Support for Databases

Databases are usually created on file systems to simplify backup, copying, and moving tasks and are slower compared to databases on raw disks.

Using the VERITAS Quick I/O for Databases feature with VxFS lets systems retain the benefits of having a database on a file system without sacrificing performance. VERITAS Quick I/O creates regular, preallocated files to use as character devices. Databases can be created on the character devices to achieve the same performance as databases created on raw disks.

Treating regular VxFS files as raw devices has the following advantages for databases:

• Commercial database servers such as Oracle Server can issue kernel supported asynchronous I/O calls (through the asyncdsk or Posix AIO interface) on these pseudo devices but not on regular files.