How to verify VCS installation on a system
Symantec recommends that you verify your installation of Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) on a system before you install or upgrade VCS. This allows you to know about the product prerequisites, installed product version, and configuration. You can verify installation of VCS on a system using the following techniques: Operating System (OS) commands Script-based Installer Symantec Operations Readiness Tools (SORT) checks VCS command validation OS commands You can run native OS commands on the system to verify whether VCS is installed. The following table lists the commands to verify the VCS installation and the VCS version and patches installed on the system. Use cases AIX HP-UX Linux Solaris Verifying VCS installation lslpp -l VRTSvcs swlist VRTSvcs rpm –qi VRTSvcs For Solaris 10: pkginfo –l VRTSvcs For Solaris 11: pkg info VRTSvcs Verifying VCS version and patches lslpp -l VRTSvcs swlist VRTSvcs rpm –qi VRTSvcs showrev –p | grep VRTSvcs You can use these commands to verify which product packages are installed on the system.To get a complete list of required and optional packages for VCS, see the product release notes on theSORTwebsite. Note:On Linux, there is no sparse patch or patch ID. Therefore, the package version itself indicates the patch version of the installed VCS. Advantage of using the OS command technique By default, native commands are available on a system and can be used with ease. Limitations of using the OS command technique You must run OS commands as root on the cluster nodes. OS commands are useful for package and patch validation. However, these commands do not provide complete information about the VCS product installation. You need to run multiple commands to validate whether the required packages are installed on the system Script-based Installer Symantec recommends that you use the script-based installer to install Symantec products. The script-based installercan be used to identify which products from the Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) family are installed on the system. The installer script can be executed to get a list of VCS packages and their versions installed on the system. These commands can be executed on AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris. The installer also allows you to configure the product, verify the pre-installation requisites, and view the description of the product. The following command provides the major version of the product and packages installed on the system. However, it does not provide details such as join version, build date, and patches installed on the other nodes in the cluster. To use this command, VCS must be already installed on the system. To use the script-based installer to verify the version of VCS installed on the system Run the following command: #/opt/VRTS/install/installvcs<version> –version Whereversionis the specific release version. For example, to validate the VCS 6.1 installation on the system, run the following command: #/opt/VRTS/install/installvcs61 –version To initiate the VCS installation validation using the product DVD media provided by Symantec, run the following installer script: #<dvd-media-path>/installer -version The installer script lists the Symantec products installed on the system along with the version details of the products. You can also use this script to perform a pre-check of the required package dependencies to install the product. If the product is already installed on the system and you want to validate the list of packages and patches along with their version, run the following command: #/opt/VRTS/install/showversion This command provides details of the product installed on all the nodes in a cluster. This information includes the product name, required and optional packages installed on the system, installed and available product updates, version, and product license key. Advantage of using script-based installer A single script validates all nodes in the cluster. Therefore, it does not need any platform-specific commands for performing validation. Limitation of using script-based installer The VRTSsfcpi package must be installed on the systems. Note: The VRTSsfcpi package was first released in VCS 6.0 and is available in the later versions. For earlier versions, use the installer from the DVD media. As an alternative, you can launch theinstaller from the DVD provided by Symantec, regardless of the product version. For more information about installing VCS using installer, seeInstalling VCS using the installer. SORT checks SORT provides a set of web-based tools to automate and simplify time-consuming administrator tasks. For example, the data collector tool gathers system-related information and generates web-based and text-based custom reports. These reports capture the system and platform-related configuration details and list the Symantec products installed on the system. SORT generates the following custom reports: Installation and Upgrade Risk Assessment License/Deployment You can generate and view custom reports to check which Symantec products are installed on a system. These reports list the passed and failed checks and other significant details you can use to assess the system. The checks and recommendations depend on the installed product. For SORT checks, see System Assessments. To generate a SORT custom report, On theData Collectortab, download the appropriate data collector for your environment. Follow the instructions in the README file to install the data collector. Run the data collector. It analyzes the nodes in the cluster and stores results in an XML file. On theUpload Reportstab, upload the XML file to the SORT website. SORT generates a custom report with recommendations and links to the related information. For more information about custom reports, visithttps://sort.symantec.com. Advantage of using the SORT checks SORT checks provide comprehensive information about the installed product. Limitation of using the SORT checks SORT data collector is not a part of product media and must be downloaded and installed on the system to generate reports. VCS command validation VCS provides a set of commands to validate and provide additional details of the components installed as a part of VCS product installation. For more information about verifying the VCS installation using VCS commands, seeSymantec™ Cluster Server 6.1 Administrator's Guide. The VCS command validation method allows you to check if VCS is correctly configured on the nodes in a cluster. To verify the status of the VCS components such as Low-Latency Transport (LLT), Group Membership Services/Atomic Broadcast (GAB), and the VCS engine, you can inspect the content of the key VCS configuration files or run the following VCS commands. Component Command Provides GAB #gabconfig -W GAB protocol version LLT #lltconfig -W LLT protocol version VCS engine #had -version HAD engine version and join version Cluster #hasys -state Cluster state Advantages of using VCS commands VCS commands provide comprehensive information about the cluster. VCS commands can be used for configuring the cluster. Limitation of using VCS commands VCS commands can be used only after the VCS product is completely installed and configured on the system. Frequently asked questions The following is a list of VCS installation-related frequently asked questions: Where do I check the availability of the CPI installer on a system? The installer script is located at /opt/VRTS/install. Where are the CPI installation logs located? The installation logs are located at /opt/VRTS/install. Where do I find information about SORT checks and reports? For information about SORT checks and reports, visithttps://sort.symantec.com. How do I validate a system before installing VCS? Before you install VCS, you must make sure the system is ready. To validate the system, use the installer script on the Symantec DVD. To start the pre-installation validation on the system and verify whether the system meets the product installation requirements, run the following command: #installer –precheck
Veritas InfoScale 7.2: Documentation available
The documentation for Veritas InfoScale 7.2 is now available at the following locations: PDF and HTML versions: SORT documentation page Late Breaking News: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000116047 Hardware Compatibility List: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000116023 Software Compatibility: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000116038 Manual pages: AIX,Linux,Solaris The Veritas InfoScale 7.2 documentation set includes the following manuals: Getting Started Veritas InfoScale What's New Veritas InfoScale Solutions Getting Started Guide Veritas InfoScale Readme First Release Notes Veritas InfoScale Release notes Installation guide Veritas InfoScale Installation guide Configuration and Upgrade guides Storage Foundation Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation and High Availability Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation for Sybase ASE CE Configuration and Upgrade guide Cluster Server Configuration and Upgrade guide Legal Notices Veritas InfoScale Third-party Software License Agreements For the complete Veritas InfoScale documentation set, see the SORT documentation page.
SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: Understanding the udid_mismatch flag
Beginning with the Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability release 5.0, a unique disk identifier (UDID) is added to the disk's private region when the disk is initialized or when the disk is imported into a disk group (if this identifier does not already exist). When a disk is brought online, the current UDID value that is known to the Device Discovery Layer (DDL) is compared with the UDID that is set in the disk’s private region. If the UDID values do not match, the udid_mismatch flag is set on the disk. This usually means that the disk has been copied from another disk. For example, a disk may be copied by creating a hardware snapshot or clone, by using dd or some other command to replicate the disk, or by building a new logical unit (also known as a LUN or virtual disk device) from the space that was previously used by a deleted LUN. Duplicated disks are prevented from being imported to avoid duplicate disk IDs. The vxdisk list command displays the udid_mismatch flag in the event that the UDID values do not match. For information on the udid_mismatch flag, see: Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers Writing a new UDID to a disk Importing a disk group containing cloned disks Sample cases of operations on cloned disks Clearing the udid_mismatch flag for non-clone disks For information on what the udid_mismatch flag indicates, and how to solve mismatches, see: TechNote128957 - Explanation of what the udid_mismatch flag indicates in vxdisk list output Information regarding the udid_mismatch flag can also be found in the PDF versions of the following guides: Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability Administrator's Guide Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Troubleshooting Guide vxdisk (1M) 6.0.1 manual pages: AIX HP-UX Linux Solaris vxdisk (1M) manual pages and Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other platforms and releases can be found on the SORT website.
SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: Using Veritas Cluster Server Simulator
Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) Simulator enables you to simulate and test cluster configurations. You can use VCS Simulator to view and modify service group and resource configurations and test failover behavior. VCS Simulator can run on a stand-alone system and does not require any additional hardware. You can install VCS Simulator only on a Windows operating system. VCS Simulator runs an identical version of the VCS High Availability Daemon(HAD) as in a cluster, ensuring that failover decisions are identical to those in anactual cluster. Using VCS Simulator, you can test configurations from different operating systems.For example, you can run VCS Simulator to test configurations for VCS clusterson Windows, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris operating systems. VCS Simulatoralso enables you to create and test global clusters. You can administer VCS Simulator from the Java Console or from the commandline. To download VCS Simulator, see: http://go.symantec.com/vcsm_download For more information on installing and administering VCS Simulator, see: Installing VCS Simulator on a Windows System Upgrading VCS Simulator Administering VCS Simulator Predicting VCS behavior using VCS Simulator Administering VCS Simulator from the Java Console Administering VCS Simulator from the command line interface VCS documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on theSORT website.Veritas Access 7.2: Documentation available
The documentation for Veritas Access 7.2 is now available at the following locations: PDF versions: SORT documentation page Late Breaking News: http://www.veritas.com/docs/000116052 Hardware Compatibility List: http://www.veritas.com/docs/000019707 The Veritas Access 7.2 documentation set includes the following manuals: Getting Started Veritas Access Quick Start Guide Release Notes Veritas Access Release Notes Installation Guide Veritas Access Installation Guide Administrator's Guide Veritas Access Command-Line Administrator's Guide Troubleshooting Guide Veritas Access Troubleshooting Guide Legal Notices Veritas Access Third-Party License Agreements
Veritas Risk Advisor: Working with Reports
Veritas Risk Advisor (VRA) is a data protection and downtime avoidance risk assessment solution that lets you diagnose disaster recovery and high availability (clustering) problems (also called “gaps”) and optimize data protection and reduce the risk of downtime. VRA enables enterprises to effectively manage business continuity implementations to ensure that critical business data is protected. VRA automatically detects and alerts you to any potential gaps, best practice violations, or service level agreement (SLA) breaches. VRA’s Report Generator automatically generates detailed reports describing your configuration and the gaps that it detected from information extracted from the VRA database. VRA allows you generate multiple reports at the same time. Also you can export the content into the MS Word, PDF, and MS Excel format. VRA Report Types VRA has the following reports: Scan Status System Event Log Ticket Details Storage Allocation Optimization Unreplicated Data on Replicated Hosts NetApp Filer Replication Summary Unsynchronized Remote Replication Old Replicas Standby Pairs and so on Report scheduling VRA also lets you schedule when reports are automatically generated and sent to one or more email destinations that you configure. New reports automatically generate each time before they are sent. You may also choose to save the generated reports in the file system and access them later. Learning More For more information on working with Reports, see “VRA reporting” in the Veritas Risk Advisor User’s Guide. You can access the User’s Guide and other VRA documentation in the Documents area of the SORT website.
Using third party Multipathing with VCS LVM agents
Using third party Multipathing with VCS LVM agents is mostly not clear in the documentation. With SF, you can understand why 3rd party Multipathing needs to be tested to be supported as SF integrates at a low-level with the storage and multipathing effect this, but with VCS, VCS integrates with LVM at a high level, activating and deactivating he volume groups (equivalent to importing and deporting Veritas diskgroups), so it is first unclear why any 3rd party multipathing software should not be supported, except for perhaps O/S multipathing which is tightly integrated with LVM where the command to activate or deactivate the diskgroup MAY be different if multipathing is involved. For AIX, the HCL specifically mentions VCS LVM agentswith third party Multipathing: The VCS LVM agent supports the EMC PowerPath third-party driver on EMC's Symmetrix 8000 and DMX series arrays. The VCS LVM agent supports the HITACHI HDLM third-party driver on Hitachi USP/NSC/USPV/USPVM, 9900V series arrays. but VCS LVM agentsare not mentioned for Linux or HP-ux - these should be, even if this is to say "no third party Multipathing is supported with VCS LVM agents" In the Linux 5.1 bundled agents guide, it IS clear thatno third party Multipathing is supported with VCS LVM agents: You cannot use the DiskReservation agent to reserve disks that have multiple paths. The LVMVolumeGroup and the LVMLogicalVolume agents can only be used with the DiskReservation agent, Symantec does not support the configuration of logical volumes on disks that have multiple paths However, it is not so clear with 6.0 which says: No fixed dependencies exist for LVMVolumeGroup Agent. When you create a volume group on disks with single path, Symantec recommends that you use the DiskReservation agent So in 6.0, DiskReservation is optional, not mandatory as in 5.1, but thebundled agents guide does not say why theDiskReservation agent is mandatory in 5.1 and it does not elaborate why it is recommended in 6.0 - i.e. the 6.0bundled agents guide does not explain the benefits of using theDiskReservation agent or the issues you may encounter if you don't use theDiskReservation agent. The6.0bundled agents guide says for theDiskReservation agent: In case of Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing, the LVMVolumeGroup and the LVMLogicalVolume agents can be used without the DiskReservation agent This says you can use Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing with LVM, but it doesn't explicitly say you can't use other multipathing software, and for the LVMVolumeGroup agent, the 6.0bundled agents guidegives examples using multipathing, but it does not say if this is Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing or third party. To me, as the examples say multipathing and NOT specifically Veritas DMP, this implies ALL multipathing is supported, but it is not clear. So it seems that for 5.1 and before, for Linux and HP-ux (if you go by HCL), all disk multipathing was not supported with VCS LVM agents, but in the 10 years I worked for a consultant at Symantec, not one customer did NOT use disk multipathing - this is essential redundancy and there is no point having LVM agents if they don't support disk multipathing, so I am not sure it can be correct that multipathing is not supported with VCS LVM agents. This is redeemed in part by the recent introduction of Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing being available as a separate product which doesn't require SF and can be used on non-VxVM disks. So can the support be clarified for 5.1 and 6.0 of the support ofthird party Multipathing with VCS LVM agents on this forum and the documents updated to make what is supported clearer. Thanks MikeVeritas InfoScale 7.1: Documentation available
The documentation for Veritas InfoScale 7.1 is now available at the following locations: PDF and HTML versions:SORT documentation page Late Breaking News: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.0001072139 Hardware Compatibility List: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000107677 Software Compatibility: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000107212 Manual pages: AIX,Linux,Solaris The Veritas InfoScale 7.1 documentation set includes the following manuals: Getting Started Veritas InfoScale What's New Veritas InfoScale Solutions Getting Started Guide Veritas InfoScale Readme First Release Notes Veritas InfoScale Release notes Installation guide Veritas InfoScale Installation guide Configuration and Upgrade guides Storage Foundation Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation and High Availability Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC Configuration and Upgrade guide Storage Foundation for Sybase ASE CE Configuration and Upgrade guide Cluster Server Configuration and Upgrade guide Legal Notices Veritas InfoScale Third-party Software License Agreements For the complete Veritas InfoScale documentation set, see the SORT documentation page.SFHA Solutions 6.0: Use Cases for troubleshooting Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability
The following use cases describe how to diagnose setup or configuration issues that you might encounter while using Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster System High Availability (SFCFSHA), which includes I/O fencing, Cluster Volume Manager in SFHA Solutions clusters, and troubleshooting interconnect problems. The following are use cases for troubleshooting Cluster File System (CFS): Incorrect order in root user's <library> CFS commands might hang when run by non-root (2403263) The following are use cases for troubleshooting fenced configurations: Example of a preexisting network partition (split-brain) Recovering from a preexisting network partition (split-brain) Example Scenario I Example Scenario II Example Scenario III The following are use cases for troubleshooting Cluster Volume Manager: CVM group is not online after adding a node to the cluster Shared disk group cannot be imported Error importing shared disk groups Unable to start CVM CVMVolDg not online even though CVMCluster is online Shared disks not visible The following are use cases for troubleshooting interconnects: Restoring communication between host and disks after cable disconnection Network interfaces change their names after reboot Example entries for mandatory devices The Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Troubleshooting Guide can be found on the SORT website.