Storage Foundation 7.4.1 Administrator's Guide - Linux
- Section I. Introducing Storage Foundation
- Overview of Storage Foundation
- How Dynamic Multi-Pathing works
- How Veritas Volume Manager works
- How Veritas Volume Manager works with the operating system
- How Veritas Volume Manager handles storage management
- Volume layouts in Veritas Volume Manager
- Online relayout
- Volume resynchronization
- Hot-relocation
- Dirty region logging
- Volume snapshots
- Support for atomic writes
- FastResync
- Volume sets
- How VxVM handles hardware clones or snapshots
- Volume encryption
- How Veritas File System works
- Section II. Provisioning storage
- Provisioning new storage
- Advanced allocation methods for configuring storage
- Customizing allocation behavior
- Setting default values for vxassist
- Using rules to make volume allocation more efficient
- Understanding persistent attributes
- Customizing disk classes for allocation
- Specifying allocation constraints for vxassist operations with the use clause and the require clause
- Management of the use and require type of persistent attributes
- Creating volumes of a specific layout
- Creating a volume on specific disks
- Creating volumes on specific media types
- Creating encrypted volumes
- Changing the encryption password
- Viewing encrypted volumes
- Automating startup for encrypted volumes
- Configuring a Key Management Server
- Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes
- Site-based allocation
- Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes
- Customizing allocation behavior
- Creating and mounting VxFS file systems
- Creating a VxFS file system
- Converting a file system to VxFS
- Mounting a VxFS file system
- log mount option
- delaylog mount option
- tmplog mount option
- logiosize mount option
- nodatainlog mount option
- blkclear mount option
- mincache mount option
- convosync mount option
- ioerror mount option
- largefiles and nolargefiles mount options
- cio mount option
- mntlock mount option
- ckptautomnt mount option
- Combining mount command options
- Unmounting a file system
- Resizing a file system
- Displaying information on mounted file systems
- Identifying file system types
- Monitoring free space
- Extent attributes
- Section III. Administering multi-pathing with DMP
- Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
- Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices
- Partial device discovery
- About discovering disks and dynamically adding disk arrays
- About third-party driver coexistence
- How to administer the Device Discovery Layer
- Listing all the devices including iSCSI
- Listing all the Host Bus Adapters including iSCSI
- Listing the ports configured on a Host Bus Adapter
- Listing the targets configured from a Host Bus Adapter or a port
- Listing the devices configured from a Host Bus Adapter and target
- Getting or setting the iSCSI operational parameters
- Listing all supported disk arrays
- Displaying details about an Array Support Library
- Excluding support for a disk array library
- Re-including support for an excluded disk array library
- Listing excluded disk arrays
- Listing disks claimed in the DISKS category
- Adding unsupported disk arrays to the DISKS category
- Removing disks from the DISKS category
- Foreign devices
- Making devices invisible to VxVM
- Making devices visible to VxVM
- About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and storage processors
- About displaying DMP database information
- Displaying the paths to a disk
- Administering DMP using the vxdmpadm utility
- Retrieving information about a DMP node
- Displaying consolidated information about the DMP nodes
- Displaying the members of a LUN group
- Displaying paths controlled by a DMP node, controller, enclosure, or array port
- Displaying information about controllers
- Displaying information about enclosures
- Displaying information about array ports
- Displaying information about devices controlled by third-party drivers
- Displaying extended device attributes
- Suppressing or including devices from VxVM control
- Gathering and displaying I/O statistics
- Setting the attributes of the paths to an enclosure
- Displaying the redundancy level of a device or enclosure
- Specifying the minimum number of active paths
- Displaying the I/O policy
- Specifying the I/O policy
- Disabling I/O for paths, controllers, array ports, or DMP nodes
- Enabling I/O for paths, controllers, array ports, or DMP nodes
- Renaming an enclosure
- Configuring the response to I/O failures
- Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism
- Configuring Low Impact Path Probing (LIPP)
- Configuring Subpaths Failover Groups (SFG)
- Displaying recovery option values
- Configuring DMP path restoration policies
- Stopping the DMP path restoration thread
- Displaying the status of the DMP path restoration thread
- Configuring Array Policy Modules
- Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices
- Dynamic Reconfiguration of devices
- About online dynamic reconfiguration
- Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control using the Dynamic Reconfiguration tool
- Manually reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control
- Overview of manually reconfiguring a LUN
- Manually removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID
- Manually adding new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID
- About detecting target ID reuse if the operating system device tree is not cleaned up
- Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or removing LUNs
- Manually cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs
- Changing the characteristics of a LUN from the array side
- Upgrading the array controller firmware online
- Reformatting NVMe devices manually
- Managing devices
- Displaying disk information
- Changing the disk device naming scheme
- About disk installation and formatting
- Adding and removing disks
- Renaming a disk
- Event monitoring
- Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
- Section IV. Administering Storage Foundation
- Administering sites and remote mirrors
- About sites and remote mirrors
- Making an existing disk group site consistent
- Configuring a new disk group as a Remote Mirror configuration
- Fire drill - testing the configuration
- Changing the site name
- Administering the Remote Mirror configuration
- Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites
- Displaying site information
- Failure and recovery scenarios
- Administering sites and remote mirrors
- Section V. Optimizing I/O performance
- Veritas File System I/O
- Veritas Volume Manager I/O
- Veritas Volume Manager throttling of administrative I/O
- Managing application I/O workloads using maximum IOPS settings
- About application volume groups
- Creating application volume groups
- Viewing the list of application volume groups
- Setting the maximum IOPS threshold on application volume groups
- Viewing the IOPS statistics for application volume groups
- Removing the maximum IOPS setting from application volume groups
- Adding volumes to an application volume group
- Removing volumes from an application volume group
- Removing an application volume group
- Section VI. Using Point-in-time copies
- Understanding point-in-time copy methods
- About point-in-time copies
- When to use point-in-time copies
- About Storage Foundation point-in-time copy technologies
- Volume-level snapshots
- Storage Checkpoints
- About FileSnaps
- About snapshot file systems
- Administering volume snapshots
- About volume snapshots
- Traditional third-mirror break-off snapshots
- Full-sized instant snapshots
- Creating instant snapshots
- Adding an instant snap DCO and DCO volume
- Creating and managing space-optimized instant snapshots
- Creating and managing full-sized instant snapshots
- Creating and managing third-mirror break-off snapshots
- Creating and managing linked break-off snapshot volumes
- Creating multiple instant snapshots
- Creating instant snapshots of volume sets
- Adding snapshot mirrors to a volume
- Removing a snapshot mirror
- Removing a linked break-off snapshot volume
- Adding a snapshot to a cascaded snapshot hierarchy
- Refreshing an instant space-optimized snapshot
- Reattaching an instant full-sized or plex break-off snapshot
- Reattaching a linked break-off snapshot volume
- Restoring a volume from an instant space-optimized snapshot
- Dissociating an instant snapshot
- Removing an instant snapshot
- Splitting an instant snapshot hierarchy
- Displaying instant snapshot information
- Controlling instant snapshot synchronization
- Listing the snapshots created on a cache
- Tuning the autogrow attributes of a cache
- Monitoring and displaying cache usage
- Growing and shrinking a cache
- Removing a cache
- Creating instant snapshots
- Linked break-off snapshots
- Cascaded snapshots
- Creating multiple snapshots
- Restoring the original volume from a snapshot
- Adding a version 0 DCO and DCO volume
- Administering Storage Checkpoints
- About Storage Checkpoints
- Storage Checkpoint administration
- Storage Checkpoint space management considerations
- Restoring from a Storage Checkpoint
- Storage Checkpoint quotas
- Administering FileSnaps
- Administering snapshot file systems
- Understanding point-in-time copy methods
- Section VII. Optimizing storage with Storage Foundation
- Understanding storage optimization solutions in Storage Foundation
- Migrating data from thick storage to thin storage
- Maintaining Thin Storage with Thin Reclamation
- Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays
- Identifying thin and thin reclamation LUNs
- Displaying VxFS file system usage on thin reclamation LUNs
- Reclaiming space on a file system
- Reclaiming space on a disk, disk group, or enclosure
- About the reclamation log file
- Monitoring Thin Reclamation using the vxtask command
- Configuring automatic reclamation
- Veritas InfoScale 4k sector device support solution
- Section VIII. Maximizing storage utilization
- Understanding storage tiering with SmartTier
- Creating and administering volume sets
- Multi-volume file systems
- About multi-volume file systems
- About volume types
- Features implemented using multi-volume file system (MVFS) support
- Creating multi-volume file systems
- Converting a single volume file system to a multi-volume file system
- Adding a volume to and removing a volume from a multi-volume file system
- Volume encapsulation
- Reporting file extents
- Load balancing
- Converting a multi-volume file system to a single volume file system
- Administering SmartTier
- About SmartTier
- Supported SmartTier document type definitions
- Placement classes
- Administering placement policies
- File placement policy grammar
- File placement policy rules
- Calculating I/O temperature and access temperature
- Multiple criteria in file placement policy rule statements
- Multiple file selection criteria in SELECT statement clauses
- Multiple placement classes in <ON> clauses of CREATE statements and in <TO> clauses of RELOCATE statements
- Multiple placement classes in <FROM> clauses of RELOCATE and DELETE statements
- Multiple conditions in <WHEN> clauses of RELOCATE and DELETE statements
- File placement policy rule and statement ordering
- File placement policies and extending files
- Using SmartTier with solid state disks
- Sub-file relocation
- Administering hot-relocation
- About hot-relocation
- How hot-relocation works
- Configuring a system for hot-relocation
- Displaying spare disk information
- Marking a disk as a hot-relocation spare
- Removing a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare
- Excluding a disk from hot-relocation use
- Making a disk available for hot-relocation use
- Configuring hot-relocation to use only spare disks
- Moving relocated subdisks
- Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation
- Deduplicating data
- Compressing files
- About compressing files
- Compressing files with the vxcompress command
- Interaction of compressed files and other commands
- Interaction of compressed files and other features
- Interaction of compressed files and applications
- Use cases for compressing files
- Section IX. Administering storage
- Managing volumes and disk groups
- Rules for determining the default disk group
- Moving volumes or disks
- Monitoring and controlling tasks
- Using vxnotify to monitor configuration changes
- Performing online relayout
- Adding a mirror to a volume
- Configuring SmartMove
- Removing a mirror
- Setting tags on volumes
- Managing disk groups
- Disk group versions
- Displaying disk group information
- Creating a disk group
- Removing a disk from a disk group
- Deporting a disk group
- Importing a disk group
- Handling of minor number conflicts
- Moving disk groups between systems
- Importing a disk group containing hardware cloned disks
- Setting up configuration database copies (metadata) for a disk group
- Renaming a disk group
- Handling conflicting configuration copies
- Disabling a disk group
- Destroying a disk group
- Backing up and restoring disk group configuration data
- Working with existing ISP disk groups
- Managing plexes and subdisks
- Decommissioning storage
- Rootability
- Root Disk Encapsulation (RDE) is not supported
- Encapsulating a disk
- Device name format changes in RHEL 7 environments after encapsulation
- Rootability
- Restrictions on using rootability with Linux
- Sample supported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 1: supported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 2: supported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 3: supported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 4: supported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Sample unsupported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 1: unsupported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 2: unsupported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 3: unsupported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Example 4: unsupported root disk layouts for encapsulation
- Booting root volumes
- Boot-time volume restrictions
- Creating redundancy for the root disk
- Creating an archived back-up root disk for disaster recovery
- Encapsulating and mirroring the root disk
- Upgrading the kernel on a root encapsulated system
- Administering an encapsulated boot disk
- Unencapsulating the root disk
- Quotas
- About Veritas File System quota limits
- About quota files on Veritas File System
- About Veritas File System quota commands
- About quota checking with Veritas File System
- Using Veritas File System quotas
- Turning on Veritas File System quotas
- Turning on Veritas File System quotas at mount time
- Editing Veritas File System quotas
- Modifying Veritas File System quota time limits
- Viewing Veritas File System disk quotas and usage
- Displaying blocks owned by users or groups
- Turning off Veritas File System quotas
- Support for 64-bit Quotas
- File Change Log
- Managing volumes and disk groups
- Section X. Reference
- Appendix A. Reverse path name lookup
- Appendix B. Tunable parameters
- About tuning Storage Foundation
- Tuning the VxFS file system
- DMP tunable parameters
- Methods to change Dynamic Multi-Pathing tunable parameters
- Tunable parameters for VxVM
- Methods to change Veritas Volume Manager tunable parameters
- Appendix C. Command reference
Combining mount command options
Although mount options can be combined arbitrarily, some combinations do not make sense. The following examples provide some common and reasonable mount option combinations.
To mount a desktop file system using options:
# mount -t vxfs -o log,mincache=closesync \ /dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup/volume /mnt
This guarantees that when a file is closed, its data is synchronized to disk and cannot be lost. Thus, after an application has exited and its files are closed, no data is lost even if the system is immediately turned off.
To mount a temporary file system or to restore from backup:
# mount -t vxfs -o tmplog,convosync=delay,mincache=tmpcache \ /dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup/volume /mnt
This combination might be used for a temporary file system where performance is more important than absolute data integrity. Any O_SYNC writes are performed as delayed writes and delayed extending writes are not handled. This could result in a file that contains corrupted data if the system crashes. Any file written 30 seconds or so before a crash may contain corrupted data or be missing if this mount combination is in effect. However, such a file system does significantly less disk writes than a log file system, and should have significantly better performance, depending on the application.
To mount a file system for synchronous writes:
# mount -t vxfs -o log,convosync=dsync \ /dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup/volume /mnt
This combination can be used to improve the performance of applications that perform O_SYNC writes, but only require data synchronous write semantics. Performance can be significantly improved if the file system is mounted using convosync=dsync without any loss of data integrity.