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
SFW changes for fast failover
The following changes are introduced in SFW to support fast failover:
New dynamic disk group state Deported Read-Only
SFW supports two disk group states; Imported and Deported.
When storage resources are online on a node (the active node), the disk group is imported in a Read/Write mode. In this state the disk group is accessible and writable on the active node. When storage resources are offline on a node (the passive node), the disk group is in a deported state. In this state the disk group is not accessible from the passive node.
With fast failover, a new state, Deported Read-Only, is added to the SFW dynamic disk group entity. The disk group status on passive nodes now displays as Deported Read-Only.
In this state, the disk group is imported in a "Read-Only" mode on the passive node. All the volumes are in an offline state and no transactions are allowed on the disk group.
During failover, SFW normally performs a complete disk group deport operation on the active node followed by a Read/Write import operation on a passive node.
With fast failover, instead of performing deport and import operations, SFW now performs only a mode change for the disk group. The disk group state on the passive node is changed from Read-Only to Read/Write.
A mode change (Read-Only to Read/Write) is a much faster operation as compared to a full deport and import (Deport None to Import Read/Write) and thus results in faster disk group failovers.
The following table describes the different disk group states. The 4th column shows the new Deported, Read-Only state introduced as part of fast failover.
Disk group property
Imported, Read/Write
Deported, None
Deported, Read-Only
Can disk group configuration be modified?
Yes
No
No
Are volume devices created?
Yes
No
Yes
Are disks reserved?
Yes
No
No
Changes to vxdg command
The SFW vxdg command is modified to display the new disk group state introduced for fast failover. The vxdg list and vxdg dginfo options now display the new Deported Read-Only state of fast failover enabled disk groups.
Here's an example of the vxdg list command displaying the new state:
C:\>vxdg list Disk groups are.... Name : dg1 Disk Group Type : Dynamic (Cluster) DiskGroup ID : 689ef763-9c1f-4e96-807e-1b97543b3dba Status : Deported Access : Read-Only
Here's an example of the vxdg dginfo command displaying the new state:
C:\>vxdg -gSQL_DG dginfo Disk group information for the disk group SQL_DG Name : SQL_DG DiskGroup ID : b1f9e838-0689-4b91-b737-cd33f60cdcf4 Disk Group Type : Dynamic (Cluster) Private Group Protection : No Status : Deported Access : Read-Only Current Version : Yes Version Number : 60 Comment : Number of Volumes : 5 Number of Disks : 1 Names of the Volumes are.... \Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\SQL_DG\REGREP \Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\SQL_DG\DB_LOG \Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\SQL_DG\DB_VOL \Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\SQL_DG\DATA_FILES \Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\SQL_DG\SRL1 Names of the Disk are.... Harddisk2
The vxdg command has a new option, vxdg refreshff, which refreshes the state of disk groups on a system to support the new Deported Read-Only state. You must run this command if the disk group state on a passive node does not display the Read-Only state even though FastFailover is enabled for the VMDg resources. This typically occurs in cases where a new node is added to a service group where FastFailover is already enabled.