SavWareHA Sub-Menus

Mirror Sub-Menu

This menu will be enabled when the selector is moved by pressing either “Ý “, “ß “, or [SPACE] keys to position the highlight pointer at a mirror and [RETURN] is pressed. The options executed from this menu only affect the mirror selected (except for display mirror log which shows entries for all mirrors on the system).

Each of these selections are described in detail on the following pages. Please note that only the system administrator should access these selections.

Display Mirror Status

This selection allows the user to examine the status flags for each side of the mirror. Also, information as to the creation and last access dates and times are shown, and the size of each mirror side.

This screen will show the protocol for the data link (TCP/IP or LLI) when both sides of the mirror are active.

Fix Broken Mirror

This selection displays another menu whose three selections are shown below:

This menu controls the ‘fixing’, or regeneration, of a broken mirror; allows the user to turn off the Standby System element or the mirror selected. By pressing [END], [ESCAPE], or ‘q’, the user may exit this menu without making a selection.

Each of these options is explained below, with representative screen displays.

Regenerate Mirror

[Use With Caution!]

Use this option to bring the mirror back into compliance after some error has either broken the mirror completely (either the master or slave side of the mirror has been turned ‘OFF’ intentionally or by the action of the mirror driver), or one side of the mirror reported a read or write error (usually resulting in the offending side’s read/write flag being set to ‘W’ rite only), or when the Primary System is unable to reach the Standby System (the slave side of the mirror will then display ‘ERROR’).

The program will display the mirror elements again, and will prompt the user for authority to begin a regeneration from the ‘GOOD’ or ‘ACTIVE’ side of the mirror to the inactive side of the mirror. An affirmative (‘y’) response will immediately begin the regeneration; any other response will abort the regeneration.

Always check the direction of the copy to insure that valid data will not be inadvertently overwritten.

Turn Off Standby Element

[Use with Caution]

This option’s effect is to turn off all reads and writes to the slave (Standby System) side of the mirror. No system interruption will be noticed by the users on the Primary System. All pending disk writes will be flushed, no more writes (or reads) will be accepted. The slave side’s status will be set to ‘OFF’.

Some circumstances where the user may wish to use this option: The Standby System must be taken completely away; a verified backup of the mirrored unit in a quiescent state is desired without interrupting the Primary System’s users; some impending Standby System, network error or major reconfiguration is anticipated in the near future.

Note that this will pause the SavWareHA monitor program on the Standby system. No further mirroring will be done, and no automatic fallback process will be initiated. Use the ‘Fix Broken Mirror: Regenerate Mirror’ option to bring the mirror back into compliance.

Turn Off Primary Element

This option’s effect is to turn off all reads and writes to the Primary System’s side of the mirror. No system interruption will be noticed by the users on the Primary System. All pending disk writes will be flushed, no more writes (or reads) will be accepted. The Primary System’s status will be set to ‘OFF’.

Some circumstances where the user may wish to use this option: The Primary System’s disk array must be taken completely away (assuming there are ‘hot swap’ drive carriers in use); some impending system threatening error is about to occur if the Primary System’s side of the mirror is left active for either reading or writing.

Note that this will NOT pause the SavWareHA monitor program on the Standby system. No further mirroring will be done on the Primary System - all reads and writes will be performed on the Standby System over the data link connection. Use the ‘Fix Broken Mirror: Regenerate Mirror’ option to bring the mirror back into compliance.

Check Mirror Integrity

[USE CAUTION!]

NOTE: This option was removed in Revision 2.01a of SavWareHA, and is included here for those installations prior to Revision 2.01a.

This option will allow dynamic block by block comparison of the mirrored units. Please note that on an active filesystem there may be some errors reported by this option. This is due to the fact that the mirror reads on either side may be dynamically interrupted by a write buffer flush before both side’s blocks have been read, thereby reporting an error that does not really exist. For this reason, only use this option when the mirror is quiescent (unmounted).

Change Read Flags

[USE CAUTION!]

This option will allow the user to toggle on or off the read enabling flags for either side of the mirror. Care should be taken when using this option, as system performance may be impacted (in the case of turning on reads to both sides of the mirror)..