Release Notes: FlexSync 3.0

FlexSync 3.0 includes enhancements and bug fixes. To view a list of resolved issues and known limitations, see Change Requests: Known Issues and Fixed Issues.

Operating Systems No Longer Supported Effective with FlexSync 3.0

• RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6

• CentOS 6

• Debian 9

New Features and Enhancements in FlexSync 3.0

• You can now synchronize (read/write) to an S3 repository (this functionality is also referred to as FlexSync-object). FlexSync-object includes support for:

  • An Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 repository, or a Quantum ActiveScale S3 repository.

  • Multi-part uploads.

  • AWS Signature Version 2 (V2) and AWS Signature Version 4 (V4) signing.

  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) communication protocol.

  Overview of FlexSync-object

  Within the StorNext Unified User Interface (UUI), you can configure FlexSync-object to synchronize data from multiple sites to an S3 repository. The UUI allows you to configure basic task configuration, management, and monitoring. The FlexSync-object functionality is designed as a Revision Control System (RCS) and it provides typical features such as check-in (commit), check-out, and update (pull) to manage multiple revisions of files.

  At site A, you can:

  1. Initialize your S3 repository for use by FlexSync.

  2. Connect your S3 repository to your StorNext file system.

  3. Edit your file(s).

  4. Commit (synchronize) your file(s) to your S3 repository.

  At site B, you can:

  1. Connect to the same S3 repository as site A.

  2. Synchronize your local repository based on the contents of your S3 repository.

  At both sites, you can:

  • Edit, commit, and update your data.

  • Configure automated tasks to perform the synchronization to your S3 repository.

  Limitations for FlexSync-object

  The following are limitations of the FlexSync-object functionality:

  • The StorNext file system is the only supported file system.

  • StorNext managed directories are not supported.

  • Named streams are not supported.

  • Thin/sparse file system access is not supported.

  • A file is written to an S3 repository as an object; in other words, there is no file system naming in the S3 repository.

  • The UUI supports most key functions; however, you cannot perform a manual check-out, a manual check-in (commit) or a manual update using the UUI. You can only perform a manual check-out, a manual check-in (commit) or a manual update using the FlexSync CLI.

• Beginning with FlexSync 3.0, you can download the FlexSync Man Pages Reference Guide PDF. The following are new FlexSync-object specific CLI commands (for complete details, refer to the FlexSync Man Pages Reference Guide PDF):

  New for /opt/quantum/flexsync/bin/flexsyncadmin

  • add-default-object-task

  • add-object-task

  • check

  • clean

  • delete

  • edit-register-config

  • edit-repo-config

  • getconfig

  • init

  • register

  • repos

  • rstconfig

  • setconfig

  • unregister

  New for /opt/quantum/flexsync/bin/flexsync

  • checkout

  • commit

  • copy

  • diff

  • dump

  • get

  • help

  • info

  • list|ls

  • log

  • mkdir

  • revert

  • update

• Beginning with FlexSync 2.3, log files are located at /var/log/flexsync.

  Note: For FlexSync 2.2.4 (or earlier), log files are located at /opt/quantum/flexsync and /var/log/messages.

  • When you execute a daemon or CLI command, the information is logged in a respective file, as follows:

    • For flexsyncd, the log file is located at /var/log/flexsync/flexsyncd.log.

    • For flexsyncadmind, the log file is located at /var/log/flexsync/flexsyncadmind.log.

    • For flexsync, the log file is located at /var/log/flexsync/flexsync.cli.log.

    • For flexsyncadmin, the log file is located at /var/log/flexsync/flexsyncadmin.cli.log.

  • A log file is rolled using a standard Linux logrotate function; by default, a log file is rolled when its size exceeds 100 MB. The configuration file is located at /etc/logrotate.d/flexsync_logrotate. For more information, see Configure FlexSync Log Maintenance on the Troubleshooting Tools page.

Important Information about Your FlexSync Installation or Upgrade

You must install or upgrade FlexSync on each system using the feature, including the source destination, the target destination, and the managing appliance.

Caution: Mixed versions of FlexSync daemons is not supported and results in a communication error. You must install the same version of FlexSync, or upgrade to the same version of FlexSync on all of the hosts or systems using Flexsync. A newer version of the Flexsync daemon cannot communicate with an older version within a configuration, or on another host or system.

Information about Storage Manager Storage of Temporary Files and FlexSync

As part of the replication process, FlexSync creates temporary files on the destination. If your destination is a managed StorNext directory, then it is not desirable to allow StorNext Storage Manager to store the temporary files as it might cause problems in some cases. To prevent Storage Manager from storing the temporary files you must update the TSM configuration file, excludes.store entry depending upon the version of FlexSync you are running.

For complete details, see Storage Manager Storage of Temporary Files and FlexSync.

For additional information about FlexSync, see Welcome to FlexSync™.

Related Product Release Notes

Configured and managed through a simple but powerful graphical user interface, FlexSync is an optionally licensed feature for use with StorNext. Visit the Quantum Documentation Portal to stay up-to-date with the other Quantum products in your environment.