Spiralog V1.0 for OpenVMS V7.0 for Alpha Systems
Customer Update
HIGHLIGHTS
o V1.0 early adopters kit for leading-edge technology users
o Fully clustered file system offers transparent server failover and load
balancing
o Runs on both single computers and OpenVMS Cluster systems, providing up
to double the performance of today's write-intensive applications
o Online backup and new high-performance recovery system for disk volumes
delivers the highest backup/restore throughput in the industry
o When combined with PATHWORKS, provides a single mechanism to access and
backup data from multiple clients, including Windows 95, Windows NT, or
DOS
o Co-exists with the existing OpenVMS file system (Files-11), allowing
existing applications to run unchanged
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Spiralog V1.0 advanced cluster file system, which runs on OpenVMS V7.0
for Alpha systems, provides users with transparent failover and load
balancing, reduces server bottlenecks, and uses a fully distributed cache
to optimize cluster file system performance. Spiralog's combination of
integrated high-performance cluster support, fast server failover and
recovery, and online backup and data management provides an excellent
solution for users looking for availability, reliability, and virtually
constant uptime.
Spiralog V1.0 runs with OpenVMS V7.0, which supports new technology, such
as 64-bit support, kernel threads, and the Spiralog filesystem. This new
technology is expected to be used initially by early adopters for testing
with non-mission-critical applications. Future versions will be
implemented for full production use.
The log structured, on-disk design of Spiralog V1.0 provides dramatically
improved write performance, with read performance capabilities that are
comparable to the current OpenVMS file system (Files-11). Coupled with
massive write-back caching and a strategy of order-preserving writes,
Spiralog V1.0 allows applications to achieve substantial performance
improvements. A fully cluster-coherent write-behind cache further
improves both performance and coherency.
The radical new approach to data protection and file recovery in Spiralog
V1.0 means fewer disk I/Os and minimal CPU overhead are needed to provide
unsurpassed performance when compared with the backup/restore
capabilities offered by traditional file systems. Spiralog V1.0 is the
only commercially available file system that offers both volume backup at
almost spiral disk read rates, and a mechanism to restore individual
files from the backed-up volume. Backup performance exceeds two times
that of today's OpenVMS backup, and is now limited by the throughput
rates of drive hardware tape technology, not the software.
In addition, Spiralog V1.0 can perform incremental backups in which only
parts of files with changes are saved. This is in contrast to other file
system products, which save whole files even if only one byte of the file
is changed. This clearly reduces system management efforts and the
requirements for offline storage and I/O bandwidth. A utility that allows
full and incremental savesets to be merged offline ensures that, data
restoration should be necessary, is a fast process. This facility will be
of interest to most users, but particularly those running applications
with large volumes of online data and relatively few data updates.
Spiralog has full 64-bit capability supporting huge files and data
volumes (for example, 100 GB RAID sets and huge numbers of files) because
of its use of fast, scalable B-tree directories.
Spiralog V1.0 is a single universal cluster-wide file system that is
available to multiple clients, such as OpenVMS, PC, and Windows NT
systems. Through tight integration with PATHWORKS for OpenVMS V5.0D,
Spiralog will provide significant performance improvements.
BENEFITS
o Provides all the availability features users have today through clusters,
with the addition of improved application performance to support
mission-critical production environments. Spiralog V1.0 is particularly
well suited to write-intensive applications, which today have I/O
bottlenecks with the Files-11 file system.
o High performance file operations allow for faster data utilization.
o Fast online backup facility for all file system client data decreases
system management efforts, increases user productivity, and eliminates an
important source of application downtime.
o Full compatibility with existing Files-11 data.
o An offline merge facility minimizes the time taken to restore data from a
mix of full and incremental save operations.
o Incremental backups decrease the amount of physical data stored off line
and the time needed to complete backup procedures.
o Closer integration with PATHWORKS for improved performance.
o User investment is preserved by allowing existing RMS-based applications
to run with no changes and alongside today's OpenVMS file system. Data
migration is a simple task of copying Files-11 data to a Spiralog volume.
AVAILABILITY AND ORDERING
Spiralog V1.0 will be available in January 1996 from Digital and its
business partners. The Spiralog V1.0 license is included with the OpenVMS
V7.0 for Alpha operating system; there is a separate cost for the media
kit.
Order No. Description
QA-4P7AA-H8 Spiralog V1.0 Media Kit (CD-ROM)
QA-4P7AA-GZ Spiralog V1.0 Hardcopy Documentation Kit
TECHNICAL DATA
Prerequisites
o OpenVMS V7.0 for Alpha
o RAID5 shadowing or hardware/software
o Minimum of 64 MB memory
o Minimum of 500 MB disk
o Files-11 system disk
o PATHWORKS access must be via PATHWORKS V5.0D