Storage Foundation for Oracle® RAC 7.2 Configuration and Upgrade Guide - Solaris

A process that starts, stops, and monitors all configured resources of a type, and reports their status to VCS.

The Veritas Security Services component that serves, one level beneath the root broker, as an intermediate registration authority and a certification authority. The authentication broker can authenticate clients, such as users or services, and grant them a certificate that will become part of the Veritas credential. An authentication broker cannot, however, authenticate other brokers. That task must be performed by the root broker.

A cluster is one or more computers that are linked together for the purpose of multiprocessing and high availability. The term is used synonymously with VCS cluster, meaning one or more computers that are part of the same GAB membership.

The cluster functionality of Veritas Volume Manager.

Administrators with clusters in physically disparate areas can set the policy for migrating applications from one location to another if clusters in one geographic area become unavailable due to an unforeseen event. Disaster recovery requires heartbeating and replication.

A collection of disks logically arranged into an object. Arrays tend to provide benefits such as redundancy or improved performance.

A feature designed to provide greater reliability and performance by using path failover and load balancing for multiported disk arrays connected to host systems through multiple paths. DMP detects the various paths to a disk using a mechanism that is specific to each supported array type. DMP can also differentiate between different enclosures of a supported array type that are connected to the same host system.

A feature with which administrators of multi-volume VxFS file systems can manage the placement of files on individual volumes in a volume set by defining placement policies that control both initial file location and the circumstances under which existing files are relocated. These placement policies cause the files to which they apply to be created and extended on specific subsets of a file system's volume set, known as placement classes. The files are relocated to volumes in other placement classes when they meet specified naming, timing, access rate, and storage capacity-related conditions.

A failover occurs when a service group faults and is migrated to another system.

A communication mechanism of the VCS engine that manages cluster membership, monitors heartbeat communication, and distributes information throughout the cluster.

The concept of configuring the product to be highly available against system failure on a clustered network using Cluster Server (VCS).

An identifier for a computer or other device on a TCP/IP network, written as four eight-bit numbers separated by periods. Messages and other data are routed on the network according to their destination IP addresses.

See also virtual IP address

A node is in jeopardy when it is missing one of the two required heartbeat connections. When a node is running with one heartbeat only (in jeopardy), VCS does not restart the applications on a new node. This action of disabling failover is a safety mechanism that prevents data corruption.

For file systems, this typically refers to the amount of time it takes a given file system operation to return to the user.

A communication mechanism of the VCS engine that provides kernel-to-kernel communications and monitors network communications.

A simple volume that resides on an extended partition on a basic disk and is limited to the space within the extended partitions. A logical volume can be formatted and assigned a drive letter, and it can be subdivided into logical drives.

See also LUN

A LUN, or logical unit, can either correspond to a single physical disk, or to a collection of disks that are exported as a single logical entity, or virtual disk, by a device driver or by an intelligent disk array's hardware. VxVM and other software modules may be capable of automatically discovering the special characteristics of LUNs, or you can use disk tags to define new storage attributes. Disk tags are administered by using the vxdisk command or the graphical user interface.

The file in which the cluster configuration is stored.

A form of storage redundancy in which two or more identical copies of data are maintained on separate volumes. (Each duplicate copy is known as a mirror.) Also RAID Level 1.

The physical host or system on which applications and service groups reside. When systems are linked by VCS, they become nodes in a cluster.

Individual components that work together to provide application services to the public network. A resource may be a physical component such as a disk group or network interface card, a software component such as a database server or a Web server, or a configuration component such as an IP address or mounted file system.

A dependency between resources is indicated by the keyword "requires" between two resource names. This indicates the second resource (the child) must be online before the first resource (the parent) can be brought online. Conversely, the parent must be offline before the child can be taken offline. Also, faults of the children are propagated to the parent.

Each resource in a cluster is identified by a unique name and classified according to its type. VCS includes a set of pre-defined resource types for storage, networking, and application services.

The first authentication broker, which has a self-signed certificate. The root broker has a single private domain that holds only the names of brokers that shall be considered valid.

A networking paradigm that provides easily reconfigurable connectivity between any subset of computers, disk storage and interconnecting hardware such as switches, hubs and bridges.

A service group is a collection of resources working together to provide application services to clients. It typically includes multiple resources, hardware- and software-based, working together to provide a single service.

A service group dependency provides a mechanism by which two service groups can be linked by a dependency rule, similar to the way resources are linked.

Storage devices that are connected to and used by two or more systems.

A volume that belongs to a shared disk group and is open on more than one node at the same time.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) developed to manage nodes on an IP network.

The current activity status of a resource, group or system. Resource states are given relative to both systems.

A facility that provides a consistent and stable view of a file system or database image and keeps track of modified data blocks since the last Storage Checkpoint.

The physical system on which applications and service groups reside. When a system is linked by VCS, it becomes a node in a cluster.

See Node

A file that describes standard resource types to the VCS engine; specifically, the data required to control a specific resource.

An open systems clustering solution designed to eliminate planned and unplanned downtime, simplify server consolidation, and allow the effective management of a wide range of applications in multiplatform environments.

A unique IP address associated with the cluster. It may be brought up on any system in the cluster, along with the other resources of the service group. This address, also known as the IP alias, should not be confused with the base IP address, which is the IP address that corresponds to the host name of a system.

A module of the Veritas Infoscale product suite that provides high performance and online management capabilities to facilitate the creation and maintenance of file systems. A file system is a collection of directories organized into a structure that enables you to locate and store files.

A Veritas Infoscale module installed on storage clients that enables management of physical disks as logical devices. It enhances data storage management by controlling space allocation, performance, data availability, device installation, and system monitoring of private and shared systems.

A data replication tool designed to contribute to an effective disaster recovery plan. VVR is a feature of Veritas Volume Manager.