About managing SmartIO
SmartIO supports the use of multi-vendor Solid-State Devices (SSDs) as read-write cache for the high-transaction applications running on a system to improve overall I/O performance. Traditional disks often pose as an I/O bottleneck for high transaction applications. To address this issue, SmartIO facilitates SSD-based cache to drive high performance applications.
When an application issues an I/O request, SmartIO checks to see if the I/O can be serviced from the cache. As applications access data from the underlying volumes or file systems, certain data is moved to the cache based on the internal heuristics. Subsequent I/Os are processed from the cache.
SmartIO supports read and write caching for the VxFS file systems that are mounted on VxVM volumes. It also supports block-level read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes. This type of SmartIO caching supports the applications that run directly over raw volumes. For example, database instances running directly over raw volumes. Volume-level read caching can also be used in cases where VxFS caching cannot be used.
SmartIO requires a managed host with Storage Foundation 6.1 or later for Windows or Linux.
SmartIO requires a managed host with Storage Foundation 6.2 or later for Solaris and AIX.
The volumes to be cached must have the disk group version 190 and the file system layout version 10.
Creating a cache area on shared disks is not recommended. From release 7.1, the creation of multiple cache areas on a single SSD is supported from the Management Server console. SmartIO does not support caching of RAID-5 volumes and DCO volumes.
On a Linux managed host you can create one cache area of VxVM type, and an unlimited number of cache areas of VxFS type.
On a Windows managed host you can create maximum eight cache areas of type VxVM.
For more information on SmartIO, refer to Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide for Windows or Veritas InfoScale SmartIO for Solid State Drives Solutions Guide for Linux.
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