White Paper

T2775xx: HP Serviceguard Cluster File System

The HP Serviceguard Cluster File System (SGCFS) is an integrated product bundle that includes

Serviceguard high availability clustering with Symantec’s Veritas Storage Foundation CFS, which

adds the Veritas CFS and Veritas CVM for concurrent data access from multiple servers to the content

of SGSMP. This bundle includes the following individual components:

 HP Serviceguard

 HP Serviceguard Manager

 HP Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit

 Veritas File System version

 Veritas Volume Manager version

 Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP)

 Veritas Enterprise Administrator

 Dynamic Storage Tiering (DST)

 Instant Volume Snapshots (FlashSnap)

 Storage Checkpoints

 Veritas Storage Rollback

 Database FlashSnap

 Disk Group Split and Join (FlashSnap)

 FastResync

 Veritas Cluster File System (CFS)

 Veritas Cluster Volume Manager (CVM)

HP recommends the SGCFS bundle to Serviceguard users who want to take advantage of the CFS

functionality in a non-Oracle database environment. All premium storage management features

introduced with the SGSMP bundle are also included in the SGCFS bundle.

Generally, the CFS can be used for any application that requires sharing of files, such as for home

directories and project files, web pages, and multi-instance applications. The CFS is also applicable

when you want highly available standby data in predominantly read-only environments where you

must access data, or if you do not want to rely on a Network File System (NFS) for file sharing.

The following applications use CFS features in different ways:

 Single-instance failover applications, including non-Oracle single instance databases, may benefit

from using CVM or CFS because of the potential for improved end-to-end failover time when

compared to a cluster with VxVM/VxFS volumes and file systems. Without CFS, the volumes and

file systems must be made available on the failover node before the application can start. These

steps are unnecessary in a CFS configuration.

 Decision support systems that use point-in-time copies of data from systems running on different

cluster nodes can use FlashSnap functionality on data shared by the CFS. In this way, the decision

support system can run on a different node than the primary system while CFS and FlashSnap

create the point-in-time data and make it available on the decision support system node.

 For CFS in combination with FlashSnap, using the point-in-time copy of a production system for

backup purposes on a different node reduces the performance impact on the primary system during

the backup process.