Administering Cluster File Systems Overview

No special Sun Cluster commands are necessary for cluster file system administration. Administer a cluster file system as you would any other Solaris file system, using standard Solaris file system commands, such as mount, newfs, and so on. Mount cluster file systems by specifying the -g option to the mount command. Cluster file systems can also be automatically mounted at boot.

When the cluster file system reads files, the file system does not update the access time on those files.

Guidelines to Support VxFS

The following VxFS features are not supported in a Sun Cluster 3.1 configuration.

• Quick I/O

• Snapshots

• Storage checkpoints

• Cache advisories can be used, but the effect is observed on the given node only

• VERITAS CFS requires VERITAS cluster feature & VCS

• VxFS-specific mount options

  • convosync (Convert O_SYNC)

  • mincache

  • qlog, delaylog, tmplog

All other VxFS features and options that are supported in a cluster configuration are supported by Sun Cluster 3.1 software. See VxFS documentation for details about VxFS options that are supported in a cluster configuration.

The following guidelines for how to use VxFS to create highly available cluster file systems are specific to a Sun Cluster 3.1 configuration.

• Create a VxFS file system by following procedures in VxFS documentation.

• Mount and unmount a VxFS file system from the primary node. The primary node masters the disk on which the VxFS file system resides. A VxFS file system mount or unmount operation that is performed from a secondary node might fail.

• Perform all VxFS administration commands from the primary node of the VxFS cluster file system.

The following guidelines for how to administer VxFS cluster file systems are not specific to Sun Cluster 3.1 software. However, the guidelines are different from the way you administer UFS cluster file systems.

• You can administer files on a VxFS cluster file system from any node in the cluster. The exception is ioctls, which you must issue only from the primary node. If you do not know whether an administration command involves ioctls, issue the command from the primary node.

• If a VxFS cluster file system fails over to a secondary node, all standard-system-call operations that were in progress during failover are re-issued transparently on the new primary. However, any ioctl-related operation in progress during the failover will fail. After a VxFS cluster file system failover, check the state of the cluster file system. Administrative commands that were issued on the old primary before failover might require corrective measures. See VxFS documentation for more information.