Course E 2.5 of 4

Benefits of Symantec Storage Foundation
Commercial system availability now requires continuous uptime in many

implementations. Systems must be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and
365 days a year. Symantec Storage Foundation reduces the cost of ownership by
providing capacity, availability, and performance enhancements for these
enterprise computing environments.
Capacity
• VxVM, VxFS, and DMP provide consistent management across Solaris, HP-
UX, AIX, and Linux platforms.
• Storage Foundation provides additional benefits for array environments, such
as inter-array mirroring and hardware independent dynamic multipathing.
• Hosts can be replaced without modifying storage.
• Hosts with different operating systems can access the same storage.
• Storage devices can be spanned.
Performance
• I/O throughput can be maximized by measuring and modifying volume layouts
while storage remains online.
• Extent-based allocation of space for files minimizes file level access time.
• Read-ahead buffering dynamically tunes itself to the volume layout.
• Aggressive caching of writes greatly reduces the number of disk accesses.
• Direct I/O performs file I/O directly into and out of user buffers.
• With VxFS, certain features are available for maximizing performance in a
database environment.
• With VxFS, you can create a multi-tier storage environment where you benefit
from using a mixture of high-end disk arrays, solid state disks, low-end disk
arrays, and JBODs.
Availability
• Management of storage and the file system is performed online in real time,
eliminating the need for planned downtime.
• Online volume and file system management can be centralized through an
Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.
intuitive, easy-to-use Web console that is implemented using Veritas

Operations Manager.
• Through software RAID techniques, storage remains available in the event of
hardware failure.
• Recovery time is minimized with logging and background mirror
resynchronization.
• Logging of file system changes enables fast file system recovery.
• A snapshot of a file system provides an internally consistent, read-only image
Intro
for backup, and file system checkpoints provide read-writable snapshots.
CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

13 Course Introduction
Intro–7
Benefits of VxVM and RAID arrays
RAID arrays virtualize individual disks into logical LUNS which are accessed by
host operating systems as “physical devices,” that is, using the same method of
addressing as a directly-attached physical disk.
VxVM virtualizes both the physical disks and the logical LUNs presented by a
RAID array. Modifying the configuration of a RAID array may result in changes in
SCSI addresses of LUNs, requiring modification of application configurations.
VxVM provides an effective method of reconfiguring and resizing storage across
the logical devices presented by a RAID array.
When using VxVM with RAID arrays, you can leverage the strengths of both
technologies:
• You can use VxVM 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 manufacture or type; that is, one array can be a
RAID array and the other a JBOD.
• VxVM facilitates data reorganization and maximizes available resources.
• VxVM 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) or Veritas File Replicator
(VFR) in your environment, VVR and VFR can be used to provide hardware-
independent replication services.

14 Intro–8 Symantec Storage Foundation 6.x for UNIX: Administration Fundamentals
Symantec Storage Foundation curriculum
Symantec Storage Foundation 6.x for UNIX: Administration Fundamentals
training is designed to provide you with basic instructions on making the most of
Symanec Storage Foundation. This is a base course. Differences courses of newer
releases of Storage Foundation 6.x are built on top of this course.
Intro

Intro–9
Symantec Storage Foundation for UNIX: Administration
Fundamentals overview
The Administration training provides comprehensive instruction on operating the
file and disk management foundation products: Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM)
and Veritas File System (VxFS). In this training, you learn how to combine file
system and disk management technology to ensure easy management of all storage
and maximum availability of essential data.
Objectives
After completing the Administration Fundamentals training, you will be able to:
• Identify VxVM virtual storage objects and volume layouts.
• Install and configure Storage Foundation.
• Administer the SF environment from a centralized Web console using Veritas
Operations Manager (VOM).

• Configure and manage disks and disk groups.
• Create concatenated, striped, mirrored, and layered volumes.
• Configure volumes by adding mirrors and logs and resizing volumes and file
systems.
• Perform file system administration.
• Manage the dynamic multipathing feature.
• Resolve hardware problems that result in disk and disk group failures.

Additional course resources
Appendix A: Lab Solutions

This section contains detailed solutions to the lab exercises for each lesson.
Appendix B: Using the VEA

This section contains instructions on how to perform administrative tasks from the
Veritas Enterprise Administrator Graphical User Interface.
Typographic conventions used in this course

The following tables describe the typographic conventions used in this course.
Intro

Intro–11
Typographic conventions in text and commands
Convention Element Examples

Courier New, Command input, To display the robot and drive configuration:
bold both syntax and tpconfig -d
examples
To display disk information:
vxdisk -o alldgs list
Courier New, • Command output In the output:
plain • Command protocol_minimum: 40
names, directory protocol_maximum: 60
names, file protocol_current: 0
names, path Locate the altnames directory.
names, URLs
Go to http://www.symantec.com.
when used within
regular text Enter the value 300.
paragraphs.
Courier New, Variables in To install the media server:
Italic, bold or command syntax, /cdrom_directory/install
plain and examples:
To access a manual page:
• Variables in
man command_name
command input
are Italic, plain. To display detailed information for a disk:
• Variables in vxdisk -g disk_group list
command output dm_name
are Italic, bold.
Typographic conventions in graphical user interface descriptions
Convention Element Examples

Greater than (>) sign and Menu navigation paths Select File > Save.
bold font
Initial capitalization and Buttons, menus, windows, Select the Next button.
bold font options, and other interface Open the Task Status
elements window.
Remove the checkmark

from the Print File check
box.

Lesson 1
Virtual Objects

19

20 1–2 Symantec Storage Foundation 6.x for UNIX: Administration Fundamentals
1
Operating system storage devices and virtual data storage

The different UNIX flavors supported by Storage Foundation each have their own
unique way of detecting and using storage devices. Some platforms, such as
Solaris and Linux, use a partition table and disk partitions to organize data on the
physical disks and others, such as AIX and HP-UX, use OS-native logical volume
management software to detect disks as physical volumes.
Storage Foundation hides the complexity of the device management layer by
introducing a virtual data layer that works the same on all of these UNIX
platforms. The way Volume Manager uses disks to organize data is explained in
detail later in this lesson.
However, the key point to note is that Volume Manager can only use a device if it
is recognized by the operating system on the Storage Foundation host. Therefore,
if a disk device is not visible in Volume Manager, you first have to ensure that the
operating system detects it correctly.

Use the following OS-specific commands to list storage devices on individual
platforms. Refer to manual pages for specific command syntax.
Operating system Command to use

Solaris format
Linux fdisk
HP-UX ioscan
AIX lsdev

21 Lesson 1 Virtual Objects
1–3
Operating system disk naming
Solaris
You locate and access the data on a physical disk by using a device name that
specifies the controller, target ID, and disk number. A typical device name uses the
format: c#t#d#.
• c# is the controller number.
• t# is the target ID.
• d# is the logical unit number (LUN) of the drive attached to the target.
If a disk is divided into partitions, you also specify the partition number in the
device name:
s# is the partition (slice) number.
For example, the device name c0t0d0s1 is connected to controller number 0 in the
system, with a target ID of 0, physical disk number 0, and partition number 1 on

the disk.
HP-UX
Traditionally, you locate and access the data on a physical disk by using a device
name that specifies the controller, target ID, and disk number. A typical traditional
device name uses the format: c#t#d#.
• c# is the controller number.
• t# is the target ID.
• d# is the logical unit number (LUN) of the drive attached to the target.

For example, the c0t0d0 device name is connected to the controller number 0 in
the system, with a target ID of 0, and the physical disk number 0.
With HP-UX 11iv3, a new method called agile view has been introduced. The new
convention uses the /dev/[r]disk/diskN name where N is the decimal
instance number for the disk. This is called a persistent device special file name. 1
The persistent device special file names are not available before HP-UX 11iv3.
AIX
Every device in AIX is assigned a location code that describes its connection to the
system. The general format of this identifier is AB-CD-EF-GH, where the letters
represent decimal digits or uppercase letters. The first two characters represent the
bus, the second pair identify the adapter, the third pair represent the connector, and
the final pair uniquely represent the device. For example, a SCSI disk drive might
have a location identifier of 04-01-00-6,0. In this example, 04 means the PCI bus,
01 is the slot number on the PCI bus occupied by the SCSI adapter, 00 means the
only or internal connector, and the 6,0 means SCSI ID 6, LUN 0.
However, this data is used internally by AIX to locate a device. The device name
that a system administrator or software uses to identify a device is less hardware
dependant. The system maintains a special database called the Object Data
Manager (ODM) that contains essential definitions for most objects in the system,
including devices. Through the ODM, a device name is mapped to the location
identifier. The device names are referred to by special files found in the /dev
directory. For example, the SCSI disk identified previously might have the device
name hdisk3 (the fourth hard disk identified by the system). The device named
hdisk3 is accessed by the file name /dev/hdisk3.
If a device is moved so that it has a different location identifier, the ODM is
updated so that it retains the same device name, and the move is transparent to
users. This is facilitated by the physical volume identifier stored in the first sector
of a physical volume. This unique 128-bit number is used by the system to
recognize the physical volume wherever it may be attached because it is also
associated with the device name in the ODM.
Linux
On Linux, device names are displayed in the format:
• sdx[N]
• hdx[N]
In the syntax:
• sd refers to a SCSI disk, and hd refers to an EIDE disk.
• x is a letter that indicates the order of disks detected by the operating system.
For example, sda refers to the first SCSI disk, sdb refers to the second SCSI
disk, and so on.
• N is an optional parameter that represents a partition number in the range 1
through 16. For example, sda7 references partition 7 on the first SCSI disk.
Primary partitions on a disk are 1, 2, 3, 4; logical partitions have numbers 5 and up.
If the partition number is omitted, the device name indicates the entire disk.
1–5
Disk arrays
Reads and writes on unmanaged physical disks can be a relatively slow process,
because disks are physical devices that require time to move the heads to the
correct position on the disk before reading or writing. If all of the read and write
operations are performed to individual disks, one at a time, the read-write time can
become unmanageable.
A disk array is a collection of physical disks. Performing I/O operations on
multiple disks in a disk array can improve I/O speed and throughput.
Hardware arrays present disk storage to the host operating system as LUNs. A
LUN can be made up of a single physical disk, a collection of physical disks, or
even a portion of a physical disk. From the operating system point of view, a LUN
corresponds to a single storage device.
Multipathing
Some disk arrays provide multiple ports to access disk devices. These ports,
coupled with the host bus adaptor (HBA) controller and any data bus or I/O
processor local to the array, compose multiple hardware paths to access the disk
devices. This is called multipathing.
In a multipathing environment, a single storage device may appear to the operating
system as multiple storage devices. Special multipathing software is usually
required to administer multipathed storage devices. Veritas Dynamic Multi-
Pathing (DMP) product which is part of the Storage Foundation software provides
seamless management of multiple access paths to storage devices in heterogeneous
operating system and storage environments.
1
Example array structure

In an array, the LUNs are a virtual presentation. Therefore, you cannot know
where in the array the actual data will be put. That means you have no control over
the physical conditions.
The array in the slide contains slots for 14 physical disks, and the configuration
places 12 physical disks in the array. These physical disks are paired together into
6 mirrored RAID groups. In each RAID group, 12 logical units, or LUNs, are
created. These LUNs appear to hosts as SAN-based SCSI disks. The remaining
two disks are used as spares in case one of the active disks fails.

1–7
Virtual storage management
Veritas Volume Manager creates 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 volume.
What is a volume?
A volume is a virtual object, created by Volume Manager, that stores data. A
volume consists of space from one or more physical disks on which the data is
physically stored.
How do you access a volume?

Volumes created by VxVM appear 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 using
special device files in a manner similar to accessing a disk partition.
Volumes have block and character device nodes in the /dev tree. You can supply
the name of the path to a volume in your commands and programs, in your file
system and database configuration files, and in any other context where you would
otherwise use the path to a physical disk partition.

1
Volume Manager-controlled disks

With Volume Manager, you enable virtual data storage by bringing a disk under
Volume Manager control. By default, Volume Manager uses a cross-platform data
sharing (CDS) disk layout. A CDS disk is consistently recognized by all VxVM-
supported UNIX platforms and consists of:
• OS-reserved area: To accommodate platform-specific disk usage, 128K is
reserved for disk labels, platform blocks, and platform-coexistence labels.
• Private region: The private region stores information, such as disk headers,
configuration copies, and kernel logs, in addition to other platform-specific
management areas that VxVM uses to manage virtual objects. The private
region represents a small management overhead:
Operating System Default Block/Sector Size Default Private Region Size

Solaris 512 bytes 65536 sectors (32M)

HP-UX 1024 bytes 32768 sectors (32M)
AIX 512 bytes 65536 sectors (32M)
Linux 512 bytes 65536 sectors (32M)
• Public region: The public region consists of the remainder of the space on the
disk. The public region represents the available space that Volume Manager
can use to assign to volumes and is where an application stores data. Volume
Manager never overwrites this area unless specifically instructed to do so.

1–9
Comparing CDS and other VxVM disk formats
In addition to the default CDS disk format, Volume Manager supports other
platform-specific disk formats. These disk formats are used for bringing the boot
disk under VxVM control on operating systems that support that capability.
On platforms that support bringing the boot disk under VxVM control, CDS disks
cannot be used for boot disks. CDS disks have specific disk layout requirements
that enable a common disk layout across different platforms, and these
requirements are not compatible with the particular platform-specific requirements
of boot disks. Therefore, when placing a boot disk under VxVM control, you must
use a non-default disk format (sliced on Solaris and Linux, hpdisk on HP-UX).
For nonboot disks, you can convert CDS disks to other disk layout formats and
vice versa by using VxVM utilities.

1
Volume Manager storage objects

Disk groups
A disk group is a collection of VxVM disks that share a common configuration.
You group disks into disk groups for management purposes, such as to hold the
data for a specific application or set of applications. For example, data for
accounting applications can be organized in a disk group called acctdg. A disk
group configuration is a set of records with detailed information about related
Volume Manager objects in a disk group, their attributes, and their connections.
Volume Manager objects cannot span disk groups. For example, a volume’s
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.
Volume Manager disks

A Volume Manager (VxVM) disk represents the public region of a physical disk
that is under Volume Manager control. Each VxVM disk corresponds to one
physical disk. Each VxVM disk has a unique virtual disk name called a disk media
name. The disk media name is a logical name used for Volume Manager
administrative purposes. Volume Manager uses the disk media name when
assigning space to volumes. A VxVM disk is given a disk media name when it is
added to a disk group.
Default disk media name: diskgroup##

1–11
You can supply the disk media name or allow Volume Manager to assign a default
name. The disk media name is stored with a unique disk ID to avoid name
collision. After a VxVM disk is assigned a disk media name, the disk is no longer
referred to by its physical address. The physical address (for example, c#t#d# or
hdisk#) becomes known as the disk access record.
Subdisks
A VxVM disk can be divided into one or more subdisks. A subdisk is a set of
contiguous disk blocks that represent a specific portion of a VxVM disk, which is
mapped to a specific region of a physical disk. A subdisk is a subsection of a disk’s
public region. A subdisk is the smallest unit of storage in Volume Manager.
Therefore, subdisks are the building blocks for Volume Manager objects.
A subdisk is defined by an offset and a length in sectors on a VxVM disk.
Default subdisk name: DMname-##
A VxVM disk can contain multiple subdisks, but subdisks cannot overlap or share
the same portions of a VxVM disk. Any VxVM disk space that is not reserved or
that is not part of a subdisk is free space. You can use free space to create new
subdisks.
Conceptually, a subdisk is similar to a partition. Both a subdisk and a partition
divide a disk into pieces defined by an offset address and length. Each of those
pieces represent a reservation of contiguous space on the physical disk. However,
while the maximum number of partitions to a disk is limited by some operating
systems, there is no theoretical limit to the number of subdisks that can be attached
to a single plex. This number has been limited by default to a value of 4096. If
required, this default can be changed, using the vol_subdisk_num tunable
parameter. For more information on tunable parameters, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation and High Availability Solutions Tuning Guide.
Plexes
Volume Manager 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 length of a plex is determined by the last block that can be read or
written on the last subdisk in the plex.

Default plex name: volume_name-##
Volumes
A volume is a virtual storage device that is used by applications in a manner
similar to a physical disk. Due to its virtual nature, a volume is not restricted by the
physical size constraints that apply to a physical disk. A VxVM volume can be as
large as the total of available, unreserved free physical disk space in the disk
group. A volume consists of one or more plexes.

1
VxVM volume layouts and RAID levels

RAID
RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. RAID is a
storage management approach in which an array of disks is created, and part of the
combined storage capacity of the disks is used to store duplicate information about
the data in the array. By maintaining a redundant array of disks, you can regenerate
data in the case of disk failure.
RAID configuration models are classified in terms of RAID levels, which are
defined by the number of disks in the array, the way data is spanned across the
disks, and the method used for redundancy. Each RAID level has specific features
and performance benefits that involve a trade-off between performance and
reliability.
Volume layouts
RAID levels correspond to volume layouts. A volume’s layout refers to the
organization of plexes in a volume. Volume layout is the way plexes are
configured to remap the volume address space through which I/O is redirected at
run-time. Volume layouts are based on the concepts of disk spanning, redundancy,
and resilience.
Disk spanning
Disk spanning is the combining of disk space from multiple physical disks to form
one logical drive. Disk spanning has two forms:

1–13
• Concatenation: Concatenation is the mapping of data in a linear manner
across two or more disks.
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 alternating
across multiple disks. Striping is also called interleaving.
In a striped volume, data is spread evenly across multiple disks. Stripes are
equally-sized fragments that are allocated alternately 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. 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 is 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 are
required for true mirroring (redundancy of data). Each of these plexes should
contain disk space from different disks for the redundancy to be useful.
• Resilience: A resilient volume, also called a layered volume, is a volume that
is built on one or more other volumes. Resilient volumes enable the mirroring
of data at a more granular level. For example, a resilient volume can be
concatenated or striped at the top level and then mirrored at the bottom level.
A layered volume is a virtual Volume Manager object that nests other virtual
objects inside of itself. Layered volumes provide better fault tolerance by
mirroring data at a more granular level.
• Parity: Parity is a calculated value used to reconstruct data after a failure by
doing an exclusive OR (XOR) procedure on the data. Parity information can be
stored on a disk. If part of a volume fails, the data on that portion of the failed
volume can be re-created from the remaining data and parity information.
A RAID-5 volume uses striping to spread data and parity evenly across
multiple disks in an array. Each stripe contains a parity stripe unit and data
stripe units. Parity can be used to reconstruct data if one of the disks fails. In
comparison to the performance of striped volumes, write throughput of RAID-
5 volumes decreases, because parity information needs to be updated each time
data is accessed. However, in comparison to mirroring, the use of parity
reduces the amount of space required.

1
Labs and solutions for this lesson are located on the following pages:
Appendix A provides complete lab instructions and solutions.
“Lab 1: VMware Workstation Introduction,” page A-8

1–15


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Benefits of Symantec Storage Foundation

Commercial system availability now requires continuous uptime in many

intuitive, easy-to-use Web console that is implemented using Veritas

for backup, and file system checkpoints provide read-writable snapshots.

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Operations Manager (VOM).

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Appendix A: Lab Solutions

Appendix B: Using the VEA

Typographic conventions used in this course

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Convention Element Examples

Typographic conventions in graphical user interface descriptions

Convention Element Examples

Remove the checkmark

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Operating system storage devices and virtual data storage

operating system detects it correctly.

Operating system Command to use

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

system, with a target ID of 0, physical disk number 0, and partition number 1 on

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Example array structure

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

How do you access a volume?

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Volume Manager-controlled disks

Operating System Default Block/Sector Size Default Private Region Size

Solaris 512 bytes 65536 sectors (32M)

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Volume Manager storage objects

Volume Manager disks

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

written on the last subdisk in the plex.

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

VxVM volume layouts and RAID levels

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

CONFIDENTIAL - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

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