100 002707 A

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Veritas Storage
Foundation 6.0 for
Windows
100-002707-A
COURSE DEVELOPERS
Kumar Varun Verma

Raj Bangaru
LEAD SUBJECT MATTER

EXPERTS
Gene Henriksen
Paul Johnston
TECHNICAL
CONTRIBUTORS AND
REVIEWERS
Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.
Ankit Vaishnav
Feng Liu
Jason Chu
Rahul Sarda
Roshan Swamy
Sachin Dhorage
Vikram Kamat
Wally Heim

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows
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http://www.symantec.com
Table of Contents
Course Introduction
Storage virtualization............................................................................... Intro-2
Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows................................................ Intro-6
Course overview.................................................................................... Intro-10
Additional resources.............................................................................. Intro-12
Typographic conventions used in this course ....................................... Intro-13
Lesson 1: Virtual Objects
Physical and virtual data storage ................................................................. 1-3
SFW storage objects .................................................................................. 1-11
SFW RAID levels and volume layouts........................................................ 1-14
Lesson 2: Installing and Accessing SFW Interfaces
Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows: Overview .......................................... 2-3
Installing SFW 6.0 ...................................................................................... 2-11
Upgrading to SFW 6.0................................................................................ 2-25
SFW user interfaces................................................................................... 2-28
Lesson 3: Working with Disk Groups and Volumes
Preparing disks and disk groups for volume creation................................... 3-3
Creating a volume ...................................................................................... 3-13
Displaying disk, disk group, and volume information ................................. 3-20
Removing volumes, disks, and disk groups ............................................... 3-32
Lesson 4: Working with Volumes with Different Layouts

Comparing volume layouts........................................................................... 4-3
Creating volumes with various layouts ....................................................... 4-10
Creating a partition and logical drive .......................................................... 4-14
Lesson 5: Making Configuration Changes

Administering mirrored volumes................................................................... 5-3
Resizing a volume ...................................................................................... 5-13
Changing a drive letter or path ................................................................... 5-18
Moving data between systems ................................................................... 5-21
Upgrading a dynamic disk group................................................................ 5-29
Lesson 6: Implementing Offline and Off-Host Processing
Offline and off-host processing tasks ........................................................... 6-3
Creating a volume snapshot......................................................................... 6-6
Performing dynamic disk group split and join............................................. 6-14
Enabling fast resynchronization ................................................................. 6-21
Implementing off-host processing .............................................................. 6-28
Lesson 7: Using Recovery Features

Table of Contents
iii
Monitoring objects and events ...................................................................... 7-3

Maintaining data consistency...................................................................... 7-10
Configuration backup and restore............................................................... 7-14
Managing hot relocation at the host level ................................................... 7-15
Troubleshooting disk replacement and recovered volumes ....................... 7-21
Lesson 8: Managing Performance
Monitoring I/O ............................................................................................... 8-3
Setting capacity monitoring parameters ..................................................... 8-10
Changing the volume layout ....................................................................... 8-12
Using SmartMove ....................................................................................... 8-16
Lesson 9: Administering DMP
Overview of dynamic multipathing ................................................................ 9-3
Managing arrays, individual disks, and paths ............................................... 9-8
Displaying performance information ........................................................... 9-15
Specifying load balancing settings.............................................................. 9-18
Specifying control timer settings for an array.............................................. 9-22
Appendix A: Using Site Awareness with Mirroring
What are remote mirroring and site awareness?......................................... A-2
Configuring site awareness ......................................................................... A-5
Lesson B: Managing Data Centers using VOM

Need for managing Data Centers ................................................................ B-2
Introducing Veritas Operations Manager ..................................................... B-5
Preparing a setup for Veritas Operations Manager ..................................... B-8
Installing Veritas Operations Manager....................................................... B-12
Using Veritas Operations Manager............................................................ B-23

iv

Part 1: Install and Configure SFW 6.0

Course Introduction
7
Storage virtualization
In this topic, you will learn how storage virtualization addresses the challenges of
storage management.
Challenges of storage management
Storage management is becoming increasingly complex due to:

Storage hardware from multiple vendors
Unprecedented data growth
Dissimilar applications with different storage resource needs
Management pressure to increase efficiency
Multiple operating systems
Rapidly changing business climates
Budgetary and cost-control constraints
Administrators must have the tools to skillfully manage large, complex, and
heterogeneous environments in order to create an efficient environment. Storage
virtualization helps businesses to simplify the complex IT storage environment
and gain control of capital and operating costs by providing consistent and
automated storage management.

Intro2

What is storage virtualization?

Storage virtualization is the process of combining multiple physical storage
devices into logical (virtual) storage devices that are presented to the operating
system, applications, and users. Storage virtualization builds a layer of abstraction
above the physical storage so that data is not restricted to specific hardware
devices, creating a flexible storage environment.
Storage virtualization simplifies storage management and significantly reduces
costs through improved hardware utilization and consolidation.
Benefits of storage virtualization include:

Greater IT productivity through the automation of manual tasks and simplified
administration of heterogeneous environments
Increased application return on investment through improved throughput and
increased uptime
Lower hardware costs through the optimized use of hardware resources
Intro
With storage virtualization, the physical aspects of storage are masked to users.
Administrators can concentrate more on delivering access to necessary data and
less on physical aspects of storage.

Course Introduction
Intro3
Storage virtualization: Types

The usage of storage virtualization and the benefits derived from it depend on the
nature of your IT infrastructure and specific application requirements.
Three main types of storage virtualization used today are:
1 Storage-based
2 Host-based
3 Network-based
Most companies use a combination of these three types of storage virtualization
solutions to support their chosen architecture and application needs.
The type of storage virtualization that you use depends on the following factors:
Heterogeneity of deployed enterprise storage arrays
Need for applications to access data contained in multiple storage devices
Importance of uptime when replacing or upgrading storage
Need for multiple hosts to access data within a single storage device
Value of the maturity of technology
Investments in a SAN architecture
Level of security required
Level of scalability needed
10

Intro4

Storage-based storage virtualization

Storage-based virtualization refers to disks within an individual array that are
virtually presented to multiple servers. Storage is virtualized by the array itself. For
example, RAID arrays virtualize the individual disks (that are contained within the
array) into logical LUNS which are accessed by host operating systems using the
same method of addressing as a directly attached physical disk.
This type of storage virtualization is useful in the following scenarios:
You need data in an array accessible to servers of different operating systems.
All of a servers data needs are met by storage contained in the physical box.
You are not concerned about disruption to data access when replacing or
upgrading the storage.
The limitation of this type of storage virtualization is that data cannot be shared
between arrays, creating islands of storage that must be managed.
Host-based storage virtualization
Host-based storage virtualization refers to disks within multiple arrays from
multiple vendors that are presented virtually to a single host server. For example,
software-based solutions, such as Veritas Storage Foundation, provide host-based
storage virtualization.
Using Veritas Storage Foundation to administer host based storage virtualization is
the focus of this training.
Host-based storage virtualization is useful in the following scenarios:
A server needs to access data stored in multiple storage devices.
You need the flexibility to access data stored in arrays from different vendors.
Additional servers do not need to access the data assigned to a particular host.
Maturity of technology is an important factor for making IT decisions.
By combining Veritas Storage Foundation with clustering technologies, such as
Veritas Cluster Server, you can virtualize storage to multiple hosts of the same
operating system.
11
Network-based storage virtualization refers to disks from multiple arrays and

multiple vendors that are presented virtually to multiple servers and usually use
SAN and fibre channels. Network-based storage virtualization is useful in the
following scenarios:
You need data accessible across heterogeneous servers and storage devices.
You require central administration of storage across all network attached
storage (NAS) systems or storage area network (SAN) devices.
You want to replace or upgrade storage without disrupting data access.
You want to virtualize storage to provide block services to applications.

Course Introduction
Intro5
Intro
Network-based storage virtualization
Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows

Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows (SFW) is a storage management tool.
SFW enables administrators to make changes to storage while keeping that storage
online. SFW does this by interposing a logical volume management layer between
physical storage devices and the applications that need to access that storage.
Traditional disk partition tables only allow a volume to use a single device to
contain an extremely limited number of volumes. With SFW, single volumes are
built from multiple devices, a single device can be split into thousands of
partitions, or almost any combination of these techniques can be employed.
The logical volume management layer also allows most volume reconfiguration to
occur online, minimizing user downtime against the volume. If a volume is using a
hot-reconfigurable file system, no user downtime needs to occur.
Through the support of RAID redundancy techniques, SFW protects against disk
and hardware failures, while providing the flexibility to extend the capabilities of
existing hardware.
12
SFW creates a foundation for other value-added technologies such as SAN

environments, clustering and failover, automated management, backup and
hierarchical storage management (HSM), and remote browser-based management.

Intro6

Benefits of Storage Foundation
13
Manageability
You can manage storage performed online in real time, eliminating the need for
planned downtime.
You can manage all online storage from an intuitive graphical user interface.
Storage Foundation provides consistent management across Windows, Solaris,
HP-UX, Linux, and AIX platforms.
Storage Foundation provides additional benefits for array environments, such
as inter-array mirroring.
Availability
Integrity of storage is maintained by true mirroring across all write operations.
Through software RAID techniques, storage remains available in the event of
hardware failure.
Hot relocation guarantees the rebuilding of redundancy in the case of a disk
failure.
Recovery time is minimized with logging and background mirror
resynchronization.

Course Introduction
Intro7
Intro
Commercial system availability now requires continuous uptime in many

implementations. Systems must be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
and 365 days a year. SFW reduces the cost of ownership by providing
manageability, availability, performance, and scalability enhancements for
enterprise computing environments.
Performance
I/O throughput can be maximized by measuring and modifying volume layouts
while storage remains online.
Performance bottlenecks can be located and eliminated by using SFW analysis
tools.
Scalability
SFW 6.0 runs on 64-bit operating systems.
Storage can be deported from smaller platforms and then imported to larger
enterprise platforms seamlessly.
SFW can add new disk space to existing volumes.
Storage devices can be spanned.
14

Intro8

SFW and RAID arrays: Benefits

RAID arrays cause individual disks and logical LUNs to be virtual, which are
accessed by host operating systems as physical devices, that is, using the same
method of addressing as a directly attached physical disk.
15
When using SFW with RAID arrays, you can leverage the strengths of both
technologies:
You can use SFW to mirror between arrays to improve disaster recovery
protection against the failure of an array, particularly if one array is remote.
Arrays can be of different makes and types; that is, one array can be a RAID
array, and the other can be a JBOD.
SFW facilitates data reorganization and maximizes available resources.
SFW improves overall performance by making I/O activity parallel for a
volume through more than one I/O path (to and within the array).
You can use snapshots with mirrors in different locations, which is beneficial
for disaster recovery and off-host processing.
If you include Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) in your environment, you can use
VVR to provide hardware-independent replication services.

Course Introduction
Intro9
Intro
SFW causes both the physical disks and the logical LUNs that are presented by a
RAID array to be virtual. Modifying the configuration of a RAID array may result
in changes in SCSI addresses of LUNs, which require modification of application
configurations. SFW provides an effective method of reconfiguring and resizing
storage across the logical devices that are presented by a RAID array.
Course overview
This training provides instruction on fundamental operational management
procedures for Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows.
After completing this course, you will be able to:

Describe how physical data storage relates to the virtual storage components of
Veritas Storage Foundation.
Install and configure Veritas Storage Foundation.
Create and manage virtual disks, disk groups, volumes, and volume snapshots.
Resize volumes, change volume layouts, and manage volume tasks.
Perform disk group move, split, and join operations.
Perform basic recovery operations and performance tuning techniques.
16

Intro10

Course resources
Administration course
This SFW Administration course covers fundamental operational management
procedures for Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows. This training shows you
how to install and configure Storage Foundation and how to manage disks, disk
groups, and volumes. This course also covers offline and off-host processing and
introduces basic troubleshooting, performance tuning, and recovery techniques.
Appendix A: Lab exercises
17
Appendix B: Lab solutions

This section contains detailed solutions to the lab exercises for each lesson.
Intro
This section contains hands-on exercises that enable you to practice the concepts
and procedures that are presented in the lessons.

Course Introduction
Intro11
Additional resources
Reference book
Virtual Storage Redefined by Paul Massiglia provides an introduction to highavailability storage environments.
Title: Virtual Storage Redefined: Technologies and Applications for Storage
Virtualization
Author: Paul Massiglia with Frank Bunn
Publisher: Veritas Publishing
Online reference information
18
The following Symantec Web sites contains links to product guides, white papers,
demos, Webcasts, and other SFW-related information:
http://www.symantec.com/business/storage-foundationhigh-availability-for-windows
https://sort.symantec.com/documents/doc_details/
sfha/6.0/Windows/ProductGuides/

Intro12

Typographic conventions used in this course

The following tables describe the typographic conventions used in this course.
Typographic conventions in text and commands
Element
Font
Example
File and folder

names
Courier New
C:\Program Files\Veritas\
Veritas Volume Manager\
logs\vxcli.log
C:\Program Files
CLI command
Courier New
vxdg list
The adddisk command...
The syntax to display the message Hi
there! using CLI is:
echo Hi there!
User input
Courier New
Enter the value 300.

Log on as user1.
User input
with
instruction to
type
Courier New bold
To display the message Hi there!, type:

echo Hi there!
System output
Courier New
Hi there!
URL
Courier New
http://www.symantec.com
CLI command
with a variable
If the surrounding
text is bold,
variables
are nonbold; if the
surrounding text is
nonbold, variables
are bold.
The syntax to delete a file is:

del file_name
19
To delete a file, type:

del file_name
Typographic conventions in graphical user interface descriptions

Element
Style
Examples
Menu navigation paths,

buttons, menus, windows,
options, and other interface
elements
All GUI elements in bold
Select File > Save.

Click the Tasks tab.
Click OK.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
Mark the Mirrored
check box.
Note that all text in the Power Point slides is in Calibri font, and all regular text in the
Frame Maker book is in Times New Roman.

Course Introduction
Intro13
Intro
User input
with variable
20

Intro14

Lesson 1
Virtual Objects
21
22

12

Physical and virtual data storage

Disks
A disk is a physical data storage device attached to a computer. Microsoft
Windows offers two types of disks for storage: basic and dynamic. Each basic or
dynamic disk corresponds to one physical disk.
Basic disks
A basic disk is a physical disk that contains primary partitions, extended partitions,
or logical drives. Partitions and logical drives on basic disks are known as basic
volumes. You can only create basic volumes on basic disks. On Windows, physical
disks are automatically initialized as basic disks. On a basic disk, storage space is
organized as basic volumes.
23
With basic disks, you can have up to four primary partitions, or three primary
partitions and one extended partition.
Dynamic disks
You can convert basic disks to dynamic disks. On dynamic disks, storage space is
organized as dynamic volumes. These dynamic volumes can span multiple disks
and can provide fault tolerance.
A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes such as simple volumes, spanned
volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. Dynamic
disks use a database to track information about dynamic volumes on the disk and

Virtual Objects
13
about other dynamic disks in the computer. Each dynamic disk stores a replica of
the dynamic disk database. Therefore, you can repair a corrupted database on one
dynamic disk by using the database on another dynamic disk.
Some key advantages of dynamic disks include:
Using multidisk volumes to make better use of your available disk space by
combining areas of unallocated space in volumes
Improving I/O performance by providing for more I/O concurrency through
the use of multi-disk volume layouts
Making volumes fault tolerant
Note: Dynamic disks are not supported in Windows 7, Vista, and XP Home
Edition.
24

14

Disk arrays
A collection of identical physical disks is referred to as a disk array. In addition to
the physical disks, a typical disk array can also contain a hardware controller,
cache memory, and power supply. The hardware controller allows balanced I/O
across multiple disks.
The rate at which I/O operations to an individual disk can be performed is limited
by the physical characteristics of the mechanical components from which it is
made.
Reads and writes on unmanaged physical disks are slow processes. Disk arrays and
multipathed disk arrays improve I/O speed and throughput.
I/O performance can be improved by utilizing disk array technology in which

access to the physical disks is buffered by the use of large memory caches.
25
Individual disks in a disk array are generally identified by logical unit numbers, or
LUNs. A LUN is a logical reference to a portion of a storage subsystem. A LUN
can comprise a disk, a section of a disk, a whole disk array, or a section of a disk
array in the subsystem. The LUNs are perceived and handled by the OS as physical
disks.
Multipathed disk arrays
Some disk arrays provide multiple ports to access the physical disks. These ports,
coupled with the host bus adaptor (HBA) controller and any data bus or I/O
processor local to the array, constitute multiple hardware paths to access the disk
devices. This type of disk array is called a multipathed disk array. A multipathed
disk array provides multiple ports to access a disk array.

Virtual Objects
15
You can connect multipathed disk arrays to host systems in different

configurations, such as:
Connecting multiple ports to different controllers on a single host
Chaining ports through a single controller on a host
Connecting ports to different hosts simultaneously
26

16

Virtual data storage

Microsoft provides storage management on Windows Server 2008 and Symantec
on Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows. Both Windows and Storage
Foundation for Windows can create a virtual level of storage management above
the physical device level by creating virtual storage objects. The virtual storage
object that is visible to users and applications is called a dynamic volume, or
volume. A volume is a virtual object that stores data. A volume consists of space
from one or more physical disks on which the data is physically stored.
Volumes are displayed to the operating system as physical disks, and applications
that interact with volumes work in the same way as with physical disks.
All users and applications access volumes as contiguous address space in a manner
similar to accessing a disk partition.
27
How do you access a volume?

Volumes are assigned drive letters or mount points. You can supply the drive letter
or mount point of a volume in your commands and programs, in your file system
and database configuration files, and in any other context where you otherwise use
the drive letter or mount point of a disk partition.
Hardware-based RAID array devices are the hardware equivalent of dynamic
volumes.

Virtual Objects
17
Benefits of virtual data storage
Virtual volumes have many benefits over physical volumes, including:

Online administration: All dynamic volumes with an NTFS file system can be
extended online, that is, increased in size while the volume is in use. You can
select where to extend the volume, or have Storage Foundation for Windows
(SFW) assign space optimally on the disks available within the volumes
dynamic disk group.
Complex multidisk configurations: Multidisk volumes improve disk
performance by letting more than one disk drive read and write data. Complex
multidisk configurations include concatenation, mirroring, striping, and RAID5.
High availability: You can access volumes continuously, even across disk
reconfiguration events. SFW features that provide high availability include
disk group import and deport, and hot relocation.
Disk spanning: Virtual data storage can span across multiple disks. It leads to
better use of available disk space by combining areas of unallocated space in
volumes that go across multiple disks.
Load balancing: In Virtual data storage, data is assigned to physical drives to
evenly balance the I/O load among the disk drives.
28
Each of the preceding features is discussed in detail in the lessons that follow.

18

Why upgrade to SFW?

For Windows Server 2008, the native disk and volume manager is Microsoft Disk
Management. With Windows Disk Management, you can create multidisk
volumes, add mirrors to simple volumes, extend volumes, and create dynamic disk
groups. With SFW, you can do all this and much more. The disk management
features available with Windows and SFW are listed on the slide.
The advanced features available in SFW include hot relocation; dirty region and
RAID-5 logging; disk replacement and evacuation; subdisk split, move, and join;
FastResync; volume snapshots; and dynamic disk group split and join.
However, FastResync, volume snapshots, and dynamic disk group split and join
require an additional license.
29
SFW 6.0 for Windows runs on Windows Server 2008. When you install SFW 6.0
on Windows Server 2008, both Windows Disk Management and SFW can coexist. In the previous versions, the coexistence was not supported. Installing SFW
5.1 on Windows Server 2003 makes Disk Management (previously known as
Logical Disk Manager, or LDM) unavailable.
Note: The Windows Server 2008 Disk Management does not support virtual
objects created by SFW, such as dynamic disks or dynamic volumes.

Virtual Objects
19
How SFW controls disks

When you install SFW, it creates virtual objects on both dynamic disks and basic
disks and establishes logical connections between those objects and the underlying
physical devices.
When a basic disk is upgraded to a dynamic disk, SFW creates two regions on the
disk:
Public region: The public region consists of the majority of the space on the
disk. The public region represents the available space that SFW uses to assign
to volumes and the space where applications store user data.
Private region: The private region stores metadata, that is, information about
virtual objects. The private region contains information about the SFW name
for the disk, which system owns that disk, which disk group the disks belong
to, and a globally unique identifier (GUID) for that disk.
The private region may also contain a database with all the objects associated
with that disk and other disks in its disk group. For redundancy, this database is
reproduced to the private region of multiple dynamic disks in the disk group.
The private regions ability to hold this information means that the disk group
is not dependent on the disk information present in the registry of the operating
system. Further, the private region and public region are created on a single
dynamic disk. This is suitable for moving the disk between different operating
systems. The disk group can, therefore, be switched between systems without
your having to download and update registry information.
30
The default size of the private region is 1 MB, and it is located at the end of the
disk. This region is a small management overhead.

110

SFW storage objects

Disk groups
A disk group is a collection of SFW disks. Disks are grouped into disk groups for
ease of management. Organizing disks based on their usage facilitates tasks such
as server and storage provisioning and capacity management. For example, you
can organize data for accounting applications in a disk group called acctdg. A disk
group configuration is a set of records with detailed information about related
SFW objects in a disk group, their attributes, and their connections.
31
SFW objects cannot span disk groups. For example, a volumes subdisks, plexes,
and disks must be derived from the same disk group as the volume. You can create
additional disk groups as necessary. Disk groups enable you to group disks into
logical collections. Disk groups and their components can be moved as a unit from
one host machine to another.
Dynamic disks
A dynamic disk represents the public region of a physical disk that is under SFW
control. Some key advantages of dynamic disks include:
Using multidisk volumes to make better use of your available disk space by
combining areas of unallocated space in volumes
Improving I/O performance by providing for more I/O concurrency through
the use of multi-disk volume layouts
Making volumes fault tolerant

Virtual Objects
111
Volumes
A volume is a virtual object that stores data and consists of one or more plexes,
dependent on its layout. The plexes may map to multiple physical disks. A volume
is used by applications in a manner similar to a physical disk. Due to their virtual
nature, volumes are not restricted by the physical size constraints that apply to a
physical disk. A volume can span multiple disks.
A volume can be formatted with a file system and can be accessed by a drive letter
or a mount path.
Plexes
SFW uses subdisks to build virtual objects called plexes. A plex is a structured or
ordered collection of subdisks that represents one copy of the data in a volume. A
plex consists of one or more subdisks located on one or more physical disks. The
default plex name is volumename-##. A non-mirrored volume contains only one
data plex. However, mirrored volumes contain two or more plexes, one for each
copy of data. In short, a plex is a copy of data within a volume.
Subdisks
A dynamic disk can contain one or more subdisks, each of which is a range of
contiguous disk blocks in the disk's public region. Subdisks are used for allocating
space in a volume and cannot overlap. Blocks on a dynamic disk that are not part
of a subdisk are considered to be unallocated (or free) space, which can be used to
create new volumes or to extend existing ones. You can relocate subdisks to other
disks in the same disk group to improve performance or to alleviate hot spots
(these topics are discussed in other lessons).
In the slide example, the accdg disk group comprises the expvol and payvol
volumes. The expvol volume has one expvol-01 plex. The payvol volume has two
plexes named payvol-01 and payvol-02, where the payvol-02 plex is a mirror
image of the payvol-01 plex. The expvol-01 plex contains the Disk1-01, Disk2-02
and Disk3-02 subdisks, while the payvol-01 plex contains the Disk1-02 and
Disk2-01 subdisks and the payvol-02 plex consists of the Disk3-01 subdisk.
32

112

Types of volumes and disk groups

SFW uses multiple volume and disk group types.
Volume types
Dynamic volumes: Dynamic volumes are volumes created on dynamic disks
using SFW. A dynamic volume always contains at least one plex and can also
contain multiple plexes. These plexes consist of subdisks from one or more
dynamic disks. All of these objects must be members of a single disk group.
Basic volumes: In SFW, basic volumes refer to all the volumes that are on basic
disks (primary and extended partitions and logical drives). With SFW, you can
manage these basic volumes.
33
Disk group types

Dynamic disk groups: A dynamic disk group is a disk group consisting of
dynamic disks (disks with a public and private region). Disks within a dynamic
group can only belong to that group. A dynamic disk group is created when the
first basic disk in the system is upgraded to dynamic. You can have multiple
dynamic disk groups.
Basic disk group: SFW has a single disk group for all basic disks. All nondynamic disks are assigned to the basic disk group. None of these disks has a
private region. Because of this, no persistent record is kept of these disks in SFW.
SFW must rebuild basic disk group membership every time it is stopped and
restarted (for example, after a reboot).

Virtual Objects
113
SFW RAID levels and volume layouts

RAID levels
RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. RAID is a
storage management approach in which you can configure storage to use multiple
disks in order to provide better performance (using disk spanning), better
protection against disk failure (using data redundancy), or both.
RAID configuration models are classified in terms of RAID levels. These RAID
levels define how data is written across the disks; for example, data can be striped
or mirrored across multiple disks or even striped with additional parity data added.
Each RAID level has specific features and benefits that involve a trade-off
between performance and reliability.
Volume layouts
34
Volume layouts are available for each RAID level and define how SFW writes data
across the disks in a volume. Each volume layout contains at least one plex (two or
more if mirroring) and multiple subdisks and the volume layout define how those
subdisks and plexes are accessed.
Disk spanning
Disk spanning is the combining of disk space from multiple physical disks to form
one logical drive. Disk spanning has two forms:
Concatenation: Concatenation is the mapping of data in a linear manner
across two or more disks.

114

In a concatenated volume, subdisks are arranged both sequentially and

contiguously within a plex. Concatenation allows a volume to be created from
multiple regions of one or more disks if there is not enough space for an entire
volume on a single region of a disk.
Striping: Striping is the mapping of data in equally-sized chunks across
multiple disks. Striping is also called interleaving. A stripe unit is also known
as a column.
In a striped volume, data is spread evenly across multiple disks. Stripes are
allocated sequentially and evenly to the subdisks of a single plex. There must
be at least two subdisks in a striped plex, each of which must exist on a
different disk. If configured properly, striping not only helps to balance I/O but
also to increase throughput.
Data redundancy
To protect data against disk failure, the volume layout must provide some form of
data redundancy. Redundancy is achieved in two ways:
Mirroring: Mirroring refers to maintaining two or more copies of volume
data. A mirrored volume uses multiple plexes to duplicate the information
contained in a volume. Although a volume can have a single plex, at least two
plexes are required for true mirroring (redundancy of data). Each of these
plexes must contain disk space from different disks for the redundancy to be
useful.
Parity: Parity is a value calculated using an exclusive OR (XOR) Boolean
function that is written to the volume along with the data. It is written to a
different column (or stripe unit) within each stripe and is used in the event of a
failure to reconstruct the lost data.
In comparison to the performance of striped volumes, write throughput of
RAID-5 volumes is slower, because parity information needs to be calculated
each time data is written. However, in comparison to mirroring, the use of
parity reduces the amount of space required.
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Virtual Objects
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36
Lab exercises and lab solutions for this lesson are located in the following
appendices:
Appendix A provides step-by-step lab instructions.
Appendix B provides complete lab instructions and solutions.

116

Lesson 2
Installing and Accessing SFW Interfaces
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22

Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows: Overview

The Symantec Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows is a data and application
availability solution that simplifies storage management and offers high
availability and disaster recovery for Windows applications. This course focuses
on the storage management aspects of Storage Foundation for Windows.
SFW 6.0 software package
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The Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 6.0 for Windows
release packages four Symantec products, which are listed as follows:
1 Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions (SFWHA) 6.0
2 Veritas Storage Foundation (SFW) 6.0
3 Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) 6.0
4 Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) 6.0
These products are used for enterprise data management and protection, high
availability, and disaster recovery in a Microsoft Windows environment.
The four products are listed and available for installation on a single Symantec
Product Installer GUI screen. In previous releases, these products were listed and
installed on different GUI screens. The installables for these four products are now
packaged and shipped on a single DVD or CD.

23
SFW and SFWHA 6.0 options
Optional features of SFW include:

FlashSnap: Veritas FlashSnap is a multistep process that enables you to create
independently addressable snapshot volumes, which are copies of the volumes
on your server. You can use these snapshot volumes as quick recovery images
for recovering applications, such as Microsoft Exchange. You can also use
them for backup or application testing. One of the main advantages of using
FlashSnap is that you can easily move the snapshot volumes to another server
without affecting the applications running on the server.
Even when you perform FlashSnap on the same server, its optimized mirror
creation, breakoff, and join processes are much faster and require less CPU
overhead than other mirroring utilities.
SFW supports the capability of creating simultaneous and multiple split-mirror
snapshots. You can split snapshots into their own dynamic group and use them
on a completely different system. This further preserves the availability and
functionality of the original server by reducing I/O load on that server.
FlashSnap is made possible by several features in SFW. These features are:
FastResync, snapshot commands, and disk group split and join.
Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR): VVR is a data replication tool designed
to maintain a consistent copy of application data at a remote site. VVR is built
to contribute to an effective disaster recovery plan. In the event that the data
center is down, the application data is immediately available at the remote site,
and the application can be restarted at the remote site. VVR works as a fully
integrated component of SFW. If you choose to use this optional feature, you
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24

41
will not have to install it separately. VVR will be installed during the SFW
installation.
Dynamic multipathing: This option adds fault tolerance to disk storage by
using multiple paths between a computer and individual disks in an attached
disk storage system. Disk transfers that fail because of a path failure are
automatically rerouted to an alternate path. With dynamic multipathing, you
can configure, manage, and obtain status information about these multiple
paths. Dynamic multipathing also improves performance by allowing loadbalancing among paths.
Replace Disk Management Snap-in with SFW VEA GUI: This option
replaces the Disk Management snap-in in the Windows Computer
Management and Server Manager consoles with the SFW Veritas Enterprise
Administrator (VEA) GUI. SFW then takes control of all disks and handles all
disk administration. This option is available only when you install SFW, and is
not available when you install SFWHA.
Microsoft Failover Cluster: This option provides failover and increased
availability of applications and services when a node fails in a Microsoft
cluster environment. SFW can support up to eight nodes in a cluster
environment that is set up under the Microsoft cluster software on Windows
Server 2008. This optional feature requires that the cluster hardware and the
Microsoft cluster software be installed and a cluster be set up before installing
SFW.
Veritas Cluster Server Options: This option provides failover and high
availability of applications and services when a node fails in any clustered
environment. SFW HA provides built-in VCS support to set up cluster disk
groups for a VCS cluster on a Windows Server 2008 system.
VCS monitors systems and services on a cluster and fails over services to a
different system in case of a system crash or a service failure. VCS provides
policy-based, application-focused failover management, which enables
applications to be failed over to any server in the cluster or SAN environment
and to consecutive servers as necessary. VCS supports up to 32-node clusters
in SAN and traditional client-server environments.
Fast Failover: This option improves failover time for the storage stack
configured in a clustered environment. Fast failover provides significant
reduction in the failover time taken by storage resources during service group
failovers.
Global Cluster Option (GCO): The GCO option allows for the management
of multiple VCS clusters and their applications from a single console. GCO is
also a disaster recovery tool that facilitates replication support after a site
failure. GCO ensures that applications are failed over, in addition to data. GCO
is for cluster-to-cluster failover.

25
SFW editions
Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows and Veritas Storage Foundation for
Windows High Availability 6.0 are available in both the standard and the
enterprise license editions. The Enterprise edition includes all the available
product options. However, the Standard edition does not include the FlashSnap,
Microsoft Failover Cluster, and Dynamic Multi-path options.
SFW Basic is a limited version of the Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows
software. SFW Basic has the same functions of SFW except that SFW Basic is
limited in the number of dynamic volumes that it can support and the Veritas DMP
option is included. No other options are available in SFW Basic.
SFW Basic is a free version of the software and is limited to four volumes and two
processors for each physical server. SFW Basic needs to be downloaded
separately, and is not shipped with the SFW DVD/CD.
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Note: To install SFW Basic, you must download it from: http://

www.symantec.com/business/storage-foundation-basic
VVR is available as a separate licensed feature. To avail the VVR functionality,
you must purchase the license separately.
Refer to the Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 6.0 for
Windows Installation and Upgrade Guide for more information on SFW license
editions.

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SFW licensing schemes
43
In SFW 6.0, there are two types of licensing schemes:

1 Keyless licensing scheme: A keyless license installs the embedded license key
that is valid for two months, and allows you to use all the available product
options. It thus helps you to begin with the installation even if the appropriate
license keys are not available at the time of installation. For the Keyless license
type, all the product options are enabled by default. Although, the keyless
license enables all products by default, users must deselect the ones they do not
plan to use so that only the required features are installed.
2 User entered licensing scheme: A User entered license installs the permanent
license keys. The license key needs to be entered by the user. For the User
entered license key, the product options available are based on the licenses the
user enters.
You can change from a Keyless licensing scheme to a User entered licensing
scheme and the reverse is also true. When you switch from a Keyless to a User
entered licensing scheme, you must install a permanent license. And when you
change from User entered license to a Keyless licensing scheme, an embedded
license is installed.
You can view the licenses used in the SFW installation on your computer using the
vxlicrep command. This command generates a report of the licenses in use on
your system.

27
Keyless license
This is a new licensing scheme that lets you install SFW without any license key.
This scheme requires the host to be connected to and managed by Veritas
Operations Manager (VOM) 4.0. VOM is an application that lets you monitor and
manage the operations of Storage Foundation and Veritas Cluster Server
installations on multiple operating systems.
The Keyless license is similar to the evaluation license, and you can now use the
Keyless license for 60 days.
Note: Evaluation license keys are now deprecated.
Typically, if you install the product using the Keyless option, a message is logged
every day in the Event Viewer indicating that you must configure VOM within 60
days of product installation. Failing this, a non-compliance error is logged every
four hours.
44
Symantec requires that you perform one of the following tasks to convert the
keyless license into a permanent license.
Add the system as a managed host to a Veritas Operations Manager
Management Server.
Add an appropriate and valid license key on this system using the Symantec
Product Installer from Windows Add/Remove Programs.

28

Obtaining licensing keys

Create a Symantec Licensing Portal account to access the Licensing Portal at
https://licensing.symantec.com. You must procure an appropriate
license key from the Symantec license certificate and portal. The user entered
license allows you to use the product options based on the license key you enter.
Adding or removing license keys
45
To add or remove license keys:

1 Open the Windows Control Panel and click Programs and Features.
2 Select the option for Veritas Storage Foundation.
3 On the Mode Selection panel, select Add or Remove and then click Next.
4 On the System Selection panel, the wizard performs the verification checks
and displays the applicable installation and product options.
5 To add or remove the licenses, click Edit.
6 On the License Details panel, type the license key and then click Add.
If you want to remove a license key, select the license key and click
Remove.
Windows Installation and Upgrade Guide for more information on managing
licenses.

29
SFW software components
The Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows software consists of the following
components:
Client software: The client software includes the console, the Veritas
Enterprise Administrator (VEA). The client enables you to configure and
manage storage attached to both local and remote hosts.
Server software: The server software, which runs on a managed node, is the
common repository for all storage objects.
Providers: The providers run on a managed server. Providers are similar to
drivers. Each provider manages a specific hardware or software storage
component. For example, there is a disk provider that manages all devices that
Windows Server 2008 detects as disks.
Providers discover the existing physical and logical entities and store that
information in the SFW distributed database. Providers update the database
whenever there is a change in the physical or logical entities present in the
hardware or software. For example, if a disk array is disconnected or turned
off, the providers for that array (disk, HBA, and possibly DMP) notify the
server software of the loss of service for that array. If the array is later
reconnected, the providers again notify the server software of the change in
service.
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210

Installing SFW 6.0

This section discusses the system requirements for installing SFW 6.0, the
Symantec Product Installer, and the installation procedure.
Installation prerequisites: Hardware
Before installing SFW, you must review the system requirements for installing the
product. The minimum hardware requirements for installing SFW on a local
computer are listed on the slide.
If you are installing DMP as an option, ensure that you have at least two I/O paths
from the server to the storage array for load balancing to happen.
47
The VVR Option requires a static IP for replication. If you install this option,
ensure that the system has at least one IP address configured that is not assigned by
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).

211
Installation prerequisites: Software

The minimum software requirements for installing SFW on a local computer are
listed on the slide. SFW 6.0 supports the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008.
SFW 6.0 has discontinued support for Windows Server 2003.
Before installing the product software, disable firewall and spyware monitoring
software. This must be done only as preinstallation requirement and you must
reenable the software immediately after installation. Also, ensure that only one
instance of SFW must be running on a system.
Refer to the hardware and software compatibility lists, available from the
Symantec Support Web site, for detailed information about the system
requirements for installing SFW.
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Symantec Product Installer

The Symantec Product Installer is an installation management tool, which is
used to install the products in the SFW family. The Symantec Product Installer
enables you to install the server components of four SFW 6.0 products: SFW, SFW
HA, VCS and DMP.
The installer lists the four products on its GUI. It also displays the Late Breaking
News link, the Windows Data Collector link, the SORT link, the Technical
Support link, and the links to basic SFW documentation.
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The Late Breaking News link provides access to the latest information about
updates, patches, and software issues regarding this release. The Windows Data
Collector link is used to verify that your configuration meets all pertinent software
and hardware requirements. The SORT link takes you to Symantec Operations
Readiness Tools site.
For all SFW documentaion including release notes and product guides, refer to the
following Web site:
https://sort.symantec.com/documents/doc_details/sfha/
6.0/Windows/ProductGuides

213
Support resources
With each new release of the SFW software, changes are made that may affect the
installation or operation of SFW in your environment. By reading version release
notes and installation documentation that are included with the product, you can
stay informed of any changes.
For more information about specific releases of Veritas Storage Foundation, visit
the Support Web site at:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/
index?page=landing&key=15227
This site contains product and patch information, a searchable knowledge base of
technical notes, access to product-specific news groups and e-mail notification
services, and other information about contacting technical support staff.
50
For specific information on hardware and software compatibility, search for the
HCL and SCL compatibility documents and locate the latest version.

214

SFW installation process
The steps to install SFW 6.0 are listed on the slide.
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215
Installing the server components

You launch the Symantec Product Installer using the SFW 6.0 installation CDs
autorun feature or by opening the DVD1 folder, and running Setup.exe.
In order to install SFW, you need to click the Install Server Components button.
This button is present at two locations: under the Veritas Storage Foundation and
High Availability Solutions 6.0 tab and under the Veritas Storage Foundation
6.0 tab.
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Viewing the Welcome screen
A Welcome screen for the Symantec Product Installer is displayed. On the

Welcome screen, click Next.
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Accepting the license agreement
Read the License Agreement, select the I accept the terms of the License
Agreement option, and click Next.
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Selecting the systems to install SFW components
You can install SFW components on multiple systems simultaneously. Click

Browse, select all the remote systems on which you want to install SFW, and then
proceed with the installation.
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Selecting the SFW options
In the Product Options window, select all the SFW options you want to install by
marking the appropriate check boxes. Click Next to continue.
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Selecting the appropriate licensing option

SFW options are enabled or disabled based on the licenses entered. The default
licensing type is the Keyless licensing scheme.
If you select the User entered license key as your license scheme, the License
Details panel is displayed by default. On the License Details panel, type the
license key and then click Add. You can add multiple licenses for the
various product options you want to use.
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Reviewing the preinstallation summary
In the Pre-install Summary screen, the installer checks the prerequisites for the
selected computers and displays the results in the Pre-install Report window. You
can review the report, and select the Save Report button to save the report. You
can mark the check box if you want to automatically reboot after the installation
completes, and click Next to proceed.
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Reviewing the installation progress
The Installation screen displays status messages and the progress of the
installation. If an installation fails, click Next to review the report and address the
reason for failure. You may have to either repair the installation or uninstall and reinstall. When the installation completes, review the status message and click Next.
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Rebooting
On the Finish screen, click Finish. A message is displayed prompting you to

reboot. Click Yes to restart your system and complete the installation.
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Upgrading to SFW 6.0

This section describes the upgrade paths and the upgrade matrix for upgrading to
SFW 6.0.
Supported upgrade paths
Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows 6.0 works only on the 64-bit edition of
Windows Server 2008 and later versions. Before upgrading, you must ensure that
your system meets the minimum product version requirement.
While you plan to install the product, you must upgrade your Windows operating
system to the supported minimum level. Symantec recommends that you perform
the Windows upgrade before upgrading the product.
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Upgrading from previous versions

SFW 6.0 supports upgrades from version 5.1 and later only. When you upgrade
from version 5.1.x or later, your previous licenses are honored. Your existing
licenses are automatically recognized and do not need to be reinstalled. Most
settings and data volumes from previous versions of SFW are retained.
SFW 6.0 is not compatible with version 5.0 and earlier versions. An upgrade from
version 5.0 or earlier requires a new product license. If you are running version 5.0
or earlier, you must uninstall the product and then install version 6.0. Separate
installations of different versions cannot exist on the same computer.
The upgrade procedure is same as the procedure followed earlier in this lesson,
while installing the server components using the Symantec Product Installer
wizard.
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Cross-product upgrade matrix

You can perform the following cross-product upgrades:
SFW 6.0 to SFW HA 6.0
DMP 6.0 to SFW or SFW HA 6.0
VCS 6.0 to SFW HA 6.0
The detailed cross-product upgrade matrix is displayed on the slide. During
upgrade, the installer wizard provides the Keyless option by default.
Windows Installation and Upgrade Guide for more information on upgrading.
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SFW user interfaces

Storage Foundation for Windows 6.0 supports three user interfaces. SFW objects
created by one interface are compatible with those created by the other interface.
VEA, CLI, and VOM interfaces
SFW supports the following user interfaces on a stand-alone host.
Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA): Veritas Enterprise Administrator is
the graphical user interface for SFW and other products. VEA provides access to
SFW functionality through visual elements such as icons, menus, wizards, and
dialog boxes. Using VEA, you can manipulate Storage Foundation objects and
also perform common file system operations.
Command-line interface (CLI): The command-line interface consists of utilities

that you invoke from the command line to perform standard SFW tasks. You can
use the CLI to manipulate Storage Foundation objects and perform scripting and
debugging functions. Most of the CLI commands require administrator or other
appropriate privileges. The CLI commands perform simple and complex
functions, with some commands requiring detailed user input.
64
Veritas Operations Manager (VOM): VOM is a centralized management

platform for Veritas Storage Foundation and its High Availability products. VOM
collects and manages information pertaining to the SFW products on managed
hosts. VOM provides the infrastructure and a single console for administrators and
operators to monitor, visualize, and manage their SFW products and generate
reports about storage resources.

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VEA and CLI console

The procedure for starting a VEA GUI and CLI console is illustrated on the slide.
To launch the VEA GUI:
Select Start > All Programs > Symantec > Veritas Storage Foundation >
Veritas Enterprise Administrator.
To start the CLI console:
Select Start > Command Prompt.
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VEA GUI
VEA is a Java-based interface that consists of a server and a client. The VEA
server gets installed with SFW installation. You can install the VEA client on a
Windows machine that is running SFW. The VEA client can run on any machine
that supports the Java 1.4 Runtime Environment, which can be Windows, Solaris,
HP-UX, AIX, or Linux.
Some SFW features of VEA include:

Remote administration: You can perform SFW administration remotely or
locally. The VEA client runs on Windows or UNIX machines.
Security: VEA can only be run by users with appropriate privileges, and you
can restrict access to a specific set of users.
Multiple host support: The VEA client can provide simultaneous access to
multiple host machines. You can use a single VEA client session to connect to
multiple hosts, view the objects on each host, and perform administrative tasks
on each host. Each host machine must be running the VEA server.
Multiple views of objects: VEA provides multiple ways to view SFW objects,
including a hierarchical tree layout, a list format, and a variety of graphical
views.
66
Other views in VEA

In addition to the main window, you can view SFW objects in other ways:
The Disk View window provides a graphical view of objects in a disk group.
The object Properties window provides information about a selected object.

230

VEA: Viewing Help information

VEA contains an extensive database of Help information that is accessible from
the menu bar. To access VEA Help information, select Help > Contents. The Help
window is displayed.
In the Help window, you can view help information in three ways:
Click a topic under the Contents tab.
Select a topic under the alphabetical index listing under the Index tab.
Search for a specific topic by clicking the Search tab.
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Command-line interface
The Storage Foundation command-line interface (CLI) provides commands used
for administering SFW from the command window on a Windows system. You
can execute CLI commands individually for specific tasks or combine them into
scripts.
The SFW command set ranges from commands requiring minimal user input to
commands requiring detailed user input. Many of the SFW commands require an
understanding of Storage Foundation concepts. Most SFW commands require
administrator or other appropriate access privileges.
SFW has a log that captures commands issued through the CLI and the system
response to each command. The log file, vxcli.log, is typically located at
C:\Program Files\Veritas\Veritas Volume Manager\logs.
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VOM
VOM is required for keyless licensing. You can convert a keyless license into a
permanent license by adding the system with the keyless license as a managed host
to a VOM Server. A VOM management server is a centralized management server
that you must set up before you can configure an SFW host as a managed host.
You can configure an SFW host as a managed host or as a stand-alone host.
This course does not cover VOM and managed hosts. For more information on
VOM, refer to the Veritas Operations Manager 4.1 Administrator's Guide and the
following Web sites:
https://sort.symantec.com/vom
https://sort.symantec.com/documents/doc_details/vom/
4.1/Windows%20and%20UNIX/ProductGuides/
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appendices:

234

Lesson 3
Working with Disk Groups and Volumes
71
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Preparing disks and disk groups for volume creation

Before you install SFW, disks are either basic or dynamic and are managed by
Microsoft Disk Management. When you install SFW, you can change these disks
to SFW managed dynamic disks by adding them to a disk group.
Storage Foundation enables you to perform the following operations on basic

disks:
Create, delete, and format:
Primary and extended partitions
Logical drives
Mark a primary partition as active (used for startup).
Upgrade a basic disk to dynamic disk.
73
However, you cannot perform the following tasks on basic disks:

Create complex volume layouts (spanned, striped, or mirrored).
Extend partitions.
Grow file systems.
Converting basic disks to dynamic disks
When a dynamic disk is created, two regions are created on the physical disk. One
is the public region, and the other is the private region.
The public region occupies majority of the dynamic disk space. The region
represents the space available for the assignment of dynamic volumes.

33
The private region is 1 MB in size and is located at the end of the disk. The private
region contains a database with disk configuration information, such as disk group
and volume information.
You can convert multiple basic disks to dynamic disks at one time. Also, you can
directly convert empty basic disks and basic disks containing partitions or logical
drives.
Empty basic disks: These disks are converted to empty dynamic disks. You
can create dynamic volumes on the new dynamic disks.
Basic disks containing partitions or logical drives: Storage Foundation
converts the partitions and logical drives into subdisks, and then places plex
(mirror) and volume wrappers around the appropriate subdisk objects. This
creates a dynamic volume of the appropriate type, preserving all data contained
within.
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34

Disk configuration stages

A basic disk is configured in three stages.
Stage 1: Write a signature on a disk
A new disk that is shown under the Disks icon displays an error icon and a disk
type of No Disk Signature. If left unsigned, you cannot use the disk. You add a
disk signature by using the Write Signature option.
After a signature is written on a disk, the disk is displayed as a basic disk. You can
then create partitions on the basic disk, or you can upgrade the disk to dynamic and
create volumes. To write a signature on a disk, right-click the unsigned disk and
select Write Signature.
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Stage 2: Assign a disk to a disk group

When you add a disk to a disk group, SFW has full control of the disk, and the disk
can be used to allocate space for volumes. After disks are placed under SFW
control, storage is managed in terms of the logical configuration. File systems
mount to logical volumes, not to physical partitions. Logical names replace
physical locations.
Stage 3: Assign disk space to volumes
When you create volumes, space in the public region of a disk is assigned to the
volumes. Some operations, such as removal of a disk from a disk group, are
restricted if space on a disk is in use by a volume.

35
Why disk groups?

A disk group is a collection of physical disks, volumes, plexes, and subdisks that
are used for a common purpose. A disk group is created when you place at least
one disk in the disk group. When you add a disk to a disk group, a disk group entry
is added to the private region header of that disk. Because a disk can only have one
disk group entry in its private region header, one disk group cannot detect other
disk groups, and therefore, disk groups cannot share resources, such as disk drives,
plexes, and volumes. A volume with a plex can belong to only one disk group, and
subdisks and plexes of a volume must be stored in the same disk group. You can
never have an empty disk group, because you cannot remove all disks from a disk
group without destroying the disk group.
Disk groups assist disk management in several ways:

Disk groups enable the grouping of disks into logical collections for a
particular set of users or applications. This facilitates storage provisioning and
capacity management.
Disk groups enable data, volumes, and disks to be easily moved from one host
machine to another.
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Disk groups ease the administration of high availability environments. Disk drives
can be shared by two or more hosts, but accessed by only one host at a time. If one
host crashes, the other host can take over its disk groups and therefore, its disks.

36

Types of disk groups

SFW uses several different types of disk groups.
Basic disk group
The first time that you run SFW on a server, all basic disks on your system are
assigned to one group, which is called the basic disk group. This disk group is
called the BasicGroup in the VEA.
Dynamic disk groups
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A dynamic disk group is created when the first basic disk in the system is upgraded
to dynamic. You can have multiple dynamic disk groups. You can create a new
dynamic disk group whenever you upgrade a basic disk to dynamic. A dynamic
disk is limited to one dynamic disk group; it cannot participate in multiple
dynamic disk groups. Disks within a dynamic disk group share a common
configuration. Dynamic volumes are created within a dynamic disk group and are
restricted to using disks within that group.
Primary and secondary dynamic disk groups
In SFW, the primary dynamic disk group is the disk group that contains the
computers boot or system disk. Only one primary dynamic disk group can exist
on a single host computer. Additional groups that are created or imported on that
computer are secondary dynamic disk groups.
However, we cannot have a primary SFW dynamic disk group. A primary disk
group in Windows Server 2008 must be an Microsoft Disk Management disk
group. All SFW disk groups are secondary.

37
Note: A primary disk group upgraded from Microsoft Disk Management with
SFW running on Windows Server 2008 always becomes a secondary
dynamic disk group.
Microsoft Disk Management disk group
The Microsoft Disk Management Disk (MDM) group contains dynamic disks that
are controlled by Windows Server 2008. SFW can create and manage a Microsoft
Disk Management disk group on a Windows Server 2008. However, dynamic
disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management disk group do not support many
SFW features, including operations on subdisks, private dynamic disk group
protection, cluster disk groups, hot relocation, S.M.A.R.T monitoring, evacuate
disk, replace disk, changing internal name of the disk, shred volume, and so on.
Cluster disk groups
SFW has a special category of dynamic disk groups for disks involved in the
support of clustering software, such as Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) or Microsoft
Failover Cluster (MFC). These shared dynamic disk groups are called cluster disk
groups.
A cluster disk group is designed to be moved between systems under the control of
cluster management software, such as Veritas Cluster Server. The new system then
starts up any applications needed to make use of that group, such as Oracle or
Exchange. A cluster disk group has multiple layers of protection so that only one
system in the cluster can use the disk group at any time. This prevents data
corruption.
For information about using clusters effectively, refer to the Veritas Cluster Server
6.0 Administrator's Guide or Microsoft Failover Cluster documentation.
Private dynamic disk group protection
This SFW feature enables you to partition shared storage on a SAN or shared array
for exclusive ownership by a single machine. You partition the storage by using a
secondary dynamic disk group. The private dynamic disk group protection feature
provides hardware locking to the disks in the secondary dynamic disk group
through a SCSI reservation thread.
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Creating a disk group: VEA
79
Select:
Disk Groups folder, or a free or uninitialized disk
Navigation path:
Actions > New Dynamic Disk Group
Input:
Group name: Type the name of the disk group to be created.

Create cluster group: To create a shared disk group, mark this
check box; which is only applicable in a cluster environment.
Add private group protection: Makes it possible to put SCSI
reservation on shared storage with a regular dynamic disk group
Create Windows Disk Management Disk Group: Creates a
disk group that is compatible with the disk groups created in
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Disk Management.
Available/Selected disks: Select at least one disk to be placed in
the new disk group.
Note: When working in a SAN environment, or any environment in which

multiple hosts may share access to disks, Symantec recommends that you
perform a rescan operation to update the VEA view of the disk status
before allocating any disks.

39
Creating a disk group: CLI

To create a disk group from the command line, use the vxdg command:
vxdg -gdiskgroup_name [-s|-R] [-TLDM] init disk_name
In the syntax:
Creates a cluster dynamic disk group
-R
Creates a disk group with private dynamic disk group protection
-TLDM
Creates a Microsoft Disk Management disk group
Note: Windows 2008 allows only one Microsoft Disk

Management disk group and automatically
assigns the name of the disk group when it is
created. Specifying the -TLDM option with the
name of the disk group with the gdiskgroup_name attribute results in an
error.
80
-s
Refer to the Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows Administrators Guide
for detailed information on CLI commands.

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Adding a disk to a disk group: VEA

Select:
A free or uninitialized disk
Navigation path:
Actions > Add Disk to Dynamic Disk Group
Input:
Dynamic disk group name: Select an existing disk group.

Alternatively, click the New dynamic disk group button to add a
new dynamic disk group.
Select: You can move disks between the Selected disks and
Available disks fields by clicking the Select and Unselect
buttons.
When the disk is placed under SFW control, the Type property changes to
Dynamic, and the Status property changes to Imported.
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Adding a disk to a disk group: CLI

To add a disk to a disk group from the command line, you use the vxdg command
with the adddisk option.
vxdg -gdiskgroup_name adddisk disk_name
Note: There is no space between -g and the dynamic group name. If a space is
present, SFW assigns a random name to the disk group.
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312

Creating a volume
This section covers all the steps involved in creating a volume.
Creating a volume: VEA
The steps involved in creating a volume using the New Volume Wizard are listed
on the slide.
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Selecting disks
A disk group
Navigation path:
Select Actions > New Volume.
Input:
Auto select disks: Let SFW determine (default), or manually

select disks to use.
Volume attributes: Specify a volume name, the size of the
volume, the type of volume layout, and other layout
characteristics. Assign a meaningful name to the volume that
describes the data stored in the volume.
File system: Create a file system on the volume and set file
system options.
By default, SFW locates available space on all disks in the disk group and assigns
the space to a volume automatically based on the layout you choose.
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Select:

314

Setting volume attributes

Volume name: Assign a meaningful name to the volume that describes the data
stored in the volume.
Size: Specify a size for the volume. The default unit is MB. Select a size for the
volume based on the volume layout and the space available in the disk group.
Layout: Select a layout type from the group of options. The default layout is
Concatenated.
Mirror Info: Symantec recommends mirroring. To mirror the volume, mark the
Mirrored check box.
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Assigning a drive letter
In the Add Drive Letter and Path window, select one of the three choices:
Assign a drive letter: Use the pull-down menu to select a drive.
Do not assign a drive letter: If you do not want to assign a drive letter, select
this option. The volume is displayed as an icon with no name in the VEA
console. You can assign a drive letter later by right-clicking the volume and
then selecting the Modify Drive Letter option. If you do not assign a drive
letter, the partition is not accessible.
Mount as an empty NTFS folder: Type in a folder name or browse to select
the folder name. When you click the Browse button, click the New Folder
button in the Browse for drive path window. SFW can create a new folder for
you.
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Adding a file system
87
When you create a volume, you can place a file system on the volume and specify
options for mounting the file system. Mark the Format this volume check box and
specify:
File system type: Specify the file system type as FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.
FAT is a file system used by MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 95/98.
Windows NT and Windows 2000 can also use the FAT file system, but
unlike NTFS, it provides no security, has lower overall performance, and
does not support online file compression.
FAT32 is an enhanced implementation of the FAT file system designed for
larger drives.
NTFS is an advanced file system designed for use specifically within the
Windows NT, 2000, 2003, and 2008 operating systems. Use this format if
you want to use file and folder compression or NTFS permissions. File and
folder compression are supported only on NTFS volumes.
File system options:
Allocation size: This is the smallest amount of space that can be allocated
or added to a file. A block can only be allocated to one file at a time.
File system label: If you do not enter a label, no default label is provided.
You can enter a label for or rename the file system later.
Perform a quick format: Formats the disk without checking for bad
sectors
Enable file and folder compression: Can only be used if you select the
NTFS format

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Replacing a file system of an existing volume
A file system provides an organized structure to facilitate the storage and retrieval
of files. You add a file system to a volume when you create the volume initially,
and you can replace the file system at any time after you have created the volume.
88
Select:
A volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > File System > Replace File System.
Input:
Select a file system: You can choose FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.

Allocation size: This represents the smallest amount of disk
space that can be allocated to hold a file.
File system label: If you do not enter a label, you can enter a
label for the file system later.
Perform a quick format: Formats the disk without checking
for bad sectors
Enable file and folder compression: Enables file and folder
compression and can be used only with NTFS file systems

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Creating a volume: CLI

To create volumes from the command line, use the vxassist command:
vxassist -gdiskgroup_name make volume_name length

type={mirror|raid5|stripe} driveletter={A|B|..|Z}
89
In the syntax:
-g specifies the disk group in which to create the volume.
make is the keyword for volume creation.
volume_name is a name you give to the volume.
length specifies the number of sectors in the volume. You can specify the
length in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes by adding a k, m, or g to the
length. If no unit is specified, megabytes are assumed.
type specifies the type of volume to be created. The default is a spanned
volume.
driveletter specifies the drive letter for the volume. The default is no
assignment of a drive letter to the volume.
You can specify many additional attributes, such as volume layout or specific
disks. For detailed descriptions of all attributes that you can use with vxassist,
type vxassist help on your system.
The vxassist utility does not format the drive and leaves it in RAW format. You
must execute the format command to mount the drive successfully. To format
the H: drive using NTFS, you type: format H: /fs:NTFS

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Displaying disk, disk group, and volume information

For each disk, information is provided on whether the disk contains volumes and
about the disk group with which the disk is associated. By viewing disk
information, you can:
Determine if a disk has been placed under SFW control.
Determine if a disk has been added to a disk group.
Verify the changes that you make to disks.
Keep track of the status and configuration of your disks.
Viewing all disks: VEA
In VEA, disks are represented under the Disks node in the object tree, in the Disk
View window, and in the grid for several object types, including controllers, disk
groups, enclosures, and volumes.
90
In the grid of the main window, under the Disks tab, you can identify many disk
properties, including disk name, disk group name, size of disk, amount of unused
space, and disk status. In particular, the status of a disk can be:
No Disk Signature: A disk without a signature is not usable by Windows. The
disk can be used only after a signature is written on the disk, when it becomes a
basic disk. You can create partitions on it, or upgrade the disk to dynamic and
create volumes on it, only when the disk is basic.
Online: The disk is accessible and has no known problems. This is the normal
disk status for basic disks.
Imported: The disk is in an imported disk group.

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91
Offline: The disk is in a deported disk group. There is no deported disk status.
Deported shows only if you look at the disk group view rather than the disk
view.
Disconnected: The system can no longer find the disk. The name of the disk
becomes Missing disk.
Import Failed: An import of the disk was unsuccessful.
Failing: I/O errors have been detected on a region of the disk. All the volumes
on the disk display Failed, Degraded, or Failing status, and you may not be
able to create new volumes on the disk.
Foreign: A disk may be foreign if:
This disk was moved to the system and has not been set up properly to be
accessed on the local system.
This disk contains a secondary disk group, and you have a dual-boot
system. When you switch between operating systems, the disk is marked as
foreign.
This disk was originally created on the local system, moved to another
system, and then moved back to the original system.

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Viewing disk details: VEA
When you select a disk in the object tree, details of the disk layout are displayed in
the grid. You can access these details by clicking the associated tab:
Volumes: This page displays the volumes that use this disk.
Disk Regions: This page displays the disk regions (subdisks) of the disk.
Disk View: This page displays the layout of any subdisks created on this disk
media, and details of usage. The Disk View window has the same view of all
related disks with more options available. To launch the Disk View window,
select an object (such as a disk group or volume), and then select Actions >
Disk View.
Alerts: This page displays any problems with a drive.
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Viewing disk properties: VEA

In VEA, you can also view disk properties in the disk Properties window. To open
the window, right-click a disk and select Properties.
The disk Properties window includes the capacity of the disk and the amount of
unallocated space. You can select the units for convenient display in the unit of
your choice.
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Viewing disk group properties: VEA

The object tree in the VEA main window contains a Disk Groups node that
displays all of the disk groups attached to a host. When you click a disk group, the
SFW objects contained in the disk group are displayed in the grid.
To view additional information about a disk group, right-click a disk group and
select Properties.
The disk group Properties window is displayed. This window contains basic disk
group properties, including the:
Disk group name, status, and type
Number of disks and volumes
Disk group version
Disk group size and amount of free space
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Viewing disk information: CLI
You use the vxdisk list command to display basic information about all disks
attached to the system. The vxdisk list command displays the:
Internal disk name
Size
Free space
Status of each disk
Disk style
The Master Boot Record (MBR) disk style is limited to four primary partitions
and is available on MS-DOS, Windows 95/98, and later Windows versions.
Another style of disk is GUID Partition Table (GPT). GPT allows a maximum
of 128 primary partitions.
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Viewing detailed disk information: CLI

To display detailed information about a disk, you use the vxdisk diskinfo
command with the name of the disk group and disk:
vxdisk [-gdiskgroup_name] diskinfo disk_name
The information includes the disk name, the dynamic disk group with which the
disk is associated, capacity (indicated as Length), free space, device type, port,
channel, target ID, LUN, and the disk signature. If the disk has subdisks associated
with it, they are also listed.
For example, to see information about Harddisk2, type:
vxdisk diskinfo Harddisk2
Note: The disks that belong to a deported dynamic disk group have a status of
offline and show a zero capacity.
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Viewing disk group properties: CLI

To return a list of the dynamic disk groups that are on the current computer, you
type:
vxdg list
The list includes the disk groups names, their types, whether each disk group is
imported or deported, and the dynamic disk group ID. The dynamic disk group ID
(DgID) is an internal number assigned to the disk group. This number can be used
in place of the dynamic disk group name.
To return information about the disk group, including the names and numbers of
the volumes and the disks in the disk group, type:
vxdg -gdiskgroup_name dginfo
97
This command gives the names and numbers of the volumes and the disks in the
dynamic disk group. This command also includes the dynamic disk group name,
its state (either Imported or Deported), and its dynamic disk group ID.

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Viewing volume information: VEA

To display information about volumes in VEA, you can select different views.
You can view volumes and volume details by selecting an object in the object tree
and displaying volume properties in the grid, as follows:
To view the volumes in a disk group, select a disk group in the object tree and
click the Volumes tab in the grid.
To explore detailed components of a volume, select a volume in the object tree
and click each of the tabs in the grid.
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Disk View
The Disk View window displays a close-up graphical view of the layout of
subdisks in a volume. To display the Disk View window, select a volume or disk
group and select Actions > Disk View.
Display options in the Disk View window include:

Expand: The Expand button displays detailed information about all disks in
the Disk View window.
Vol Details: The Vol Details button displays volume names, layout types, and
volume status for each subdisk.
Projection: The Projection button highlights objects associated with a
selected subdisk or volume. Projection shows the relationships between objects
by highlighting objects that are related to or part of a specific object.
99
Warning: You can move subdisks in the Disk View window by dragging subdisk
icons to different disks or to gaps within the same disk. Moving subdisks
reorganizes volume disk space and must be performed with care.
This is one way to move volumes to other disks or arrays. You can also move
subdisks using the Move Subdisk command or the vxevac utility.

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Volume Properties
The volume Properties window displays a summary of volume properties. To

display the volume Properties window, right-click a volume and select
Properties.
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Displaying volume information: CLI

To access volume information, use the vxvol volinfo command.
This command displays information, such as the name, disk group, volume layout,
volume status, and size. For a dynamic volume, the command displays additional
information, such as the names of disks and plexes associated with the volume. To
display volume information using the vxvol volinfo command, type:
vxvol [-v] volinfo volume_name|drive_letter
In the syntax:
101
[-v]
Displays the size and offset of the subdisks
volinfo
Displays information about the dynamic volume
volume_name|
drive_letter
Specifies the name of the volume or drive letter
To return a list with the volume name, disk group, and size for volume M, you
type:
vxvol volinfo M:

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Removing volumes, disks, and disk groups

When you can delete a volume, you free up the underlying disk space and make it
available for use elsewhere. The disk regions used by the subdisks in the volume
are released to free space and become available for reallocation. No I/O is
performed to the disk regions. Delete a volume only if you are sure that you do not
need the data in the volume, or if the data is backed up elsewhere.
Removing a volume
102 332
Select:
A volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Delete Volume or right-click the volume

to be deleted and select Delete Volume.
Input:
Verify the volume to be removed and confirm its removal.
Removing a volume using the CLI

You can use the vxassist delete command by typing:
vxassist delete volume_name|drive_letter
When a volume is deleted, the space used by the volume is freed and can be used
elsewhere.

Shredding a volume: VEA

All data in the volume is lost when you shred it. The volume is entirely overwritten
with a digital pattern.
Prior to shredding a volume, ensure that the information has been backed up onto
another storage medium and verified, or that it is no longer needed.
103
SFW provides the following methods for overwriting the volume:

1 Pass algorithm: The volume is overwritten with a pattern of zeroes and
ones.
3 Pass algorithm: The volume is overwritten a total of three times. The
volume is first overwritten with a pre-selected digital pattern, then overwritten
with the binary complement of the pattern. In the last pass, the volume is
overwritten with a randomly selected digital pattern. This three-pass approach
is based on the specifications in the US Department of Defense standard
5220.22-M (3).
7 Pass algorithm: The volume is overwritten a total of seven times. Each pass
consists of overwriting the volume with a randomly selected digital pattern or
with the binary complement of the previous pattern. This seven-pass approach
is based on the specifications in the US Department of Defense standard
5200.28-STD (7)
To shred a volume:
Right-click the designated volume and select Shred Volume.
2 Select the method to shred the volume and click OK to continue.
3 In the confirmation dialog box, click Yes to confirm the operation.
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333
The volume is entirely overwritten and immediately removed when the operation
has completed.
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Evacuating a disk
Evacuating a disk moves the contents of the volumes on a disk to another disk. The
contents of a disk can be evacuated only to disks in the same disk group that have
sufficient free space.
105
Select:
The disk that contains the objects and data to be moved to another
disk
Navigation
path:
Actions > Evacuate Disk
Input:
Auto assign destination disk: SFW selects the destination disks

to contain the content of the disk to be evacuated.
Manually assign destination disk: To manually select a
destination disk, select the disks listed in the list box, and click
OK.
Evacuating a disk: CLI

To evacuate a disk from the command line, use the vxevac command, as follows:
vxevac -gdiskgroup_name from_disk_name [to_disk_name]

335
Removing a disk
If a disk is no longer needed in a disk group, you can remove the disk. After you
remove a disk from a disk group, the disk cannot be accessed.
Note: The remove operation fails if there are any subdisks on the disk. However,
the destroy disk group operation does not fail if there are volumes in the
disk group.
Before removing a disk, ensure that the disk contains no data, the data is no longer
needed, or the data is moved to other disks. Removing a disk that is in use by a
volume can result in lost data or lost data redundancy.
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Select:
The disk to be removed
Navigation path:
Actions > Remove Disk from Dynamic Disk Group
Input:
Dynamic disk group name: The disk group that contains the
disk to be removed
Selected disks: The disk to be removed must be displayed in the
Selected disks field. Only empty disks are displayed in the list
of available disks as candidates for removal.

Note: If you select all disks for removal from the disk group, the disk group is
automatically destroyed.
Removing a disk: CLI
To remove a disk from a disk group using the command line, you use the vxdg
rmdisk command as follows:
vxdg gdiskgroup_name rmdisk Harddisk#
This command reverts the referenced disk from a dynamic disk to a basic disk. You
can verify the removal by using the vxdisk list command to display disk
information.
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Deleting a dynamic disk group

You can delete a dynamic disk group in two different ways as explained on the
slide. For both procedures, all data in a volume is lost when you delete the volume.
Before deleting a dynamic disk group, ensure that the information has been
transferred elsewhere or that it is no longer needed.
Note: Microsoft Disk Management disk groups do not support the Destroy
Dynamic Disk Group command.
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109
appendices:

339
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340

Lesson 4
Working with Volumes with Different Layouts
111
112

42

Comparing volume layouts
Each volume layout has different advantages and disadvantages. For example, a
volume can be extended across multiple disks to increase capacity, mirrored on
another disk to provide data redundancy, or striped across multiple disks to
improve I/O performance. The layouts that you choose depend on the levels of
performance and reliability required by your application.
Concatenated layout
113
A concatenated volume layout maps data in a linear manner onto one or more
subdisks in a plex. Subdisks do not have to be physically contiguous and can
belong to more than one SFW disk. Storage is allocated completely from one
subdisk before using the next subdisk in the span. Data is accessed in the
remaining subdisks sequentially until the end of the last subdisk. For example, if
you have 14 GB of data, then a concatenated volume can logically map the volume
address space across subdisks on different disks. The addresses 0 GB to 7 GB of
volume address space map to the first 8 GB subdisk, and addresses 8 GB to 13 GB
map to the second 6 GB subdisk. An address offset of 12 GB, therefore, maps to an
address offset of 4 GB in the second subdisk.

43
Striped layout
A striped volume layout maps data so that the data is interleaved, or allocated in
stripes, among two or more subdisks on two or more physical disks. Data is
allocated alternately and evenly to the subdisks of a striped plex.
The subdisks are grouped into columns. Each column contains one or more
subdisks and can be derived from one or more physical disks. To obtain the
maximum performance benefits of striping, do not use a single disk to provide
space for more than one column.
All columns must be of the same size. The minimum size of a column must equal
the size of the volume divided by the number of columns. The default number of
columns in a striped volume is based on the number of disks in the disk group.
Data is allocated in equally sized units, called stripe units, that are interleaved
between the columns. Each stripe unit is a set of contiguous blocks on a disk. The
stripe unit size can be in units of sectors, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. The
stripe width of striped volumes in blocks is 512K. This provides adequate
performance for most general-purpose volumes. You can improve the performance
of an individual volume by matching the stripe unit size to the I/O characteristics
of the application using the volume.
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44

Mirrored layout
By adding a mirror to a concatenated or striped volume, you create a mirrored

layout. A mirrored volume layout consists of more than one plex that duplicates
the information contained in a volume. Each plex in a mirrored layout contains an
identical copy of the volume data. In the event of a physical disk failure and when
the plex on the failed disk becomes unavailable, the system can continue to operate
using the unaffected mirrors.
Although a volume can have a single plex, at least two plexes are required to
provide redundancy of data. Therefore, a single plex can be considered to be a
potential mirror for data. Each of these plexes must contain disk space from
different disks to achieve redundancy.
115
SFW uses true mirrors, which means that all copies of the data are the same at all
times. When write to a volume occurs, all plexes must receive the write before the
write is considered complete.

45
RAID-5 layout
A RAID-5 volume layout has the same attributes as a striped plex, but it includes
one additional column of data that is used for parity. Parity provides redundancy.
Parity is a calculated value used to reconstruct data after a failure. While data is
being written to a RAID-5 volume, parity is calculated by performing an exclusive
OR (XOR) procedure on the data. The resulting parity is then written to the
volume. If a portion of a RAID-5 volume fails, the data that was on that portion of
the failed volume can be re-created from the remaining data and parity
information.
RAID-5 volumes keep a copy of the data and calculated parity in a plex that is
striped across multiple disks. Parity is spread equally across columns. Given a
five-column RAID-5 volume where each column is 1 GB in size, the RAID-5
volume size is 4 GB. One column of space is devoted to parity, and the remaining
four 1-GB columns are used for data.
116
The stripe width of RAID volumes in blocks is 512K. Each column must be the
same length but may be made from multiple subdisks of variable length. Subdisks
used in different columns must be located on separate physical disks.
RAID-5 requires a minimum of three disks for data and parity. When implemented
as Symantec recommends, an additional disk is required for the log.
RAID-5 cannot be mirrored.

46

Comparing volume layouts
Concatenation: Advantages
Removes size restrictions: Concatenation removes the restriction on the size
of storage devices imposed by physical disk size.
Offers better usage of free space: Concatenation enables better usage of free
space on disks by providing for the ordering of available discrete disk space on
multiple disks into a single addressable volume.
Simplifies administration: Concatenation enables large file systems to be
created and reduces overall system administration complexity.
Concatenation: Disadvantages
117
Provides no protection against disk failure: Concatenation does not protect

against disk failure. A single disk failure results in the failure of the entire volume.
Striping: Advantages
Improves performance through parallel data transfer: Improved
performance is obtained by increasing the effective bandwidth of the I/O path
to the data. This may be achieved by a single volume I/O operation spanning
across a number of disks or by multiple concurrent volume I/O operations to
more than one disk at the same time.
Provides load-balancing: Striping is also helpful in balancing the I/O load
from multiuser applications across multiple disks.

47
Striping: Disadvantages
Provides no redundancy: Striping alone offers no redundancy or recovery
features.
Single disk failure causes volume failure: Striping a volume increases the
chance that a disk failure results in failure of that volume.
Mirroring: Advantages
Improves reliability and availability: With concatenation or striping, failure
of any one disk makes the entire plex unusable. With mirroring, data is
protected against the failure of any one disk. Mirroring improves the reliability
and availability of a striped or concatenated volume.
Improves read performance: Reads benefit from having multiple places
from which to read the data.
Offers fast recovery through logging: Dirty region logging (DRL) greatly
speeds up the time that it takes to recover from a system crash for mirrored
volumes.
Mirroring: Disadvantages
Requires more disk space: Mirroring requires twice as much disk space,
which can be costly for large configurations. Each mirrored plex requires
enough space for a complete copy of the volumes data.
Provides slightly slower write performance: Writing to volumes is slightly
slower, because multiple copies have to be written in parallel. The overall time
the write operation takes is determined by the time that is needed to write to the
slowest disk involved in the operation.
The slower write performance of a mirrored volume is not generally significant
enough to decide against its use. The benefit of the resilience that mirrored
volumes provide outweighs the performance reduction.
RAID-5: Advantages
Provides redundancy through parity: With a RAID-5 volume layout, data
can be re-created from the remaining data and parity in case of the failure of
one disk.
Requires less space than mirroring: RAID-5 stores parity information, rather
than a complete copy of the data.
Improves read performance: RAID-5 provides similar improvements in read
performance as in a normal striped layout.
Offers fast recovery through logging: RAID-5 logging minimizes recovery
time in case of disk failure.
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RAID-5: Disadvantages
Provides slower write performance: The performance overhead for writes
can be substantial, because a write can involve much more than simply writing
to a data block. A write can involve reading the old data and parity, computing

48

the new parity, and writing the new data and parity, as a multi step readmodify-write operation.
Performs poorly after a disk failure: After one column fails, all I/O
performance goes down. This is not the case with mirroring, where a disk
failure does not have any significant effect on performance.
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49
Creating volumes with various layouts

Selecting volume layout
Volume name: Assign a meaningful name to the volume that describes the data
stored in the volume.
Size: Specify a size for the volume. The default unit is MB. If you click the Max
Size button, SFW determines the largest size possible for the volume based on the
layout selected and the disks to which the volume is assigned. The size of the
volume must be less than or equal to the available free space on the disks. For a
mirrored volume, SFW allocates additional free space for the volumes additional
plexes.
120 410
Layout: Select a layout type from the group of options.

Concatenated: The volume is created using one or more regions of specified
disks. The default layout is concatenated.
Striped: The volume is striped across two or more disks. The default number
of columns across which the volume is striped is two, and the default stripe
unit size is 128 sectors (64K).
Mirror Info:
Mirrored: Symantec recommends mirroring. To mirror the volume, mark the
Mirrored check box. Only striped or concatenated volumes can be mirrored.
RAID-5 volumes cannot be mirrored.
Total mirrors: Type the total number of mirrors (plexes) for the volume. A
volume can have up to 32 plexes; however, the practical limit is 31. One plex is
reserved by SFW to perform restructuring or relocation operations.

Creating a concatenated volume: CLI
By default, vxassist creates a concatenated volume that uses one or more

sections of disk space. The vxassist command attempts to locate sufficient
contiguous space on one disk for the volume. However, if necessary, the volume is
spanned across multiple disks. SFW selects the disks on which to create the
volume.
To create a concatenated volume called datavol with a length of 10 GB, in the
datadg disk group, using any available disks, mapped to drive letter T, you type:
vxassist -gdatadg make datavol 10g driveletter=T
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If you want the volume to reside on specific disks, you can designate the disks by
adding the disk names to the end of the command, such as Harddisk2. The disk
name can also be indicated by the internal disk name or by p#c#t#l#, where the
hashs correspond to the port, channel, target, and LUN of a disk.
Refer to the Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows Administrators Guide for
detailed information on CLI commands.

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Creating a striped volume: CLI
To create a striped volume, you add the layout type and other attributes to the
vxassist make command displayed on the slide.
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In the syntax:
type=stripe designates the striped layout.
column=n designates the number of stripes, or columns, across which the
volume is created.
If you do not provide a number of columns, then SFW selects a number of
columns based on the number of free disks in the disk group. The minimum
number of stripes in a volume is two, and the maximum is eight.
stripeunit=size specifies the size of the striped volumes in blocks. The
default is 16K.
driveletter=letter specifies the drive letter to be assigned to the
volume. By default, no drive letter is assigned to the volume.
[disks...] To stripe the volume across specific disks, you can specify the
disk names at the end of the command. The order in which disks are listed on
the command line does not imply any ordering of disks within the volume
layout. By default, SFW selects any available disks with sufficient space.

Creating a mirrored volume: CLI
To mirror a concatenated volume, you add the type=mirror attribute in the

vxassist command as displayed on the slide.
By default, the volume is created with two mirrors. To specify more than two
mirrors, you add the [mirror=number_of_mirrors]attribute. This attribute
specifies the number of mirrors to be created for mirrored volumes.
When you create a mirrored volume, the volume initialization process requires that
the mirrors be synchronized. The vxassist command typically waits for the
mirrors to be synchronized before returning to the system prompt. To run the
process in the background, you add the -b option.
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413
Creating a partition and logical drive

On basic disks, you can use SFW to create volumes called primary and extended
partitions. A partition is a portion of a physical disk that functions as though it is a
physically separate disk.
Partitions can be created only on basic disks. Partitions cannot span disks; they
must be contiguous regions.
Basic disks use the disk partitioning mechanism used by Windows. A basic disk
can have up to either four primary partitions or three primary partitions plus an
extended partition:
You cannot subpartition or subdivide primary partitions.
You can subpartition extended partitions into multiple volumes called logical
drives. Use an extended partition if you want to have more than four drives.
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Use SFW to create partitions on basic disks if you want computers running Linux,
Windows, or MS-DOS to access these partitions.
After you change a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the volumes on the disk cannot be
accessed by MS-DOS, Windows 95/98, or Windows NT.
When a basic disk that contains partitions is added to a dynamic disk group, the
partitions become simple volumes on the dynamic disk.

Creating a partition: VEA
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Select:
A basic disk
Navigation path:
Select Actions > New Partition.
Input:
Select disk and region: Select the disk and check the box for
the free space that you want to use.
Select Partition Type: Select the partition type (Primary or
Extended) and enter the size of the partition.
Assign a drive letter: Select a drive letter or drive path for this
partition.
Create File System: Mark the Format this volume check box.
Select the type of format that you want: FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.
Type a partition name in the File system label field. If you do
not enter a name, your partition is named New Volume by
default. Select an allocation unit size in bytes if you want to use
a size other than the default. However, Symantec strongly
recommends default settings for general use. Select a format
method: Perform a quick format or Enable file and folder
compression.

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Creating a logical drive in an extended partition: VEA
A logical drive is a partition, created in an extended partition, that acts like a

separate drive. You can subdivide an extended partition into as many as 32 logical
drives. You can use all or part of the free space in an extended partition when
creating logical drives. An extended partition or a logical drive cannot span
multiple disks.
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Select:
An extended partition
Navigation path:
Select Actions > New Logical Drive.
Input:
Select disk and region: Select the disk and check the box for
the free space that you want to use.
Select Partition Type: The Logical drive button is selected by
default, and the window displays the largest logical drive size
that can be created in the extended partition.
Assign a drive letter: Select a drive letter or drive path for this
partition.
Create File System: Mark the Format this volume check box.
Select the type of format that you want. Type a partition name in
the File system label field. Select an allocation unit size in
bytes if you want to use a size other than the default. Select a
format method.

Marking a partition as active
The partitions containing the startup and operating system files are commonly
named:
System partition: This partition is used for startup.
Boot partition: This partition is used for operating system files.
Note: The boot partition can be (but does not have to be) the same as the system
partition.
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The system partition must be a primary partition that has been marked as active for
startup purposes. This partition must be located on the disk that the computer
accesses when starting up the system. There can only be one active system
partition at a time, which is displayed as Active in the status field. To use another
operating system, you must first mark its system partition as active before
restarting the computer.
The Mark Partition Active command enables you designate a basic primary
partition as active. You can only use the Mark Partition Active command on a
basic primary partition, not on a dynamic volume.
To mark a partition as active, right-click the primary partition that contains the
startup files for the operating system that you want to activate and select Mark
Partition Active. A message states that the partition is marked active and that the
operating system on that partition is started when you restart the computer.

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appendices:

Lesson 5
Making Configuration Changes
129
130 52

Administering mirrored volumes

When to add a mirror to a volume
Add a mirror to a volume when you need to provide redundancy or high

availability. The reasons for adding a mirror to a volume are listed on the slide.
Without SFW, moving data from one array to another requires downtime. Using
SFW, you can mirror to a new array, ensure that it is stable, and then remove the
plexes from the old array. No downtime is necessary.
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This method does not require downtime. This is useful in many situations, for
example, if a company purchases a new array. With SFW, you:
1 Add the new array to the SAN.
2 Zone for the server to see the LUNs.
3 Rescan with VEA.
4 Add the LUNs from the new array to the disk group.
5 Mirror the volumes to the new array.
6 Remove the plexes on the old array.
7 Remove the LUNs that are on the old array from the disk group.

53
Adding mirrors to and removing mirrors from a volume

Adding a mirror
If a volume was not originally created as a mirrored volume, or if you want to add
additional mirrors, you can add a mirror to an existing volume. By default, a mirror
is created with the same plex layout as the plex already in the volume. For
example, assume that a volume consists of a single striped plex. If you add a
mirror to the volume, SFW makes that plex striped, as well. You can specify a
different layout using VEA or from the command line.
A mirrored volume requires at least two disks. You cannot add a mirror to a disk
that is already being used by the volume. A volume can have multiple mirrors, as
long as each mirror resides on separate disks.
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Only disks in the same disk group as the volume can be used to create the new
mirror. Unless you specify the disks to be used for the mirror, SFW automatically
locates and uses available disk space to create the mirror.
A volume can contain up to 32 plexes (mirrors); however, the practical limit is 31.
One plex must be reserved for use by SFW for background repair operations.
Removing a mirror
When a mirror (plex) is no longer needed, you can remove it. You can remove a
mirror to provide free space, to reduce the number of mirrors, or to remove a
temporary mirror.
Caution: Removing a mirror results in the loss of data redundancy. If a volume
only has two plexes, removing one of them leaves the volume unmirrored.

Adding a mirror: VEA
133
Select:
The volume to be mirrored
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Mirror > Add.
Input:
Number of mirrors to add: Type a number. The default is 1.

Choose the layout: Select from Concatenated or Striped.
Selected disks: SFW can select the disks, or you can choose
specific disks. You can also mirror or stripe across controllers,
trays, targets, or enclosures.
To verify that a new mirror has been added, view the total number of copies of the
volume as displayed in the main window. The total number of copies is increased
by the number of mirrors added.
Adding a mirror: CLI
Use the vxassist utility with the mirror option to add a mirror to an existing
volume. For example, to add two mirrors to volume Z: using Harddisk4 and
Harddisk5, you type:
vxassist mirror Z: Mirror=2 Harddisk4 Harddisk5
Instead of using the drive letter, you can provide a path:
vxassist mirror
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\DiskGroup1\Volume1 Mirror=2
Harddisk4 Harddisk5

55
Removing a mirror: VEA
134 56
Select:
The volume that contains the mirror to be removed
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Mirror > Remove.
Input:
The Remove Mirror dialog box is displayed as shown on the

slide. The available mirrors is displayed in the left pane.
Use the Add or Add All button to move the desired mirrors to
the list of mirrors selected to be removed in the right pane. To
move mirrors from the Selected mirrors list to the Available
mirrors list, select them in the right pane and click the Remove
button. To move all of the mirrors from the Selected mirrors list
back to the Available mirrors list, click the Remove All button.
Select the mirror to remove and click OK to remove the mirror
or mirrors.
Removing a mirror: CLI

Use the vxassist utility with the remove option to remove a mirror from a
volume. You can use either the path of the mirrored volume or its drive letter. You
must specify the plex to be removed. The data on the specified plex is destroyed
and unrecoverable.
To remove the Volume1-01 mirror, that is assigned the drive letter Z, you type:
vxassist remove mirror Z: plex=Volume1-01

Breaking a mirror
Breaking (that is, breaking off) a mirror takes away a redundant mirror (or plex) of
a volume and assigns another drive letter to it. The data on the new volume is an
exact copy of the original volume at the time of breaking off.
The broken-off plex retains the other volume layout characteristics without the
mirror. For example, if you have a mirrored striped volume, the broken-off plex
becomes a striped volume.
Breaking off a plex of the mirrored volume does not delete the information, but it
means that the plex that is broken off no longer mirrors information from the other
plexes in the mirrored volume. For example, in a two-way mirrored volume,
breaking off a mirror creates two dynamic volumes on the disks with each volume
containing identical data. These volumes are no longer fault tolerant.
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57
Breaking a mirror: VEA

Select:
The volume that contains the mirror to be broken off
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Mirror > Break.
Input:
Select which mirror to break: Select the mirror that you want
to break off.
For break off volume: Indicate whether to assign a drive letter
to the broken-off volume. You may either assign a specific drive
letter from the drop-down menu or accept the default.
Breaking a mirror: CLI
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Use the vxassist utility with the break option to break a mirror from an
existing volume. The syntax is displayed on the slide. You can use either the path
of the mirrored volume or its drive letter. The plex that is specified receives a new
drive letter.
To break a mirror from volume H and assign the new volume the drive letter Z,
type:
vxassist break H: plex=Volume1-01 DriveLetter=Z

Adding/Removing a log
Logging in SFW
When you enable logging, SFW tracks changed regions of a volume. You can then
use the log information to reduce plex synchronization times and speed the
recovery of volumes after a system failure. Although this feature is optional,
Symantec highly recommends logging, especially for large volumes.
You can add a log to a volume when you create the volume or at any time after
volume creation. The type of log that is created is based on the type of volume
layout.
Dirty region logging
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Dirty region logging (DRL) is used with mirrored volume layouts. DRL keeps
track of the regions that have changed due to I/O writes to a mirrored volume.
Prior to every write, a bit is set in a log to record the area of the disk that is being
changed. In case of system failure, DRL uses this information to recover only the
portions of the volume that need to be recovered.
If DRL is not used and a system failure occurs, all mirrors of the volumes must be
restored to a consistent state by copying the full contents of the volume between its
mirrors. This process can be lengthy and I/O-intensive.
When you enable logging on a mirrored volume, one log plex is created by default.
The log plex uses space from disks already used for that volume, or you can
specify which disk to use. To enhance performance, consider placing the log plex
on a disk that is not already in use by the volume. You can create additional DRL
logs on different disks to mirror the DRL information.

59
Adding a log: VEA

Select:
The volume to be logged
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Log > Add.
Input:
Disk to contain the log: By default, SFW locates available space

on any disk in the disk group and assigns the space
automatically. To place the log on specific disks, select
Manually assign destination disks and select the disk to
contain the log.
Removing a log: VEA

Select:
The volume that contains the log to be removed
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Log > Remove.
Input:
The log removal method is similar to removing a mirror.
Note: When you remove the only log from a volume, logging is no longer in
effect, and recovery time increases in the event of a system crash.
Adding a log: CLI
You can add a dirty region log to a mirrored volume by using the vxassist
addlog command, as follows:
vxassist addlog volume_name|drive_letter
For example, to add a log to the mirrored payvol volume in the acctdg disk group,
type:
vxassist addlog payvol
SFW recognizes that the layout is mirrored and adds a dirty region log.
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You can specify additional attributes, such as the disks that must contain the log,
when you run the vxassist addlog command. When no disks are specified,
SFW uses space from the disks already in use by that volume, which may not be
best for performance.
Removing a log: CLI
You can remove a dirty region log by using the vxassist remove log
command with the name of the volume. The appropriate type of log is removed
based on the type of volume.
vxassist remove log volume_name|drive_letter
For example, to remove the dirty region log from drive H, you type:
vxassist remove log H:

Volume read policies with mirroring
One of the benefits of mirrored volumes is that you have more than one copy of the
data from which to satisfy read requests. You can specify which plex SFW must
use to satisfy read requests by setting the read policy. The read policy for a volume
determines the order in which volume plexes are accessed during I/O operations.
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SFW has two read policies:

Round robin: This is the default read policy. If you specify a round-robin read
policy, SFW reads each plex in turn in round-robin manner for each
nonsequential I/O detected. Sequential access causes only one plex to be
accessed in order to take advantage of drive or controller read-ahead caching
policies. If a read is within 256K of the previous read, then the read is sent to
the same plex.
Preferred plex: With the preferred plex read policy, SFW reads first from a
plex that has been named as the preferred plex. Read requests are satisfied
from one specific plex, presumably, the plex with the highest performance. If
the preferred plex fails, another plex is accessed.
For example, if you are mirroring in a campus environment and the local plex
is faster than the remote one, setting the local plex as the preferred plex
increases performance.

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Changing the volume read policy: VEA

Select:
A volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Set Volume Usage.
Input:
Set Volume Read Policy: Select either the Round robin or

Preferred option. The default is that mirrors are read using
Round robin. If you select Preferred, then you can also select
the preferred plex from the list of available plexes. This
designates a particular mirror to be used for reads, whenever
possible.
Changing the volume read policy: CLI
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The vxvol rdpol command sets the volume read policy on a volume with
multiple mirrors to designate a specific plex to be used for reads. This plex is
referred to as the preferred plex. The syntax of the command is as follows:
vxvol -gdiskgroup_name rdpol round
volume_name|drive_letter
vxvol -gdiskgroup_name rdpol prefer
volume_name|drive_letter preferred_plex

Resizing a volume
You can expand a volume across all dynamic disks within a disk group up to a
maximum of 256 disks. You can extend a volume while remaining online. You can
expand a volume only if:
The volume is formatted with NTFS.
There is unallocated space on the dynamic disks in the same disk group onto
which the volume is to be extended.
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Important considerations:
You can only expand a system or boot volume in increments of the disks
cylinder size and only into contiguous space at the end of the volume.
You cannot expand a volume on a disk that is part of a cluster disk group that
has applications running and is being monitored by the cluster management
software.

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Expanding a volume: VEA
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Select:
The volume to be resized
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Resize Volume > Expand.
Input:
Current volume size: Displays the current size of the selected

volume
Add by: To increase the volume size by a specific amount of
space, input how much space is to be added to the volume.
New volume size: To specify a new volume size, input the
size.
Auto assign destination disks: Assign the disks automatically.
Manually assign destination disks: You can select specific
disks to use and specify mirroring and striping options.
Expanding a volume and file system: CLI

To expand a dynamic volume across dynamic disks, use the vxassist utility
with the growby option as shown on the slide. To extend datavol by an
additional 10 MB, type:
vxassist -gdatadg growby datavol 10m

Shrinking a volume: VEA

Before shrinking, defragment the volume. This enables the volume size to be
further decreased. The volume shrink command cannot be used on a volume that is
greater than 2 TB in size.
For additional information on shrinking volumes, refer to the technical document

ID 286419.
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Select:
The volume to be reduced
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Resize Volume > Shrink.
Input:
The Shrink by entry box enables you to specify an amount to

decrease the volume. The New volume size entry box enables
you to specify the new size of the volume. The Max Shrink
button enables you to decrease the volume by the maximum
amount possible.
Shrinking a volume: CLI

The syntax to shrink a dynamic volume using the vxassist utility with the
shrinkby option is as follows:
vxassist -gdiskgroup_name shrinkby
volume_name|drive_letter length

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Online volume shrink: Overview

SFW 6.0 provides support for the online volume shrink feature. You can use this
feature to decrease, or shrink, the size of data volumes while the volumes are
online. This feature helps you to reclaim unused space to better utilize your system
resources. It calculates the amount of space that can be freed from the volume to
create smaller new volumes. The size of a volume after the volume shrink
operation is approximately the difference between the current volume size and the
amount of maximum reclaimable bytes.
The new volume size can be specified in sectors, kilobytes (K), megabytes (MB),
gigabytes (GB), or terabytes (TB), and the specified value must be less than the
maximum size of the volume. The new volume size is displayed in the Veritas
Enterprise Administrator GUI.
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The volume shrink feature existed in the previous release of SFW, but users had to
bring down the application accessing a volume before they were able to shrink the
volume. The online volume shrink feature overcomes this drawback. You can now
shrink a volume while it is being written.

Limitations and best practices

The volume shrink command does not support NTFS volumes that are greater than
2 TB. Therefore, you cannot shrink NTFS volumes greater than 2 TB.
You must not perform online volume shrink on non-NTFS and read-only volumes.
This is because online volume shrink is not supported on these entities.
Also, in the Windows Server 2008 and later operating systems, you must not
perform any of the operations listed on the slide when an online volume shrink
operation is in progress.
Otherwise, the computer crashes. This is a known Microsoft issue and there is no
workaround for it. To avoid this problem, you need to abstain from performing the
mentioned operations.
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517
Changing a drive letter or path

Changing a drive letter or path: VEA
You can add multiple drive paths to a volume. However, if you change the drive
letter or path on a volume, programs installed on that volume may no longer run.
Drive paths are useful because they eliminate the 24-drive-letter limit on hard-disk
volume names.
SFW also enables you to mount a volume at any empty folder on a local NTFS
volume. The volume can be a partition, a logical drive that was created in
Windows Disk Management, or a dynamic volume. For example, you can mount
the C:\Temp folder as another drive to provide additional disk space for
temporary files.
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Select:
A volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > File System > Change Drive Letter and
Path.
Input:
Add/Modify/Remove: Select the action.

Assign a drive letter: Select a drive letter from the drop-down
menu.
Mount as an empty NTFS folder: Browse to select the empty
folder by clicking the Browse button. Browse to the folder that
you want to use or create a new folder by clicking the New
Folder button. The folder to which you mount the volume must
be empty and must be an NTFS volume on a local computer.
You cannot mount volumes to network-accessible drives. You
can, however, assign multiple drive paths to a single volume.
Mounted drive folders are distinguished from ordinary folders
by having a drive icon instead of a folder icon.
Changing a drive letter or path: CLI

You can use the vxassist command to assign or change a drive letter or drive
path for a volume, as follows:
vxassist-gdiskgroup_name assign volume_name|
drive_letter|volume_name|drive_path DriveLetter=letter
DrivePath=path
vxassist-gdiskgroup_name unassign volume_name|

drive_letter|volume_name|drive_path DriveLetter=letter
DrivePath=path
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519
Viewing all drive paths

You can view all the mounted volumes on a selected server in the View all drive
paths window. This window displays volumes that have been assigned a drive
path rather than a drive letter.
Drive paths are useful because they eliminate the 24-drive-letter limit on hard-disk
volume names. Drive letters A and B are reserved for floppy drives. The volume
can be a partition, a logical drive that was created using Windows Disk
Management utility, or a dynamic volume.
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Moving data between systems

Example: Disk groups in a high availability (HA) environment
The example in the diagram represents a high availability environment.
In the example, Computer A and Computer B each have their individual maindg
main disk group on their own private SCSI bus. The two hosts are also on a shared
SCSI bus. On the shared bus, each host has another acctdg disk group, and each
disk group has a set of dynamic disks and volumes. There are additional disks on
the shared SCSI bus that have not been added to a disk group.
If Computer A fails, then Computer B, which is on the same SCSI bus as the
acctdg disk group, can take ownership or control of the disk group and all of its
components.
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Moving disk groups

One of the main benefits of disk groups is that they can be moved between
systems. When you move a disk group from one system to another, all of the SFW
objects within the disk group are moved. You can move a disk group by deporting
and importing the disk group.
Some reasons to move a disk group include:
The host needs to be serviced or has hardware problems.
The data needs to be permanently moved to a new host.
An alternate host can offer better I/O performance.
Moving a disk group: VEA
150 522
To move a dynamic disk group between computers:

1 Deport the disk group on one computer.
2 Rescan the disks on the new computer.
3 Import the disk group.
Note: If you are not working in a SAN, physically remove the disks from the
current system. Move all the disks that are members of the dynamic disk
group at the same time. If the drives are not hot-swappable, it is necessary
to shut down and turn off the computer to remove the drives.

Precautions to observe when moving a dynamic disk group

You may need to reboot: Hot-swappable disks are disks that you can move
between systems without performing a system shutdown. If the disks on your
system are not hot-swappable, you need to shut down the computer in order to
remove or install the drives.
Ensure that the volumes are healthy: Before disconnecting and moving the
disks in a dynamic group, ensure that the disks are online and the volumes are
healthy. If the status is not healthy, repair the volumes before you move the
disks. In some cases, you may need to prepare disks for removal.
Stop all processes: Before you deport a dynamic disk group, you must stop all
processes using volumes existing in the dynamic disk group and all I/O to files.
Otherwise, data written to internal buffers may not be written to disk, resulting
in data loss. Also, back up all data on your volumes before you move disks to
another computer.
Correct failed redundancy: Although it is possible, Symantec does not
recommend that you deport dynamic groups containing volumes that are in a
Failed Redundancy state. If a disk fails during transport between systems or
while being imported, data can be lost for these volumes.
Wait for the import to finish: If you have more than one dynamic disk group
that you intend to move, you must wait for the import or deport to complete
before you can continue with the next import or deport.
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523
Deported a disk group: Overview

A deported disk group is a disk group over which management control has been
surrendered. This means that the objects within the disk group cannot be accessed,
and the disk group configuration cannot be changed. Deporting a disk group makes
a disk group and its volumes unavailable. To resume management of the disk
group, you must import it.
Deporting: Prerequisites
Before deporting a dynamic disk group, ensure that the disks are online and the
volumes are healthy. If the status is not healthy, repair the volumes before you
deport the disk group and move the disks.
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The process of deporting a dynamic disk group puts the contained disks in the
Offline state and all volumes in the Stopped state. This placement applies only
while the dynamic disk group is deported. After an Import Dynamic Disk Group
command is issued, disks come back online and volumes return to the state they
were in at the time they were deported.
It is important to use the Deport Dynamic Disk Group command, especially if
you are moving hot-swappable disks between computers. The Deport Dynamic
Disk Group command stops access to disks. Using this command ensures that the
data has been flushed in a clean state before you move the disks to the other
computer. The Deport Dynamic Disk Group command also clears the host ID of
the computer on which the disk group is located so that it can be imported on
another computer.

Deporting a disk group: VEA
153
Select:
The disk group to be deported
Navigation path:
Actions > Deport Dynamic Disk Group
Input:
The Deport Dynamic Disk Group command also clears the

host ID of the computer on which the disk group is located, so
that it can be imported on another computer.
Group name: Verify the name of the disk group to be
imported.
New name: To change the name of the disk group at import,
type a new disk group name in this field.
Clear host ID: This option clears the existing host ID stamp on
all disks in the disk group at import. Do not use this option if
another host is using any disks in the disk group.
Deport a disk group in preparation for importing it to another computer. Disks and
volumes cannot be accessed until the disk group is imported.
Deporting a disk group: CLI
To deport the disk group, use the vxdg command, as follows:
vxdg -gdiskgroup_name [-f] deport
The -f option forces the disk group to be deported if one or more of its volumes
are still in use.

525
Importing a deported disk group

Importing a disk group reenables access to a deported disk group by bringing the
disk group under SFW control on a new system or on the same system from which
it was deported. After the import command is issued, disks come back online, and
the volumes return to the state they were in at the time of the deport.
Importing and renaming
A deported disk group cannot be imported if another disk group with the same
name has been created since the disk group was deported. You can import and
rename a disk group at the same time. By default, when you import a disk group by
using VEA, all volumes in the disk group are started automatically.
Clearing the host ID
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When you import a dynamic disk group, the system puts its host ID in the private
region of the disks in the disk group. If there is a previous host ID on the disks
because the dynamic disk group has not been deported from its previous host, the
import operation fails. However, you can force the import operation by clearing
the previous host ID while importing the dynamic disk group.

Importing a disk group: VEA

Select:
The disk group to be imported
Navigation path:
Actions > Import Dynamic Disk Group
Input:
Group name: Verify the name of the disk group to be

imported.
New name: To change the name of the disk group at import,
type a new disk group name in this field.
Clear host ID: This option clears the existing host ID stamp on
all disks in the disk group at import. Do not use this option if
another host is using any disks in the disk group.
Importing a disk group: CLI
155
To import a disk group for use on a new computer, use the vxdg command:
vxdg -gdiskgroup_name [-n new_dg_name][-s][-C][-f]
import
-s
Imports the dynamic disk group as a cluster dynamic disk group
-C
Clears the original host ID and stamps a new host ID onto the dynamic disk
group
-f
Forces the disk group to be imported if disks are missing or failed
For example, to import the disk group previously called DynamicGroup and
rename it acctgdg, you type:

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vxdg gDynamicGroup n acctgdg import
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Upgrading a dynamic disk group

If you have upgraded your software, upgrade the disk groups so that they are
compatible with your version of SFW.
Upgrading a disk group: VEA
To upgrade a dynamic disk group:
157
Select:
The disk group to be upgraded
Navigation path:
Actions > Upgrade Dynamic Disk Group Version
Note: You cannot upgrade to a specific disk group version by using VEA. You
can only upgrade to the current version. To upgrade to a specific version,
use the command line.
Upgrading a disk group: CLI
To upgrade a disk group from the command line, use the vxdg upgrade
command, as follows:
vxdg -gdiskgroup_name upgrade

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appendices:

Part 2: Manage and Administer SFW 6.0
159
160

Lesson 6
Implementing Offline and Off-Host

Processing
161
162 62

Offline and off-host processing tasks
163
The common offline and off-host processing (OHP) tasks include:

Data backup: If your business requires high availability, you cannot afford the
downtime involved in backing up critical data offline. By taking a snapshot of
your data and backing up from this snapshot, you can ensure that your
business-critical applications continue to run without extended downtime and
without impacting performance.
Decision support analysis and reporting: Because snapshots hold a point-intime copy of a production database, you can construct a copy of the database
by using snapshots to perform decision support analysis and business
reporting. With FastResync enabled, you can quickly resynchronize the
database copy with the data in the primary database, as needed.
Testing and training: Development or service groups can use snapshots as
test data for new applications. Snapshot data provides developers, system test
engineers, and QA groups with a realistic basis for testing the robustness,
integrity, and performance of new applications.
Database error recovery: Logic errors caused by an administrator or an
application program can compromise the integrity of a database. By restoring
database table files from a snapshot copy with FastResync enabled, you can
recover a database more quickly than by full restoration from tape or other
backup media.

Implementing Offline and Off-Host Processing
63
Offline and off-host processing solutions

FlashSnap is a separately licensable feature that combines several technologies to
perform offline and off-host processing tasks. By integrating the SFW features of
disk group splits and joins, snapshots, and FastResync, you can move data offline
or to another host in order to perform data processing activities, such as backup,
decision support, testing, and database error recovery.
Veritas FlashSnap is a multistep process that enables you to create independently

addressable snapshot volumes that are copies or mirrors of the volumes on your
server. When these snapshots are moved to a remote server, you can use them for
backup and other activities, such as uploading or updating data warehouses or
performing application testing while business continues. Therefore, you can
perform these activities without affecting mission-critical applications on the
original working server.
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Even when FlashSnap is performed on the same server, its very efficient mirror
breakoff and join process is much faster and takes less CPU availability than other
mirror breakoff procedures that use ordinary mirroring. FlashSnap is made
possible by several features in SFW. These features are:
Snapshot commands
Use the Snapshot commands to create the mirrored volumes or snapshots that
are useful for backup or other resource-intensive processing purposes.
Dynamic disk group split and join
Dynamic disk group split and join supports the ability to split a dynamic disk
group into two disk groups so that the newly formed disk group can be moved
to another server. This functionality enables you to split a mirror for backup
and have a separate server handle the backup. After the backup is completed,
the split-off disk group is moved back to the original server and joined to its
former disk group, and the mirror is reassociated with its mirror set and
resynchronized. Dynamic disk group split and join also can be performed on
the same server for same-host backup or for reorganizing the disk groups on
the server.
FastResync
FastResync supports resynchronizing of mirrors by copying only changes for
the temporarily split mirror by using FastResync logging. This reduces the
time that it takes to rejoin a split mirror with the mirror set and also reduces the
server CPU cycles needed to complete the resynchronization.
These features are necessary for the FlashSnap procedure, but they can also be
used for other, more general purposes. However, to use these commands, you must
purchase the license that enables FlashSnap.
Note: Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management disk group do
not support snapshot commands and dynamic disk group split and join
operations.

Off-host processing: Overview
Implementing online backup or decision support has three general phases:

Phase 1: Create, split, and deport.
On the primary host, create a snapshot volume, split it into a separate disk
group, and deport the disk group.
Phase 2: Import, process, and deport.
On another host, import the disk group containing the snapshot volume and
perform off-host processing. When you have completed your off-host
processing tasks, deport the disk group.
Phase 3: Import, join, and resynchronize.
On the primary host, bring the snapshot volume back by rejoining the disk
groups and resynchronize the volumes.
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These OHP phases are covered in greater detail throughout the lesson.

65
Creating a volume snapshot
Creating a volume snapshot provides a method for using data contained in a

volume with minimal interruption to users. A volume snapshot is an exact copy, or
temporary mirror, of a volume at a specific point in time.
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How do you create a snapshot volume?

1 Create a temporary mirror of an existing volume (Prepare): Creating the
temporary mirror may take a long time, depending on the size of the volume.
The copy procedure used by SFW produces an atomic copy, which is similar to
a full backup of the volume.
2 Detach the mirror from the volume and place it into a new volume
(Snapshot): The new volume is called a snapshot volume. The snapshot
volume is an exact copy of the original volume at the time the snapshot phase
begins.
3 Use the snapshot: You can do this at a convenient time.
After you use the snapshot, you have three options. You can:
Reassociate a snapshot volume with its original volume by using the
snapback feature (Snap back).
Permanently break the link between the snapshot and the original volume
by using the snapclear feature. This procedure is called disassociating a
snapshot volume (Snap clear).
Remove the snapshot volume (Snap abort).

Creating a temporary mirror: VEA
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Select:
The volume to be copied to a snapshot
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Snap > Prepare.
Input:
Do not use existing mirror for snap: You see this option if you
already have a mirrored volume. A dialog box to select disks is
displayed next.
Select existing mirror for snap: You see this option if you
already have a mirrored volume. If you select an existing mirror
to be used for the snapshot mirror, the command completes at
this point.
After the Prepare command completes, a new snapshot mirror is attached to the
volume. For example, if Vol01 (H:) has a snapshot mirror attached to it, the
new mirror is added to the Mirrors tab for the volume. In this example, the mirror
is identified as a snapshot mirror and has the Snapshot icon. After the snapshot
mirror is synchronized with the volume, its status becomes Snap Ready.
Note: The Prepare command replaces the Snap Start command in VEA and the
CLI.
In this example, the disk change object (DCO) log is created by the Prepare
command. The DCO volume is created to track the regions on a volume that are
changed while a mirror is detached. The DCO volume is not included in the tree
view of the VEA because it is not a usable volume for user data. To view the DCO

67
volume, you must use the Disk View. To access the Disk View, click the Disk
View tab in the right pane or select Disk View or DCO from a disks or volumes
context menu.
Note: The terms disk change object and data change object are synonymous.
Creating a temporary mirror: CLI
You can create volume snapshots from the command line by using the vxassist
command.
To run vxassist prepare to create a snapshot mirror on the volume to be
backed up, the syntax is:
vxassist [-b] prepare volume_name|drive_letter
[plex=mirror_plex_name|disk_name]
If you specify the plex option as a mirror plex in the command, SFW converts a
specified mirror plex to a snap plex. This plex can be the plex name (such as
Volume2-01) or the GUID of the mirror plex. A GUID is a unique internal number
assigned to the plex. To determine the GUID for a given plex, use the vxvol -v
volinfo command for the mirrored volume that contains the plex.
If you specify the plex option as a disk, SFW creates the new snapshot on the
specified disk.
The vxassist prepare task creates a write-only mirror, which is attached to
and synchronized with the volume.
When fully synchronized, the mirror is used in the volume in the same way as any
other mirror. The mirror becomes part of the volume read policy, and all writes
also go to the mirror.
The mirror is ready to be used as a snapshot mirror. However, the mirror continues
to be updated until it is detached during the actual snapshot phase of the procedure.
168 68
Note: You can also use the volume shadow copy service (VSS) for SFW using
vxsnap to create snapshots. See the Veritas Storage Foundation for
Windows Administrators Guide for more information.

Detaching the mirror: VEA
169
Select:
The snapshot volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Snap > Snap Shot.
Input:
Automatic mirror selection: Leave this button selected to have

SFW select the mirror automatically.
Manual mirror selection: Select this button if there are multiple
mirrors and you want to select the mirror to be used. You can
then select the mirror from the list on the screen.
Drive letter option: You can accept the programs assignment of
the drive letter, use the pull-down menu to select another drive
letter, or not assign a drive letter.
The snapshot mirror is detached from the original volume, and a new volume is
created that is associated with the snapshot mirror. This process usually takes less
than a minute.
The snapshot mirror is no longer displayed on the Mirrors tab for the original
volume.
The new snapshot volume is displayed under the Volumes folder in the tree view.
The program assigns it the next available drive letter. In the example on the slide,
the new snapshot volume is shown as a drive letter.

69
Detaching the mirror: CLI

Run vxassist snapshot to create the snapshot volume. This task detaches
the snapshot mirror from the original volume, creates a new volume, and attaches
the snapshot mirror to the snapshot volume. The snapshot then becomes a regular,
functioning volume.
To detach the snapshot volume, the syntax is:
vxassist snapshot volume_name|drive_letter
[plex=snap_plex_name|!disk_name]
[DriveLetter=letter|DrivePath=path] [snap_volume_name]
For example, to detach the snapshot mirror from volume E and create a new
volume H, you type:
vxassist snapshot E: DriveLetter=H
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Reassociating a snapshot volume: VEA

Select:
The snapshot volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Snap > Snap Back.
Input:
Resynchronize using the original volume: Specify if you want

the snapshot volume to be resynchronized to the original volume.
Resynchronize using the snapshot: Specify if you want the
original volume to be resynchronized to the snapshot volume.
The snapshot plex is detached from the snapshot volume and attached to the
original volume. The data in the volume is resynchronized so that the plexes are
consistent and the snapshot volume is removed. By default, the data in the original
plex is used for the merged volume.
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Reassociating a snapshot volume: CLI

To reassociate a snapshot volume, the syntax is:
vxassist [-o resyncfromreplica] snapback
snap_volume_name|drive_letter
For example, to join the snapshot volume H back to the original volume, you type:
vxassist snapback H:

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Disassociating a snapshot volume: VEA

Select:
The snapshot volume
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Snap > Snap Clear.
Input:
In the dialog box that prompts you to confirm the snapclear

operation for the specified volume, click Yes.
This permanently breaks the association between a snapshot and its original
volume. The snapshot volume becomes an independent volume. The original
volume returns to the state that it was in before the Prepare command was
executed. Dissociating a snapshot is one method that you can use to keep a
permanent image of a volume for storage.
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Disassociating a snapshot volume: CLI

To dissociate a snapshot from its original volume, the syntax is:
vxassist snapclear snap_volume_name|drive_letter
For example, to clear the association between the snapshot volume H and the
original volume, you type:
vxassist snapclear H:

Deleting a snapshot volume: VEA

After you have backed up or processed your data and you have determined that the
snapshot volume is no longer needed, you can delete the snapshot volume to avoid
wasting space.
Snap Abort aborts the changes made by the Prepare or Snap Back command. In
both these commands, a snapshot mirror plex is attached to a volume. Snap Abort
either deletes this snapshot mirror plex or converts the snapshot mirror plex to an
ordinary mirror. In cases where the deleted snap plex is the last snap plex and the
resulting volume is simple or striped, the Snap Abort command also deletes the
DCO log volume. The command cannot be performed directly after a Snap Shot
command.
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Deleting a snapshot volume is the same as deleting a regular volume. To delete a

volume, right-click the designated volume and select Delete Volume.
Deleting a snapshot volume: CLI
Use the vxassist abort command to delete a snapshot volume.
vxassist snapabort volume_name|drive_letter
You can also remove the volume by using the vxassist remove volume
command. To remove the volume, the syntax is:
vxassist remove [volume|mirror|log]
volume_name|drive_letter [plex=plex_name|!disk_name]

613
Performing dynamic disk group split and join

You can reorganize the contents of disk groups by moving SFW objects from one
disk group to another. You can move whole volumes and disks between disk
groups, split entire volumes and disks between disk groups, and join disk groups.
Disk group split and join
Dynamic Disk Group Split And Join (DGSJ) refers to two related commands:
Split Dynamic Disk Group and Join Dynamic Disk Group.
What is a dynamic disk group split?
174 614
In a dynamic disk group split operation, you use the Split Dynamic Disk Group
command to split a dynamic disk group into two dynamic disk groups. You can
move a self-contained set of SFW objects from one imported disk group to a new
target disk group that is created as part of the operation. In order to perform a split
operation, the source disk group must exist, and the target disk group must not
exist.
With the Split Dynamic Disk Group command, you can take some but not all of
the disks from one dynamic disk group to another. The source dynamic disk group
retains its identity as the original, while the other dynamic disk group, called the
target disk group, becomes a new dynamic disk group.

The Split Dynamic Disk Group command assumes that the split-off disk group
contains all disks that are needed to make the volumes in the new disk group
complete. If the disks that you select to split the disk group results in incomplete
volumes, the logic built into the command adds the remaining disks needed to split
the disk group with complete volumes.
What is a dynamic disk group join?
In a disk group join operation, you use the Join Dynamic Disk Group command
to join two dynamic disk groups into one merged disk group. You can join two disk
groups that were originally split apart with the Split Dynamic Disk Group
command, but you can also join two dynamic disk groups that started out as
separate disk groups.
You can move all SFW objects from an imported source disk group to an imported
target disk group, and then the source disk group is removed when the join is
complete. The target disk group must exist in order to perform the join.
Reorganization and accessibility
In dynamic disk group split or join operations, volumes that are being relocated
into a different disk group are temporarily inaccessible during the process.
Therefore, before moving volumes between disk groups, you must stop all
applications that are accessing the volumes and unmount all file systems that are
configured in the volumes.
Before reorganizing disk groups
Before you reorganize disk groups, ensure that the following requirements are met:
Primary dynamic disk groups cannot be split because dynamic disk groups can
contain the computers boot and system disks.
The objects involved must be top-level objects, such as disks or volumes.
When you perform the operation, all component objects, such as plexes and
subdisks, are affected.
The objects involved must be self-contained objects. You cannot share a disk,
or a volume, between disk groups at any time.
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What cannot be moved between disk groups?

You cannot move:
Open volumes: You cannot move open dynamic volumes in the split
operation. Before moving volumes between disk groups, stop all applications
that are accessing the volumes.
Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) volumes: You cannot move VVR objects
between disk groups. A volume under replication cannot be part of the
volumes that are split off to the target disk group. A join operation is not
allowed if the source disk group has any VVR objects.
DCOs: DCOs and snap objects that have been dissociated by persistent
FastResync cannot be moved between disk groups.

615
Splitting a disk group: VEA
Before performing a split or join operation, stop all applications that are accessing
the volumes and ensure that the volumes to be split are healthy. Similarly, ensure
that any disks to be split do not have a Missing status.
176 616
Select:
The dynamic disk group that you want to split
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Split Dynamic Disk Group.
Input:
The new dynamic disk group name: The name is limited to 18

characters.
Split dynamic disk group by disks: When you select to split
by disks, disks are displayed in the panes in the lower section of
the window.
Split dynamic disk group by volumes: If you choose to split
by volumes, volumes are displayed instead of disks.
Available disks: Select the disks or volumes that you want to
split.
If the dynamic disk group split is successful, you are able to view the new target
dynamic disk group in the tree view and in the right pane of the console. By
default, the new target disk group is in the Imported state if you use the VEA to
perform the split. If the Split Dynamic Disk Group command fails, an error
dialog box is displayed showing the reason for the failure. The Dynamic Disk
Group Split operation fails if the target disk group already exists or if a problem
occurs when the split operation is taking place.

Splitting a disk group: CLI

To split dynamic disk group contents from the command line using the vxdg
split command, the syntax is:
vxdg -gsource_diskgroup -n target_diskgroup [-i] [-s]
[-y] [-v] split [object]
In the syntax:
-i
Causes the new dynamic disk group to be in the Imported state
-s
Makes the new dynamic disk group a cluster dynamic disk group
-y
Queries for the split closure
-v
Splits all disks in the dynamic disk group that contain snapshot volumes
object
Specifies a disk or volume, or a drive letter

You can split either by disks or volumes. This option is not needed when
using the -v option.
Note: If you use the command line to execute the split, the new target disk group
is in the Deported state by default. This is because it is assumed that you
want to deport the disk group, and then import it on another computer.
Examples
For example, you can query to determine whether Harddisk5 and Harddisk7 in a
dynamic disk group named Dynamic1 compose the total disks that are needed to
have a dynamic disk group split, where all the volumes in the split-off dynamic
disk group are complete.
To query for the split closure, you type:
vxdg -gDynamic1 -y -n Dynamic1 split Harddisk5
Harddisk7
The output of the command is:
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Following is the Closure for the requested Split operation.

Names of the Disks are....
Harddisk7
Harddisk5
Harddisk6
Names of the Volumes are....
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\Dynamic1\Volume1
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\Dynamic1\Stripe1
The output indicates that in order to have a successful split, or what is called split
closure, you must also add Harddisk6. To perform the actual split, you type:
vxdg -gDynamic1 -i -n Dynamic2 split Harddisk5
Harddisk6 Harddisk7

617
This command successfully splits the Dynamic1 dynamic disk group with the
target Dynamic2 dynamic disk group in the Imported state. The new dynamic disk
group has the Harddisk5, Harddisk6, and Harddisk7 disks.
In the example that follows, you designate the volumes to be included in a new
target disk group by typing:
vxdg -gDynamic1 -i -n Dynamic2 split
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\Dynamic1\mirrorvol1
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\Dynamic1\mirrorvol2
Note the path that is needed for volumes.
This command results in successfully splitting the Dynamic1 dynamic disk group
with the Dynamic2 target dynamic disk group in the Imported state. The new
dynamic disk group contains the
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\Dynamic2\mirrorvol1 and
\Device\HarddiskDmVolumes\Dynamic2\mirrorvol2 volumes.
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Joining a disk group: VEA

When you join two dynamic disk groups, the disk group that you designate as the
source is the one that loses its identity in the merge. The target dynamic disk group
is the one that remains after the merge.
SFW requires that the volumes transferred to another disk group must be
complete; that is, the source disk group cannot have missing disks. The disk group
type after the join is the type of the target disk group. For example, if the target
disk group before the join had private dynamic disk group protection, it has private
dynamic disk group protection after the join.
179
Select:
One of the disk groups that you want to join together
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Join Dynamic Disk Group.
Input:
Source dynamic disk group: This is the disk group that is

merged with the target dynamic disk group. The source disk
group ceases to exist after the join.
Target dynamic disk group: This is the disk group that
remains after the join. This disk group retains its identity and
becomes larger with the addition of the disks from the source
disk group.
If the join operation succeeds, the source dynamic disk group merges into the
target dynamic disk group. If you see an error message, the new dynamic disk
group after the join command has the same type as the target dynamic disk group.
For example, if a cluster dynamic disk group is joined with a normal dynamic disk
group, then the new dynamic disk group is a normal dynamic disk group.

619
Joining a dynamic disk group: CLI

To join dynamic disk group contents using the vxdg join command, the syntax
is:
vxdg -gsource_diskgroup -n target_diskgroup [-p] join
The -p option enables a partial join. Even if some disks are missing or
nonfunctional in the source dynamic disk group, the join command still works.
When the missing disks come back to an online state, then you need to perform
another Join Dynamic Disk Group command to add the missing disks to the
target disk group.
Note: If you have a partial join in place, you must wait until the missing disks are
joined to the target disk group before making the following configuration
changes to either the source or target disk group: replace or evacuate a disk,
split or move a subdisk, extend a volume, add a mirror, and clear hot
relocation. Doing so before all disks are joined can result in data loss.
For example, to join Dynamic2 back into Dynamic1, you type:
vxdg -gDynamic2 -n Dynamic1 join
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Enabling fast resynchronization

What is FastResync?
FastResync (FR) is anSFW feature that speeds up the resynchronization of mirrors
in a volume. FastResync performs quick and efficient resynchronization of stale
mirrors by increasing the efficiency of the SFW snapshot mechanism to better
support operations, such as backup and decision support.
Resynchronization: Optimizes the resynchronization of a mirror that is
detached from, and then is returned to, a volume
Reconnection: Extends the snapshot model by providing the ability to refresh
and reuse a snapshot, rather than discarding it
6
How does FastResync work?
181
FastResync is based on the fact that if a mirror becomes unavailable, some or all of
the data that is on the disk can still be valid. The FastResync feature keeps track of
mirrors that have been detached and the updates that were applied when the
mirrors were unavailable. A bitmap, called a FastResync map, is used to track
changes.
By keeping track of updates missed when a mirror was offline, and then applying
only those updates when the mirror is back online, you can reduce
resynchronization times. The time it takes to recover a mirror depends on the
amount of change that occurred when the mirror was offline.

621
FastResync is automatically enabled for a volume when the prepare operation is

performed on the volume. If FastResync is enabled for a volume, then delta
tracking occurs whenever a mirror has been detached from its volume, either
automatically (by SFW, as the result of an error), or directly by an administrator
(by an SFW utility, such as vxassist).
You can enable or disable FastResync on a per-volume basis. When you enable
FastResync for a volume, a DCO volume is created to track the regions on a
volume that are changed while a mirror is detached.
Only a limited subset of operations is permitted on a DCO volume. You can
perform a subdisk move, or add and remove a mirror.
How does FastResync improve snapshot efficiency?
FastResync enables you to refresh and reuse snapshots, rather than discarding the
snapshots. With FastResync, you can quickly reassociate a snapshot volume with
its original volume. This reduces the system overhead required to perform cyclical
operations, such as backups, that rely on snapshot functionality, and also reduces
the resynchronization time during the snapback phase of the snapshot.
Resynchronization
FastResync keeps track of data store updates missed by mirrors that are
unavailable at the time that the updates are applied to a volume. When a mirror
returns to service, FastResync resynchronizes the mirror with the volume by
applying only the updates missed by that mirror while it was detached. This
method generally takes less time than the traditional method of copying the entire
data store to the returning mirror.
If you want FastResync to resynchronize a mirror, FastResync must be enabled for

the volume before the mirror is detached and must continue to be enabled until
after the mirror is reattached and resynchronized. However, if you are using any of
the snapshot commands, FastResync is automatically turned on.
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Although both FastResync and dirty region logging (DRL) keep track of regions
on a volume where the mirrors are not synchronized, they perform different
functions. FastResync keeps track of data store updates missed by a detached
mirror, while DRL keeps track of whether a write to a mirrored volume has been
completed on all mirrors. The write region on the volume is considered dirty
because the mirrors are out of synchronization until the write to all mirrors is
completed. Use DRL to resynchronize mirrors following a system crash.

Enabling and disabling FastResync: VEA

For FastResync to be active when a mirror is reattached and resynchronized with
its associated volume, FastResync must be enabled before the mirror is detached
and remain enabled until the mirror has been reattached and resynchronized with
the volume. You can access FastResync commands from the command line or
from the VEA.
Note: If you are using snapshot commands, you do not need to use the following
steps, because FastResync is automatically enabled for snapshot
commands. These steps are needed only when you want to enable
FastResync on a volume that will not be used with any snapshot
commands.
183
To enable FastResync for a volume, select the mirrored volume for which you
want to enable FastResync and select Actions > FastResync > Add.
To disable FastResync for a volume, select the mirrored volume for which you
want to disable FastResync and select Actions > FastResync > Remove.
Enabling and disabling FastResync: CLI
To enable or disable FastResync, use the vxvol command. This command turns
FastResync on or off for the specified mirrored volume. The syntax to enable or
disable FastResync is as follows:
vxvol set fastresync=on|off volume_name|drive_letter

623
Note: If you have initiated a snapshot operation on a volume, you cannot turn
FastResync off for that volume. If you try to do so, the command-line
interface returns an error message.
For example, to turn the FastResync feature on for the volume with drive letter J,
you type:
vxvol set fastresync=on J:
To turn the FastResync feature on for Volume1, which belongs to DynDskGrp1,
type:
vxvol set fastresync=on

\Device\HarddiskDMVolumes\DynDskGrp1\Volume1
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DCO volume
The DCO volume is created when you enable FastResync or when a snapshot
operation is started. The DCO volume keeps track of the changes made to a
volume while a mirror is detached. The DCO volume is not visible in the tree view
in the left pane of the VEA. This volume is visible in the Disk View (when Volume
Details is not selected).
185
You can perform two optional operations on a DCO volume:

Add or remove a mirror: You can add a mirror to the DCO volume and
remove a mirror from it. You may want to add a mirror to a DCO volume to
have a backup copy of the DCO volume.
Move a subdisk: You can move the DCO volume and the mirrored subdisk
associated with it to another disk with the Subdisk Move command. You may
want to move a DCO volume and the mirrored subdisk associated with it to
another disk if something happens to the original disk, or you may prefer to
have this subdisk on another disk to split the disk group differently. The DCO
volume and the mirrored subdisk associated with it must be moved to a disk in
the same disk group.

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Fast File Resync

Fast File Resync (FFR) uses Veritas FastResync technology to resynchronize one
or more files in a snapshot volume back to the original volume. FFR is designed
for database applications using volumes with multiple database files and can be
used to restore one or more corrupt files. A snapback command that
resynchronizes the split-mirror snapshot back to the original files is performed
only for the selected files. Other databases do not have to be taken offline during
the FFR process, and the entire volume is not resynchronized. FFR restores the
files on the original volume but does not bring the database to a current state.
Note: It is important to wait until the FFR process is complete before accessing
and using the restored file. Data corruption can occur if the file is used
before the resynchronization is complete.
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Requirements for FFR

The following prerequisites must be met for a successful FFR resynchronization of
a file:
The names and creation times of the snapshot and original files are identical.
The file is formatted using NTFS.
The file is not compressed.
The file is not encrypted.
There are no open handles on either file.

Using Fast File Resync: VEA

Select:
The original volume containing the missing or corrupted file
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Fast File Resync.
Input:
Select file to resync: Browse to the corrupted file you want to

resynchronize.
Snap list: Select the snapshot from the list. A snapshot volume
must have either a drive letter or a mount point assigned for it to
be available for selection from the Snap list in the Fast File
Resync window.
Using Fast File Resync: CLI
187
The CLI command does not support resynchronization of multiple files. To use
Fast File Resync to resynchronize a single file in a snapshot volume to the original
volume, the format of the command is as follows:
vxfsync -gdiskgroup_name -m master_volume -s
snap_volume -f file_name
The vxfsync command is only available from the Storage Foundation folder
found at the following path: Program Files\Veritas\Veritas Volume
Manager.
For example, to use the snapshot volume, vol1_snap01, to resynchronize or restore
the test.dat file on the master or original volume, vol1, you type:
vxfsync -gtestdg -m vol1 -s vol1_snap01 -f test.dat

627
Implementing off-host processing
This section provides an outline of how to apply off-host processing by using the
FlashSnap procedure, which is a combination of the snapshot, FastResync, and
disk group split and join features of SFW. You can use this outline to set up a
regular backup cycle or to set up a replica of a production database for decision
support purposes. Configuring a database and performing the backup itself are
beyond the scope of this course.
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189
Phase 1: Create, split, and deport

1 Use the Prepare command to attach a snapshot mirror to a volume on the
working server.
This step of creating the snapshot mirror of the volume and resynchronizing it
to the volume takes considerable time, but you must perform it only one time
for the initial setup.
2 If the original volume contains database tables in a file system, suspend
updates to the volume.
You may need to stop the service (Exchange and SQL) and wait until all
changes to all plexes are synchronized. (Exchange and SQL can be
automatically quiesced with VSS on Windows 2008.)
The database (Oracle) may have a hot backup mode that enables you to do
this by temporarily suspending writes to its tables.
3 Use the Snap Shot command to automatically detach the snapshot mirror and
create a new volume that is associated with the snapshot mirror.
You can use this new volume, which is also called a snapshot, for backup or
other purposes. The snapshot process typically takes less than 20 seconds.
4 Restart the application service or release all the tables from hot backup mode.
5 Split the new volume from its dynamic disk group with the Split Dynamic Disk
Group command, creating a new dynamic disk group on the server.
6 Deport the new dynamic disk group from the original server.
If you do not have a SAN where you can access the deported dynamic disk
group from the second server, move the split-off dynamic disk group by
physically moving its disks and connecting them to the second server.

629
190 630
Phase 2: Import, process, and deport

7 Rescan the second server so that the computer recognizes the split-off dynamic
disk group.
8 Import the dynamic disk group onto the second server where the backup or
other off-host processing is to occur.
9 Perform the off-host processing activities:
If you are performing an online backup, then back up the file system using
your backup utilities and methods.
If you are performing decision support activity, then issue the appropriate
database commands to recover and start the replica database for its
decision-support role.
10 Deport the dynamic disk group from the second server.
If you do not have a SAN where you can access the deported dynamic disk
group from the original server, physically move the split-off disk groups disks
back to the original server.

Phase 3: Import, join, and resynchronize

11 Rescan the original server so that the server recognizes the split-off dynamic
disk group.
Note: You do not need to import the dynamic disk group back to the original
server.
12 Use the Join Dynamic Disk Group command to join the split-off dynamic disk
group back to its original dynamic disk group.
13 Join the mirrored volume (or snapshot) back to its original volume by using the
191
Snap Back command.

The mirrored volume is now resynchronized to the data source and continually
updated.

631
192 632
appendices:

Lesson 7
Using Recovery Features
193
194 72

Monitoring objects and events

SFW error symbols
When a problem occurs in a computers storage subsystem, SFW alerts you with
error messages and error symbols placed on top of the disk or volume icons to
show the source of the problem.
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73
Disk status tags

If a disk fails, it is important to repair or replace the disk as quickly as possible.
Disk failure puts a volume in dangerif a critical number of disks in the volume
fail, the volume at least goes offline, causing a service interruption. If the disk
failure is permanent, irrecoverable data loss can occur, as well. The time between
the first disk failure and permanent volume failure is called a recovery window.
Because this time is critical, SFW enables you to locate and address problems
quickly.
You can locate these problems using the Status column of the Disks View tab or
Volumes View tab. You can also see indications of abnormal status in the tree view
or the Disk View tab. If the status is not Healthy for volumes, Imported for
dynamic disks, or Online for disks, you need to determine if there is a problem,
and, if necessary, correct it.
196 74
You can display the status of basic and dynamic disks by selecting the Disks node
in the left pane of the VEA. In the Disks tab in the right pane, disk status tags are
displayed under the Status column.

Volume status tags
You can display the status of basic and dynamic volumes by selecting the Volumes
node in the left pane of the console. You can view the status of all volumes by
clicking the Volumes folder in the left pane. In the General tab, volume status
tags are displayed under the Status column.
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75
Event notification
SFW provides event notification by SMTP e-mail, by pager, and through SNMP
traps that can be displayed in any trap receiver, such as HP OpenView, CA
Unicenter, and IBM Tivoli.
You can configure the notification service to send messages to specific individuals,
to groups, or to a management console in the case of SNMP traps. The event
notification service is implemented through SFWs Rule Management utility. If
you want to set up event notification, you must use the Rule Management utility to
set up rules that send out notifications after certain events occur. You access the
Rule Management utility through SFWs Control Panel.
If you want to send notification messages by SMTP e-mail or pager, your first step
in configuring the notification service is to set up the SMTP mail server.
198 76
In addition to the events listed in SFW, Windows also provides SFW entries in the
Event Viewer Windows Server logs. Many enterprises use products to look at these
OS logs to notify users of problems.

Creating rules
Creating rules involves the following steps:
1 In the Perspective bar, select the Control Panel. The Rule Manager icon is
displayed. Double-click the icon.
Note: The Perspective bar is located at the far left of the console, and it provides
quick access to different perspectives (views) of the system to which you
are connected.
In the Rule Manager window, click New Rule to start the New Rule wizard.
3 Follow the wizard prompts to perform the following:
a Select the type of rule you want to create. You have two options:
Create a rule for certain alerts that you identify by name.
Create a rule for all alerts that have a particular severity and/or
classification.
b Configure one or more actions to be taken when the events are detected:
Send email notifications.
Send SNMP trap notifications.
Execute a command.
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77
Configuring SMTP for e-mail notification
Configuring SMTP involves the following steps:

1 In the Perspective bar, select the Control Panel. Select SMTP Configuration
in the right pane.
2 Type the requested information and click OK.
200 78

Displaying alerts
SFW maintains an alert log that is used to report application events, also known as
alerts. The Alert Log displays messages associated with the selected objects. The
listing of events can help you identify significant incidents, such as a disk failure
or a disk addition.
Click the Logs tab in the Perspective bar to display the alert logs. For each alert
listed, you can see information about the date and time of the message, the
message text, and its class.
Severity levels
201
Alerts listed in the Alert Log have four severity levels:

Critical: Indicates alerts of high importance involving a system crash or
unrecoverable data loss
Error: Indicates a loss of functionality or data
Warning: Indicates recoverable errors and no data corruption
Information: Indicates an informational event, when a new disk has been
added to the system
You can configure the Alert Log through the Log Settings dialog box. To access
this dialog box, select the Control Panel Perspective, select the host to which you
are connected, and double-click the Log Settings icon in the right pane. Specify
the maximum file size for the log.
Note: The Task Log is not implemented.

79
Maintaining data consistency

What is resynchronization?
Data is written to the mirrors of a volume in parallel. If a system crash occurs
before all the individual writes complete, some writes may complete while other
writes do not. This functionality can cause two reads from the same region of the
volume to return different results if different mirrors are used to satisfy the read
request. SFW uses volume resynchronization processes to ensure that all copies of
the data match exactly.
SFW records when a volume is first written to and marks it as dirty. When a
volume is closed by all processes or stopped cleanly by the administrator, all
writes have been completed, and SFW removes the dirty flag for the volume. Only
volumes that are marked dirty when the system reboots require resynchronization.
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Not all volumes require resynchronization after a system failure. Volumes that
were never written or that had no active I/O when the system failure occurred do
not require resynchronization.
Two types of resynchronization:
Atomic-copy resynchronization refers to the sequential writing of all blocks of
the volume to a plex. This operation is used anytime a new mirror is added to a
volume, or an existing mirror is in stale mode and has to be resynchronized.
Read-writeback resynchronization makes all plexes identical by alternately
copying regions between plexes.

Minimizing the impact of resynchronization
The process of resynchronization can impact system performance and can take
time. To minimize the performance impact of resynchronization, SFW offers the
following solutions:
Dirty region logging (DRL) for mirrored volumes
RAID-5 logging for RAID-5 volumes
FastResync for mirrored and snapshot volumes
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711
Dirty region logging

You were introduced to dirty region logging when you created a volume with a log.
This section describes how dirty region logging works.
How does DRL work?
DRL logically divides a volume into a set of consecutive regions and keeps track
of the regions to which writes occur. A log is maintained that contains a status bit
representing each region of the volume. For any write operation to the volume, the
regions being written are marked dirty in the log before the data is written.
204 712
If a write causes a log region to become dirty when it was previously clean, the log
is synchronously written to disk before the write operation can occur. On system
restart, SFW recovers only those regions of the volume that are marked as dirty in
the dirty region log.
Log subdisks store the dirty region log of a volume that has DRL enabled. With
regard to log subdisks:
Only one log subdisk can exist per plex.
Multiple log subdisks can be used to mirror the dirty region log.
If a plex contains a log subdisk and no data subdisks, it is called a log plex.
Only a limited number of bits can be marked dirty in the log at any time. The dirty
bit for a region is not cleared immediately after writing the data to the region;
instead, it remains marked as dirty until the corresponding volume region becomes
the least-recently used.

Dirty region log size

SFW selects an appropriate dirty region log size based on the volume size.
In the dirty region log:

A small number of bytes of the DRL is reserved for internal use. The
remaining bytes are used for the DRL bitmap.
The bytes are divided into two bitmaps: an active bitmap and a recovery
bitmap.
Each bit in the active bitmap maps to a single region of the volume.
A maximum of 2048 dirty regions per system is allowed by default.
205
The number of regions that can be dirty at any one time is maintained in a linked
list in memory. The maximum number of dirty regions maintained in the list is
2048. The oldest region is cleared based on elapsed time.
How the bitmaps are used in dirty region logging
Both bitmaps are zeroed when the volume is started initially, after a clean
shutdown. As regions transition to dirty, the log is flushed before the writes to the
volume occur.
If the system crashes, the active map performs a logical OR (Boolean) operation
with the recovery map.
Mirror resynchronization is now limited to the dirty bits in the recovery map.
The active map is reset simultaneously, and normal volume I/O is permitted.
Using two bitmaps in this fashion allows SFW to handle multiple system crashes.

713
Configuration backup and restore

Configuration backup preserves the private region of disks and disk groups so that
the stored data may be recovered after disk corruption. Configuration backup only
backs up the configuration of disk groups that are online. Any offline or deported
disk groups are not processed by this operation.
The vxcbr utility is the CLI equivalent. vxcbr provides the ability for users to
back up and restore their SFW configuration. This utility does not back up and
restore user data; it stores only the SFW configuration data, that is, the disk group
and logical volume layout on a server.
206 714

Managing hot relocation at the host level

What is hot relocation?
Hot relocation is a feature of SFW that enables a system to automatically react to
I/O failures on redundant (mirrored or RAID-5) SFW objects and restore
redundancy and access to those objects. SFW detects I/O failures on objects and
relocates the affected subdisks. The subdisks are relocated to disks that are
designated as spare disks or to free space within the disk group. SFW then
reconstructs the objects that existed before the failure and makes them redundant
and accessible again.
Partial disk failure
207
When a partial disk failure occurs (that is, a failure affecting only some subdisks
on a disk), redundant data on the failed portion of the disk is relocated. Existing
volumes on the unaffected portions of the disk remain accessible. With partial disk
failure, the disk is not removed from SFW control and is labeled as FAILING,
rather than as FAILED. Before removing a FAILING disk for replacement, you
must evacuate any remaining volumes on the disk.
Note: Hot relocation is only performed for redundant (mirrored) subdisks on a
failed disk. Nonredundant subdisks on a failed disk are not relocated, but
the system administrator is notified of the failure.

715
The hot-relocation process
The hot-relocation feature is enabled by default. No system administrator action is

needed to start hot relocation when a failure occurs.
208 716
A successful hot-relocation process involves:

1 Failure detection: Detecting the failure of a disk or subdisk
2 Notification: Writing an entry to the Event log and, if configured, sending
notification to designated users identifying the affected SFW objects
3 Relocation: Determining which subdisks can be relocated, finding space for
those subdisks in the disk group, and relocating the subdisks
(The system administrator is notified of the success or failure of these actions.
Hot relocation does not guarantee the same layout of data or the same
performance after relocation.)
4 Recovery: Initiating resynchronization procedures, if necessary, to restore all
plexes to a consistent state

How is space selected for relocation?
When relocating subdisks, SFW attempts to select a destination disk with the
fewest differences from the failed disk. SFW:
1 Attempts to relocate to the same controller, target, and device as the failed
drive
2 Attempts to relocate to the same controller and target, but to a different device
3 Attempts to relocate to the same controller, but to any target and any device
4 Attempts to relocate to a different controller
5 Potentially scatters the subdisks to different disks
209
A spare disk must have a signature written to it and be placed in a disk group as a
spare before it can be used for replacement purposes.
Hot relocation attempts to move all subdisks from a failing drive to a single
spare destination disk, if possible.
If no disks have been designated as spares, SFW automatically uses any
available free space in the disk group not currently on a disk used by the
volume.
If there is not enough spare disk space, a combination of spare disk space and
free space is used. Free space that you exclude from hot relocation is not used.
In all cases, hot relocation attempts to relocate subdisks to a spare in the same disk
group, which is physically closest to the failing or failed disk.
When hot relocation occurs, the failed subdisk is removed from the configuration
database. The disk space used by the failed subdisk is not recycled as free space.

717
Enabling Hot Relocation Mode
The default for SFW is to have automatic Hot Relocation Mode active. This means
that if an I/O error occurs in a redundant subdisk, only that subdisk is
automatically relocated to another disk. The option to disable automatic hot
relocation mode is available from the Control Panel.
210 718

Managing spare disks
When you add a disk to a disk group, you can specify that the disk be added to the
pool of spare disks that are available to the hot-relocation feature of SFW. Any
disk in the same disk group can use the spare disk. Try to provide at least one hotrelocation spare disk per disk group. While designated as a spare, a disk is not used
in creating volumes unless you specifically name the disk on the command line.
211
Select:
A disk
Navigation Path:
Select Actions > Set Disk Usage.
Input:
Preferred Hot Relocation Target: SFW first looks for space

on disks marked as preferred hot-relocation targets.
Secondary Hot Relocation Target: If there are no disks
selected as preferred targets or if there is no space available on
those disks, SFW chooses space on disks marked as secondary
targets.
Not used as a Hot Relocation Target: This option does not
allow any hot-relocated subdisks to be moved to the selected
disks.
Unrelocating a disk
The Undo Hot Relocation command is available only after a hot relocation or hot
sparing procedure has occurred. This command relocates subdisks back to their
repaired original disk or replacement disk. This command also restores a system to
its original configuration, less any failed volumes.

719
If hot relocation has scattered subdisks from a failed disk to several disks within a
dynamic disk group, the Undo Hot Relocation command moves all of the
subdisks back to a single disk without requiring you to find and move each subdisk
individually.
Select:
The dynamic disk group that contains the hot-relocated

volumes
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Undo Hot Relocation.

Note: This option is only available after hot relocation or hot
sparing has occurred.
Input:
Select the disk that contained the subdisks before relocation

occurred.
It is not possible to return relocated subdisks to their original disks if their disk
groups relocation information has been cleared.
212 720

Troubleshooting disk replacement and recovered volumes
Disk replacement tasks
213
Replacing a failed or corrupted disk involves both physically replacing the disk
and then logically replacing the disk and recovering volumes in SFW.
Disk replacement: When a disk fails, you replace the corrupt disk with a new
disk. The replacement disk cannot already be in a disk group. Disk
replacement can be performed only on a disk that has failed. The VEA console
identifies the disk by renaming it Missing Disk.
If the disk replacement is successful, the replacement disk takes on the
attributes of the failed disk, including the disk name.
Volume recovery: When a disk fails and is removed for replacement, the plex
on the failed disk is disabled until the disk is replaced. Volume recovery
involves starting disabled volumes and resynchronizing mirrors.
After successful recovery, the volume is available for use again. Redundant
(mirrored) volumes can be recovered by SFW. Nonredundant (unmirrored)
volumes must be restored from backup.
Note: When hot relocation takes place, SFW removes the disk from SFW control
and marks the disk as FAILED. Partial disk failure refers to disks that have
been marked with a status of FAILING.

721
Replacing the physical disk

Connect the new disk and ensure that the OS recognizes the new disk. Then, in
VEA, select Actions > Rescan to run disk setup commands to ensure that SFW
recognizes the newly attached disk.
Logically replacing a disk
Select:
The disk to be replaced
Navigation path:
Select Actions > Replace Disk.
Input:
Select the disk to be used as the new (replacement) disk.
SFW replaces the disk and attempts to recover volumes.
214 722

Refreshing the console

The Refresh option refreshes drive letter, file system, volume, and removablemedia information on the current computer. This option also checks to see whether
previously unreadable volumes are now readable. This option may not pick up disk
changes that occurred since the last reboot or rescan if no I/O occurred on the
changed disk. To refresh the console, select Actions > Refresh.
Note: The Refresh option does not scan hardware.
Rescanning the system
215
The Rescan option rescans the SCSI bus for disk changes. This option also
performs the equivalent of the Refresh option. Symantec recommends that you
use Rescan every time you make disk changes, such as removing or adding a disk.
To rescan the system, select Actions > Rescan.
7

723
Reactivating a disk or volume

Occasionally, rescan does not clear error flags on a dynamic disk. When this
situation happens, you can use Reactivate Disk to clear these flags. Reactivating a
disk manually restarts the disk. You can reactivate dynamic disks that are marked
as Offline. To reactivate a disk, right-click the disk with the error flags and select
Reactivate Disk.
If you have errors on a volume, use Reactivate Volume to regenerate the volume.
If the underlying disks for a volume are sound, the volume returns to a healthy
state. To reactivate a volume, right-click the volume and select Reactivate
Volume.
216 724

Checking a disk
Run chkdsk.exe to ensure that the data on the volume is not corrupted. Even if
the disk and volumes are back online, it is important to check whether the
underlying data is intact. If the data is corrupted, you may need to replace it with
data from backup storage.
To run chkdsk.exe, open a command prompt window and type the following
command:
chkdsk x: /f
In the syntax, x specifies the drive letter of the volume to check, and /f fixes any
errors that are found.
217

725
218 726
appendices:

Lesson 8
Managing Performance
219
220 82

Monitoring I/O
Real-time I/O statistics
To begin collecting statistics, you must set the display options. To select the online
data display options, from the Tools menu, select Statistics View > Online Data
Display Options.
221

83
Viewing real-time I/O statistics
The Online Monitoring window displays real-time statistics for selected storage
objects. The display can include disks, subdisks, and volumes. To access the
Online Monitoring window, from the Tools menu, select
Statistic View > Online Monitoring.
222 84

Throttling tasks
The Task Throttling window enables you to determine the priority of certain
tasks.
Using task throttling causes an operation to pause for the specified amount of time
whenever a disk I/O is performed, allowing the CPU to perform other tasks.
By selecting the Throttle all tasks check box, you apply the priority in the text
field to all SFW tasks. To apply different priorities to individual tasks, clear the
check box, type the number of milliseconds in each tasks text field, and click OK.
223

85
Historical statistics
To perform historic data collection, select logging options and objects, begin
logging, and analyze the data. You may also want to stop logging after you have
analyzed the information.
Selecting logging options
The first task in the setup process is to configure the settings in the Historical
Statistics Settings window.
224 86
Navigation path:
Open the Control Panel and double-click Historical Statistics

Settings.
Input:
Data collection rate in seconds: This rate is the time interval

between data samples. The default is every five seconds.
File size per object monitored: SFW collects the data in a
file. You set the desired size of the file. After the file reaches
the specified size, the older statistics information is deleted as
new information is added.
Disk Usage Information: The numbers at the bottom of this
window are an estimate of how much time (in days and hours)
is required to compile statistics per storage object monitored to
fill up the file size indicated. If you change either the data
collection rate or the file size per object monitored, click the
Check button to update the estimate.

Starting historical monitoring
The next task in the setup for the historical statistics is to select the storage objects
that you want to monitor and start the historical statistics data collection.
225
Navigation path:
Select Tools > Statistics View > Start Historical Data

Collection.
Input:
Selected List: Select the storage object that you want to

monitor for historical statistics data collection by highlighting
the object and clicking the Add button to move the objects to
the Selected List.
After you have made your selection and clicked OK, the historical data collection
begins. This data collection continues in the background until one of the following
occurs:
You stop data collection with the Stop Historical Data Collection option.
SFW is stopped.
The computer is rebooted.

87
Displaying historical statistics

The historical statistics collection and graphing function enables you to create
individual graphs for storage objects (disks, subdisks, or volumes) and to monitor
storage objects over time. You invoke the graphing function by right-clicking a
storage object and selecting Graph Historical Statistics Information.
To display the statistics, you select the View menu at the upper-left corner of the
graph and choose one of the nine statistical parameters to graph.
Read and write request per second and blocks per second are quick indicators as to
the current (and ultimately sustainable) transfer rates.
226 88
The queue depth, however, is a better indicator as to whether an object (subdisk,

disk, or volume) is being overloaded, or held back due to a bottleneck somewhere
in the I/O path. I/Os are queued when they cannot be immediately serviced,
usually because the heads on the disk are eleswhere or another data transfer is
currently in progress. The greater the queue depth, the greater the backlog.
Average time per read and write blocks can be highly dependent on the type of data
being transferred to the object. For example, larger I/Os is limited by the maximum
transfer rate of the underlying disk. A 15,000 (15K) RPM disk gives better
performance than a 10K RPM disk. Smaller, non-contiguous I/Os on a fragmented
file system is limited by the disk head motion, which can be effectively masked by
disks, controllers, and SFW by using larger data caches.

Windows Performance Monitor
SFW is fully integrated into the Windows OS and uses Windows performance
counters.
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89
Setting capacity monitoring parameters
Capacity monitoring in SFW alerts you when any volume reaches certain size
thresholds. You configure capacity monitoring settings on a volume-by-volume
basis by right-clicking the volume and selecting Capacity Monitoring. By
default, capacity monitoring is off for all volumes.
228 810
The capacity monitoring parameters are:

Enable capacity monitoring for volumes: This option enables or disables the
monitoring of the capacity of each dynamic volume.
Polling interval for checking the capacity (sec): This option indicates the
interval in seconds at which SFW checks volume capacities. The minimum and
default value is 20 seconds.
Minimum time between alerts if condition persists (sec): This option
enables you to limit how often an alert message is generated after a capacity
threshold is reached for a volume. The default is 100 seconds between
messages.
Capacity monitoring thresholds:
Critical threshold: The percentage of volume capacity at which SFW reports
an error
The default is 90 percent.
Warning Threshold: The percentage of volume capacity at which SFW logs a
warning alert message
The default is 80 percent.

Automatic volume growth

The Automatic Volume Growth feature is a command to have an individual
volume grow (increase capacity) automatically by a user-specified amount when
the used disk space on the volume reaches a certain threshold. This threshold is set
in the Capacity Monitoring wizard.
By automating the growth process, the Automatic Volume Growth feature

enhances the capability of dynamic volumes to expand without requiring that the
underlying disks be offline. The advantages of this automatic process include:
The need for a system administrator to monitor volume capacity at all times is
reduced.
Disk space is allocated on an as-needed basis; there is no idle excess capacity.
Space is always available for mission-critical data.
229
You can specify two automatic volume growth parameters:

Volume growth: Type the size by which you want the volume to expand each
time the growth threshold is reached.
Maximum volume size: Select the maximum volume size for the volume.
Unrestricted volume growth is the default. It allows the volume to grow
without an upper limit to the volume size.
Restricted volume growth allows you to enter a maximum size for the volume.
The volume growth is limited to this specified size. This setting may be useful
to manage a database volume that may be vulnerable to uncontrolled rapid
growth due to malicious updates, spam, or virus attack.

811
Changing the volume layout

What is dynamic relayout?
You may need to change the volume layout in order to change the redundancy or
performance characteristics of an existing volume.
The dynamic (or online) relayout feature of SFW enables you to change from one
volume layout to another by invoking a single command. You can also modify the
performance characteristics of a particular layout to reflect changes in your
application environment. While relayout is in progress, data on the volume can be
accessed without interruption.
Dynamic relayout eliminates the need for creating a new volume in order to obtain
a different volume layout. Relayout allows you to modify an existing volume into
all those layouts you can select when creating a volume.
230 812
Supported transformations
By using dynamic relayout, you can change the layout of an entire volume or a
specific plex. Use dynamic relayout to change the volume or plex layout to or
from:
Concatenated
Striped

Examples of dynamic relayout
231
You can change the layout in three ways:

1 Concatenated to Striped
For example, if you want to convert a concatenated volume on a single disk to
a striped volume with two columns, you select striped and two columns in the
Add Mirror window. The resulting volume will have two mirrors or plexes,
one is the original plex, and the second is a copy of the original volume striped
across two disks. Thus, the entire volume requires a total of three disks. The
volumes type is designated as Mixed. At this point, you can remove the
original plex by deleting it with the Remove Mirror command. Now you have
a striped volume in place of the concatenated one that existed before.
2 Striped to Concatenated
Assume the example of an existing two-column striped volume. If you open
the Add Mirror window and select the concatenated layout, the resulting
volume will involve three disks: the first two disks have the plex of the twocolumn striped original volume, and the third disk contains a concatenated plex
of the volume. By removing the original plex, the volume now will now reside
on one disk. Changing a striped volume to a concatenated volume probably
wont be done very often.
3 Striped to Striped
The purpose of converting a striped volume to another striped volume is to
change the attributes of the volume (the stripe unit size and the number of
columns) without having to recreate the volume.

813
For example, you can convert a two-column striped volume to a three-column

striped volume. First, you would select three columns in the Add Mirror
window. The resulting volume would involve five disks: two disks for the
original two-column striped plex and three disks for the new three-column
striped mirror. Again, you can remove the original plex by deleting it with the
Remove Mirror command, leaving only a three-column striped volume.
232 814

Changing the layout: VEA

The basic concept is that you select the features you want the volume layout to be
changed to, and SFW creates a mirror or plex of the original volume with the
desired attributes of the new layout. If you no longer have a need for the original
volume, you remove it with the Remove Mirror command.
Thus, the conversion or relayout is a two-step process. First, you select the desired
attributes and create the mirror through the Add Mirror command. Second, you
remove the original plex through the Remove Mirror command.
The volume relayout feature is implemented through the Add Mirror window.
That window has a section called Choose the layout.
233
Select:
The volume to be changed to a different layout
Navigation path:
Actions > Mirror > Add
Input:
Layout: Select the new volume layout and specify layout

details as necessary.

815
Using SmartMove
What is SmartMove?
The performance of mirror operations and subdisk moves can be enhanced with
the SmartMove feature. SmartMove helps reduce the resynchronization time
required by mirror operations and subdisk moves. The resynchronization time is
reduced by using the NTFS file system metadata to resynchronize only selected
regions. You can improve the performance of operations that involve mirrors, like
adding a mirror to a volume, off-host backup, and array migration, by using the
SmartMove feature.
Note: SmartMove does not support non-NTFS disks.
234 816

Working with SmartMove

1 In the Control Panel, double-click the System Settings icon to bring up the
System Settings dialog box.
2 Click the SmartMove tab to bring up the SmartMove window.
3 Check Enable SmartMove to enable the SmartMove setting to help reduce the
the resynchronization time for mirror operations and subdisk moves.
SmartMove reduces the resynchronization time by using NTFS file system
metadata to resynchronize only those regions that the NTFS file system uses.
When SmartMove is not enabled, SFW resynchronizes all regions.
235

817
236 818
appendices:

Lesson 9
Administering DMP
237
238 92

Overview of dynamic multipathing

What Is DMP?
DMP is the method that SFW uses to manage two or more hardware paths to a
single disk in a storage array. A path is the connection between a computer and
disks. In a storage area network (SAN), a path consists of a host bus adapter
(HBA), fibre cabling, a switch, an array controller and a disk container.
239
Note: An iSCSI environment is much like a SAN. In an iSCSI environment, the

SAN HBA is replaced with an Ethernet interface. iSCSI can use an
Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) or a dedicated iSCSI offload NIC.
The iSCSI offload NIC is also called a TNIC, which includes a TCP/IP
Offload Engine (TOE) or iSCSI HBA, predominately over copper cabling.
The speed typically achieved with CAT5E or CAT6 twisted-pair cabling is
1 GB per second.
Multiple paths are made possible by connecting two or more HBAs with either
SCSI or fiber-optic cabling to the storage array. The DMP software manages the
multiple paths so that only one path to the data on each of the arrays disks is
accessible to the host computer at a time.

Administering DMP
93
DMP modes
240 94
The paths on an array are set up to work in two ways: either in an Active/Active
mode, which provides load balancing of the data between multiple paths, or in an
Active/Passive mode, in which only one path is active and any remaining paths are
backups.
Active/Active: DMP performs load balancing by allocating the data transfer
across the possible paths. For example, if DMP implements a round-robin
algorithm, each path is selected in sequence for each successive data transfer to
or from a disk. That is, if two paths, A and B, are active, the first disk transfer
occurs on path A, the next on path B, and the next on path A again.
Active/Passive: A path is designated as the preferred path, and it is always
active. The other paths act as backups that are called into service if the current
operating path fails.
DMP mode considerations
When you specify the DMP mode, consider the following points:
Refer to the documentation for your storage array to determine which DMP
mode it supports.
Note that after the appropriate array setting is made, all the disks in an array
have the same load balancing setting as the array.
Note that if the array is set to Active/Active, you can change the setting on an
individual disk so that it has a different load balancing setting from the one on
its array. You cannot change the load balancing setting if the array is set to
Active/Passive.

DMP DSMs
SFW offers dynamic multipathing as DMP device-specific modules.
Device-specific modules (DSMs)
DSMs are designed to support a multipath disk storage environment set up with
the Microsoft multipathing input/output (MPIO) solution.
241
DMP DSMs work effectively with Windows to provide a fault-tolerant, multipath,

disk storage environment. DMP DSMs have the following benefits:
Windows Server 2008 support (64-bit)
Windows StorPort driver support
Many balancing options
Active/Active dynamic multipathing with clustering support
Note: This lesson focuses on DSM. Microsoft is only providing MPIO software
on new operating systems.

Administering DMP
95
I/O flow through DSMs

The Microsoft MPIO architecture provides hardware and software vendors with a
means of creating Microsoft MPIO solutions that work effectively with the
Windows Server operating system to provide a fault-tolerant, multipath, disk
storage environment on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Storage Server 2008
platforms.
The Microsoft MPIO solutions are designed to work in conjunction with DSMs
written by vendors. The MPIO driver package does not, by itself, form a complete
solution. Microsoft provides a sample DSM, which is designed to provide a
software interface between the multipath driver package and the hardware device.
242 96
The MPIO driver package includes generic code for vendors to adapt to their
specific hardware device so that usage and performance of the device can be
improved. Device-specific information is abstracted and exported to the bus driver
and to the disk objects under its control.
This joint solution allows vendors to design hardware solutions that are tightly
integrated with the Windows operating system, and also enables Microsoft to
correctly accommodate the non-generic characteristics of each vendor's storage
device (such as whether there are multiple active controllers or the controllers have
only standby capability), without having to design the MPIO solution in
anticipation of each possible difference. Compatibility with both the operating
system and other vendor storage devices is ensured through requiring that vendors
meet a set of standards (the Microsoft Logo program) designed to help ensure
proper vendor device functionality.

Managing DSM information from the CLI

vxdmpadm for DSMs
Use the vxdmpadm command to manage DSM from the command line. The
keywords for vxdmpadm are:
dsminfo
Displays information about the DSM., including the

DSM name, arrays in the DSM, and the array load
balance policy
arrayinfo
Displays information about an array.
deviceinfo
Displays information about a device (that is, a hard disk

in an array)
pathinfo
Provides information about a path
arrayperf
Displays performance statistics about an array
deviceperf
Displays performance statistics about a device
pathperf
Displays performance statistics about the paths

connected to a device
setattr dsm
Sets DSM attributes
setattr array
Sets array attributes
setattr device
Sets device attributes
setattr path
Sets path attributes
243 Administering DMP
97
Managing arrays, individual disks, and paths

Managing arrays
You can display information about an array by using the vxdmpadm
arrayinfo command, as follows:
vxdmpadm [-gdiskgroup_name] arrayinfo
disk_name|p#c#t#l#
The disk_name parameter can contain the device name (such as Harddisk2) or
the internal disk name (such as Disk2). To specify the internal disk name, you
must use the -g option (for example, vxdmpadm -gDG1 arrayinfo
Disk2).
24498
The hashes in the p#c#t#l# parameters correspond to the port, channel, target,
and LUN of a disk.
The output of this command includes the array name, its type, the devices in the
array, and the monitor interval time. The output can also display tunable
parameters that affect the testing and failover of DMP paths.
For example, to display the array information for the array in which Harddisk5
participates, type:
vxdmpadm arrayinfo Harddisk5
You can set array properties by using the vxdmpadm setattr array
command.

vxdmpadm [-gdiskgroup_name] setattr array

[loadbalancepolicy=FO|RR|RS|LQ|WP|LB]
[primarypath=#][testpathretrycount=# scsicmdtimeout=#
kernelsleeptime=#
failoverretrycount=#]disk_name|p#c#t#l#
This command sets the load balance policy and primary path of the array to which
the designated disk belongs. It also allows you to set tunable parameters (control
timer settings) that affect the testing and failover of the paths. The following
attributes apply:
loadbalancepolicy=FO
|RR|RS|LQ|WP|LB|BP
Specifies the load balance policy for the array where:

FO specifies Fail Over Only (Active/Passive)
RR specifies Round Robin (Active/Active)
RS specifies Round Robin with Subset
LQ specifies Dynamic Least Queue Depth
WP specifies Weighted Paths
LB specifies Least Blocks
BP specifies Balanced Path
path#=state#
state# specifies either standby (0) or active (1) state of

the specified path#.
path#=weight#
weight# specifies the weight assigned to the specified

path#.
blockshift=#
# specifies the number of contiguous I/O blocks that

are sent along a path to an Active/Active array before
switching to the next available path.
primarypath=#
# specifies the primary path of the array.
testpathretrycount=#
# specifies the number of times the test path routine

retries to test the health of the path.
scsicmdtimeout=#
# specifies the amount of time a SCSI command waits

for a device to respond to a SCSI command. Range:
30 ~ 120 seconds
kernalsleeptime=#
# specifies the interval of time the DMP DSMs kernal

waits between attempts to recover a path from an error
condition. Range: 200 ~ 10000 milliseconds. Default
is 200 milliseconds.
failoverretrycount=#
# specifies the number of times the failover routine

retries to fail over the path.
99
Example: Managing arrays from the CLI
The slide is an example of managing arrays using the vxdmpadm arrayinfo

command on the CLI.
246 910

Managing disks
You can display information about a hard disk in an array by using the vxdmpadm
deviceinfo command.
This command displays the device name, the internal disk name, number of paths,
type, and status.
For example, to display DMP-related information about Harddisk5 and
Harddisk6, type:
vxdmpadm deviceinfo Harddisk5 Harddisk6
You can set disk properties by using the vxdmpadm setattr device
command.
For example, to set the properties for Harddisk6 in the array, type:
vxdmpadm setattr device loadbalancepolicy=FO
primarypath=1-1-0 Harddisk6
911
Example: Managing Disks from the CLI
The slide is an example of managing disks using the vxdmpadm deviceinfo

command on the CLI.
248 912

Managing paths from the CLI

You can display information about a path by using the vxdmpadm pathinfo
command.
vxdmpadm [-gdiskgroup_name] pathinfo disk_name|p#c#t#l#
This command displays the path status, port, target, and LUN along with the
device name, internal disk name, and number of paths. For example, to display
path information for Harddisk5 and Harddisk6, type:
vxdmpadm pathinfo Harddisk5 Harddisk6
913
Setting the primary path

You can add and delete paths in an array.
To add a path, plug in the cable and perform a rescan.
To delete a path, unplug the cable. DMP detects that the path is gone and deletes it.
You may then need to perform a rescan.
To set the primary path, pick a disk from the array.
250 914

Displaying performance information
To display information about performance, use the vxdmpadm command with

pathperf, deviceperf, or arrayperf.
251

Administering DMP
915
Example: Displaying path performance information
The slide is an example of path performance information on the CLI.
252 916

Managing performance statistics using vxdmpadm
When performance testing is complete, you can clear the statistics counters by
using the iostat, cleardeviceperf, cleararrayperf, or
clearallperf option with the vxdmpadm command.
253

Administering DMP
917
Specifying load balancing settings

Specifying load balancing settings for an array
When you first set up an array under DMP, you must ensure you that have the load
balancing setting you want for the paths in the array. After the setup is complete,
all of the disks in the array have the same load balancing setting by default.
254 918
For DSM, there are several load balancing options:

Round Robin (Active/Active): This option selects each path in sequence for
each successive data transfer to or from a disk. For example, if two paths, A
and B, are active, the first disk transfer occurs on path A, the next on path B,
and the next on path A again.
Round Robin with Subset: This option uses a subset of paths, each in turn, in
round-robin fashion. The user specifies the paths for data transfer that make up
the subset. The remaining paths are in standby mode. For example, if you have
three active paths, path A, path B, and path C and you specify the subset to
contain path A and path B, then DMP DSMs use path A for one data transfer
and then use path B for the next. Path C is in standby mode and is used if path
A or path B fails.
Dynamic Least Queue Depth: This option selects the path with the least
number of I/O requests in its queue for the next data transfer. For example, if
you have two active paths, path A with one I/O request and path B with none,
DMP DSMs select the path with the least number of I/O requests in its queue,
path B, for the next data transfer.
Weighted Paths: This option uses the path with the lowest numerical weight.
Each path is assigned a weight by the storage administrator to designate which

255
path is favored for data transfer. If two or more paths have the same weight and
are the lowest weight of all paths, then these paths are used each in turn, in
round-robin fashion, for the data transfer. For example, if you have three active
paths, path A with weight of 0, path B with weight of 0, and path C with
weight of 9, DMP DSMs use path A for one data transfer and then use path B
for the next. Path C is in standby mode and is used if path A or path B fails.
Least Blocks:This option selects the path with the least number of blocks of I/
O in its queue for the next data transfer. For example, if you have two active
paths, path A with one block of I/O and path B with none, DMP DSMs select
the path with the least number of blocks of I/O in its queue, path B, for the next
data transfer.
Balanced Path: This option is designed to optimize the use of caching in disk
drives and RAID controllers. The size of the cache depends on the
characteristics of the particular hardware. Generally, disks and LUNs are
logically divided into a number of regions or partitions. I/O to and from a given
region is sent on only one of the active paths. Adjusting the region size to be
compatible with the size of the cache is beneficial so that all the contiguous
blocks of I/O to that region use the same active path.
Fail Over Only (Active/Passive): With this option, you can specify one path to
be used for data transfer. The specified path is called the Primary Path, and is
the only path used for data transfer. This option does not provide load
balancing among paths.

Administering DMP
919
Changing the load balancing on a disk

When an array has no load balancing (Active/Passive), data transfer is limited to
only one path. Therefore, a disk on that array cannot use Active/Active because
load balancing requires two or more available paths to work.
If an array is set to Active/Active, you can set its disks to Active/Passive. In that
situation, one path for that disk becomes the primary path for the disk and the other
paths to the disk become secondary or standby paths. If the primary path to the
disk fails, one of the standby paths is used for data transmission.
If an array is set to Active/Passive, you cannot change any of its disks to Active/
Active.
If an array is set to Active/Active and one or more of its disks has already been set
to Active/Passive, you can change those disks back to Active/Active.
256 920

Setting load balancing policies using CLI
Several load balancing options are available when using the vxdmpadm
command. Use the loadbalancepolicy command with the applicable option.
257

Administering DMP
921
Specifying control timer settings for an array
Control timer settings for an array are a set of tunable parameters that affect the
testing of a paths status or health.
258 922

Control timer options using vxdmpadm
The vxdmpadm command has four options for the control timer:
Test Path Retry Count
SCSI Command Timeout
Kernel Sleep Time
Failover Retry Count
259

Administering DMP
923
260 924
appendices:

Appendix A
Using Site Awareness with Mirroring
261
What are remote mirroring and site awareness?

In a remote mirror configuration, SF hosts and the storage are distributed to two or
more sites. These sites are typically connected via a redundant high-capacity
network (Fiber Channel or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) that
provides access to storage. The disk groups include disks from all sites and
volumes are created with a mirror at each site.
With standard mirroring, Volume Manager does not include any feature to enable a
different management for volumes mirrored across sites. Therefore, there is no
difference between a volume mirrored locally and a volume mirrored across
multiple sites with standard mirroring. For example, the hot relocation daemon is
unable to determine which disks belong to which sites and is able to easily replace
a failed disk at a remote location with a disk at the local site.
262 A2
With SF 6.0, new features are added to Volume Manager to make it site-aware. The
remote mirroring features in Volume Manager are enabled by an enterprise license.
These features are described in detail in the following section.

Campus cluster scenario

Remote mirroring is usually implemented in combination with Veritas Cluster
Server (VCS) to provide high availability and disaster recovery.
In a campus environment, VCS, along with Veritas Volume Manager, is used to

create a cluster that spans multiple data centers or buildings. Instead of a single
storage array, data is mirrored between arrays at remote sites using Veritas Volume
Manager. This mirroring provides synchronized copies of data at both sites.
This procedure is identical to mirroring between two arrays in a data center, but
now it is spread over a distance using Storage Area Networks (SAN). In addition
to two storage arrays at different locations with highly available disks, the
requirements for a campus cluster include:
One or more servers at each site that provide for cluster communication with:
Multiple independent network links between systems
Multiple independent network links between sites
SAN connectivity
Public network connectivity between different locations
Campus clusters with failover applications
A failover application that is online on only one host at the primary site. In this
case, the standby hosts at the secondary site are used for high availability or
disaster recovery whenever the hosts at the primary site are unavailable. During
normal operation, there is no I/O to the data disks from the hosts at the secondary
site.
263 Appendix A Using Site Awareness with Mirroring

A3
Note: Symantec has tested campus cluster scenarios up to 80km distance.

However, there are campus cluster configurations that span even larger
distances. The main limitation in terms of the distance is the impact of
remote mirroring on application performance.
264 A4

Configuring site awareness

With the site awareness feature in SF 6.0, you can define sites and allocate each
physical resource to a site. Disk groups can include disks from a variety of sites
and it is possible to explicitly add sites to a disk group that enables site-based
allocation.
Commands such as vxdg and vxassist have new options that enable the user
to set site-based allocation of the physical resources.

A5
The procedure to configure a site-aware environment

The slide provides the steps to configure an environment that is site-aware.
After creating the disk groups, you tag the disks with site names to enable siteaware allocation. This is a separate operation, referred to in the VEA as adding
disks to a site.
During volume creation, if you specify the volume site type as Site Separated.
This ensures that the volume is restricted to the disks on the selected site.
266 A6

Assigning physical resources to a site

The first step in configuring a site-aware environment is to allocate each physical
resource to a site. The physical resources in a remote mirroring environment are
the disks (LUNs) and the Storage Foundation hosts.
Assigning disks to a site
You assign a disk to a site by tagging the disk with the site name. You can use
arbitrary tag names while tagging the disks for other purposes, such as support for
hardware cloning. For site-awareness, you must use the site tag. When you assign
a value to this tag, it is considered as the name of the site to which the disk
belongs. The commands used to set or modify the disk tags related to siteawareness are listed on the slide.

A7
Assigning hosts to a site

The vxassist taghost command is used to add a host to a site as shown on
the slide. You can use use the vxassist showtag command to list the site
name to which a host belongs. Finally, use the vxassist untaghost
command to remove the site name for a host.
The syntax for these commands is as shown on the slide. For more information
refer to the Veritas Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide.
268 A8

Performing site-based storage allocation of volumes

A new property Sitetype has been added to SFW dynamic volumes.
You can set or reset the Sitetype property of a SFW dynamic volume.
Use vxassist set sitetype command for setting the Sitetype volume
property of a Siteless volume to either Site Confined or Site Separated.
Use vxassist resetsitetype to convert a Site Confined or Site Separated
volume to Siteless volume.
When creating site-based volumes (Site Confined or Site Separated), it is a
prerequisite that your storage must be site tagged.
You can use the vxassist make command to create a volume for site-based
allocation.

A9
Adding a mirror to a site-based volume

If you want to add a mirrored plex to a disk or storage that is not site tagged, then
you should change the volume Sitetype property to Siteless.
In case of a Site Confined volume, mirrors can be added within the same site only.
If you want to add a mirrored plex to a different site, then you should change the
volume Sitetype property to Site Separated or Siteless.
In case of a Site Separated volume, mirrors can be added to a different site. All
volumes that are required for an application to come up must have a complete plex
at all the specified sites. Writes are written to the specified sites as done in case of
a normal mirrored volume.
Use the vxassist mirror command to add a mirror to an existing site-based volume.
270 A10

271

Appendix A Using Site Awareness with Mirroring
A11
272 A12

Appendix B
Managing Data Centers using VOM
273
Need for managing Data Centers
Increasing complexity of Data Centers
274 B2
Change is the only constant in todays data center environments. All IT

administrators have to manage change going forward. There are many reasons for
this constant change; the main ones are as follows:
Servers move from one vendor to another due to insecurity or cost, as well as
technology.
New projects involving new application deployment or setup of a new
datacenter.
Storage moves due to growth, price, or technology, such as thin storage arrays,
Solid State Devices, or tiering implementations.
Standardization into a new technology, searching for efficiency, and better
business practices.
All this makes todays data center increasingly more complex; there are too many
disparate tools, too many manual processes, and adopting new technologies, such
as virtualization, introduces its own set of challenges.

Data Centers: Challenges
The result is reduced visibility and control of your infrastructure, increased

challenge in scaling operations, reduced utilization of storage assets, and an
increased risk of unplanned downtime.
275 Appendix B Managing Data Centers using VOM

B3
Data Center management solutions offered by Symantec

Symantec has a unique portfolio of storage management solutions that will enable
you to manage a heterogeneous and complex data center environment and address
the challenges we just described.
Symantecs base offering, which is free with Storage Foundation High Availability
products, is Veritas Operations Manager (or VOM). VOM maximizes your SFHA
investments with centralized visibility and advanced control.
Symantec also offers other management solutions that extend the benefits to other
levels and environments with or without Storage Foundation software.
CommandCentral Storage assesses storage utilization with capacity management

and charge back reporting across your heterogeneous environment.
276 B4
DataInsight for Storage manages unstructured data growth and implements charge
back, helping you to reclaim misused storage.
Disaster Recovery Advisor conducts automated, non-disruptive HA/DR testing
across your heterogeneous environment.

Introducing Veritas Operations Manager

Veritas Operations Manager: Overview
Veritas Operations Manager (VOM), by Symantec is a centralized management

console for the Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability products. You
can use it to monitor, visualize, and manage storage and cluster resources, and
generate reports for them. Veritas Operations Manager also lets administrators
centrally manage diverse datacenter environments.

B5
Veritas Operations Manager: Architecture
278 B6
Veritas Operations Manager is based on a distributed client-server architecture. It

consists of the following:
Central management server (or MS) includes a management server, an
embedded Authentication Broker (AB) for OS or public domain-based user
authentication, a database server, and a Web server.
One or more managed hosts, each consisting of an agent
An agent is a process that collects status information from all resources and
relays that information to VOM. Typically, a managed host is a production
server on which different components of SF products are installed and running.
A typical data center can have thousands of such hosts using some or all of the
SF products.
Optional external authentication brokers for additional domain support
An AB is a system with Symantec Product Authentication Services (SPAS)
installed, and provides access to user authentication with public domains, such
as Active Directory, NIS, or NIS+.
In a centrally managed deployment, managed hosts relay information about
storage resources and applications to the MS. The management server then
coalesces the data it receives from the managed hosts within its database.
SFW 6.0 supports VOM 4.1.

Veritas Operations Manager: Benefits
Some of the benefits of using Veritas Operations Manager to address the

challenges in todays data centers are as follows:
Accelerate operations and decision making with better visibility.
Eliminate user errors with automated operations.
Empower operators to execute complex tasks with minimal Admin
intervention.
Identify and automatically reclaim unused storage.
Migrate storage non-disruptively across vendors.
Reduce risk on storage and server maintenance with impact analysis reports.
Minimize downtime with health check reports and warning alerts.

B7
Preparing a setup for Veritas Operations Manager

Management Server and Managed Hosts: Supported Operating
Systems
The slide lists the supported Operating System for the Management Server and the
Managed Hosts. Many UNIX/Linux operating systems are also supported.
280 B8

Management Server and Managed Hosts: System requirements
This slide lists the system requirements for the Managed Server and the Managed
Hosts.
281

Appendix B Managing Data Centers using VOM
B9
Web browser requirements

The Veritas Operations Manager console is a graphical user interface that displays
reports and other information for users of the Storage Foundation products through
a standard Web browser.
The Web browsers that the Veritas Operations Manager console supports are:
Internet Explorer versions 6.x to 9.x
Firefox 3.x to 6.x
282 B10
Additional considerations for supported Web browsers are:

Your browser must support JavaScript 1.2.
If you use pop-up blockers (including Yahoo Toolbar or Google Toolbar),
either disable them or configure them to accept pop-ups from the Web server to
which you connect.
For Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows 2003 (Server and Advanced Server), set
the default intranet zone security level to Medium or lower.
For Internet Explorer, when popup-blocker is turned on, make sure that the
filter level is set to Medium or lower.
You must install Adobe Flash plug-in version 10 or above.
Use the following criteria to identify the kind of system you need to run the Web
console:
The Web console host must be able to access Veritas Operations Manager.
Veritas Operations Manager must support the Web browser.

Network and firewall requirements

If you are managing hosts within multiple domains, you must update the DNS
entries on the Management Server host.
Veritas Operations Manager uses the default ports as displayed on the slide to
transfer information.

B11
Installing Veritas Operations Manager

Installing the Management Server
You can install the Veritas Operations Manager Management Server on a Windows
host using the Veritas_Operations_Manager_CMS_4.1_Win.exe file.
284 B12
To install Veritas Operations Manager Management Server perform the following

steps:
1 Make sure that the host where you plan to install Management Server meets or
exceeds system and operating system requirements.
2 On the host where you plan to install Management Server, log on as a user with
administrator privileges.
3 Download and unzip the installation file.
4 To launch the installer, run the
Veritas_Operations_Manager_CMS_4.1_Win.exe file.

On the Welcome screen, click Next.

B13
286 B14
Accept the End User License Agreement, and then click Install.

After the installation is complete, click Finish.

The Web browser is launched to configure Veritas Operations Manager.
8 Configure Veritas Operations Manager. This is discussed further in this lesson.
9 Verify that Management Server is installed and the required services are
started.

B15
Tracing installation footprints

You can verify the Management Server installation by making sure that the Veritas
Operations Manager for Windows program is installed, and the Veritas Storage
Foundation Messaging Service is started.
To verify Management Server installation perform the following steps:

1 On the host where you have installed host management, on the Windows
Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs.
Check whether Veritas Operations Manager for Windows appears in the list of
installed programs.
2 On the Windows Services panel, check whether the Veritas Storage
Foundation Messaging Service has started.
288 B16

Initial configuration of Management Server

For the initial configuration of the Management Server, perform the following
steps:
1 In the Authentication Required dialog box, enter Management Server host's
root user name and password.
2 In the Server Setting page, verify the Server Settings. Check and modify the
Server Name and Server Address, if required.
3 In the Database Setting page, check the default Database location and
modify it, if required. Click Next.
4 In the Analytics Setting page, select Enable Analytics Gathering to allow
Symantec to gather data on your Veritas Operations Manager usage.
Do one of the following:
To change settings, click Back,
To start the configuration, click Finish.
At the end of the Veritas Operations Manager configuration, messages
similar to the following are displayed:
Configuration successful
Click the Launch Web Console button to login.
Click Launch Web Console to log on to Veritas Operations Manager on
the configured Management Server host.

B17
Installing the host component
You can install Veritas Operations Manager host component on a Windows host by
running the .msi file on it.
1 Log on to the target host as a user with administrator privileges.
Make sure that the host where you plan to install host management meets or
exceeds system and operating system requirements.
290 B18

291
Click on Actions > Add Host(s).

B19
292 B20
In the Add Hosts wizard panel, select the Agent option to add the host(s) to
the Management Server. Enter the host details, and then click Next.

In the Results panel, verify that the host has been added successfully. Click
OK.
Verify that the host management program is installed and the required service has
started.

B21
Tracing the installation footprints for host management

You can verify host component installation on Windows by making sure that the
Veritas Operations Manager for Windows program is installed, and the SF
Messaging Service is started.
To verify host component installation perform the following steps:

1 On the host where you have installed host component, on the Windows
Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs.
Check whether Veritas Operations Manager (Host Component) appears in
the list of installed programs.
2 On the Windows Services panel, check whether the Veritas Storage
Foundation Messaging Service has started.
294 B22

Using Veritas Operations Manager

Setting up the Web browser
If you use Internet Explorer 7.0, or later, on Windows Server 2008, or Firefox 3.0,
or later, the Web pages for configuring and launching Veritas Operations Manager
are not displayed. You need to set up the Web browser to display the Web pages.
For Internet Explorer 7.0, or later, on Windows Server 2008, if the Web pages are
not automatically displayed, add each Web site to the Trusted Sites list.
To set up Internet Explorer 7.0, or later, on Windows Server 2008 for Veritas
Operations Manager, perform the following steps:
1 In Internet Explorer, select Tools > Internet Options.
2 Select the Security tab.
3 Click Sites to add the following Web sites:
https://hostname:5634/ - URL to configure Veritas Operations Manager
https://hostname:14161/ - URL to launch Veritas Operations Manager
where, hostname is the name of the Management Server host.
To set up Firefox 3.0, or later, for Veritas Operations Manager perform the
following steps:
1 On the security exception page that is displayed when you attempt to open an
Veritas Operations Manager Web page, click the Or you can add an
exception link.
2 Click Add Exception.

B23
4
5
6
For Firefox 3.6.x, or later, the users should first click the I Understand the
Risks button before they click the Add Exception button.
In the Add Security Exception dialog box, verify that the location is one of
the following:
https://hostname:5634/ - URL to configure Veritas Operations
Manager
https://hostname:14161/ - URL to launch Veritas Operations
Manager
where, hostname is the name of the Management Server host.
Click Get Certificate.
Select the Permanently store this exception check box.
Click Confirm Security Exception.
The Web page is now displayed.
296 B24

Veritas Operations Manager Dashboard
To connect to Veritas Operations Manager, perform the following steps:

1 On a client system that has a network connection to the host, open a Web
browser.
2 In the browsers address field, type the following URL and press ENTER:
https://hostname:14161/ where hostname is the host name, fullyqualified host name, or IP address of the Management Server.
In the username and password fields, type credentials for a valid operating
system network domain account.
The Authentication Service automatically recognizes users in the domain on
which the Authentication Broker host is a member.
3 Click Login.
You can view the Veritas Operations Manager Dashboard.

B25
Administering a Managed Host

To administer a Windows managed host, perform the following steps:
1 In Veritas Operations Manager console, select Manage > Hosts.
2 In the Hosts view, in the table that lists the hosts, click the name of the host
that you want to administer.
3 In the details view of the host, click Administer.
If the Administer link has a red arrow that is displayed after it, you cannot perform
the Windows managed host administration.
298 B26

Managing a virtual environment

Data Centers adopt virtualization technology to effectively use the ITinfrastructure and substantially reduce the capital and operational expenditures. If
you have adopted virtualization technology in your datacenter, Veritas Operations
Manager provides you an efficient way of discovering and managing your virtual
storage and infrastructure assets.
Veritas Operations Manager supports the following virtualization technologies:

VMware virtualization technology
Solaris Zones
Solaris Logical Domains (LDom)
In the VMware virtualization technology that Veritas Operations Manager
supports, a designated Control Host discovers the VirtualCenter servers in the data
center. This discovery displays the ESX servers that the VirtualCenter server
manages and the virtual machines that are configured on the ESX servers. Veritas
Operations Manager can also discover the ESX servers that VirtualCenter servers
do not manage.
In the Solaris zones virtualization technology that Veritas Operations Manager
supports, the Zone agentlet that is present in the VRTSsfmh package, which is
installed on a Solaris managed host discovers the Global Zones that are configured
on the host. This discovery displays the non-global zones that are configured on
the Global Zone.

B27
In the Solaris LDom virtualization technology that Veritas Operations Manager

supports, the LDom agentlet that is present in the VRTSsfmh package, installed
on a Solaris managed host discovers the LDom Server that is configured on the
host. This discovery displays the LDoms that are configured on the LDom Server.
300 B28

301

B29
302 B30

Index
A
DWDM A-2
dynamic disk
benefits 1-4, 1-11
dynamic disk group 1-13
dynamic group 1-13
dynamic volume 1-13
basic disk group 1-13

basic volume 1-13
active/active 9-4
active/passive 9-4
event notification 7-6
303
campus cluster A-3

changing a drive letter or path 5-18
command-line interface
using 2-32
historical 8-7
historical statistics 8-6
displaying 8-8
monitoring 8-7
hot relocation 7-15
DCO volume 6-25

Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing A-2
dirty region log
how it works 7-12
size 7-13
dirty region logging 5-9
disk
private region 1-10
public region 1-10
replacing 7-21
spare 7-19
status tags 7-4
disk array
multipathed 1-6
disk group
basic 1-13
deporting 5-24
dynamic 1-13
disk group move
limitations 6-15
DMP 9-3
changing the load balancing 9-20
modes 9-4
global capacity monitoring 8-10
I
I/O statistics
historical 8-6
monitoring 8-3
viewing 8-4
installation
version release differences 2-14
L
log
dirty region log 5-9
M
mirror
removing 5-4

Index-1
mirrored 4-5
multipathed disk array 1-5
volume 7-5
striped 4-4
off-host processing 6-4

online relayout
supported transformations 8-12
Technical Support
web site 2-14
U
P
unrelocating a disk 7-19
parity
definition 1-15
plex
definition 1-12
preferred plex 5-11
private region 1-10
public region 1-10
V
VEA
changing volume layout 8-15
using 2-30
VERITAS Enterprise Administrator 2-28
volume
basic 1-13
definition 1-12
dynamic 1-13
status tags 7-5
volume layout
changing online 8-12
comparing layout types 4-7
concatenation 1-14
mirrored 4-5
mirroring 1-15
parity 1-15
RAID-5 1-15, 4-6
striped 4-4
striping 1-15
volume snapshot
creating 6-6
R
RAID
definiiton 1-14
RAID-5 4-6
read policy
preferred plex 5-11
round robin 5-11
relayout 8-12
removing a mirror 5-4
round robin 5-11
S
site awareness
assigning disks to a site A-7
assigning hosts to a site A-8
definition A-2, A-5
site tag A-7
software packages
optional 2-4
spare disk 7-19
split and join 6-14
status description
disk 7-4
304 Index-2


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LEAD SUBJECT MATTER

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Lesson 4: Working with Volumes with Different Layouts

Lesson 5: Making Configuration Changes

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Monitoring objects and events ...................................................................... 7-3

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Lesson B: Managing Data Centers using VOM

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Part 1: Install and Configure SFW 6.0

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Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Storage management is becoming increasingly complex due to:

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows

What is storage virtualization?

Benefits of storage virtualization include:

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Storage virtualization: Types

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows

Storage-based storage virtualization

Network-based storage virtualization refers to disks from multiple arrays and

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Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Network-based storage virtualization

Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows

SFW creates a foundation for other value-added technologies such as SAN

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows

Benefits of Storage Foundation

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Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Commercial system availability now requires continuous uptime in many

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows

SFW and RAID arrays: Benefits

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Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows

Appendix B: Lab solutions

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Online reference information

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Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows