[lug] OT: Veritas volume mgr and fs

[Bill Jorgensen]

On Fri, 17 May 2002, Chip Atkinson wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with the Veritas volume manager or file
> system?  We have a sun server here at work (yes, I found a job :-)) and
> I'm thinking of installing it on there.  However, if it sucks and is a
> huge headache, I'd rather not.  My main reasons for using it is to have
> the dynamic resizing and journalling that I think is available.

Yes I do. If had the choice I would not do any disk/storage work without
it. It is worth the money. I know of people that have said that it can
make system recovery more difficult. I frankly do not know what planet
they have come from. Veritas has literally helped me pull a rabbit out
of my hat repeatedly when it comes to system/file system recovery.
Depending on how you set up your volumes you have tons of options when
it comes to file system resizing, failed disk replacement, etc. VVM
allows you so much more flexibilty in managing disk than just about
anything I know (excluding native apps like HP and AIX's LVM). It
provides alternate disk pathing with vxdmp....

The thing that you have to realize is that VVM is not free. Either is
VxFS (Veritas' journaled file system). You have to have separate
licenses for base functions, RAID configuration and VxFS. Get a hold
of a Veritas sales guy or call Veritas and they will fill you in.

> I haven't yet started reading the docs, but usually they don't tell
> whether or not a product sucks.

It is great stuff once you get your arms around it. You will never want to
go back to "regular" disk management after this (LVM on HP and AIX excluded).

> Thanks in advance for any help offered.

Good luck! It is easy to install and easy to configure with the GUI.
CLI work comes a little later.

Later,

Bill Jorgensen

-- 
*------------------------------------------------*
  UNIX... spoken with hushed and reverent tones.
*------------------------------------------------*