Comparison: Microsoft Logical Disk Manager (LDM) and VERITAS Volume Manager

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1 Comparison: Microsoft Logical Disk Manager (LDM) and VERITAS Volume Manager V E R I T A S W H I T E P A P E R for Microsoft Windows

2 Table of Contents Online Storage Management Challenge Logical Disk Manager in Windows VERITAS Volume Manager Product Comparison: VERITAS Volume Manager, Microsoft Windows NT4 Disk Administrator and LDM

3 Online Storage Management Challenge Traditional disk storage management is a labor-intensive process, often requiring machines to be taken offline for hours at a time, disabling user access to data and requiring tedious, manual intervention by system administrators. Increasingly, Windows system administrators are experiencing the same storage management needs as their Open Systems enterprise counterparts. Until recently, Windows systems have lacked tools that meet sophisticated storage management needs, such as: Online storage configuration Online volume management Flexible I/O performance monitoring. These capabilities are critical for maintaining highly available, high-performance storage. VERITAS has worked closely with Microsoft to provide Windows administrators with various levels of sophisticated tools for storage management. Logical Disk Manager in Windows 2000 Logical Disk Manager (LDM) is the result of collaboration between VERITAS and Microsoft. It is included with all Windows 2000 Server versions as a Disk Management snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). Logical Disk Manager is designed for Windows 2000 environments with moderate uptime requirements or limited system administration resources available for configuring and managing storage. VERITAS Volume Manager VERITAS Volume Manager is designed NT4 or Windows 2000 environments requiring the highest availability-up to percent. In addition to offering the basic features in LDM 2000, VERITAS Volume Manager 2000 adds advanced storage management capabilities to the Windows 2000 environment. You can also deploy these advanced features on the Windows NT4 platform, using Volume Manager NT to extend the capabilities of Windows Disk Administrator dramatically. These volume management features provide high availability, flexible storage configuration and performance optimization. Comparison: Microsoft Logical Disk Manager and VERITAS Volume Manager Page 1

4 Product Comparison: VERITAS Volume Manager, Microsoft Windows NT4 Disk Administrator and LDM VOLUME TYPES SUPPORTED Simple volume Volume limited to a single physical disk Spanned volume Large volume spans multiple physical disks Striped volume (RAID 0) Improved I/O performance Mirrored volume (RAID 1) Data protection via extra copy RAID volume (RAID 5) Cost-effective data protection Mirrored Striped volume Performance; failure tolerance (RAID 1+0) up to half the disks can fail without data loss Max. number of subdisks More subdisks permits finer granularity in volume management VOLUME MANAGEMENT Disk encapsulation Conversion of disk from basic to dynamic allows VM features to operate Online volume creation User access to data not interrupted while a logical volume created Simple volume online growth User access to data not interrupted while a simple volume grown Spanned volume User access to data not interrupted online growth while a spanned volume grown Striped volume (RAID 0) User access to data not interrupted online growth while a striped volume grown Mirrored volume (RAID 1) User access to data not interrupted online growth while a mirrored volume grown RAID5 volume online growth User access to data not interrupted while a RAID5 volume grown Mirrored striped volume User access to data not interrupted (RAID 1+0) online growth while a mirrored striped volume grown N-way mirror support for up Online creation and management of up to 32 mirrors to 32 individual mirrors, for purposes such as backup (same host) and mining Page 2 Comparison: Microsoft Logical Disk Manager and VERITAS Volume Manager

5 CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT MMC Management Console Microsoft standard snap-in, well-known interface by users General View Displays specific disk or volume information Events View Displays Event Log messages associated with storage objects Disk View Displays graphical layout of disks DM View Displays information for the W2K Disk Management snap-in Statistics View Displays current I/O statistics for dynamic disks and subdisks Command-Line Interface (CLI) Executable commands can be initiated from a basic console Alert-based notification Threshold events will alert the System Administrator Custom monitoring settings Settable thresholds give more flexibility for alert notification Wizards Wizards guide the System Administrator through all major tasks, making them both easier and faster to accomplish PERFORMANCE MONITORING/TUNING Online volume and disk statistics View up to eight different I/O statistics to monitor storage system performance Volume and disk statistics Provides historical graph of I/O activity charting on eight statistics for use in identifying problems and predicting trends Hot-spot detection Detect areas of high I/O in order to remove the bottleneck Online subdisk move operation Removal of I/O bottleneck to improve (performance tuning) data access speeds, without interrupting users access to data Preferred plex Designation of a mirror volume (plex) as a preferred access device for faster local data access Comparison: Microsoft Logical Disk Manager and VERITAS Volume Manager Page 3

6 CLUSTERING / SEGMENTED STORAGE Segmented storage Flexible assignment of ownership between servers and storage (especially useful with SANs) Multiple disk groups Improved portability of disk groups between servers for both clustered and nonclustered environments VERITAS Cluster Server Creation and online management Support in Volume of advanced dynamic Manager v2.6 for volumes in VCS environment Windows NT Microsoft Cluster Server Creation and online management Support in Volume (MSCS) support of advanced dynamic volumes in Manager v2.5 MSCS environment 2000 Mirrored quorum disk Improved failure recoverability via high-level of redundancy for key cluster resources Page 4 Comparison: Microsoft Logical Disk Manager and VERITAS Volume Manager

7 VERITAS Software Corporation Corporate Headquarters 350 Ellis Street Mountain View, CA or For additional information about VERITAS, its products, or the location of an office near you, please call our corporate headquarters or visit our Web site at V E R I T A S W H I T E P A P E R Copyright 2001 VERITAS Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. VERITAS, VERITAS SOFTWARE, the VERITAS logo, Business Without Interruption, VERITAS The Data Availability Company, VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS Cluster Server are trademarks or registered trademarks of VERITAS Software Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Specifications and product offerings subject to change without notice. Printed in USA. May 2001 VER06-VMLDMWPR