My memory is Veritas did developed vfx for Windows, but it did not provide a
significant improvement in speed or reliablity over ntfs. Veritas choose not
to bring it to market. Who wants to stand up to Microsoft Marketing anyway.
Jim
-Original Message-
From: veritas-vx-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-vx-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Rich Whiffen
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 5:14 PM
To: Jon Price
Cc: veritas-vx@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-vx] Storage Foundation limitations in Windows version?
I think the rational is MS would have to allow Veritas the ability to
do VxFS on Windows, which I doubt they're inclined to do. It's
probably not a matter of Veritas wanting to do it, but more a matter
of MS allowing them to. I mean they could release a VxFS for windows
right now, but there would be no assurances that upcoming patches from
MS wouldn't break it.
When we use SFW, it's primary function is DMP. The secondary is the
better volume control than with LDM (win2k win2k3). Haven't worked
with MDM in win2k8. It also makes mounting volumes with out a drive
letter easier. In the 5.x versions, you do have flash-snaps, fast file
resync, and that kind of stuff, which is handy for offline backups of
exchange stores, for example. The MSCS support is also pretty good.
Plus VXVM does much better I/O stats than windows natively does so you
can get better I/O tuning as well. It also makes storage management
uniform across both platforms.
You can make win2k3 boot disks into dynamic disks via SFW but there's
some caveats and 'gotchas' (clearly documented in the admin guide).
In win2k8 the boot stuff has changed and it isn't possible (or
necessary IMHO) to do it via SFW. The native win2k8 tools are
sufficient and it keeps the support issues regarding booting under the
MS umbrella.
So if you're already a Veritas shop, adding windows hosts to the mix
is a reasonable idea. If your a windows only shop, it might not make
as much sense. If I have one piece of advice, i'd be this: If you
have any issues that involve storage in any way, open the Veritas
ticket first, MS second. It's been my experience that MS will quickly
plop the ball back into the Veritas court if there is so much as a
hint of it being a SFW related issue. 2nd, the Veritas folks are
fairly sharp and can rule out Veritas as the issue fairly quickly so
you go to MS with a lot of answers in hand.
Cheers,
Rich
On Jan 29, 2009, at 7:25 PM, Jon Price wrote:
Hi,
We've used Veritas a lot on Solaris, but trying to find out some
about Veritas for Windows.
Looks like it might be very limited.
No Veritas filesystem for Windows. Curious what the rationale is.
Does Veritas Volume Manager for Windows support space-optimized
snapshots?
If not, are there other options for creating this type of snapshot?
(Veritas or otherwise)
Veritas VM for Windows and the system disk. Does vxvm handle the
Windows boot disks?
Thanks,
Jon
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