InfoScale™ 9.0 Solutions Guide - Linux
- Section I. Introducing Veritas InfoScale
- Section II. Solutions for Veritas InfoScale products
- Solutions for Veritas InfoScale products
- Solutions for Veritas InfoScale products
- Section III. Stack-level migration to IPv6 or dual stack
- Section IV. Improving database performance
- Overview of database accelerators
- Improving database performance with Veritas Concurrent I/O
- Improving database performance with atomic write I/O
- Section V. Using point-in-time copies
- Understanding point-in-time copy methods
- Backing up and recovering
- Preserving multiple point-in-time copies
- Online database backups
- Backing up on an off-host cluster file system
- Database recovery using Storage Checkpoints
- Backing up and recovering in a NetBackup environment
- Off-host processing
- Creating and refreshing test environments
- Creating point-in-time copies of files
- Section VI. Maximizing storage utilization
- Optimizing storage tiering with SmartTier
- Optimizing storage with Flexible Storage Sharing
- Optimizing storage tiering with SmartTier
- Section VII. Migrating data
- Understanding data migration
- Offline migration from LVM to VxVM
- Offline conversion of native file system to VxFS
- Online migration of a native file system to the VxFS file system
- Migrating a source file system to the VxFS file system over NFS v4
- VxFS features not available during online migration
- Migrating storage arrays
- Migrating data between platforms
- Overview of the Cross-Platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature
- CDS disk format and disk groups
- Setting up your system to use Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS)
- Maintaining your system
- Disk tasks
- Disk group tasks
- Displaying information
- File system considerations
- Specifying the migration target
- Using the fscdsadm command
- Maintaining the list of target operating systems
- Migrating a file system on an ongoing basis
- Converting the byte order of a file system
- Migrating from Oracle ASM to Veritas File System
- Section VIII. Veritas InfoScale 4K sector device support solution
- Section IX. REST API support
- Support for configurations and operations using REST APIs
- Support for configurations and operations using REST APIs
- Section X. Reference
Considerations about data in the file system
Data within a file system might not be in the appropriate format to be accessed if moved between different types of systems. For example, files stored in proprietary binary formats often require conversion for use on the target platform. Files containing databases might not be in a standard format that allows their access when moving a file system between various systems, even if those systems use the same byte order. Oracle 10g's Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespace is a notable exception; if used, this feature provides a consistent format across many platforms.
Some data is inherently portable, such as plain ASCII files. Other data is designed to be portable and the applications that access such data are able to access it irrespective of the system on which it was created, such as Adobe PDF files.
Note that the CDS facilities do not convert the end user data. The data is uninterpreted by the file system. Only individual applications have knowledge of the data formats, and thus those applications and end users must deal with this issue. This issue is not CDS-specific, but is true whenever data is moved between different types of systems.
Even though a user might have a file system with data that cannot be readily interpreted or manipulated on a different type of system, there still are reasons for moving such data by using CDS mechanisms. For example, if the desire is to bring a file system off line from its primary use location for purposes of backing it up without placing that load on the server or because the system on which it will be backed up is the one that has the tape devices directly attached to it, then using CDS to move the file system is appropriate.
An example is a principal file server that has various file systems being served by it over the network. If a second file server system with a different operating system was purchased to reduce the load on the original server, CDS can migrate the file system instead of having to move the data to different physical storage over the network, even if the data could not be interpreted or used by either the original or new file server. This is a scenario that often occurs when the data is only accessible or understood by software running on PCs and the file server is UNIX or Linux-based.