InfoScale™ 9.0 SmartIO for Solid-State Drives Solutions Guide - Solaris

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)
Platform: Solaris
  1. Introducing SFHA Solutions SmartIO
    1.  
      About SmartIO for solid-state drives
    2.  
      About SmartIO in an SFHA environment
    3.  
      About SmartIO in an Active/Active cluster environment
    4. About SmartIO in the Solaris virtualized environments
      1.  
        Performing live migration between LDOMs in the SmartIO environment
    5.  
      About the SmartIO caching profiler tool
  2. Using the SmartIO feature: use cases
    1. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxVM volumes
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      4.  
        Verifying the VxVM cache area and monitoring the caching
    2. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxFS file systems
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching
      5.  
        Customizing the caching behavior
    3. About SmartIO caching on SSD devices exported by FSS
      1.  
        Status of cache areas when nodes leave or join the cluster
      2.  
        Setting up cache areas using SSDs exported by FSS
    4. About SmartIO write-back caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO write-back caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Setting up SmartIO write-back caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching (writeback mode)
    5. About multiple SmartIO cache areas for read and write-back caching on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        About the smartiocache option
      2.  
        Converting VxFS cache areas from one type to another
      3.  
        Setting up multiple cache areas on a system
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache areas
    6. About SmartIO caching for Oracle databases on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Prerequisites and configuration for using the SmartIO plug-in for Oracle
      2.  
        Setting default SmartIO caching policies for a database running on a VxFS file system
      3.  
        Setting SmartIO caching policies for database objects
      4.  
        Pinning and unpinning database objects
      5.  
        Enabling and disabling caching for the database
      6.  
        Listing cache policy details for the database
      7.  
        Listing cache statistics for the database
    7. About SmartIO caching for databases on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Applying a SmartIO database caching template for a VxVM volume
  3. Administering SmartIO
    1.  
      Creating a cache area
    2.  
      Displaying information about a cache area
    3. Enabling or disabling caching for a data object
      1.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a file system
      2.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a data volume
    4.  
      Adding a device to the cache area
    5.  
      Pausing caching from a volume to a cache area
    6.  
      Removing a device from the cache area
    7.  
      Destroying a cache area
    8.  
      Setting the attributes of the VxVM cache area
    9.  
      Setting or changing the caching mode for a VxFS cache area
    10.  
      Flushing dirty data from a writeback cache area
    11.  
      Tuning the writeback caching
    12. Viewing the SmartIO cache statistics
      1.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxVM cache area
      2.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxFS cache area
  4. Troubleshooting and error handling
    1. Support for a persistent or 'warm' VxVM cache
      1.  
        Primary volume failure with a stale cache could cause possible data corruption
      2.  
        Migrating a cache during HA failover is not supported
    2.  
      Cache area is lost after a disk failure (3158482)
    3.  
      Cache is not online after a reboot
    4.  
      Recovering the write-back cache after a node failure
  5. Appendix A. Command reference
    1.  
      SmartIO command reference

About SmartIO in the Solaris virtualized environments

InfoScale Enterprise Solutions are supported in the Solaris virtualized environments. This section describes how you can use SmartIO in the Solaris virtualized environments.

Table: Solaris: Oracle VM Server for SPARC shows how SmartIO can be used in the Oracle VM Server for SPARC environment.

When you install InfoScale Enterprise Solutions in the guest, you can use SmartIO to cache data onto an SSD or any other supported fast device. The SSD used for the cache can be either a PCIe or SAS device, or an array-based SSD.

When you install InfoScale Enterprise Solutions in the control domain, you can use VxVM read caching, VxFS read caching and write-back caching at the control domain level.

SmartIO caching is supported for InfoScale for Oracle RAC only on guest domains.

If an array-based SSD is used, live migration is supported with SmartIO caching. With direct attached devices (PCIe), live migration is not supported if SmartIO caching is enabled. If you need to perform live migration, you can use manual steps.

See Performing live migration between LDOMs in the SmartIO environment.

Table: Solaris: Oracle VM Server for SPARC

Configuration in guest

Configuration in control domain

Caching takes place:

VxVM read caching

VxFS read caching

VxFS writeback caching

"Split stack"

VxFS

InfoScale (VxVM/CVM/DMP)

in the control domain

Yes

No

No

"Guest-based stack"

InfoScale

Any

in the guest

Yes

Yes

Yes

"Guest-based stack"

SFCFS

Any

in the guest

Yes

Yes

Yes

"Guest-based stack"

SFRAC

No InfoScale stack

in the guest

Yes

Yes

No

"Layered stack"

InfoScale

DMP

in the guest

Yes

Yes

Yes

ZFS

InfoScale, CVM,VxFS, or CFS

in the control domain

Yes

N/A

N/A

Table: Solaris: zones shows how SmartIO can be used in the Solaris zones environment.

Table: Solaris: zones

Configuration in non-global zones

Configuration in global zone

Caching takes place:

VxVM read caching

VxFS read caching

VxFS writeback caching

InfoScale

InfoScale

in the global zone

Yes

Yes

Yes

SFCFS

Arctera InfoScale

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

For more information about configuring InfoScale Solutions in the Solaris Virtualization environment, refer the Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability Administrator's Guide - Solaris and Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide - Solaris.