InfoScale™ 9.0 SmartIO for Solid-State Drives Solutions Guide - Linux

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)
Platform: Linux
  1. Introducing SFHA Solutions SmartIO
    1.  
      About SmartIO for solid-state drives
    2.  
      About SmartIO in an SFHA environment
    3.  
      About SmartIO in an Active/Active cluster environment
    4.  
      About SmartIO in the Solaris virtualized environments
    5.  
      About SmartIO in the Linux virtualized environment
    6.  
      About the SmartIO caching profiler tool
  2. Using the SmartIO feature: use cases
    1. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxVM volumes
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      4.  
        Verifying the VxVM cache area and monitoring the caching
    2. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxFS file systems
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching
      5.  
        Customizing the caching behavior
    3. About SmartIO caching on SSD devices exported by FSS
      1.  
        Status of cache areas when nodes leave or join the cluster
      2.  
        Setting up cache areas using SSDs exported by FSS
    4. About SmartIO write-back caching for applications running on VxFS file systems- DLV 11 to 13
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO write-back caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Setting up SmartIO write-back caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching (writeback mode)
    5. About SmartIO FEL-based writeback caching for applications running on VxFS file systems- DLV 14 and later
      1.  
        Required configuration for FEL-based write-back caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Setting up FEL-based write-back caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring FEL-based write-back caching
    6. About multiple SmartIO cache areas for read and write-back caching on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        About the smartiocache option
      2.  
        Converting VxFS cache areas from one type to another
      3.  
        Setting up multiple cache areas on a system
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache areas
    7. About SmartIO caching for Oracle databases on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Prerequisites and configuration for using the SmartIO plug-in for Oracle
      2.  
        Setting default SmartIO caching policies for a database running on a VxFS file system
      3.  
        Setting SmartIO caching policies for database objects
      4.  
        Pinning and unpinning database objects
      5.  
        Enabling and disabling caching for the database
      6.  
        Listing cache policy details for the database
      7.  
        Listing cache statistics for the database
    8. About SmartIO caching for databases on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Applying a SmartIO database caching template for a VxVM volume
    9.  
      Technology Preview: Distributed SmartIO in Veritas InfoScale storage environments
  3. Administering SmartIO
    1.  
      Creating a cache area
    2.  
      Displaying information about a cache area
    3. Enabling or disabling caching for a data object
      1.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a file system
      2.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a data volume
    4.  
      Adding a device to the cache area
    5.  
      Pausing caching from a volume to a cache area
    6.  
      Removing a device from the cache area
    7.  
      Destroying a cache area
    8.  
      Setting the attributes of the VxVM cache area
    9.  
      Setting or changing the caching mode for a VxFS cache area
    10.  
      Flushing dirty data from a writeback cache area
    11.  
      Tuning the writeback caching
    12. Viewing the SmartIO cache statistics
      1.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxVM cache area
      2.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxFS cache area
  4. Troubleshooting and error handling
    1. Support for a persistent or 'warm' VxVM cache
      1.  
        Primary volume failure with a stale cache could cause possible data corruption
      2.  
        Migrating a cache during HA failover is not supported
    2.  
      Cache area is lost after a disk failure (3158482)
    3.  
      Cache is not online after a reboot
    4.  
      Recovering the write-back cache after a node failure
  5. Appendix A. Command reference
    1.  
      SmartIO command reference

Setting up FEL-based write-back caching for VxFS file systems

To set up FEL-based write-back caching for a VxFS file system, create an FEL cache area and mount the file system in writeback mode.

Setting up FEL-based write-back caching for VxFS file systems

  1. Create an FEL cache area on an SSD device, using one of the following commands.

    Specify one or more devices using the disk access name (daname) of the device. The device should be initialized for VxVM use and should have the cdsdisk format.

    • # sfcache create [size] daname[...] [ --fel [dgname=name] [nmirrors=N] [node1:daname node2:daname]] [cachearea_name]

      Where:

      daname specifies the disk access name of a device on which you want to create a cache area.

      cachearea_name specifies a customized name for an FEL cache area. If unspecified, SmartIO automatically generates a name.

      size specifies the size for a cache area. By default, the cache area uses all of the available space on the device.

      dgname specifies the name of an already created FSS disk group.

      nmirrors specifies the number of mirrored volumes to be created on FSS diskgroup.

      node1,node2 specifies the cluster node names.

      For example:

      # sfcache create --fel ssd0_0

      In SFCFSHA configuration:

      # sfcache create --fel node1:ssd0_0 node2:ssd1_0

    • Alternatively, specify the name of an FSS disk group and a volume to use for an FEL cache area. In this case, you cannot specify a size. The FEL cache area uses the entire volume.

      For example:

      # sfcache create [--fel] dg/vol

      Where:

      dg/vol is the FSS disk group name and volume name. SmartIO uses this name for the FEL cache area.

      For example:

      # sfcache create --fel ssd_dg/ssd_vol

  2. Bring the FEL cache online on each node.

    sfcache online CacheName.

  3. Mount the VxFS file system and set the smartiomode option to writeback. If the file system is already mounted, you must remount the file system to set the smartiomode option to writeback.

    For local mount:

    # mount -t vxfs -o smartiomode=writeback /dev/vx/dsk/testdg/vol1 /mnt1

    For remount:

    # mount -t vxfs -o remount,smartiomode=writeback /dev/vx/dsk/testdg/vol1 /mnt1

    For a cluster file system, the file system must be mounted on all the nodes with the smartiomode and cluster options set.

    For CFS mount:

    # mount -t vxfs -o cluster,smartiomode=writeback /dev/vx/dsk/testdg/vol1 /mnt1

    To enable writeback caching, the smartiomode option must be set to writeback.

  4. Customize the caching behavior further, if required.

    See Customizing the caching behavior.

    See Tuning the writeback caching.