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.
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 aboutconfiguring 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.
SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: About the vxconfigd daemon
The Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) vxconfigd daemon handles all configuration management tasks for VxVM objects. It maintains disk and disk group configuration details, communicates configuration changes to the kernel, and modifies the persistent configuration information stored on disks. Operations that view or change VxVM configuration objects use the vxconfigd daemon. To check the current operating mode of the vxconfigd daemon, use the vxdctl mode command. The vxdctl mode command displays whether the vxconfigd daemon is in one of the following operating modes: enabled disabled booted not-running Ensure that the vxdctl mode is enabled. Verify that the vxconfigd daemon is running by checking its presence in the ps -ef |grep vxconfigd command output. If the vxconfigd daemon is not running, you can usually restart it by running the vxconfigd -k command. If a vxconfigd daemon is already running, -k kills it before starting another daemon. This is useful for recovering from a hung vxconfigd daemon. Killing the old vxconfigd daemon and starting a new one usually does not cause problems for volume devices that are being used by applications, or that contain mounted file systems. For information on the vxconfigd daemon, see: About the configuration daemon in Veritas Volume Manager In a cluster configuration, a separate instance of the vxconfigd daemon runs on each cluster node, and these instances communicate with each other. The vxconfigd daemon plays an important role in establishing the cluster setup. For information on running the vxconfigd daemon in a cluster, see: vxconfigd daemon vxconfigd daemon recovery Volume reconfiguration Restoring a missing or corrupted /etc/vx/volboot file TECH87875 - Restarting the Volume Manager configuration daemon (vxconfigd) returns error VxVM vxconfigd ERROR V-5-1-8726/dev/vx/info: No such file or directory TECH15607 - Tips to troubleshoot the error message, ERROR: IPC Failure: Configuration daemon is not accessible when running regular VERITAS Volume Manager commands (Note: All the steps provided under Solution are Solaris-specific.) For more information on troubleshooting the vxconfigd daemon, see: Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Troubleshooting Guide vxconfigd (1M) 6.0.1 manual pages: AIX HP-UX Linux Solaris vxdctl (1M) 6.0.1 manual pages: AIX HP-UX Linux Solaris Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other platforms and releases can be found on the SORT website.
Veritas InfoScale 7.0: Introducing the Veritas InfoScale product suite
Veritas InfoScale products address enterprise IT service continuity needs. They provide resiliency and software defined storage for critical services across your datacenter infrastructure. The Veritas InfoScale product suite offers the following products: Veritas InfoScale Foundation Veritas InfoScale Availability Veritas InfoScale Storage Veritas InfoScale Enterprise The following products from Symantec Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions are rebranded and repackaged under the Veritas InfoScale family: Storage Foundation (SF) Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) Cluster Server (VCS) Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) Storage Foundation Cluster File System (SFCFS) Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability (SFCFSHA) Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC (SF Oracle RAC) Storage Foundation for Sybase ASE CE (SFSYBASECE) Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware These changes are intended to simplify the customer buying experience and improve customer life time value. Veritas InfoScale Foundation Veritas InfoScale Foundation simplifies the management of storage across the data center with an efficient application-aware storage management solution. This product works across heterogeneous storage and server environments. It includes features like: Dynamic Multi-pathing Advanced support for virtual storage Veritas InfoScale Storage Veritas InfoScale Storage provides a high-performance storage management solution that maximizes storage efficiency, data availability, operating system agility, and performance. This product works across heterogeneous server and storage environments. It includes the features like: Replication Caching Advanced storage management features like compression, deduplication, thin reclamation, SmartMove, and FileSnap Clustering features Database features like Veritas Extension for ODM, Portable Data Containers, Storage Checkpoints and SmartTier for Oracle Veritas InfoScale Availability Veritas InfoScale Availability is a comprehensive high availability and disaster recovery solution that protects critical business services from planned and unplanned downtime. The critical business services include individual databases, custom applications, and complex multi-tiered applications, which may span across physical and virtual environments and over any distance. It includes the features like: Clustering features high availability (HA) Disaster recovery features (HA/DR) Veritas InfoScale Enterprise Veritas InfoScale Enterprise provides a powerful combination of comprehensive storage management and application availability. With built-in application acceleration, Veritas InfoScale Enterprise lets you optimize data efficiently across heterogeneous storage or server environments and recover applications instantly from downtime. It includes features like: Clustering features including high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) Replication Caching Advanced storage management features like compression, deduplication, thin reclamation, SmartMove, and FileSnap Database features like Veritas Extension for ODM, Portable Data Containers, Storage Checkpoints and SmartTier for Oracle For more information on Veritas InfoScale products, see: About the release About the Veritas InfoScale product suite Mapping of Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) offerings to the new InfoScale Family Entitlement mapping for upgrades from Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) offerings to InfoScale Veritas InfoScale documentation can be found on theSORT website.Veritas Operations Manager 6.1: Managing Flexible Storage Sharing
The Flexible Storage Sharing(FSS) feature in Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability (SFCFSHA)enables the network sharing of Direct Attached Storage (DAS) or internal local storage across a global namespace. FSS allows network shared storage to coexist with physically shared storage. Logical volumes can be created from network shared storage as well as physically shared storage to provide a common storage namespace. For more information on FSS requirements and use cases, see: About Flexible Storage Sharing Flexible Storage Sharing use cases To understand how FSS is supported in Veritas Operations Manager, see: Flexible Storage Sharing features and support in Veritas Operations Manager For more information about how to use the Management Server console to manage FSS, see: Exporting and un-exporting disks for Flexible Storage Sharing Enabling or disabling Flexible Storage Sharing on existing shared disk groups For more information on implementing Flexible Storage Sharing with Veritas Operations Manager, see: Implementing Flexible Storage Sharing with Veritas Operations Manager For more information on Flexible Storage Sharing, see: Managing FSS using command-line interface Flexible Storage Sharing: Introduction and Demo Storage Foundation and High Availability and Veritas Operations Manager documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on theSORT 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 sharedaccessto local storage enablingyou 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 theSORT website.SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: Adding a node to SFHA clusters
After you install Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) and create a cluster, you can add and remove nodes from the cluster. You can create clusters of up to 64 nodes. To add a node to an existing SFHA cluster: Complete the prerequisites and preparatory tasks before adding a node to the cluster. Before adding a node to an existing SFHA cluster, verify that you have met the hardware and software requirements. You also need to prepare the new node. For information on preparing to add a node to an existing cluster, see: Before adding a node to a cluster Add a new node to the cluster. There are three ways to add a new node to the cluster: Adding a node to a cluster using the SFHA installer Adding a node using the Web-based installer Adding the node to a cluster manually Update the repository database (only if you are using the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools). If you are using Database Storage Checkpoints, Database FlashSnap, or SmartTier for Oracle in your configuration, you have to update the SFDB repository to enable access for the new node after it is added to the cluster. For more information on updating the SFDB repository, see: Updating the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) repository after adding a node. Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability documentation for other platforms and releases can be found on the SORT website.
Veritas Operations Manager 6.1: Using Veritas Operations Manager Web services API
Veritas Operations Manager version6.0 and later providean API that can be accessed over the HTTPS protocol using any standard HTTPS client. The interface provides the ability to query Veritas Operations Manager discovered data and to manage user defined attributes for certain object types. The API can be used for searching the objects, listing their properties, and setting the extended attributes on them. In Veritas Operations Manager version 6.1 you can also perform operations on some objects. These APIs can be invoked using the XPRTLC client or any other HTTPS client like cURL. For more information see the following topic: About using Veritas Operations Manager Web services API For more information on the logging in and logging out of the Web service API, see: Logging in to Veritas Operations Manager Web services API Logging out of Veritas Operations Manager Web services API For information on supported objects and operations, see: About objects supported by Veritas Operations Manager Web services API About performing operations using Veritas Operations Manager Web services API To view some examples of performing operations and the output, see: Examples of performing operations using Veritas Operations Manager Web services API Examples of performing operations using XPRTLC and cURL Examples of the output in JSON format Storage Foundation and High Availability and Veritas Operations Manager documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on theSORT website.
Veritas InfoScale 7.0 (Linux and Windows): Changes in Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware
With the introduction of the Veritas InfoScale 7.0 product family, Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) for VMware is now included as a component in the Veritas InfoScale Foundation, Storage, and Enterprise products. The license for this component is included as a part of the InfoScale license on both Linux and Windows. You can either use the Linux license or the Windows license to enable DMP functionality on the ESXi hypervisor. The DMP for VMware component consists of the following: vSphere offline DMP bundle — DMP components installed on the ESXi hypervisor vSphere UI plug-in — Installed on a Windows physical machine or on a virtual machine and serves as an interface between ESXi and vCenter Remote CLI package — Optional command-line interface to manage ESXi hosts from a Linux system or a Windows system The components can be installed using the command line or the VMware vSphere Update Manager. To install the Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware component on ESXi hosts, use one of the following: Veritas_InfoScale_Dynamic_Multi-Pathing_7.0_VMware.zip Veritas_InfoScale_Dynamic_Multi-Pathing_7.0_VMware.iso For more information on installing the DMP for VMware component, refer to the Dynamic Multi-Pathing 7.0 Installation Guide - VMware ESXi. From this release onwards: 1) DMP for VMware supports SanDisk (FusionIO) PCIe attached SSD cards. 2)TheDMP plug-in for the VMware vCenter web client: Displays I/O rate as a line graph. Displays the mapping of LUNs and VMDKs used by a virtual machine. Has a SmartPool tab for a virtual machine for easy configuration of SmartPool assigned to it. No longer requires ESXi login credentials in the Manage Device Support page. For more information about the features and enhancements, refer to the Dynamic Multi-Pathing 7.0 Administrator's Guide - VMware ESXi.Veritas Operations Manager 6.1: Managing threshold settings
Using the Management Server console, you can set threshold values on an object such as a host to receive alert notifications for a specific performance metrics. Veritas Operations Manager collects historical performance data for certain objects at a predefined interval. If any of these collected values violate the threshold value, a Risk or Fault is raised depending on the threshold definition. The following table lists the objects and the metrics on which you can set the threshold value. It also lists the evaluation intervals for the objects. Object Metrics Evaluation intervals Host CPU Utilization Available Memory Average CPU Load 5 minutes Disk, volume, and path associated with a host Average Read Latency Average Write Latency 5 minutes On a UNIX/Linux host, the performance statistics for disk and volume are collected every one minute. Last five samples are considered for threshold evaluation and if any of these violate the threshold value, an alert is raised. Host Initiator Average Read Latency Average Write Latency 5 minutes. Note: Threshold setting for host initiator on a Windows host is not supported For more information on managing threshold settings, see the following topics: About threshold settings Adding threshold settings for an object Deleting the threshold settings for an object Enabling the threshold settings for an object Disabling the threshold settings for an object Storage Foundation and High Availability and Veritas Operations Manager documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.