VERITAS Storage Foundation 4.1 Cross-Platform Data Sharing Administrator's Guide

Overview

This chapter presents an overview of Cross-Platform Data Sharing (CDS):

◆ General Concepts

◆ CDS Disk Access and Format

◆ CDS Disk Groups

General Concepts

CDS provides you with a foundation for moving data between different systems within a

heterogeneous environment. The machines may be running HP-UX, AIX, Linux or the Solaris

operating system (OS), and they may all have direct access to physical devices holding data. CDS

allows VERITAS products and applications to access data storage independently of the operating

system platform, enabling them to work transparently in heterogeneous environments.

The following levels in the device hierarchy, from disk through file system, must provide support

for CDS to be used:

◆ End-user applications — application level

◆ VERITAS File System (VxFS) — file system level

◆ VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) — volume level

◆ Operating system — device level

Although CDS allows data volumes and their contents to be easily migrated between

heterogeneous systems, it does not enable concurrent access from different types of platform unless

this is supported at all levels that are required.

CDS utilizes a new disk type (auto:cdsdisk). To effect data sharing, VxVM supports a new disk

group attribute (cds) and also supports different OS block sizes.

CDS is a license-enabled feature that is supported at the disk group level by VxVM and at the file

system level by VxFS.