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
Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Microsoft Exchange
SFW provides support for taking snapshots of Exchange 2010 mailbox databases. FlashSnap integrates with the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to allow snapshots to be taken of all the volumes that are associated with an Exchange mailbox database without taking the databases offline. The VSS Snapshot wizard uses VSS to take snapshots of mailbox databases. The VSS process allows the databases to be quiesced before the snapshot operation and reactivates them immediately after. The quiescing of the mailbox databases (Exchange 2010) level allows for Microsoft supported and guaranteed persistent snapshots of the data. A snapshot of a storage group or mailbox database can be reattached and resynchronized to match the current state of the storage group or mailbox database respectively with the VSS Snapback wizard.
Note:
Snapshots can only be taken of read or write volumes when VSS is used. The resulting VSS snapshot is read only. The file system label of VSS snapshot volumes cannot be changed.
SFW also provides a VSS Snapshot Scheduler wizard that can be used as an alternative to the VSS Snapshot wizard and the VSS Snapback wizard. It enables you to set up a schedule for taking the initial snapshots and for automating the snapback process. At the scheduled time for the snapshot, the snapshot volumes are automatically reattached, resynchronized, and then split again. The schedule is maintained by a scheduler service, VxSchedService.exe, that runs in the background.
SFW also provides recovery support for Exchange 2010 mailbox database. Using the VSS Restore Wizard, the snapshots that are taken with the VSS Snapshot wizard can be used for a point-in-time recovery of the storage group or a roll-forward recovery to the point of failure of either the storage group or an individual database in the storage group.
In case of Exchange 2010, mailbox databases are no longer tied to a particular server. Database configuration information is stored at the same hierarchy level as the Exchange configuration objects. Database names have to be unique across the organization. The failover occurs at the database level not the server level as in previous versions of Exchange.
The point-of-failure recovery recovers the Exchange storage group or mailbox database by restoring the old image of the data volumes only and replaying the logs to accomplish a roll-forward recovery, provided that the log volume is intact.
The point-in-time recovery restores the data to the time that the snapshot set was last refreshed - that is, it restores all the data that was recorded in the snapshot.
Refer to the Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solutions Guide for Microsoft Exchange for additional information about how to use FlashSnap with Microsoft Exchange to perform and to implement recovery procedures.
Note:
Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group do not support snapshot or VSS-related commands.