- Using Solaris Volume Manager Software With Sun Cluster 3.0 Framework
- Configuring Solaris Volume Manager Software in the Sun Cluster 3.0 Environment
- Advantages of Using Solaris Volume Manager Software in a Sun Cluster 3.0 Environment
- Ordering Sun Documents
Advantages of Using Solaris Volume Manager Software in a Sun Cluster 3.0 Environment
When designing a solution using Sun Cluster 3.0 software, you must decide which volume manager to use. In addition to being freely included in the Solaris 9 OE distribution, Solaris Volume Manager software has additional features that make it the volume manager of choice.
The following list is not exhaustive, but it explains why Solaris Volume Manager software deserves its place in enterprise-level configurations.
The introduction of soft partitioning eliminates the seven-slice limit imposed by the Solaris OE. Solaris Volume Manager software is now equal to other logical volume managers when very large disks are used.
The mdmonitord daemon introduces active volume monitoring.
Solaris Volume Manager software is a true cluster-aware application. It automatically registers disksets with the cluster and synchronizes volumes in the global device namespace, thereby eliminating configuration headaches. This makes it the easiest volume manager to use in combination with Sun Cluster 3.0 software.
The use of soft partitions on top of big mirrored volumes guarantees a clean and consistent volume namespace.
All nodes that can take the diskset are locally known on each cluster node, adding extra security to the configuration. Rogue nodes that have not been authorized by valid nodes will never forcibly take the diskset.
Solaris Volume Manager software, the Solaris 9 OE, and Sun Cluster 3.0 software were developed and are supported by Sun, eliminating possible supportability issues.
Solaris Volume Manager software provides the replica quorum facility to maintain data integrity. This is further enhanced by the use of mediators.
The Solaris Volume Manager software command line interface is extremely intuitive. The time required to become familiar with the product is considerably less than the time required to become familiar with competitive products.
If the need arises, tearing down and rebuilding a Solaris Volume Manager software configuration is very simple and easy to do.