Version 6.1 for VOM (Veritas Operation Manager) has been released recently. This new version brings management capabilities for Cluster File System and Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS) environments. In this blog entry I will highlight how to start using VOM to manage FSS and how to create a new volume.
Before being able to manage FSS it is necessary to upgrade the Managed Host (MH) version in the cluster nodes. The reason is that CFS 6.1 comes with a package that does not include the new capabilities from VOM in order to manage FSS. You can check your MH version clicking on the Settings icon and then on Hosts. You should see the list of all Cluster Hosts managed through VOM. If the cluster is not currently added to VOM for management then you can click on Add Host and add the nodes. The MH Version column will show what is the Managed Host version. The cluster brings 6.0 version, but 6.1 is needed in order to be managed by VOM. In a fresh installed or upgraded cluster, the MH version will be 6.0.0.0.
Therefore, the first step to start enjoining the new features is to push MH 6.1 from the VOM server.
In order to push the new package (6.1) make sure that along with your VOM 6.1 deployment, the Managed Host package has been downloaded from http://www.symantec.com/operations-manager
At the VOM console, click on the Settings icon and then on Deployment. Click on Upload Solutions and select the Veritas_Operations_Manager_Managed_Host_Bundle_6.1.0 that you had previously downloaded from the Symantec site. Once the bundle has been uploaded, click on Base Releases and you will see the vom-6.1.0.0-mh package. Clicking on Applicable Hosts I can clearly see my six nodes where I can install the new package. Select all the nodes pressing the Control key, right click and select Install.
The Recent Task tab at the bottom can be used to monitor the deployment.
Once the tasks are completed, you can verify that the new MH version is now 6.1.0.0.
The first thing we notice at the new VOM version is that in the Server Perspective there is a new “Storage Clusters” folder. Any cluster that is using Cluster File System (CFS), Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) or Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS) will be grouped in this new folder.
Keep in mind that FSS Capable will only appear for CVM Protocol Version equal or greater than 130. This is important for any cluster that has been upgraded. Until CVM Protocol is not updated to 130 the cluster will not be FSS capable.
Once we click on one specific Storage Cluster, we will be able see a tab with the Hosts belonging to that cluster, Disks, the Shared Disk Groups, Volumes and Applications running on the cluster.
Selecting the Disk tab will provide a view of all the storage seen by each of the servers. From VOM we can now select one or various disks and Export them, so they will be visible by the other cluster nodes.
Once the disk has been exported, note that one new icon is being used to show a remote disk.
I can use the Control key to select all the disks I want and with one go make all the disks available to all the cluster nodes. When using FSS, it may be interesting to add the column FSS State to the normal display. On the Properties section for any disk, right click on FSS State and select Show as column.
Once I have exported all the disks for each node, I can go to any of the nodes and take a look to what disks are being seen. The FSS State column will show which ones are locally exported and which ones are remote.
From now on, I can select the disk that I want and create Disk Groups and Volumes. There are several ways to accomplish this. I could for example select all the disks I want using the Control key, right click and select Create Disk Group.
On the wizard I only need to type the Disk Group name:
Here I have an option to provide a Custom Name to each disk selected. I will use this option to provide a more meaningful name to each disk where the prefix with the node name is respected.
Once you are done, click on Next to complete the wizard. You can monitor the Task tab for completion:
The Shared Disk Group tab will show the new Disk Group that has been created:
I can then right click on the Disk Group and select Create Volume. This brings me to a wizard where I can manually select the disks to be used or let Volume Manager to choose them for me.
I am going to manually select two disks from two different hosts in order to create a mirrored volume:
I will enable FastResync so if one server is rebooted or down, only the data modified during that period of time is resynchronized.
Finally I can create a File System on that volume. I will mount it as Cluster type in all the available nodes.
Finally I can see the new volume and mount point, and all the systems where the file system is mounted.
This completes this first entry about the exciting new capabilities provided by VOM. I am very excited to see how we are simplifying the configuration and management of shared nothing architectures, and even more excited to see what we will be bringing in the near future.
Building application and storage availability without SAN is becoming easier.
Carlos.-