SFHA Solutions 6.1 (Linux): SmartIO: support for caching on SSD
Introduced in this release, the SmartIO feature enables efficient use of your solid-state drives through data caching. SmartIO improves application performance by maximizing the number of application Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) that can be performed. SmartIO reduces the number of I/Os that must be sent to the back-end storage, which frees up back-end storage resources and improves overall throughput. SmartIO supports read and writeback caching for Veritas File System (VxFS) file systems mounted on Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) volumes, in several caching modes and configurations.For more information on SmartIO caching modes and configurations, see:
- Read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes
- Read caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
- Writeback caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
- Caching for databases running on VxFS file systems
- Caching for databases running on VxVM volumes
To use SmartIO, you set up a cache area on the target device. You can do this task simply with one command, while the application is online.
SmartIO leverages SFHA Solutions' knowledge of the workload characteristics to determine what data is cached and how that data gets removed from the cache. You can also add advisory information, to customize which data is cached.
For information about administering SmartIO, see the
Symantec™ Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions SmartIO for Solid State Drives Solutions Guide.
The following describe key administrative tasks for the SmartIO feature:
- Creating a cache area
- Displaying information about a cache area
- Enabling or disabling caching for a data object
- Pausing caching from a volume to a cache area
- Setting or changing the caching mode
- Flushing dirty data from a writeback cache area
- Viewing the SmartIO cache statistics
For more information on SmartIO, see the following Symantec Connect articles:
SmartIO Read caching demo
sfcache demo - VxVM caching
Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.
