Veritas InfoScale™ 8.0.2 Virtualization Guide - Linux on ESXi
- Section I. Overview
- Section II. Deploying Veritas InfoScale products in a VMware environment
- Getting started
- Storage configurations and feature compatibility
- About setting up VMware with InfoScale products
- InfoScale products support for VMware environments
- Installing and configuring storage solutions in the VMware virtual environment
- Recommendations for improved resiliency of InfoScale clusters in virtualized environments
- Understanding Storage Configuration
- Configuring storage
- Enabling disk UUID on virtual machines
- Installing Array Support Library (ASL) for VMDK on cluster nodes
- Excluding the boot disk from the Volume Manager configuration
- Creating the VMDK files
- Mapping the VMDKs to each virtual machine (VM)
- Enabling the multi-write flag
- Getting consistent names across nodes
- Creating a file system
- Getting started
- Section III. Use cases for Veritas InfoScale product components in a VMware environment
- Application availability using Cluster Server
- Multi-tier business service support
- Improving data protection, storage optimization, data migration, and database performance
- Use cases for InfoScale product components in a VMware guest
- Protecting data with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Optimizing storage with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- About SmartTier in the VMware environment
- About compression with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- About thin reclamation with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- About SmartMove with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- About SmartTier for Oracle with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Migrating data with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Improving database performance with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Setting up virtual machines for fast failover using InfoScale Enterprise on VMware disks
- About use cases for InfoScale Enterprise in the VMware guest
- InfoScale Enterprise operation in VMware virtualized environments
- InfoScale functionality and compatibility matrix
- About setting up InfoScale Enterprise on VMware ESXi
- Section IV. Reference
About SmartTier in the VMware environment
SmartTier is a VxFS feature that enables you to allocate file storage space from different storage tiers according to rules you create. SmartTier provides a more flexible alternative compared to current approaches for tiered storage. Static storage tiering involves a manual one-time assignment of application files to a storage class, which is inflexible over a long term. Hierarchical Storage Management solutions typically require files to be migrated back into a file system name space before an application access request can be fulfilled, leading to latency and run-time overhead. In contrast, SmartTier allows organizations to:
Optimize storage assets by dynamically moving a file to its optimal storage tier as the value of the file changes over time
Automate the movement of data between storage tiers without changing the way users or applications access the files
Migrate data automatically based on policies set up by administrators, eliminating operational requirements for tiered storage and downtime commonly associated with data movement
Note:
SmartTier is the expanded and renamed feature previously known as Dynamic Storage Tiering (DST).
You can use the SmartTier functionality of InfoScale in a VMware environment similar to how you use it in the physical environment. For example, you may have two different types of storage arrays, some SSD and some HDD. You can allocate one VMFS on each type of disk. You can use the SSD devices as one storage tier and the HDD devices as the second storage tier.
For more information about SmartTier, see Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability Administrator's Guide or Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide.