Veritas Volume Manager 5.0 Release Notes (5900-0593, March 2010)

Veritas Volume Manager 5.0 Release Notes
New Features in VxVM 5.0
Chapter 110
• Linked break-off snapshot volumes
A new variant of the third-mirror break-off snapshot type is linked break-off snapshot
volumes, which use the vxsnap addmir command to link a specially prepared volume with
the data volume. The volume that is used for the snapshot is prepared in the same way as
for full-sized instant snapshots. However, unlike full-sized instant snapshots, this volume
can be set up in a different disk group from the data volume. This makes linked break-off
snapshots especially suitable for off-host processing applications where you may want to
create the snapshot on storage with different characteristics from that used for the data
volumes.
If you change the size of volume, any snapshots that are currently linked are also resized
in the same operation.
NOTE This feature requires the FASTRESYNC license and is not available with
Base-VxVM and Full VxVM bundle.
• Volume tags
Volumes may now be tagged with an arbitrary tag name and optional tag value. Multiple
tags can be associated with a single volume. Such tags are used by features such as
Remote Mirror, Quality of Storage Service (QoSS), and Dynamic Storage Tiering (DST).
• Disk Tags
Disks may now be tagged with an arbitrary tag name and optional tag value. Multiple
tags can be associated with a single disk. Such tags are used by features such as Remote
Mirror, Intelligent Storage Provisioning (ISP), and importing cloned disks.
• Data migration
The vxassist, vxevac, and vxsd commands have been enhanced to allow data to be
migrated at the volume, disk, or subdisk level respectively. Once the data migration is in
the tentative state, it can either be committed or cancelled.
• Raw I/O access to volume components of a volume set
A mechanism is provided to allow access to the raw device nodes of the component
volumes of a volume set. This is intended to allow the component volumes to be backed up
and restored individually.
• Maximum number of component volumes in a volume set
The maximum number of component volumes in a volume set has been increased to 2048.
• Importing cloned disks