We are looking at the alternatives to VXVM/VXFS. One of the feature which we liked in Veritas, apart from the obvious ones is the ability to call the disks by name and group them in to a disk group. Especially in SAN based environment where the disks may be shared by multiple machines, it is very easy to manage them by disk group names rather than cxtxdx numbers. Does zfs offer such capabilities? thanks in advance for the help. This message posted from opensolaris.org
Magesh R wrote:> We are looking at the alternatives to VXVM/VXFS. One of the feature which we liked in Veritas, apart from the obvious ones is the ability to call the disks by name and group them in to a disk group. > > Especially in SAN based environment where the disks may be shared by multiple machines, it is very easy to manage them by disk group names rather than cxtxdx numbers. > > Does zfs offer such capabilities?ZFS greatly simplifies disk management. I would argue that is eliminates the need for vanity naming or some features of diskgroups. I suggest you read through the docs on how to administer and setup ZFS, try a few examples, and then ask specific questions. Nit: You confused me with "disks may be shared by multiple machines" because LUNs have no protection below the LUN level, and if your disk is a LUN, then sharing it leaves the data unprotected. Perhaps you are speaking of LUNs on a RAID array? -- richard
On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 12:30:32PM -0700, Richard Elling wrote:> Magesh R wrote: > > We are looking at the alternatives to VXVM/VXFS. One of the feature > > which we liked in Veritas, apart from the obvious ones is the > > ability to call the disks by name and group them in to a disk group. > > > > Especially in SAN based environment where the disks may be shared by > > multiple machines, it is very easy to manage them by disk group > > names rather than cxtxdx numbers. > > > > Does zfs offer such capabilities? > > ZFS greatly simplifies disk management. I would argue that is > eliminates the > need for vanity naming or some features of diskgroups. I suggest you > read through > the docs on how to administer and setup ZFS, try a few examples, and > then ask > specific questions. > > Nit: You confused me with "disks may be shared by multiple machines" > because LUNs > have no protection below the LUN level, and if your disk is a LUN, > then sharing it > leaves the data unprotected. Perhaps you are speaking of LUNs on a > RAID array? > -- richardRichard, It is rather rare that in "SAN based environment" you are given access to particular disks. :-) Magesh, in ZFS world you create pools. Each pool has its own name. Then, later, you refer to each pool (and filesystem) using its name. Regards przemol -- http://przemol.blogspot.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- O Twoich stronach juz si? m?wi... Na >>> http://link.interia.pl/f1ad3
Hello Magesh,
Monday, July 2, 2007, 4:12:11 PM, you wrote:
MR> We are looking at the alternatives to VXVM/VXFS. One of the
MR> feature which we liked in Veritas, apart from the obvious ones is
MR> the ability to call the disks by name and group them in to a disk group.
MR> Especially in SAN based environment where the disks may be shared
MR> by multiple machines, it is very easy to manage them by disk group
MR> names rather than cxtxdx numbers.
MR> Does zfs offer such capabilities?
ZFS''s zpool is a equivalent to a disk group in above scenario.
IF you wan to move entire pool from one host to the other all you''ve
got to do is:
node-1: zpool export pool_name
node-2: zpool import pool_name
It will actually do more in default config - all filesystems will be
mounted with all options you''ve set up, all mountpoint will be created
if needed, all nfs and/or iSCSI shares will follow, etc.
It means you won''t need to update any /etc/vfstab and similar.
Much more easy than VxVM :)
--
Best regards,
Robert mailto:rmilkowski at task.gda.pl
http://milek.blogspot.com