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ScottK
Level 5
Employee

Rationale

Even small changes in default behavior can trigger operational changes. In general, Storage Foundation aims to minimize such changes, but occasionally they are necessary; and some changes which occur every release may not be well understood by new users. This paper aims to list most deprecations and default changes in the 5.1 release of Storage Foundation; it does not claim to be comprehensive.

Deprecations

  • Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA) is in the process of being deprecated. VEA does not ship with 5.1, in part to alert users that it will not be supported in subsequent releases. Symantec recommends using Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) instead of VEA. VOM can be downloaded from http://go.symantec.com/vom
    If you need VEA for SF 5.1,  VEA can be downloaded (at the time of this writing) from https://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=89446
  • SFHA 5.1 does not support the following platforms (which were supported in SFHA 5.0):
    • AIX 5.2
    • RHEL 4
    • SLES 9
    • Solaris 8 SPARC
  • As with prior major and minor releases, SFHA 5.1 supports many, but not all, of the storage arrays supported in 5.0; for a complete list of supported arrays, check the 5.1 HCL: ftp://exftpp.symantec.com/pub/support/products/Foundation_Suite/330441.pdf
  • DMP’s diagnostic utility vxdmpinq has been renamed vxscsiinq
  • The seconly mount option in SFCFS is deprecated. With the introduction of Multi-transaction Servers in 5.0, the notion of a ‘secondary only’ node is not really applicable.
  • VxVM’s Storage Expert is deprecated. Many Storage Expert checks have been moved to the VOS Risk Assessment service. VOS Risk Assessment runs new checks not available in Storage Expert. The Risk Assessment service can be downloaded from the "Detailed Report" section of the VOS home page: https://vos.symantec.com/home
  • FlashSnap Agent for Symmetrix™ (aka VxFAS, aka TimeFinder™ ToolKit, aka TFTK) is deprecated. Some of the core TFTK functionality, namely importing a BCV™ on the same host as the STD, is available since SFHA 5.0 using: # vxdg import -o useclonedev 5.1 simplifies coordination, so a VxFS file system can be made consistent on-disk before taking a BCV™ of the underlying LUN. To do so, supply a SYMCLI™ command to snapshot as shown: # fsfreeze –m /mount_point [post-freeze_command] Note that both commands (vxdg and fsfreeze) work with all array-based snapshots, not just BCVs™
  • Intelligent Storage Provisioning (ISP) is deprecated. For information on converting ISP diskgroups to standard diskgroups, see the VxVM Admin Guide, Chapter “Creating and administering disk groups”, Section “Working with ISP disk groups”.
  • The vxvoladm utility is deprecated. To set and manage volume tags, use vxassist instead.
  • Response files for prior versions of the Common Product Installer (CPI) will not work with the 5.1 CPI. Response files automate installations; they ‘respond’ to the questions posed by the CPI menu interface. In most releases, the CPI’s questions change as the product structure and licensing are simplified, and as usability studies suggest ways to improve or simplify the CPI questions. Response files are thus not compatible across releases. To perform an automated install with 5.1, perform an installation with the 5.1 CPI; a response file is automatically generated and saved.
  • 5.1 has fewer packages in order to simplify installation. Many packages have been consolidated into other packages. For a complete list of package changes, see Table 1.1 in the the 5.1 release notes.
  • Documentation packages have been removed in 5.1. Documentation is still available as pdfs on the DVD, or from the VOS website. Man pages install with their associated product package. The VOS Documentation url is: https://vos.symantec.com/documents
  • The following features in Storage Foundation for Oracle and for DB2 (formerly known as Database Editions) are deprecated:
    • The DBED Oracle GUI features can only be done through command lines. Database cloning, database flashsnap and DBDST scheduling features are not supported through the DBED GUI. Symantec recommends using Veritas Storage Foundation Manager (SFM) 2.1 as an alternative GUI to display Oracle database information such as tablespaces, database to lun mapping, and tablespace to lun mapping. Download SFM here: http://go.symantec.com/vom
    • Oramap (libvxoramap)
    • The following commands: o dbdst_makelbfs o dbed_analyzer o dbed_checkconfig o dbed_ckptplan o dbed_ckptpolicy o dbdst_fiostat_collector o dbed_saveconfig o dbed_scheduler
    • the –f option to qio_convertdbfiles o sfua_rept_adm , used to backup and restor the DBED repository, is replaced with sfua_rept_util
    • vxdbts_fstatsummary
    • vxdbts_get_datafile_stats
    • vxstorage_stats
Default Changes

  • Oracle Disk Manager (the VRTSodm package) is installed by default with Storage Foundation and with SF Cluster File System
  • On Solaris 10, the script to start and manage ODM is being transitioned to the Solaris Service Management Facility (SMF)
  • Enclosure-based naming is now DMP’s default naming scheme. To change back to OS-based naming, use # vxddladm set
  • The default VxVM disk group version is 150 rather than 5.0’s version 140. Note that officially, the default version is (and has always been) “highest available”, rather than any specific version.
  • Tunable default changes,  in table below:

Command
Tunable (Units) 5.0MP1 5.0MP3 5.1
vxtunefs max_seqio_extent_size (VxFS blocks) 2048 1048576 2048
  read_pref_io (bytes)
write_pref_io (bytes)
65536 1048576 65536
  max_direct_iosz (bytes) 131072 131072 1048576
  max_diskq 1048576 16777216 1048576
rtconf -vP vol_kmsg_trace_count (hexadecimal) 000007d0 000007d0 00001770

Symmetrix™, TimeFinder™,  BCV™ and SYMCLI™ are tradmarks of EMC.

Comments
Samuel_Brunacin
Level 3
Partner
Thanks for summarizing the changes!
DominikG
Level 6
Partner Accredited
Great summary! Thank you very much!
symconnector
Not applicable

for the informative summary.

Version history
Last update:
‎12-07-2009 10:25 AM
Updated by: