they are first decompressed before they are moved. Client had user space restrictions set and those restrictions followed the migration. Users files when decompressed went over their space restrictions resulting in an out of disk space message to them. Client had to disable User Space Restrictions manually to get the users functionality back. When the server reboots, the restrictions atribute has to be disabled each time.

Now my customer is going through the process of adjusting the space restictions manually for 400+ users. This adjustment can also be done using an LDIF import to alter the atribute on the user objects (cutomer just didn't have the budget for me to do this for them).

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt Certified nut case
Senior Network Engineer

http://www.kiscc.com

 

[bytehd]

NSS also auto repairs which is handy.
and all the namespaces are loaded by default.
and the NSS code is SMP.

 

[LawnBoy]

OK I'm sold. Actually I already was, just seeking external validation. (sorry, too much psych 101)

 

[ikendo]

dumb question can you use NSS with just one ide HD?

 

[Provogeek]

yes

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt Certified nut case
Senior Network Engineer

http://www.kiscc.com