Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows by Symantec Advanced online storage management Data Sheet: Storage Management Overview Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0 for Windows brings advanced online storage management to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 environments by virtualizing the storage seen by a host, so that users can optimally manage, configure, and share storage. Storage Foundation delivers storage management without interruption to servers and the business-critical applications they host, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint Server. Advanced features that will make your data center more dynamic and reduce overall costs are also included, such as Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP) and replication. Highlights Online configuration with dynamic disks Optimizes storage performance and availability without disrupting the OS or applications. Centralized ed management and reporting Improves operational efficiencies and visibility with centralized management and reporting across thousands of hosts and enables non-disruptive storage operations through Graphical User Interface (GUI) based management. I/O path availability and performance Spreads I/O across multiple paths for maximized performance and provides path-fault tolerance for protection against path failure. Local and remote data protection tection Creates faulttolerant snapshot copies of data for quick recovery and off-host operations, and replicates data across any distance for remote access. Thin provisioning support Enables customers to "Get Thin" and "Stay Thin." Microsoft t Hyper-V integration gration Enhances Hyper-V environments with advanced storage management and disaster recovery features. Online configuration with dynamic disks Dynamic disks created with Storage Foundation for Windows enhance storage management, improve performance and increase availability. Multiple volume types, including simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, mirrored-stripe, and RAID-5 can be configured and operations such as relaying out a volume can be performed while the system, volumes, and the hosted applications remain online. Advanced features are available to monitor volume capacity, take corrective action when low space conditions exist, perform online shrinking of volumes, discover thin storage, and the reclaim freed up space, which is returned to the thin array s storage pool. Dynamic disks also dramatically simplify server and storage migrations with technology that seamlessly crosses hardware boundaries, including the SmartMove feature, which provides efficient movement of data when mirroring volumes. With SmartMove, only used blocks are copied, which results in improved performance during volume and snapshot mirror operations, and significantly shortens volume and array migration times. The Site Aware Allocation feature protects against configuration errors in stretched (or campus) clusters that allow storage resources to be tagged with site identifiers so that volumes maintain site integrity. With Site Aware Allocation, volumes can be mirrored or grown to any storage within the same site. Centralized management and reporting With Veritas Operations Manager, organizations can centrally monitor and report on the application, server, and 1
Data Sheet: Storage Management storage environments through a secure Web-based console across heterogeneous platforms. This approach leads to higher service levels, reduces the risk of human error, and provides comprehensive visibility throughout the environment. Operations Manager enables administrators to identify and visualize potential problems with applications and storage resources by correlating health and status information across multiple applications, servers, storage, and replication resources. The increased visibility enables rapid problem resolution that typically spans multiple organizational structures. Storage Foundation for Windows enables single point control of routine administration tasks, such as adding or Figure 1. Storage Foundation for Windows provides simple, graphical, and non-disruptive, storage management capabilities. moving storage resources or data across different disk devices and subsystems. Volume shred capabilities allow data to be securely deleted via Department-of-Defense I/O path availability and performance compliant three- and seven-pass erasure. Online storage Storage I/O performance and availability are enhanced bottlenecks and I/O hot spots are proactively detected and across heterogeneous server and storage infrastructures the data can be migrated easily and non-disruptively with with Dynamic Multi-pathing. It fully integrates with the drag-and-drop functionality or scheduled with a migration Microsoft Windows MPIO Framework, offering MPIO Device wizard. Automatic track alignment is also available to Specific Modules for most of the industry s leading arrays. It optimize performance. also delivers several intelligent algorithms to balance I/O Storage Foundation for Windows manages and monitors load across multiple host bus adapters for faster storage presented by all of the leading array vendors, and throughput, and increases application availability by supports clustering configurations with Veritas Cluster rerouting I/O traffic to an available data path in the event of Server and Microsoft Windows Server Failover Cluster. a path failure. Advanced multi-pathing management enables visualization of array resources (by array, controller, or path), commandline interfaces for custom scripts, path performance statistics, proactive path checking, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) alerts for path failure and recovery notification. Array specific naming provides consistent device names across servers, bridging the gap between server and storage administrators. Aggregate statistics offer better determination of bottlenecks, and extended attribute discovery provides information about the devices being managed so that a system administrator can easily identify the type of device being presented, 2
Data Sheet: Storage Management including RAID type, whether it s thick or thin, being VSS-based configuration wizards ease the snapshot replicated, or cloned. configuration process, providing component selection and support for multiple snapshot sets, disk selection for snapshot volumes, and setup schedules for snapshot operations. Along with these quick recovery wizards, entire workflows and configuration wizards are also available for other solutions in the Symantec Solutions Configuration Center. For business-critical applications that require remote recovery sites, the Volume Replicator Option is extremely flexible and can efficiently replicate data across any distance over IP networks. Organizations can combine virtually any storage devices on any major operating system to offer a consistent, easy-to-manage, highly available disaster recovery solution across the enterprise. Volume Figure 2. Storage Foundation for Windows provides easy to use storage, device, and I/O path management. Replicator integrates with FlashSnap so that VSS-based snapshots can be taken at the production site and duplicated with minimal overhead at the disaster recovery Local and remote data protection site. The bunker replication feature allows organizations to Storage Foundation for Windows addresses both local and implement the optimal data replication strategy, where they remote data protection needs. With the Veritas FlashSnap can replicate data over any distance while being able to option, administrators can utilize the intuitive, GUI-based maintain a recovery point objective of zero. scheduler to create point-in-time copies of data with minimal impact to applications and users. Veritas Volume Replicator from Symantec is a non-hardware specific solution that consistently copies data to remote locations without distance limitations. FlashSnap snapshots are full-mirror, point-in-time copies, which can be accessed from the same server or easily transported to another server. FlashSnap is integrated with Microsoft s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), and supports VSS-based snapshots via a scheduler and software snapshot provider. These snapshots can be used on-host as backups for quick recovery from disasters, or off-host for various operations, including backup, testing, and data Figure 3. Establishing snapshots and using rollbacks or roll-forward to recover from data corruption or logical failures. warehousing. FlashSnap includes application specific support for Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, and Symantec Enterprise Vault. 3
Data Sheet: Storage Management "Get Thin" and "Stay Thin" Storage Foundation for Windows delivers unique capabilities when it comes to leveraging thin provisioning. Organizations can address the two major elements involved in the successful long term adoption of thin provisioning: first they need to get thin and then they need to stay thin. Organizations need to do both of these in a manner that is seamless and non-disruptive. Getting Thin. The first challenge for IT organizations is migrating to a thin environment. Most online storage migration tools perform block-level copying, which means that they cannot differentiate between used and unused data blocks, so they copy everything, including the unused blocks. This results in the destination and the source being identical and over provisionined by the thin array. Storage Foundation for Windows solves this challenge by identifying which blocks are used and which are unused. It then copies only the used data blocks to the new, thin environment. Migration can occur while applications remain online. This facilitates an easy, non-disruptive and efficient transition to a thin environment at anytime. Staying Thin. The second challenge IT organizations face is keeping an environment thin over time. While this may seem like a rational expectation, array vendors typically don t make it easy to stay thin. Specifically, blocks of data that are erased by an application or user are typically not reclaimable, even by the most advanced thin-enabled arrays. Storage Foundation for Windows provides host-side intelligence that notifies thin arrays about freed blocks, and actively triggers reclamation of those blocks and returns them to the free pool. The reserve free pool remains as capacious as possible, which provides optimum value and decreases the need to purchase additional hardware. Other volume managers use a write-once, allocate-forever approach that does not allow unused blocks to be reclaimed and repurposed. Figure 4. Storage Foundation for Windows helping customers to migrate to thinly provisioned storage and continuously reclaiming unused storage after it has been migrated. Hyper-V integration Storage Foundation for Windows provides several benefits to virtual machines (VMs) when used in the Hyper-V parent partition, including multi-pathing, replication, storage migration, and snapshots, to extend Hyper-V s capabilities in the data center. Those benefits extend to both the VM's operating system and its associated data volumes, in both Quick Migration and Live Migration scenarios. Live Storage Migration Storage Foundation for Windows includes a Storage Migration Wizard that allows selection at the VM level for live storage migration. The VM and all of its associated data files are identified and intelligently migrated while remaining online and accessible. This capability allows administrators a high level of flexibility when deploying new hardware, as VMs can be moved to a new array or to a Logical Unit Number (LUN) that has been configured for better performance. Replication Running in the Hyper-V parent, Volume Replicator can selectively replicate volumes that contain the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files used by the VMs and their application data over an IP network. Replication can be synchronous, asynchronous, or a combination of the two. 4
Data Sheet: Storage Management Campus Clusters As a host-based volume manager, Storage Foundation for Windows can mirror volumes across different storage devices and arrays. This allows shared storage clusters to be stretched beyond the confines of a data center to a secondary site, as long as the distance between them does not exceed latency limitations. These stretched clusters, also known as Campus Clusters, provide a level of high availability that can withstand a complete site failure, and provide a potential disaster recovery strategy for a Hyper-V environment. Dynamic Multi-pathing Storage Foundation for Windows extends multi-pathing capabilities to provide path failover and load balancing to Logical Unit Numbers that host Hyper-V VMs. Supported OS platforms, applications, and storage devices Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (x64) Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008 R2 Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2007, 2010 Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Oracle 10g R2, 11g Blackberry Enterprise Server Symantec Enterprise Vault 8.0, 9.0 If the Storage Foundation for Windows Dynamic Multipathing or any third-party, multi-pathing software is utilized, refer to the latest Storage Foundation for Windows Hardware Compatibility List. If a multi-pathing option is not utilized, any hardware device in the Microsoft Windows Server Catalog is supported. Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing for Windows Operations Manager Packaging Veritas Storage Foundation Basic for Windows A free version of the industry-leading Storage Foundation for Windows is available for management of edge-tier and departmental workloads, with up to four volumes and two sockets per system. Storage Foundation Basic for Windows is available for free download at: www.symantec.com/sfbasic Storage Foundation for Windows Includes Dynamic Multi-pathing Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise for Windows Includes FlashSnap and the Cluster Option for Microsoft Cluster Veritas Storage Foundation HA for Windows Includes Veritas Cluster Server for Windows, application agents and database agents Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise HA for Windows Includes FlashSnap and Fast Failover Veritas Storage Foundation HA/DR for Windows Includes Hardware Replication agents and Global Cluster Option Veritas Storage Foundation Enterprise HA/DR for Windows Includes Storage Foundation HA for Windows, DMP, Hardware Replication agents, GCO, FlashSnap, and Fast Failover Veritas Volume Replicator Option tion Includes Volume Replicator Related products Veritas Storage Foundation HA for Windows Veritas Cluster Server for Windows and Veritas Cluster Server HA/DR for Windows 5
Data Sheet: Storage Management Feature Management Console Dynamic Multi-pathing Online administration Benefit Centralizes monitoring and reporting across server platforms to provide visibility into application, server, and storage resources with Operations Manager Balances I/O across all available paths between the server and the storage array to improve performance and availability. Common failures from I/O path, HBA, or switches can be avoided because administrators can spread I/O across multiple paths. Limits the amount of time that disks need to be offline for maintenance by performing volume resizing (including shrinking), domain reconfiguration, backup, and off-host processing while the data remains online and available. More Information Visit our website http://enterprise.symantec.com To speak with a Product Specialist in the U.S. Call toll-free 1 (800) 745 6054 To speak with a Product Specialist outside the U.S. For specific country offices and contact numbers, please visit our website. FlashSnap Automated performance tuning Hot relocation SmartMove RAID support Supports all major storage arrays Takes instant full copy snapshots of data for off-host processing, on-host backup, and recovery. Only resynchronizes changed blocks for fast resynchronization. Provide scheduled, application aware snapshots for quick recovery of Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, and Enterprise Vault. Automatically tunes each write for optimal performance. Administrators no longer need to manually tune writes for performance. Automatically migrates data from failing disks to healthy disks. Helps you move to Thin Provisioned storage quicker in a data migration scenario. It only migrates the blocks that have data in them, thereby speeding the processes and minimizing the amount of storage consumed. Supports several levels of RAID for optimized availability and performance. Choose the storage hardware that best fit the environment. Symantec World Headquarters 350 Ellis St. Mountain View, CA 94043 USA +1 (650) 527 8000 1 (800) 721 3934 www.symantec.com Please consult the hardware and software compatibility lists for the most t current and detailed operating system and storage array support information. Copyright 2011 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, and backup and recovery solutions. 21210852 09/11 6