InfoScale™ 9.0 Storage and Availability Management for DB2 Databases - AIX, Linux
- Section I. Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) management solutions for DB2 databases
- Overview of Storage Foundation for Databases
- Introducing Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) Solutions for DB2
- About the File System component
- About the Volume Manager component
- About Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP)
- About Cluster Server
- About Cluster Server agents
- About InfoScale Operations Manager
- Feature support for DB2 across InfoScale products
- Use cases for InfoScale products
- Overview of Storage Foundation for Databases
- Section II. Deploying DB2 with InfoScale products
- Deployment options for DB2 in a Storage Foundation environment
- DB2 deployment options in an InfoScale environment
- DB2 on a single system with Storage Foundation
- DB2 on a single system with off-host in a Storage Foundation environment
- DB2 in a highly available cluster with Storage Foundation High Availability
- DB2 in a parallel cluster with SF Cluster File System HA
- Deploying DB2 and Storage Foundation in a virtualization environment
- Deploying DB2 with Storage Foundation SmartMove and Thin Provisioning
- Deploying DB2 with Storage Foundation
- Deploying DB2 in an off-host configuration with Storage Foundation
- Deploying DB2 with High Availability
- Deployment options for DB2 in a Storage Foundation environment
- Section III. Configuring Storage Foundation for Database (SFDB) tools
- Configuring and managing the Storage Foundation for Databases repository database
- About the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) repository
- Requirements for Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools
- Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools availability
- Configuring the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools repository
- Updating the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) repository after adding a node
- Updating the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) repository after removing a node
- Removing the Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) repository
- Configuring authentication for Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools
- Configuring and managing the Storage Foundation for Databases repository database
- Section IV. Improving DB2 database performance
- About database accelerators
- Improving database performance with Quick I/O
- About Quick I/O
- How Quick I/O improves database performance
- Tasks for setting up Quick I/O in a database environment
- Preallocating space for Quick I/O files using the setext command
- Accessing regular VxFS files as Quick I/O files
- Converting DB2 containers to Quick I/O files
- About sparse files
- Displaying Quick I/O status and file attributes
- Extending a Quick I/O file
- Monitoring tablespace free space with DB2 and extending tablespace containers
- Recreating Quick I/O files after restoring a database
- Disabling Quick I/O
- Improving DB2 database performance with VxFS Concurrent I/O
- Section V. Using point-in-time copies
- Understanding point-in-time copy methods
- About point-in-time copies
- When to use point-in-time copies
- About Storage Foundation point-in-time copy technologies
- Point-in-time copy solutions supported by SFDB tools
- About snapshot modes supported by Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools
- Volume-level snapshots
- Storage Checkpoints
- Considerations for DB2 point-in-time copies
- Administering third-mirror break-off snapshots
- Administering Storage Checkpoints
- About Storage Checkpoints
- Database Storage Checkpoints for recovery
- Creating a Database Storage Checkpoint
- Deleting a Database Storage Checkpoint
- Mounting a Database Storage Checkpoint
- Unmounting a Database Storage Checkpoint
- Creating a database clone using a Database Storage Checkpoint
- Restoring database from a Database Storage Checkpoint
- Gathering data for offline-mode Database Storage Checkpoints
- Backing up and restoring with Netbackup in an SFHA environment
- Understanding point-in-time copy methods
- Section VI. Optimizing storage costs for DB2
- Section VII. Storage Foundation for Databases administrative reference
- Storage Foundation for Databases command reference
- Tuning for Storage Foundation for Databases
- Troubleshooting SFDB tools
Data integrity in volume snapshots
A volume snapshot captures the data that exists in a volume at a given point in time. As such, VxVM does not have any knowledge of data that is cached in memory by the overlying file system, or by applications such as databases that have files open in the file system. Snapshots are always crash consistent, that is, the snapshot can be put to use by letting the application perform its recovery. This is similar to how the application recovery occurs after a server crash. If the fsgen volume usage type is set on a volume that contains a mounted VxFS file system, VxVM coordinates with VxFS to flush data that is in the cache to the volume. Therefore, these snapshots are always VxFS consistent and require no VxFS recovery while mounting.
For databases, a suitable mechanism must additionally be used to ensure the integrity of tablespace data when the volume snapshot is taken. The facility to temporarily suspend file system I/O is provided by most modern database software. The examples provided in this document illustrate how to perform this operation. For ordinary files in a file system, which may be open to a wide variety of different applications, there may be no way to ensure the complete integrity of the file data other than by shutting down the applications and temporarily unmounting the file system. In many cases, it may only be important to ensure the integrity of file data that is not in active use at the time that you take the snapshot. However, in all scenarios where application coordinate, snapshots are crash-recoverable.