About I/O fencing

I/O fencing protects the data on shared disks when nodes in a cluster detect a change in the cluster membership that indicates a split-brain condition.

See the Storage Foundation Cluster File System Administrator's Guide.

The fencing operation determines the following:

This decision prevents possible data corruption. The installsf installs the SFCFS I/O fencing driver, VRTSvxfen. To protect data on shared disks, you must configure I/O fencing after you install and configure SFCFS.

I/O fencing technology uses coordination points for arbitration in the event of a network partition.

You can configure I/O fencing to use one or both of the following components as coordination points:

Coordinator disk

I/O fencing that uses coordinator disks is referred to as disk-based I/O fencing.

Disk-based I/O fencing ensures data integrity in a single cluster.

Coordination point server (CP server)

I/O fencing that uses at least one CP server system is referred to as server-based I/O fencing.

Server-based I/O fencing ensures data integrity in multiple clusters.