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Welcome to SolsticeTM DiskSuiteTM 4.2

  

Solstice DiskSuite is a volume management solution designed to meet the demands of mission-critical business applications. As more and more mission-critical applications are migrated from proprietary mainframes to open platforms, the need for robust storage management increases. Solstice DiskSuite is designed to meet the demands of those technical and business applications. It equips you with features and tools previously available only on proprietary systems.

Solstice DiskSuite is focused on addressing the need for increased data safety, availability, and performance as well as controlling the costs of managing these growing, complex environments. Solstice DiskSuite addresses your critical needs through the use of the following technologies:

  • Disk mirroring
  • Hot spares
  • RAID-5
  • Concatenation
  • Disk striping and RAID-5
  • A logging UNIX® file system
Together these technologies provide a powerful set of tools to get the job done.

Features

Solstice DiskSuite includes the following features:

  • Disk mirroring and RAID-5 handles all disk failures transparently.

  • A hot spares facility provides for automatic online recovery.

  • A logging UNIX file system eliminates fsck files for fast system recovery.

  • Disk striping enables parallel I/O and load balancing for improved performance.

  • The graphical user interface is designed for error free meta-device setup and administration along with file system and disk management.

  • Concatenation and the growfs files command allow the construction of large logical devices and enable online expansion and reconfiguration.

  • System throughput can be proactively monitored and problem areas identified through the GUI based performance monitor.

  • Event notifications can be sent to network management applications via SNMP traps.

New Features

Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 includes the following new features:
  • 64-bit Compliance - Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 is 64-bit compliant. This means DiskSuite operates on Solaris 7. DiskSuite recognizes whether the computer is booted in 64-bit or 32-bit mode, and the 4.2 release will support either architecture.
  • Alternative Pathing - Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 supports alternate pathing. This allows DiskSuite to see the alternate pathing pseudo devices that are provided on E10000 Enterprise Servers.
  • Enhanced Reliability and Performance - Numerous bug fixes enhance the reliability and performance on both SPARC and x86 platforms. For a list of the more critical bugs that were fixed in the DiskSuite 4.2 release, refer to the Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 Installation and Product Notes (part number 805-5960-10).

Benefits

Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 is a software product that enables you to manage large numbers of disks and the data on those disks.

Although there are many ways to use DiskSuite, most tasks center around increasing:

  • Storage capacity
  • Data availability

DiskSuite uses virtual disks to manage physical disks and their associated data. In DiskSuite, a virtual disk is called a metadevice. A metadevice is functionally identical to the physical disk in the view of an application. DiskSuite converts I/O requests directed at a metadevice into I/O requests to the underlying member disks.

DiskSuite's metadevices are built from slices (disk partitions). An easy way to build metadevices is to use the graphical user interface, DiskSuite Tool, that comes with DiskSuite. DiskSuite Tool presents you with a view of all the slices available. By dragging slices onto metadevice objects, you can quickly assign slices to metadevices.

Enhanced Data Availability

Solstice DiskSuite enhances data availability through the implementation of disk mirroring and RAID-5.

Solstice DiskSuite transparently maintains a mirror copy of the data on another disk and automatically uses the surviving copy in the event of hardware failure. Mirroring provides complete data redundancy for your Solaris server.

Solstice DiskSuite's RAID-5 feature provides highly available data storage at a reduced cost over mirroring. RAID-5 distributes parity information across all kdisks files) in the RAID. This allows recovery of any single disk failure within the RAID without the loss of data.

Online system recovery is supplemented by the use of a hot spare utility that automatically replaces failed mirror or RAID-5 components online. This facility migrates new partitions in to replace failing ones. Not only are users still supported on the surviving copy of the data, but a new mirror is automatically generated.

System uptime is further enhanced through Solstice DiskSuite's logging UNIX file system (UFS) feature. When coming back online after a reboot, UNIX checks file systems for integrity. Although a time consuming operation in large systems, fsck files) was necessary to avoid system panics and data corruption. The logging UFS included in Solstice DiskSuite eliminates the need for this process, enabling fast system recovery.

Through the use of any or all of these capabilities, users can continue working even if there is a disk or controller failure. Data is accessible and the organization remains productive.

Improved Data Reliability and Integrity

Keeping mission-critical data safe is of great concern to any organization. Solstice DiskSuite is the cornerstone for data reliability and integrity. Metadevice database replication guarantees consistency across mirrors. The UFS file system logging prevents file system corruption due to a system crash or power outage. Updates are safely recorded in a log before they are applied. Solstice DiskSuite allows the log to be mirrored for increased safety.

Improved Performance

Solstice DiskSuite improves both I/O and system performance. Disk striping augments application performance by increasing I/O throughput. Disk striping spreads the I/O load over several disks, increasing the throughput available to a single process.

Increased File System Capacity

In the past, when a UNIX file system was out of space, files had to be moved around or the file system had to be reconstructed on a larger disk, and users were interrupted for long periods. Solstice DiskSuite supports large file systems by enabling a single file system to span multiple physical disks, increasing the capacity of the file system. With Solstice DiskSuite, just add a new partition to the file system, issue the online grow file system command, and you're back in business.

Easy and Flexible Administration

Solstice DiskSuite provides you with the flexibility necessary to effectively manage your growing, dynamic, fast-paced environment. Solstice DiskSuite offers a powerful but simple graphical user interface in addition to the command line interface. This interface allows for error-free setup of metadevices, such as mirrors and UFS logs, and easy, ongoing administration of disk subsystems.

It provides a visual representation of the storage subsystem along with drag-and-drop capabilities, both of which are invaluable in managing large, complex disk subsystems.

System Monitoring

Centralized system and network management become more and more critical as the network grows in both capacity and complexity.

Solstice DiskSuite offers tools to more effectively monitor and manage disk subsystems. A GUI-based performance monitor assists in finding potential performance obstacles. You can proactively monitor system throughput and take action to correct potential problem areas.

DiskSuite now enables more effective centralized network management crucial for large, distributed environments through integration with Sun's network management products. Solstice DiskSuite can send events via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps to the Solstice Domain ManagerTM console. This significantly improves system availability and manageability.




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