Veritas Storage Foundation™ for Oracle 5.0.1 Administrator's Guide

large file system A file system more than two gigabytes in size. VxFS, in conjunction with VxVM,
supports large file systems.
latency The amount of time it takes for a given piece of work to be completed. For file
systems, this typically refers to the amount of time it takes a given file system
operation to return to the user. Also commonly used to describe disk seek times.
load balancing The tuning of a computer system, network tuning, or disk subsystem in order to
more evenly distribute the data and/or processing across available resources. For
example, in clustering, load balancing might distribute the incoming transactions
evenly to all servers, or it might redirect them to the next available server.
load sharing The division of a task among several components without any attempt to equalize
each component’s share of the load. When several components are load sharing,
it is possible for some of the shared components to be operating at full capacity
and limiting performance, while others components are under utilized.
Logical Unit Number A method of expanding the number of SCSI devices that can be placed on one SCSI
bus. Logical Unit Numbers address up to seven devices at each SCSI ID on an 8-bit
bus or up to 15 devices at each ID on a 16-bit bus.
logical volume See “volume.”
LUN See “Logical Unit Number.”
master node A computer which controls another computer or a peripheral.
megabyte A measure of memory or storage. A megabyte is approximately 1,000,000 bytes
(technically, 2 to the 20th power, or 1,048,576 bytes). Also MB, Mbyte, mbyte, and
K-byte.
metadata Data that describes other data. Data dictionaries and repositories are examples
of metadata. The term may also refer to any file or database that holds information
about another database's structure, attributes, processing, or changes.
mirror A duplicate copy of a volume and the data therein (in the form of an ordered
collection of subdisks). Each mirror is one copy of the volume with which the
mirror is associated. The terms mirror and plex can be used synonymously.
mirroring A layout technique that mirrors the contents of a volume onto multiple plexes.
Each plex duplicates the data stored on the volume, but the plexes themselves
may have different layouts.
mount point The directory path name at which a file system attaches to the file system
hierarchy.
multithreaded Having multiple concurrent or pseudo-concurrent execution sequences. Used to
describe processes in computer systems. Multithreaded processes are one means
by which I/O request-intensive applications can use independent access to volumes
and disk arrays to increase I/O performance.
Glossary406