VxVM CDS Disks and DIskgroups - Cross Platform Data Sharing

[Alzhy]

Anyone ever tried this with VxVM/VxFS 4.X upwards? With CDS one i ssupposedly able to create a DG on HP-UX, filesystems, etc... The heirarchy can then be deported from HP-UX and imported on Linux to ease bulk data transport requirements.

TIA for whatever info ye can give me.

[inukoti · Accepted solution]

I havent tried but theoritically it will work.

[Mel Burslan]

I did not try this either as I havenever needed to but, if both sides are using the same version of the VxVM, theoretically, it should work as Vertias claims their software is platform agnostic.

I'd be very interested in hearing if you can implement this solution and share data successfully between hpux and Linux.

[Alzhy]

Mel, not share.. move (back and forth that is) since NFS even @ 1Gbit dedicated pipes simply won't be faster than locally mounted storage.


I've actually done this with a beta of VxVm on Linux some years back when CDS was new. It was very small scale though and between systems with the same Endianness.

HP-UX to Linux is Big to Small Endian though and that's why I am interested as a possible solution to a client's data migration needs.

Am just awaiting for a Temp License.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Have not tried this.

If you use the same versions of Veritas Volume Manager, I think it will work.

Involve any other volume management products, because on the Linux side development and version control happens a lot faster than in the proprietary software sources.

You get best speed with local mounted files, and I see your point.

SEP

[Turgay Cavdar]

A good document for CDS:

http://sfdoccentral.symantec.com/sf/4.1/solaris/pdf/sf_cds_admin.pdf

[Alzhy]

Thanks for thine view so far.

CDS - Cross-Platform Data Sharing features of VxVM actually started with VxVM 4.X. So it is a mature technology --- wich I think is better than a SAN file system or even a NAS share as the storage is OS Agnostic -- you will howver need to be at the mercy of Symantec.

I should know tomorrow -- I needed to install VxVM 5,0 MP3 on my Linux machine RHEL 5.3 to match my HP-UX 11.31 VxVM 5.0 which is at MP1.

We expect TBs of data to be moved from UNIX to Linux and this is the only effective and efficient way that we can think of without wasting storage.

I am hoping there will be an OS Agnostic LVM and Filesystem on the horizon -- maybe LVM/EXT3 perhaps? or ZFS -- someday?

[Mel Burslan]

If I were you I would not hold my breath for portable LVM. So far, Linux supposedly uses a variation of HP's LVM and yet, they still can not interoperate. My 2 cents.

[Alzhy]

Works Beautifully as advertised.

The diskgroup should be created with cds enabled (vxdisksetup and vxdg init). With 4.1+ I think this is the default anyway.

If your DG has a Fileystem on it, you need to use "fscdsconv" to convert the filesystem prior to mounting.


Also discovered VxVM/VxFS license on Linux seem to provide for a "free?" 4 volume/4 filesystem and 1 Diskgroup "license".

So I guess for large/bulk data transfers between platforms -- we now have a way to do this.