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
Overview of VSS process for SFW snapshots
The process for creating SFW snapshots with VSS can be done through the GUI, the command line, or a script with CLI commands.
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.
Note:
Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group do not support snapshot or VSS-related commands.
It is recommended that you use the VEAG GUI Snap Back operation or vxassist snapback to reattach the snapshot mirror to its original volume. This enables you to update the snapshot mirror and make it available for more timely backups.
To create SFW snapshots with VSS
- Use the Prepare command through the VEA GUI to attach a snapshot mirror to a volume on the working server.
The vxassist prepare command can also be used.
Creating the snapshot mirror of the volume and resynchronizing it to the volume takes considerable time, but it only has to be done once for the initial setup.
The Prepare command replaces the Snap Start command in the GUI.
Both prepare and start keywords are available in the CLI, however prepare is the recommended keyword.
- Request a snapshot through a backup program (such as Backup Exec) or through SFW. In SFW, initiate a VSS snapshot through the GUI with the Snap Shot command. Be sure to enable the VSS snapshot method in the Systems Settings.
You can also use the vxsnap CLI command to take the snapshot.
If you plan to use these snapshots to recover a VSS-aware application's database, use the VSS Snapshot wizard.
You can also use the vxsnap command.
The vxsnap command lets you snapshot multiple volumes simultaneously; thus, you can snapshot all the volumes in a VSS-aware application's storage group at one time. The VSS Snapshot wizard can also snapshot a storage group one at a time.
- VSS interacts with a writer utility for the application to make sure that the application is momentarily quiesced for the snapshot.
- VSS determines the appropriate provider for the snapshot. The Microsoft default provider is used only if another provider is not present. If an SFW dynamic volume is involved, then SFW is selected as the provider.
- After the snapshot is taken, the writer utility makes sure that the application is restarted.
- Once the snapshot takes place successfully, VSS communicates the successful result to the program with the requestor software.
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