Updates, Patches and Late Breaking News for Release Notes for Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 5.1, 5.1 PR1 and 5.1 SP1 on Linux

Problem

Late Breaking News (LBN) - Updates to the Release Notes for Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 5.1, 5.1 PR1 and 5.1 SP1 on Linux

Solution

Patches and Documentation
Patches and product manuals are available at https://sort.veritas.com

Downloads
For more information on how to obtain licensing keys and installation downloads refer to https://www.veritas.com/docs/000100418

Tools
Data Collector: https://sort.veritas.com/data_collectors/overview

Forums
Storage Management Community Forums, Blogs and more: https://www.veritas.com/community/business-continuity/forums

Supported operating systems for SFHA Solutions 5.1 SP1 releases 

5.1 SP1

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) with Update 3 (2.6.18-128.el5 kernel) on  AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10) with SP2 (2.6.16.60-0.21 kernel) or SP3 on AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11) (2.6.27.19-5-default kernel) or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11) with SP1 on AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (OEL 5) with Update 3  (Red Hat compatible kernel mode only)

5.1 SP1 PR2

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6) (2.6.32-71.el6 kernel) on AMD
• Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)

5.1 SP1 RP1 and RP2

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) with Update 3 (2.6.18-128.el5 kernel)  on AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6) on AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6) with Update 1 on AMD Opteron or Intel  Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10) with SP2 (2.6.16.60-0.21 kernel),  SP3 (2.6.16.60-0.54.5) or SP4 (2.6.16.60-0.85.1), onAMDOpteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• SUSELinux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11) (2.6.27.19-5 kernel) onAMDOpteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11) with SP1 (2.6.32.12-0.7 kernel) on AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)
  Note: SFCFSRAC is not supported on SLES 11 SP1.
• Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL 5) with Update 3 (2.6.18-128.el5 kernel)  (Red Hat compatible kernel mode only) on AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon EM64T (x86_64)

Only 64-bit operating systems are supported

If your system is running an older version of either Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, or Oracle Enterprise Linux, you must upgrade it before attempting to install the Veritas Storage Foundation software. Consult the Red Hat, SUSE, or Oracle documentation for more information on upgrading or reinstalling your system.
Veritas supports only Oracle Enterprise Linux (RHEL Compatible Mode only), Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distributed kernel binaries.

Veritas products operate on subsequent kernel and patch releases provided  the operating systems maintain kernel ABI (application binary interface) compatibility.
 

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Update 3 (RHEL 6.3) on SFHA Solutions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 is currently not compatible with Storage Foundation High Availability Solutions 5.1SP1,5.1SP1PR2, 5.1SP1RP1 & 5.1SP1RP2 releases due to symbol changes used within the new kernel. Storage Foundation High Availability Solutions 5.1SP1RP3 includes support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 update 3 (RHEL 6.3).

Note: A compatibility issue has been discovered on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 update 3 running a later kernel (2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64) with Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 5.1SP1RP3. The symptom is that the VxFS component cannot be loaded or used. Veritas have released  a patch to resolve the issue.

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Update 4 (RHEL 6.4) on SFHA Solutions

A compatibility issue has been discovered on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 update 4 (RHEL 6.4) with Storage Foundation High Availability Solutions  5.1SP1RP3. The symptom is that the VxFS component cannot be loaded or used. Veritas have released a patch to resolve the issue.
 

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Update 5 (RHEL 6.5) on SFHA Solutions 5.1SP1 RP4

RHEL 6.5 is supported on SFHA Solutions 5.1SP1RP4 with some additional patches. RHEL 6.5 & OL 6.5 are also supported with SFHA 6.0.3 with an additional VxFS patch, please see the Late Breaking News for SFHA 6.0.3

For more information on RHEL6.5 support with 5.1SP1RP4, see https://www.veritas.com/docs/000021659

Note: SFDB tools may not work appropriately with ksh-20120801-10.el6.x86_64 version of RHEL 6.5 on 5.1SP1 RP4. To resolve this issue, a reference bug (case 01089221) is opened with Red Hat.

Solution: To avoid this issue, install ksh-20100621-19.el6.x86_64 or a previous version.
 

Support for Red Hat Enterpise Linux 6 Update 6 (RHEL 6.6) on SFHA Solutions

RHEL 6.6 is NOT supported on SFHA Solutions 5.1 & 5.1SP1. RHEL 6.6 will be supported with SFHA 6.0.5 & 6.1.1 with an additional patch. Consult the Late Breaking News for SFHA 6.0.5 and Late Breaking News for SFHA 6.1.1 for updates

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Update 9 (RHEL 5.9) on SFHA Solutions

Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 5.1SP1RP3 is supported on RHEL 5.9

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Update 10 (RHEL 5.10) on SFHA Solutions 5.1SP1RP4

RHEL 5.10 and Oracle Linux (OL) 5.10 are supported with Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) 5.1SP1RP4. RHEL 5.10 & OL 5.10 are also supported with SFHA 6.0.3, please see the Late Breaking News for SFHA 6.0.3

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Update 11 (RHEL 5.11) on SFHA Solutions 5.1SP1RP4

RHEL 5.11 is supported with Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) 5.1SP1RP4.
 

Documentation Errata: Veritas File System Administrator's Guide

The Veritas File System 5.1 SP1 Administrator's Guide did not include the following information. This information is now updated in the online version of the document, which is available at https://sort.veritas.com/documents.

Native asynchronous I/O with cloned processes

You can enable or disable native asynchronous I/O with cloned processes by setting the vx_allow_cloned_naio tunable. Specifying a value of 1 enables native asynchronous I/O with cloned processes, while specifying a value of 0 disables native asynchronous I/O with cloned processes. The default value is 0.

Processes that are cloned by using the CLONE_VM flag share an address space with their parent. When such threads issue native asynchronous I/O by using the io_submit() call, the system can panic if those threads return and exit before the I/O completes. You can avoid this issue by setting the vx_allow_cloned_naio tunable to 0, which causes such threads to issue the I/O synchronously.

Well-behaved applications that do not have threads exiting with pending asynchronous I/O do not have this restriction. When using such applications, such as Sybase, you can set the vx_allow_cloned_naio tunable to 1, which avoids the performance impact of such threads having asynchronous I/O become synchronous.
 

Note: LxRT 5.1 Platform Release 1 (PR1) just released: Added SFRAC support for RHEL5 u3/OEL5.3 and later, SLES10 SP2 and SLES10 SP3.


Behavior of Oracle RAC 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1) on SF Oracle RAC on Unix and Linux platforms

Details:   000007833 
 

Refreshing CVM configuration after removing a node 

In the Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System Installation Guide (5.1 SP1), Chapter, "Removing a node from Storage Foundation Cluster File System clusters," the following steps to refresh the CVM configuration after removing a node is missing.

Perform the following steps to refresh the CVM configuration on one of the existing nodes after removing a node:

# /etc/vx/bin/vxclustadm -m vcs reinit
# /etc/vx/bin/vxclustadm nidmap
 

Veritas File Systems with Disk Layout Version 4 or Version 5 Cannot be Mounted or Upgraded with Veritas File System Release 5.1
Customers MUST UPGRADE to Disk Layout version 6 or 7 on all VxFS file systems BEFORE UPGRADING to the 5.1 release.

Perl dependency errors may be seen when installing Veritas File System (VxFS) 5.1 for Linux on RHEL5

Support has been added for Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC

Problems encountered using commands such as sfua_db_config, dbed_update and dbed_vmchecksnap after installing, or upgrading, to Storage Foundation for Oracle 5.1SP1 for Linux on RHEL5

Install 5.1 Patch 1 after Installing 5.1
https://sort.veritas.com/patch/detail/2957  for RHEL5 x86_64

https://sort.veritas.com/patch/detail/2958  for SLES10 x86_64

https://sort.veritas.com/patch/detail/2959  for SLES11 x86_64

VRTSaslapm is automatically upgraded to the latest version ( 5.1.134.000) on 5.1 SP1 RP4 and includes a new format for UDID for EMC PowerPath ASL (libvxpp.so) which  may effect disk group import.
www.veritas.com/docs/000021528