Veritas Volume Manager 5.1 SP1 Administrator"s Guide (5900-1506, April 2011)

Administering cluster

functionality (CVM)

This chapter includes the following topics:

■ Overview of clustering

■ Multiple host failover configurations

■ About the cluster functionality of VxVM

■ CVM initialization and configuration

■ Dirty region logging in cluster environments

■ Administering VxVM in cluster environments

Overview of clustering

Tightly-coupled cluster systems are common in the realm of enterprise-scale

mission-critical data processing. The primary advantage of clusters is protection

against hardware failure. Should the primary node fail or otherwise become

unavailable, applications can continue to run by transferring their execution to

standby nodes in the cluster. This ability to provide continuous availability of

service by switching to redundant hardware is commonly termed failover.

Another major advantage of clustered systems is their ability to reduce contention

for system resources caused by activities such as backup, decision support and

report generation. Businesses can derive enhanced value from their investment

in cluster systems by performing such operations on lightly loaded nodes in the

cluster rather than on the heavily loaded nodes that answer requests for service.

This ability to perform some operations on the lightly loaded nodes is commonly

termed load balancing.

Chapter