SmartIO blueprint and deployment guide for Solaris platform
SmartIO for Solaris was introduced in Storage Foundation HA 6.2. SmartIO enables data efficiency on your SSDs through I/O caching. Using SmartIO to improve efficiency, you can optimize the cost per Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS). SmartIO supports both read and write-back caching for the VxFS file systems that are mounted on VxVM volumes, in multiple caching modes and configurations. SmartIO also supports block-level read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes. The SmartIO Blueprint for Solaris give an overview of the benefits of using SmartIO technology, the underlying technology, and the essential configuration steps to configure it. In the SmartIO Deployment Guide for Solaris, multiple deployment scenarios of SmartIO and how to manage them are covered in detail. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback!
SFHA Solutions 6.2: New VCS configuration wizards introduced on AIX, Linux, and Solaris
The Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) Cluster Configuration Wizard and Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard are introduced on all supported AIX, Linux and, Solaris distributions in this release. The two new wizards replace the Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard. The earlier wizard provided a combined workflow for cluster configuration and application (high availability) configuration, and was supported only on Linux. You can launch the new wizards from the Symantec High Availability view. In a VMware virtual environment, you can launch the wizards from the Symantec High Availability view in the VMware vSphere Web Client. Symantec has recently launched an add-on for Veritas Operations Manager called Symantec HA Plug-in for vSphere Web Client. The add-on lets you integrate VCS and ApplicationHA tasks with VMware GUI, while eliminating the need to install the Symantec High Availability Console. For more information on the add-on, see the following technical note. For steps to launch the VCS Cluster Configuration Wizard, see: Launching the VCS Cluster Configuration wizard (AIX, Linux, Solaris,) For steps to configure a cluster using the VCS Cluster Configuration wizard, see: Configuring a cluster by using the VCS Cluster configuration wizard (AIX, Linux, Solaris) For steps to launch the Symantec High Availability Configuration Wizard, see: Launching the Symantec High Availability Configuration wizard (AIX, Linux, Solaris) For steps to configure an application the wizard-based steps to configure the following applications for availability monitoring with VCS, see: Configuring application monitoring for generic applications (Linux, Solaris, AIX) Configuring the agent to monitor Oracle (Linux) Configuring the agent to monitor SAP (Linux) Configure the agent to monitor WebSphereMQ (Linux)Symantec ApplicationHA 6.2: Monitoring applications with Intelligent Monitoring Framework
Symantec ApplicationHA 6.2: Monitoring applications with Intelligent Monitoring Framework Introduced in this release, the Intelligent Monitoring Framework (IMF) feature improves ApplicationHA efficiency with: Faster detection of application faults Ability to monitor a large number of application components, with minimal effect on performance IMF is automatically enabled, if you use the Symantec High Availability Wizard to configure an application for monitoring. The feature was introduced in ApplicationHA 6.1 for Windows. In ApplicationHA 6.2, it is extended to AIX, Linux, and Solaris. For details, see the following topics: How intelligent monitoring works: AIX, Linux (KVM), Linux (VMware), and Solaris. Enabling debug logs for IMF: AIX, Linux (KVM), Linux (VMware), and Solaris. Gathering IMF information for support analysis: AIX, Linux (KVM), Linux (VMware), and Solaris. This release introduces IMF support for the folloing ApplicationHA agents: Apache HTTP Server DB2 Database (not applicable to Oracle VM Server for SPARC environment) Oracle Database Generic (custom) applications The following topics describe how to use the Symantec High Availability wizard to configure each supported application for IMF-enabled monitoring: Configuring application monitoring for Apache: AIX, Linux (KVM), Linux (VMware), and Solaris. Configuring application monitoring for DB2: AIX, Linux (KVM), and (Linux (VMware). Configuring application monitoring for Oracle: AIX, Linux (KVM), (Linux (VMware), and Solaris. Configuring application monitoring for generic applications: AIX, Linux (KVM), (Linux (VMware), and Solaris. You can use Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) commands to perform more advanced IMF actions. ApplicationHA and VCS documentation is available on the SORT website.
SFHA Solutions 6.2 (AIX and Solaris): Share local storage across the network using Flexible Storage Sharing
Cluster File System (CFS) 6.2 brings the Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS) feature to Solaris and AIX environments, enabling you to share Direct Attached Storage (DAS) across nodes in the cluster to run in SAN-free or hybrid modes. FSS takes advantage of high speed interconnects to allow shared access to local storage enabling you to create logical volumes in both shared and shared-nothing storage configurations, to create a high-performance, highly available shared namespace. With FSS, enterprises can use software to provide data redundancy, high availability, and disaster recovery capabilities, without requiring physically shared storage. For more information about FSS, see: Flexible Storage Sharing use cases Limitations of Flexible Storage Sharing Optimizing storage with Flexible Storage Sharing Installing Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability (SFCFSHA) or Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC (SF Oracle RAC) automatically enables the FSS feature. No additional installation steps are required. The fencing coordination points can either be SCSI-3 PR capable shared storage or CP servers. For information on administering FSS, see: Administering Flexible Storage Sharing About Flexible Storage Sharing disk support About the volume layout for Flexible Storage Sharing disk groups Setting the host prefix Exporting a disk for Flexible Storage Sharing Setting the Flexible Storage Sharing attribute on a disk group Using the host disk class and allocating storage Administering mirrored volumes using vxassist Displaying exported disks and network shared disk group Installing Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability (SFCFSHA) or Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC (SF Oracle RAC) automatically enables the FSS feature. No additional installation steps are required. The fencing coordination points can either be SCSI-3 PR capable shared storage or CP servers. For more information on Flexible Storage Sharing, see the following related Symantec Connect articles: Flexible Storage Sharing: DAS Cluster Demo Demo: Adding COmpute Nodes with Flexible Storage Sharing Clustered NFS on DAS Storage Remove the Rust: Unlock DAS and go SAN-Free High Availability and Performance Oracle Configuration with Flexible Storage Sharing in a SAN-Free Environment using Intel SSDs Commoditizing High Availability and Storage using Flexible Storage Sharing Growing my Commoditized Storage and HA Environment with an Extra Node Building Application and Data Availability without SAN Veritas Operations Manager 6.1: Managing Flexible Storage Sharing Configure Flexible Storage Sharing using Veritas Operations Manager 6.1 Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.SFHA Solutions 6.2: VCS support for SmartIO
The SmartIO feature on Linux was introduced in Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) 6.1. Beginning in this release, SmartIO is also supported on AIX and Solaris. SmartIO enables data efficiency on your solid state drives (SSDs) through I/O caching. For information about administering SmartIO, see the Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions SmartIO for Solid State Drives Solutions Guide. In an SFHA environment, applications can failover to another node. On AIX, Linux, and Solaris, beginning in this release, the SFCache agent allows you to enable caching for an application if there are caching devices. The SFCache agent also allows you to failover the application to a node that does not have caching devices. The SFCache agent monitors: Read caching for Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) cache Read and writeback caching for Veritas File System (VxFS) cache For volume-level caching, the cache objects are disk groups and volumes. For file system level caching, the cache object is the mount point. You can: Modify the caching mode at runtime Set the default caching mode when you mount the VxFS file system Configure the MountOpt attribute of the Mount agent to specify the default caching mode using the smartiomode option For more information about the smartiomode option, see the mount_vxfs(1m) manual page. If the cache faults, the application still runs without any issues on the same system, but with degraded I/O performance. You can configure the SFCache agent’s CacheFaultPolicy attribute and choose to either ignore or initiate failover. If SmartIO is not enabled on a node, the SFCache resource acts as a dummy resource and is reported as ONLINE or OFFLINE depending on the group state, but caching-related operations are not performed. For more information, see: SFCache agent Mount agent Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.SFHA Solutions 6.2 (Solaris): Dynamic application failover in a virtual environment
The AdaptiveHA feature was introduced in Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) 6.1. Beginning in this release, Symantec Cluster Server (VCS) supports dynamic selection of target nodes for a virtual machine service group (VMSG). In this release, this feature is supported only on Oracle VM Server for SPARC. When you install VCS, this feature is enabled by default. In a VMSG, you do not need to include CPU, Memory, and Swap values when specifying the Load because the Load is auto-populated by aggregating resource utilization. VCS monitors and forecasts the available capacity of the physical server in terms of SCPU and SMem. SCPU and SMem are resource-level meters. If you set the FailOverPolicy service group attribute to BiggestAvailable, VCS dynamically selects the biggest available target physical server to bring the VMSG online, or switch or failover the VMSG. For more information about dynamic application failover in a virtual environment, see: About defining failover policies About AdaptiveHA Prerequisites for enabling resource level metering for a virtual machine service group Disabling metering Re-enabling metering The following table lists the attributes that are modified or newly introduced for this feature. Cluster attributes HostAvailableMeters HostMeters MeterControl MeterUnit MeterWeight Resource attribute Utilization Resource type attributes AvailableMeters MeterEnabled MeterRegList MeterRetryLimit Meters MeterTimeout Service group attribute Load System attributes ServerAvailableCapacity ServerAvailableForecast ServerCapacity ServerReservedCapacity Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.
SFW HA 6.1: Support for SmartIO
SmartIO is a new feature introduced in Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions (SFW HA) 6.1 for Windows. SmartIO improves I/O performance of applications and Hyper-V virtual machines by using Solid State Devices (SSDs) as a caching location for read-only I/O caching. Traditional disks are often an I/O bottleneck for high transaction applications. To compensate for this, administrators usually either increase the in-RAM cache size or buy expensive storage. To address this issue, SmartIO uses an SSD-based cache to drive high performance applications. SSDs are available in many sizes and connectivity types. This adds a new layer of complexity and decentralization of the storage. SmartIO adds a central management layer between the physical SSDs and the applications that need to access them. SmartIO lets you use the SSDs to maximize application performance without requiring in-depth knowledge of the technologies. SmartIO supports volume-level read-only caching as SSDs are primarily beneficial in high-read environments. To use SmartIO, you create a cache area (storage space allocated on the SSDs for caching) using one or more non-shared SSDs and link volumes to the cache area to enable caching for the volumes. Using SmartIO, you can also disable caching and grow, shrink, or delete a cache area. In a clustered environment, you may create auto cache areas on all cluster nodes. After failover, the implicitly linked volumes use the auto cache area on the failover node. If the auto cache area is not present on the failover node, then caching is not performed on the failover node. If the data volume is disconnected, caching for that volume is stopped. Caching is restarted once the volume is reconnected and brought online. If the cache area is disconnected, the cache area is taken offline and stops caching of all the volumes linked with it. SmartIO has the following limitations: You cannot reserve a cache area for a particular volume. You can create a new cache area and link the volume with it. File pinning or block pinning is not supported. The cache is volatile and does not persist after the system is restarted. For more information on the SmartIO feature, see the following sections of the "SmartIO" chapter in the Symantec Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide: About SmartIO Administering SmartIO through GUI Administering SmartIO through CLI Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions for Windows (SFW HA) documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.SFW 6.1: Support for Cluster Volume Manager (CVM)
Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) is a new feature introduced in Symantec Storage Foundation for Windows (SFW) 6.1. CVM is a new way to manage storage in a clustered environment. With CVM, failover capabilities are available at the volume level. Volumes under CVM allow exclusive write access across multiple nodes of a cluster. In a Microsoft Failover Clustering environment, you can create clustered storage out of shared disks, which lets you share volume configurations and enable fast failover support at the volume level. Each node recognizes the same logical volume layout and, more importantly, the same state of all volume resources. Each node has the same logical view of the disk configuration as well as any changes to this view. Note: CVM (and related cluster-shared disk groups) is supported only in a Microsoft Hyper-V environment. It is not supported for a physical environment. CVM is based on a "Master and Slave" architecture pattern. One node of the cluster acts as a Master, while the rest of the nodes are Slaves. The Master node maintains the configuration information. The Master node uses Global Atomic Broadcast (GAB) and Low Latency Transport (LLT) to transport its configuration data. Each time a Master node fails, a new Master node is selected from the surviving nodes. With CVM, storage services on a per virtual machine (VM) basis for Hyper-V virtual machines protects VM data from single LUN/array failures, helping maintain availability of the critical VM data. CVM helps you achieve the following: Live migration of Hyper-V virtual machines, which is supported with the following: Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs) of virtual machine lying on one or more SFW volumes Coexistence with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) Mapping of one cluster-shared volume to one virtual machine only Seamless migration between arrays Migration of volumes (hosting VHDs) from any array to another array Easy administration using the Storage Migration Wizard Moving of the selected virtual machines’ storage to new target LUNs Copying of only those NTFS blocks that contain user data using SmartMove Availability of all the volume management functionality The following are the main features supported in CVM: New cluster-shared disk group (CSDG) and cluster-shared volumes Disk group accessibility from multiple nodes in a cluster where volumes remain exclusively accessible from only one node in the cluster Failover at a volume level All the SFW storage management features, such as: SmartIO Thin provisioning and storage reclamation Symantec Dynamic Multi-Pathing for Windows (DMPW) Site-aware allocation using the site-aware read policy Storage migration Standard features for fault tolerance: mirroring across arrays, hot relocation, dirty region logging (DRL), and dynamic relayout Microsoft Failover Clustering integrated I/O fencing New Volume Manager Shared Volume resource for Microsoft failover cluster New GUI elements in VEA related to the new disk group and volume CVM does not support: Active/Passive (A/P) arrays Storage migration on volumes that are offline in the cluster Volume replication on CVM volumes using Symantec Storage Foundation Volume Replicator For information about configuring a CVM cluster, refer to the quick start guide at: www.symantec.com/docs/DOC8119 The Storage Foundation for Windows documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.