Veritas Storage Foundation 5.1 SP1 Advanced Features Administrator"s Guide (5900-1503, April 2011)

of using symbolic links is that you must manage two sets of files (for instance,

during database backup and restore).

Note: Sybase requires special prerequisites.

See “Converting Sybase files to Quick I/O files” on page 64.

■ If possible, use relative path names instead of absolute path names

when creating symbolic links to access regular files as Quick I/O

files. Using relative path names prevents copies of the symbolic

link from referring to the original file when the directory is copied.

This is important if you back up or move database files with a

command that preserves the symbolic link.

However, some applications require absolute path names. If a file

is then relocated to another directory, you must change the

symbolic link to use the new absolute path. Alternatively, you can

put all the symbolic links in a directory separate from the data

directories. For example, you can create a directory named

/database and put all the symbolic links there, with the symbolic

links pointing to absolute path names.

Usage notes

To access an existing regular file as a Quick I/O file on a VxFS file system

Access the VxFS file system mount point containing the regular files:

$ cd /mount_point

Create the symbolic link:

$ mv filename .filename

$ ln -s .filename::cdev:vxfs: filename

This example shows how to access the VxFS file dbfile as a Quick I/O file:

$ cd /db01

$ mv dbfile .dbfile

$ ln -s .dbfile::cdev:vxfs: dbfile

This example shows how to confirm the symbolic link was created:

$ ls -lo .dbfile dbfile

-rw-r--r-- 1 sybase 104890368 Oct 2 13:42 .dbfile

lrwxrwxrwx 1 sybase 19 Oct 2 13:42 dbfile ->

.dbfile::cdev:vxfs:

63Improving Sybase performance with Veritas Quick I/O

Accessing regular VxFS files as Quick I/O files