[Vms.sig-hu] Announcment - Release plans for Host-Based MiniMerge (fwd)

[Fodor Zsuzsa]

---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 09:43:45 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: Announcment - Release plans for Host-Based MiniMerge

Dear Distribution lists,

The following is from Andy Schneider the OpenVMS Storage Product
Manager.  This is public information.

Warm Regards,
Sue

OpenVMS Host-Based Minimerge Release Plans

The OpenVMS Engineering and Business Management group would like 
to
announce the release plans for Host-Based MiniMerge capability.  The
engineering effort for the development of this feature has been largely
completed, and an initial Beta test for the capability is now underway.
The following describes the Host-Based Minimerge feature:

Overview - The purpose of the Host-Based MiniMerge feature is to 
allow a
"minimum" MERGE of only shadow set changes (rather than the
currently-required "full" MERGE) when a member of an OpenVMS cluster 
is
removed from a cluster.  A similar controller-based capability exists
today for CI-attached or DSSI-attached storage.  This new "host-based"
implementation will allow a MiniMerge to occur on any type of storage
(except CI or DSSI attached storage) that is utilized in a Host-Based
Volume Shadowing shadow set.

Technical Description - This implementation utilizes the "write bitmap"
technology used for MiniCopy functionality today, to keep track of
shadow set data changes while a shadowset member is temporarily 
removed
from a shadowset.  With MiniCopy, when a shadowset member is 
brought
back in, Shadowing is able to copy only the changed areas of the disk,
thus resulting in a much faster restoration of the shadow set member
into the shadowset.  By using similar "write bitmap" technology to track
the changes being made by each node in a cluster to the members of a
shadowset, then at the time a node fails and leaves the cluster, it is
possible to identify those specific areas on the shadowset that were
being written to by the node at the time it failed.  As such, where the
failure might have resulted in data ending up different on different
members of the shadowset, Shadowing can now merge just those 
areas which
were in the process of being modified at the time the node failed (in a
MiniMerge operation), rather than having to scan the entire disk looking
for potential discrepancies caused by the node's failure (in a Full
Merge operation).

Schedule/Version Summary - The original schedule for Host-Based
MiniMerge called for general availability in Q1 CY 2003.  Due to an
extended engineering period which was necessary, and the extensive
qualification effort required for this business-critical feature,  the
release of this feature will be as follows:

*	OpenVMS V7.3-2 - Late Q3/Early Q4 CY 2004 - Via Remedial 
Kit
available to all support customers on Alpha

*	OpenVMS V8.2  -  H2 CY 2004 - Support in base OpenVMS kit 
for
both Alpha and I64 platforms

*	OpenVMS V7.3-1 will be reaching its end of support life on
31-December-2004.  Support for Host-Based Minimerge will NOT be 
made
available on V7.3-1.   Customers currently using V7.3-1 should be
considering upgrading to the V7.3-2 release during 2004 to avoid an
unsupported operating environment.  OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2 is the last
version of the 7.x family and therefore Prior Version Support (PVS) WILL
be offered on V7.3-2.    It is not known yet, just when PVS will
commence, but for planning purposes, we are announcing that this 
version
will be placed into PVS at an appropriate time in the future.  Once in
PVS it will have an extended PVS cycle with a posted ending date of
..."with 24 month notice".  For more information on these support
options, please refer to 
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/serv_support.html .


More information on this feature will be made available on the general
OpenVMS Web page www.hp.com/go/openvms during the period prior 
to the
release of the feature later this year.   If there are any questions,
please contact Andy Schneider (Business Manager, 
andy.schneider at hp.com
).