Veritas Product Overview

[ Note - These pages have not been updated in quite some time. They were written by the original owner of this site and I'm leaving them up in the hops that they might be of some use to someone. -UnixTools]

There are several VERITAS products that all work together when running a VERITAS cluster. These are:

• Veritas File System
  This is filesystem software. One could use the standard filesystem with ufs logging enabled, however, VERITAS journal filesystem will make your filesystem checks MUCH faster upon reboot/crash.

• Veritas Volume Manager (for partitioning disks)
  This software is like a raid manager with more bells and whistles. You stripe, raid, combine, and partition disk groups. One could use Disksuite (free) instead. However, using multiple vendors can be problematic when debugging emergency issues. Additionally, Sun keeps saying that they will discontinue DiskSuite.

• Veritas Cluster Server (High Availability Cluster)
  This software enables one system to failover to the other system. All related software processes are simply moved from one system to the other system with minimal downtime. One could use Sun's Cluster product. Veritas is less platform dependant and does not require a terminal concentrator.

A superb reference book for Veritas Clusters is:

Shared Data Clusters: Scaleable, Manageable, and Highly Available Systems (VERITAS Series) - this will provide you with the background knowledge of how clusters work, how to get the best performance from your cluster, and more.

You can find out what products you are running with:

/usr/bin/pkginfo -x | grep VRTS

/usr/sbin/vxlicense -p

This set of documents mostly focuses on VERITAS cluster. However, there are some overviews of the other two products.

The Veritas Pages:

• Veritas File Systems
  VERITAS filesystem is a journaling filesystem. This means transactions are logged so that if a failure occurs, the transactions can be rolled forward.
  
  
• Veritas Volume Manager Overview
  Veritas Volume Manager divides disks into disk groups and partitions these groups as desired.
  
  
• Veritas Cluster Overview
  Veritas Cluster enables one system to failover to the other system. All related software processes are simply moved from one system to the other system with minimal downtime.
  
  
• Vertitas Cluster Install
  Veritas Cluster Install Preparation & Planning
  
  
• Veritas Cluster Debugging Tips
  Veritas cluster server is a high availability server. This means that processes switch between servers when a server fails.
  
  
• Testing Veritas Clusters
  If any licenses are not valid or expired -- get them FIXED before continuing!
  
  
• Veritas Links
  Links to Veritas Software products, services, and support.