How does Storage Foundation and Infoscale support zpools and ZFS?

Problem
 

Customer needs to know how Storage Foundation and InfoScale support ZFS zpools
 

ZFS is a type of file system presenting a pooled storage model developed by SUN (Oracle). File systems can directly draw from a common storage pool (zpool).

The Solaris Operating System (OS) can use two different types of disk labels: Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SMI) labels, and Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) labels. Traditionally, LUNs which are larger than 1TB in size, are configured with an EFI label (instead of SMI labels). ZFS configured devices will default with an EFI disk label regardless of the physical LUN size.
 

NOTE: ZFS configured devices will default with an EFI disk label regardless of the physical LUN size. All disks to be used in connection with ZFS must have an EFI disk label.
 

Error Message
 

Cause
 

Support Statement

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) in conjunction with Veritas DMP can be used to manage ZFS pools and any ZFS file system(s) that operate on those pools.
 

Veritas requires the DMP tunable "dmp_native_support" to be enabled for Veritas DMP to manage the multi-pathing operations for the ZFS zpool:

# vxdmpadm gettune dmp_native_support
            Tunable               Current Value  Default Value
------------------------------    -------------  -------------
dmp_native_support                       on              off

If enabled,  Veritas DMP can be used as the multi-pathing driver for the management of ZFS pools.
 

Solution
 

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) in connection with Veritas DMP can be used to manage ZFS pools and any ZFS file system(s) that operate on those pools. If Veritas dmp_native_support is enabled, DMP can be used as the multi-pathing driver for the management of ZFS pools.

Veritas Volume Manager & Veritas DMP support creating zpools using special Veritas pseudo dmpnodes, i.e. DMP devices.

The DMP Native Support feature enables dmpnodes which are not under VxVM control to be used for creating ZFS zpools.

The steps to enable  DMP Native Support can be found in the below article:  

How to create a Solaris ZFS zpool and manage using Veritas Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP) dmp_native_support tunable
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100038532


Veritas VCS uses the Zpool agent and enables the user to specify the faster /dev/vx/dmp/<da-name>/<slice-number> path details when importing the ZFS zpool.

Taking microseconds to import rather than minutes in some cases.

ZFS rpool, zpools and VxVM disks may co-exist on the same system. A disk may be used as either a ZFS or VxVM device, but not both.
 

We do not support creating ZFS on top of VxVM volumes. It is an overhead.

VxVM itself is a volume manager and having ZFS on top of it is redundant.   

The qualification of this specific use-case also has not happened during our testing. Customers should not use ZFS zpools on top of VxVM volumes.