File-Server | physical or over VMware vSphere? Need advice
Dear all, maybe you have a suggestion for me. We are running two SF 5.1 SP1 [Enterprise with Option MS Cluster Enterprise] on two MS Server 2003 Enterprise R2 x64 Cluster Nodes right know. There are some storage-arrays [DAS] directly on the server-machines - clustering is possible, because of two controllers in the disk-arrays. And there is some real SAN-storage over FC. My vision/planning for the future is to build up more storage in the SAN over FC or iSCSI to get away from DAS-storage and to manage all of it over SF (again). We also planning to virtualize our servers (up to 6-7 servers (Exchange, DFS, DC/DNS, Lizenzmanager-Server, etc.)) to run all of them on one or two physical servers; maybe a third standby-ESX. So there is the question to virtualize both of the enterprise cluster nodes and let them run as virtual machines or let them stay as physical machines? My pros: • "double failsafe", because the enterprise servers are cluster nodes right know [failsafe 1] and if the physical ESX is going down this virtual machine(s) will switch automatically to the second ESX [failsafe 2]. • Faster server-hardware change in the future. Build up a new ESX on more performant hardware; move the vm-server to it; shut down the old ESX which isn't performant enough anymore - no downtime. ...ok, ok, I have a cluster, so changing hardware would be possible without downtime, too. • Maybe better possibility to trunk the networkports. I'm not using vSphere right now, I only remembering some stuff from VMware webcasts. • Betterutilization of the physical hardware! That's why you will virtualize all servers. • Making snapshots before upgrade software on the servers. Faster "recovery" of the old status. "Never touch a running system" is the past. • Better allocation of the physical RAM to different servers. My cons: • Will SF run as good as it does on the physical environment right now? Or are there any restrictions - maybe because of drivers, the hypervisor, anything else? • Will SF be (more) performant than right now or will it slow down everything, especially if I use VxCache with 8GB RAM or more? • I need lots of RAM Would be nice to here some comments or another ideas from you. Thanks in advance.
Service level driven resiliency management for virtual environments with Veritas Resiliency Platform
This video shows how DR admins can provide resiliency for virtual machines deployed in heterogeneous environments requiring different service objectives and orchestrate their recovery to an off-geo data center or to a private / public cloud environment using Veritas Resiliency Platform through a uniform and standardized interface.
SFHA Solutions 6.0.1: Virtualization features
The SFHA Solutions 6.0.1 release introduces the following: SFHA Solutions for Linux now supports: Kernel-based virtual machines (KVM) in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) environments. Virtual to virtual (in-guest) clustering Enhanced support for Fusion-io ioDrive and ioDrive2: TRIM operations are supported for Fusion-io devices for Red Hat Linux 6.0 (RHEL6) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11). Veritas File System (VxFS) and Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) use the TRIM operations to free up the blocks that do not contain valid data and improve solid-state drive (SSD) performance. The TRIM capability is similar to to thin reclamation, and is performed with the same commands. For more information, see: KVM supported use cases Configuration of virtual-to-virtual (in-guest) clusters (non-KVM) Veritas Cluster Server Release Notes Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Release Notes Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Virtualization Guide SFHA Solutions for Solaris now supports: Multiple Solaris I/O domains: Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) metanodes can be directly exported to the guest domains in the Oracle VM server environment. You can enable DMP in the control and alternate I/O domains. Fusion-io ioDrive and ioDrive2 cards for DMP. Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC (SF Oracle RAC) non-global zones. Using SF Oracle RAC, you can start, stop, and monitor a non-global zone and provide high availability to Oracle RAC instances inside the non-global zone. For more information, see: Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing Release Notes Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Virtualization Guide SFHA Solutions for VMware ESX now supports VMware ESX 5.0 and 5.1. For more information, see: Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing Release Notes Virtual Business Service (VBS) now supports the following features that were previously supported only through Veritas Operations Manager (VOM): Auto discovery of IP addresses for inter-cluster communication: VBS automatically finds the working IPs of all the other hosts which are part of that VBS, removing the need to run csgconfig to set the VIPs or to set the VIPs in a multimode cluster. Automatic start and stop of VMware virtual machines from the command line interface (CLI). For more information, see: Auto discovery of IP addresses for inter-cluster communication Automatic start and stop of VMware virtual machines from the command line Virtual Business Service - Availability User's Guide VBS documentation for all platforms and releases can be found on the SORT website.