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InfoScale™ 9.0 Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability Administrator's Guide - Linux

Last Published: 2025-04-14

Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)

Platform: Linux

Write Once, Read Many (WORM) storage

InfoScale provides the facility to create a WORM storage system that you can use to retain critical data for a certain period and to ensure that the data cannot be modified. When a file is committed to WORM storage, the data in the file can be read but cannot be overwritten or erased within the specified retention period. Thus, committing a file to WORM storage prevents any accidental or intentional erasure of its data. The retention period for a WORM-enabled file specifies the duration within which the file cannot be deleted after it is committed to the WORM storage. The storage system allows the file to be deleted only after the retention period has expired.

You can enable WORM and set a different retention period for every individual file. However, per-file WORM enablement is supported only on WORM-enabled file systems, so ensure that the file system on the server is WORM-enabled. You can identify whether a file system is WORM-enabled by using one of the following commands:

To confirm WORM-enablement of a file system using a device path
# mkfs -t vxfs -m absolutePathOfVolume
To confirm WORM-enablement of a file system using a mount point
# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm nameOfMountPoint

The output of these commands displays the worm keyword to specify that the file system is WORM-enabled.

When you WORM-enable a file, you specify the retention period. Accordingly, the access time of the file is internally set to a date in the future. The maximum value allowed for the retention period is up to 2038-01-19.

Once enabled, you cannot disable WORM for a specific file system. The file system remains WORM-enabled forever.

You can WORM-enable a file system in one of the following ways:

Use the -o worm option while creating the file system.
Use the fsadm command to enable WORM for an existing file system that is mounted.

You can WORM-enable a file in one of the following ways:

Write a utility to WORM-enable a file by using VxFS APIs.
Set the access time (atime) of a file to the required retention time and then set the read-only attribute of the file.

To WORM-enable a file by manually setting its access time

Change the access time of the file so that it has the same value as the retention period, by running the following command:
# touch -at YYYYMMDDhhmm.ss nameOfFile
For example, if a file named foo must be retained till 14th July 2035 10:37:42 pm, run:
# touch -at 203507141037.42 foo
Mark the file as read-only by changing its permissions.
For example, to make the foo file read-only, run:
# chmod -w foo

When these steps are completed successfully, foo becomes WORM-enabled, with 14th July 2035 10:37:42 pm as its retention period.