Storage Foundation 8.0 Administrator's Guide - Windows
- Overview
- Setup and configuration
- Function overview
- About the client console for Storage Foundation
- Recommendations for caching-enabled disks
- Configure basic disks (Optional)
- About creating dynamic disk groups
- About creating dynamic volumes
- Set desired preferences
- Using the GUI to manage your storage
- Working with disks, partitions, and volumes
- Adding storage
- Disk tasks
- Remove a disk from the computer
- Veritas Disk ID (VDID)
- General Partition/Volume tasks
- Mount a volume at an empty folder (Drive path)
- Expand a dynamic volume
- Shrink a dynamic volume
- Basic disk and volume tasks
- Automatic discovery of SSD devices and manual classification as SSD
- Volume Manager space allocation is SSD aware
- Dealing with disk groups
- Disk groups overview
- Delete a dynamic disk group
- Detaching and attaching dynamic disks
- Importing and deporting dynamic disk groups
- Partitioned shared storage with private dynamic disk group protection
- Fast failover in clustered environments
- iSCSI SAN support
- Settings for monitoring objects
- Event monitoring and notification
- Event notification
- Configuring Automatic volume growth
- Standard features for adding fault tolerance
- Performance tuning
- FlashSnap
- FlashSnap components
- FastResync
- Snapshot commands
- Dynamic Disk Group Split and Join
- Dynamic disk group join
- Using Dynamic Disk Group Split and Join with a cluster on shared storage
- Dynamic Disk Group Split and Join troubleshooting tips
- Fast File Resync
- Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
- Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Microsoft Exchange
- Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Enterprise Vault
- Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Microsoft SQL
- Copy on Write (COW)
- Using the VSS COW snapshot wizards with Microsoft Exchange
- Using the VSS COW snapshot wizards with Microsoft SQL
- Configuring data caching with SmartIO
- Typical deployment scenarios
- About cache area
- Configuring SmartIO
- Frequently asked questions about SmartIO
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing
- Configuring Cluster Volume Manager (CVM)
- Configuring a CVM cluster
- Administering CVM
- Access modes for cluster-shared volumes
- Storage disconnectivity and CVM disk detach policy
- Unconfiguring a CVM cluster
- Command shipping
- About I/O Fencing
- Administering site-aware allocation for campus clusters
- SFW for Hyper-V virtual machines
- Introduction to Storage Foundation solutions for Hyper-V environments
- Live migration support for SFW dynamic disk group
- Preparing the host machines
- Configuring the SFW storage
- Administering storage migration for SFW and Hyper-V virtual machine volumes
- Optional Storage Foundation features for Hyper-V environments
- Microsoft Failover Clustering support
- Configuring a quorum in a Microsoft Failover Cluster
- Implementing disaster recovery with Volume Replicator
- Troubleshooting and recovery
- Using disk and volume status information
- Resolving common problem situations
- Commands or procedures used in troubleshooting and recovery
- Rescan command
- Repair volume command for dynamic mirrored volumes
- Additional troubleshooting issues
- Disk issues
- Volume issues
- Disk group issues
- Connection issues
- Issues related to boot or restart
- Cluster issues
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing issues
- vxsnap issues
- Other issues
- CVM issues
- Appendix A. Command line interface
- Overview of the command line interface
- vxclustadm
- vxvol
- vxdg
- vxclus
- vxdisk
- vxassist
- vxassist (Windows-specific)
- vxsd
- vxedit
- vxdmpadm
- vxcbr
- vxsnap
- vxscrub
- sfcache
- Tuning SFW
- Appendix B. VDID details for arrays
DMP overview
The Dynamic Multi-Pathing option adds additional fault tolerance to disk storage by making use of multiple paths between a computer and a disk in a storage array. A path is a connection between the computer and the storage array's disks and consists of a host adapter and a SCSI bus connection to one or more SCSI disks or a fiber optic channel that is connected to a hub, switch, or array. Thus, multiple paths are made possible by connecting two or more host bus adapters with either SCSI or fiber optic cabling to the storage array. The Dynamic Multi-Pathing software manages the multiple paths so that the data on each of the array's disks is accessible to the host computer. If a path to a disk fails, Dynamic Multi-Pathing automatically transmits data to and from the disk over an alternate path.
The paths on an array are set up to work in two ways - either in Active/Active mode, which provides load balancing of the data between multiple paths, or in Active/Passive mode, in which only one path is active and any remaining paths are backups.
SFW offers Dynamic Multi-Pathing as DMP device-specific modules (DSMs).
Note:
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a required service for the MPIO feature to work. Without this service, the MPIO Provider does not load and MPIO objects are not displayed on the VEA console or CLI command outputs. MPIO operations too cannot be performed in absence of WMI service.
DMP DSMs are designed to support a multi-path disk storage environment set up with the Microsoft Multipath I/O (Microsoft MPIO) solution. DMP DSMs work effectively with Windows to provide a fault tolerant multi-path disk storage environment. DMP DSMs have the following benefits:
Fiber Channel StorPort Miniport HBA Driver support
iSCSI HBA support
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator support
Boot from SAN support
Active/Active Dynamic Multi-Pathing with clustering support
DMP DSMs load balancing support
Load balancing support includes the following:
Round robin load balancing support (Active/Active)
Fail Over Only (Active/Passive)
Dynamic Least Queue Depth load balancing support
Round robin with Subset load balancing support
Least Blocks load balancing support
Weighted Paths load balancing support
Balanced Path load balancing support
Basic disks are supported if SCSI-3 registry support is not enabled for DMP DSMs. If SCSI-3 registry is enabled for DMP DSMs for an attached array, then existing basic disks should be upgraded to dynamic disks before placing them under control of DMP DSMs.
For DMP DSMs, Boot and data volumes are supported on the same bus/HBAs for non-clustered servers if the Boot from SAN recommendations from Microsoft is followed. DMP DSMs are not supported with Fibre Channel port drivers, Fibre Channel SCSI Miniport drivers or boot or cluster disks on the same bus/HBAs.