Veritas™ Volume Manager

Administrator's Guide

Solaris

5.1 Service Pack 1

Veritas™ Volume Manager Administrator's Guide
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 Contents

Technical Support ............................................................................................... 4

Chapter 1 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager ....................... 21
About Veritas Volume Manager ...................................................... 21
VxVM and the operating system ..................................................... 22
How data is stored .................................................................. 23
How VxVM handles storage management ......................................... 23
Physical objects ..................................................................... 23
Virtual objects ....................................................................... 28
Volume layouts in VxVM ............................................................... 35
Non-layered volumes .............................................................. 35
Layered volumes .................................................................... 36
Layout methods ..................................................................... 36
Concatenation, spanning, and carving ........................................ 37
Striping (RAID-0) ................................................................... 39
Mirroring (RAID-1) ................................................................. 42
Striping plus mirroring (mirrored-stripe or RAID-0+1) .................. 43
Mirroring plus striping (striped-mirror, RAID-1+0 or
RAID-10) ........................................................................ 44
RAID-5 (striping with parity) .................................................... 45
Online relayout ............................................................................ 52
How online relayout works ...................................................... 52
Limitations of online relayout .................................................. 55
Transformation characteristics ................................................ 56
Transformations and volume length .......................................... 57
Volume resynchronization ............................................................. 57
Dirty flags ............................................................................ 57
Resynchronization process ...................................................... 58
Dirty region logging ..................................................................... 58
Log subdisks and plexes .......................................................... 59
Sequential DRL ...................................................................... 59
SmartSync recovery accelerator ............................................... 59
Volume snapshots ........................................................................ 61
Comparison of snapshot features .............................................. 62
FastResync ................................................................................. 63
FastResync enhancements ....................................................... 64
8 Contents

Non-persistent FastResync ...................................................... 65

Persistent FastResync ............................................................. 65
DCO volume versioning ........................................................... 66
FastResync limitations ............................................................ 71
Hot-relocation ............................................................................. 72
Volume sets ................................................................................ 72
Configuration of volumes on SAN storage ......................................... 72

Chapter 2 Provisioning new usable storage ..................................... 75

Provisioning new usable storage ..................................................... 75
Growing the existing storage by adding a new LUN ............................ 76
Growing the existing storage by growing the LUN .............................. 76

Chapter 3 Administering disks ............................................................ 79

About disk management ................................................................ 80
Disk devices ................................................................................ 80
Disk device naming in VxVM .................................................... 81
Private and public disk regions ................................................. 83
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices ........................ 85
Partial device discovery ........................................................... 86
Discovering disks and dynamically adding disk arrays .................. 87
Third-party driver coexistence ................................................. 89
How to administer the Device Discovery Layer ............................ 90
Disks under VxVM control ........................................................... 102
VxVM coexistence with SVM and ZFS ............................................. 103
Changing the disk-naming scheme ................................................ 104
Displaying the disk-naming scheme ......................................... 106
Regenerating persistent device names ...................................... 107
Changing device naming for TPD-controlled enclosures .............. 107
Simple or nopriv disks with enclosure-based naming .................. 109
About the Array Volume Identifier (AVID) attribute .......................... 110
Discovering the association between enclosure-based disk names and
OS-based disk names ............................................................. 111
About disk installation and formatting ........................................... 112
Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes ........................ 113
Adding a disk to VxVM ................................................................ 113
Disk reinitialization .............................................................. 121
Using vxdiskadd to put a disk under VxVM control ..................... 122
RAM disk support in VxVM .......................................................... 122
Encapsulating a disk ................................................................... 124
Failure of disk encapsulation .................................................. 127
Using nopriv disks for encapsulation ....................................... 128
 Contents 9

Rootability ................................................................................ 129

Booting root volumes ............................................................ 130
Boot-time volume restrictions ................................................. 131
Creating redundancy for the root disk ..................................... 132
Creating an archived back-up root disk for disaster
recovery ....................................................................... 132
Mirroring an encapsulated root disk ........................................ 132
Booting from alternate boot disks ............................................ 133
Mirroring other file systems on the root disk ............................. 136
Encapsulating SAN disks ....................................................... 136
Administering an encapsulated boot disk .................................. 138
Unencapsulating the root disk ...................................................... 140
Displaying disk information ......................................................... 141
Displaying disk information with vxdiskadm ............................. 142
Removing disks .......................................................................... 142
Removing a disk with subdisks ................................................ 144
Removing a disk with no subdisks ............................................ 145
Removing a disk from VxVM control .............................................. 145
Removing and replacing disks ....................................................... 146
Replacing a failed or removed disk ........................................... 150
Removing and replacing a disk in a Sun StorEdge A5x00 disk
array ............................................................................ 152
Enabling a disk .......................................................................... 153
Taking a disk offline ................................................................... 154
Renaming a disk ......................................................................... 154
Reserving disks .......................................................................... 155

Chapter 4 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing .......................... 157

How DMP works ......................................................................... 157
How DMP monitors I/O on paths ............................................. 161
Load balancing ..................................................................... 163
Disabling Sun Multipath IO (MPxIO) ........................................ 163
Dynamic Reconfiguration ...................................................... 164
About booting from DMP devices ............................................. 164
DMP in a clustered environment ............................................. 164
Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible to VxVM .......... 165
Enabling multi-pathing and making devices visible to VxVM .............. 166
About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and storage
processors ........................................................................... 167
About displaying DMP database information ................................... 168
Displaying the paths to a disk ....................................................... 168
Setting customized names for DMP nodes ....................................... 171
10 Contents

DMP coexistence with native multipathing ..................................... 172

Administering DMP using vxdmpadm ............................................ 173
Retrieving information about a DMP node ................................. 173
Displaying consolidated information about the DMP nodes .......... 174
Displaying the members of a LUN group ................................... 176
Displaying paths controlled by a DMP node, controller, enclosure,
or array port .................................................................. 176
Displaying information about controllers ................................. 179
Displaying information about enclosures .................................. 180
Displaying information about array ports ................................. 181
Displaying information about TPD-controlled devices ................. 181
Displaying extended device attributes ..................................... 183
Suppressing or including devices for VxVM or DMP control ......... 185
Gathering and displaying I/O statistics ..................................... 186
Setting the attributes of the paths to an enclosure ...................... 191
Displaying the redundancy level of a device or enclosure ............. 193
Specifying the minimum number of active paths ........................ 194
Displaying the I/O policy ....................................................... 194
Specifying the I/O policy ........................................................ 195
Disabling I/O for paths, controllers or array ports ...................... 201
Enabling I/O for paths, controllers or array ports ....................... 202
Renaming an enclosure ......................................................... 203
Configuring the response to I/O failures ................................... 203
Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism ................................ 205
Configuring Subpaths Failover Groups (SFG) ............................. 206
Configuring Low Impact Path Probing ...................................... 207
Displaying recovery option values ........................................... 207
Configuring DMP path restoration policies ................................ 208
Stopping the DMP path restoration thread ................................ 210
Displaying the status of the DMP path restoration thread ............ 210
Displaying information about the DMP error-handling
thread .......................................................................... 210
Configuring array policy modules ............................................ 210

Chapter 5 Online dynamic reconfiguration ..................................... 213

About online dynamic reconfiguration ........................................... 213
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control ...................... 213
Removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID .............. 214
Adding new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID ....................... 216
About detecting target ID reuse if the operating system device
tree is not cleaned up ...................................................... 218
 Contents 11

Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or

removing LUNs .............................................................. 219
Cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing
LUNs ............................................................................ 219
Upgrading the array controller firmware online ............................... 221
Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server ............................. 222

Chapter 6 Creating and administering disk groups ...................... 227

About disk groups ....................................................................... 228
Specification of disk groups to commands ................................. 230
System-wide reserved disk groups ........................................... 230
Rules for determining the default disk group ............................. 230
Disk group versions .............................................................. 232
Displaying disk group information ................................................ 236
Displaying free space in a disk group ........................................ 237
Creating a disk group .................................................................. 238
Creating a disk group with an earlier disk group version .............. 239
Adding a disk to a disk group ........................................................ 239
Removing a disk from a disk group ................................................ 240
Moving disks between disk groups ................................................. 241
Deporting a disk group ................................................................ 242
Importing a disk group ................................................................ 243
Setting the automatic recovery of volumes ................................ 244
Handling of minor number conflicts .............................................. 244
Moving disk groups between systems ............................................. 246
Handling errors when importing disks ..................................... 247
Reserving minor numbers for disk groups ................................. 249
Compatibility of disk groups between platforms ......................... 251
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers ............................. 252
Writing a new UDID to a disk .................................................. 253
Importing a disk group containing cloned disks ......................... 253
Sample cases of operations on cloned disks ............................... 255
Considerations when using EMC CLARiiON SNAPSHOT
LUNs ............................................................................ 261
Renaming a disk group ................................................................ 261
Handling conflicting configuration copies ....................................... 263
Example of a serial split brain condition in a cluster ................... 263
Correcting conflicting configuration information ....................... 268
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups ........................................ 270
Limitations of disk group split and join ..................................... 274
Listing objects potentially affected by a move ............................ 275
Moving objects between disk groups ........................................ 277
12 Contents

Splitting disk groups ............................................................. 280

Joining disk groups ............................................................... 282
Disabling a disk group ................................................................. 283
Destroying a disk group ............................................................... 284
Recovering a destroyed disk group ........................................... 284
Upgrading the disk group version .................................................. 284
About the configuration daemon in VxVM ...................................... 285
Backing up and restoring disk group configuration data .................... 286
Using vxnotify to monitor configuration changes ............................. 287
Working with existing ISP disk groups ........................................... 287

Chapter 7 Creating and administering subdisks and

plexes ............................................................................. 291
About subdisks .......................................................................... 292
Creating subdisks ....................................................................... 292
Displaying subdisk information .................................................... 293
Moving subdisks ........................................................................ 294
Splitting subdisks ....................................................................... 294
Joining subdisks ......................................................................... 295
Associating subdisks with plexes ................................................... 295
Associating log subdisks .............................................................. 297
Dissociating subdisks from plexes ................................................. 298
Removing subdisks ..................................................................... 299
Changing subdisk attributes ......................................................... 299
About plexes .............................................................................. 300
Creating plexes .......................................................................... 301
Creating a striped plex ................................................................ 301
Displaying plex information ......................................................... 301
Plex states ........................................................................... 302
Plex condition flags .............................................................. 305
Plex kernel states ................................................................. 306
Attaching and associating plexes ................................................... 306
Taking plexes offline ................................................................... 307
Detaching plexes ........................................................................ 308
Reattaching plexes ..................................................................... 308
Automatic plex reattachment ................................................. 309
Moving plexes ............................................................................ 310
Copying volumes to plexes ........................................................... 311
Dissociating and removing plexes .................................................. 311
Changing plex attributes .............................................................. 312
 Contents 13

Chapter 8 Creating volumes ............................................................... 315

About volume creation ................................................................ 316
Types of volume layouts .............................................................. 316
Supported volume logs and maps ............................................ 318
Creating a volume ....................................................................... 319
Advanced approach .............................................................. 319
Assisted approach ................................................................ 319
Using vxassist ............................................................................ 320
Setting default values for vxassist ........................................... 321
Using the SmartMove™ feature while attaching a plex ................ 323
Discovering the maximum size of a volume ..................................... 323
Disk group alignment constraints on volumes ................................. 324
Creating a volume on any disk ...................................................... 324
Creating a volume on specific disks ................................................ 325
Creating a volume on SSD devices ........................................... 326
Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes .................... 328
Creating a mirrored volume .......................................................... 331
Creating a mirrored-concatenated volume ................................ 332
Creating a concatenated-mirror volume .................................... 332
Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume ............................... 333
Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume ............................. 336
Creating a volume with dirty region logging enabled ......................... 336
Creating a striped volume ............................................................ 337
Creating a mirrored-stripe volume ........................................... 338
Creating a striped-mirror volume ............................................ 339
Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures ........................... 339
Mirroring across media types (SSD and HDD) .................................. 340
Creating a RAID-5 volume ............................................................ 341
Creating tagged volumes .............................................................. 342
Creating a volume using vxmake ................................................... 344
Creating a volume using a vxmake description file ...................... 345
Initializing and starting a volume .................................................. 346
Initializing and starting a volume created using vxmake .............. 347
Accessing a volume ..................................................................... 348
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more
efficient .............................................................................. 348
Understanding persistent attributes ........................................ 349
Rule file format ................................................................... 350
Using rules to create a volume ................................................ 351
Using persistent attributes ..................................................... 352
14 Contents

Chapter 9 Administering volumes ..................................................... 355

About volume administration ....................................................... 356
Displaying volume information ..................................................... 356
Volume states ...................................................................... 358
Volume kernel states ............................................................. 359
Monitoring and controlling tasks .................................................. 360
Specifying task tags .............................................................. 360
Managing tasks with vxtask ................................................... 361
About SF Thin Reclamation feature ............................................... 363
Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays .......................... 363
Identifying thin and thin reclamation LUNs .............................. 364
How reclamation on a deleted volume works ............................. 364
Thin Reclamation of a disk, a disk group, or an enclosure ............. 365
Thin Reclamation of a file system ............................................ 366
Triggering space reclamation ................................................. 367
Monitoring Thin Reclamation using the vxtask command .................. 368
Using SmartMove with Thin Provisioning ....................................... 368
Admin operations on an unmounted VxFS thin volume ..................... 369
Stopping a volume ...................................................................... 369
Putting a volume in maintenance mode .................................... 370
Starting a volume ....................................................................... 370
Resizing a volume ....................................................................... 371
Resizing volumes with vxresize ............................................... 372
Resizing volumes with vxassist ............................................... 373
Resizing volumes with vxvol ................................................... 375
Adding a mirror to a volume ........................................................ 375
Mirroring all volumes ........................................................... 376
Mirroring volumes on a VM disk ............................................. 376
Additional mirroring considerations ........................................ 377
Removing a mirror ..................................................................... 379
Adding logs and maps to volumes .................................................. 380
Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots ........................... 380
Specifying storage for version 20 DCO plexes ............................ 382
Using a DCO and DCO volume with a RAID-5 volume .................. 383
Determining the DCO version number ...................................... 383
Determining if DRL is enabled on a volume ............................... 384
Determining if DRL logging is active on a volume ....................... 385
Disabling and re-enabling DRL ................................................ 385
Removing support for DRL and instant snapshots from a
volume ......................................................................... 385
Adding traditional DRL logging to a mirrored volume ....................... 386
Removing a traditional DRL log ............................................... 387
 Contents 15

Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs ......................... 387

Setting tags on volumes ............................................................... 389
Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes ................................ 391
Removing a volume .................................................................... 392
Moving volumes from a VM disk ................................................... 393
Enabling FastResync on a volume .................................................. 394
Checking whether FastResync is enabled on a volume ................. 395
Disabling FastResync ............................................................ 395
Performing online relayout .......................................................... 396
Permitted relayout transformations ......................................... 396
Specifying a non-default layout ............................................... 399
Specifying a plex for relayout ................................................. 400
Tagging a relayout operation .................................................. 400
Viewing the status of a relayout .............................................. 401
Controlling the progress of a relayout ...................................... 401
Converting between layered and non-layered volumes ...................... 402
Adding a RAID-5 log ................................................................... 403
Adding a RAID-5 log using vxplex ............................................ 404
Removing a RAID-5 log .......................................................... 404

Chapter 10 Creating and administering volume sets ...................... 407

About volume sets ...................................................................... 407
Creating a volume set .................................................................. 408
Adding a volume to a volume set ................................................... 409
Removing a volume from a volume set ........................................... 409
Listing details of volume sets ........................................................ 409
Stopping and starting volume sets ................................................. 410
Raw device node access to component volumes ................................ 411
Enabling raw device access when creating a volume set ............... 412
Displaying the raw device access settings for a volume set ........... 413
Controlling raw device access for an existing volume set ............. 413

Chapter 11 Configuring off-host processing ..................................... 415

About off-host processing solutions ............................................... 415
Implemention of off-host processing solutions ................................ 416
Implementing off-host online backup ....................................... 417
Implementing decision support ............................................... 421

Chapter 12 Administering hot-relocation .......................................... 427

About hot-relocation ................................................................... 427
How hot-relocation works ............................................................ 428
16 Contents

Partial disk failure mail messages ............................................ 431

Complete disk failure mail messages ........................................ 432
How space is chosen for relocation .......................................... 433
Configuring a system for hot-relocation ......................................... 434
Displaying spare disk information ................................................. 435
Marking a disk as a hot-relocation spare ......................................... 435
Removing a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare .......................... 436
Excluding a disk from hot-relocation use ........................................ 437
Making a disk available for hot-relocation use ................................. 438
Configuring hot-relocation to use only spare disks ............................ 438
Moving relocated subdisks ........................................................... 439
Moving relocated subdisks using vxdiskadm .............................. 439
Moving relocated subdisks using vxassist ................................. 441
Moving relocated subdisks using vxunreloc ............................... 441
Restarting vxunreloc after errors ............................................ 443
Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation ........................................ 444

Chapter 13 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) ................... 447

Overview of clustering ................................................................. 447
Overview of cluster volume management .................................. 448
Private and shared disk groups ............................................... 450
Activation modes of shared disk groups .................................... 451
Connectivity policy of shared disk groups ................................. 453
Effect of disk connectivity on cluster reconfiguration .................. 458
Limitations of shared disk groups ............................................ 459
Multiple host failover configurations ............................................. 459
Import lock ......................................................................... 459
Failover .............................................................................. 460
Corruption of disk group configuration .................................... 460
About the cluster functionality of VxVM ......................................... 461
CVM initialization and configuration ............................................. 462
Cluster reconfiguration ......................................................... 463
Volume reconfiguration ......................................................... 466
Node shutdown .................................................................... 470
Cluster shutdown ................................................................. 471
Dirty region logging in cluster environments ................................... 471
How DRL works in a cluster environment .................................. 472
Administering VxVM in cluster environments ................................. 472
Requesting node status and discovering the master node ............. 473
Changing the CVM master manually ........................................ 474
Determining if a LUN is in a shareable disk group ....................... 476
Listing shared disk groups ..................................................... 477
 Contents 17

Creating a shared disk group .................................................. 478

Importing disk groups as shared ............................................. 478
Handling cloned disks in a shared disk group ............................. 479
Converting a disk group from shared to private .......................... 480
Moving objects between shared disk groups .............................. 480
Splitting shared disk groups ................................................... 480
Joining shared disk groups ..................................................... 481
Changing the activation mode on a shared disk group ................. 481
Setting the disk detach policy on a shared disk group .................. 482
Setting the disk group failure policy on a shared disk group ......... 482
Creating volumes with exclusive open access by a node ............... 482
Setting exclusive open access to a volume by a node ................... 483
Displaying the cluster protocol version ..................................... 483
Displaying the supported cluster protocol version range .............. 484
Recovering volumes in shared disk groups ................................ 484
Obtaining cluster performance statistics .................................. 484
Administering CVM from the slave node ................................... 485

Chapter 14 Administering sites and remote mirrors ...................... 489

About sites and remote mirrors ..................................................... 489

About site-based allocation .................................................... 492
About site consistency ........................................................... 493
About site tags ..................................................................... 494
About the site read policy ....................................................... 494
Making an existing disk group site consistent .................................. 495
Configuring a new disk group as a Remote Mirror configuration ......... 496
Fire drill — testing the configuration .............................................. 498
Simulating site failure ........................................................... 498
Verifying the secondary site ................................................... 498
Recovery from simulated site failure ........................................ 498
Changing the site name ............................................................... 499
Resetting the site name for a host ............................................ 499
Administering the Remote Mirror configuration .............................. 500
Configuring site tagging for disks or enclosures ......................... 500
Configuring automatic site tagging for a disk group .................... 500
Configuring site consistency on a volume ................................. 501
Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites ............................ 502
Displaying site information .......................................................... 504
Failure and recovery scenarios ...................................................... 505
Recovering from a loss of site connectivity ................................ 505
Recovering from host failure .................................................. 506
Recovering from storage failure .............................................. 506
18 Contents

Recovering from site failure ................................................... 507

Automatic site reattachment .................................................. 507

Chapter 15 Performance monitoring and tuning ............................. 509

Performance guidelines ............................................................... 509
Data assignment .................................................................. 509
Striping .............................................................................. 510
Mirroring ............................................................................ 510
Combining mirroring and striping ........................................... 511
RAID-5 ..................................................................................... 511
Volume read policies ............................................................. 511
Performance monitoring .............................................................. 512
Setting performance priorities ................................................ 512
Obtaining performance data ................................................... 513
Using performance data ........................................................ 514
Tuning VxVM ............................................................................ 518
General tuning guidelines ...................................................... 518
Tuning guidelines for large systems ......................................... 518
Changing the values of VxVM tunables ..................................... 519
Tunable parameters for VxVM ................................................ 520
DMP tunable parameters ....................................................... 530
Disabling I/O statistics collection ............................................ 537
Enabling I/O statistics collection ............................................. 538

Appendix A Using Veritas Volume Manager commands ................. 539

About Veritas Volume Manager commands ..................................... 539
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node ................ 562
Online manual pages ................................................................... 569
Section 1M — administrative commands ................................... 570
Section 4 — file formats ......................................................... 573
Section 7 — device driver interfaces ......................................... 574

Appendix B Configuring Veritas Volume Manager ........................... 575

Setup tasks after installation ........................................................ 575
Unsupported disk arrays .............................................................. 576
Foreign devices .......................................................................... 576
Initialization of disks and creation of disk groups ............................. 576
Guidelines for configuring storage ................................................. 576
Mirroring guidelines ............................................................. 577
Dirty region logging guidelines ............................................... 578
Striping guidelines ............................................................... 579
 Contents 19

RAID-5 guidelines ................................................................ 580

Hot-relocation guidelines ....................................................... 580
Accessing volume devices ...................................................... 581
VxVM’s view of multipathed devices .............................................. 582
Cluster support .......................................................................... 582
Configuring shared disk groups ............................................... 582
Converting existing VxVM disk groups to shared disk
groups .......................................................................... 584

Glossary ............................................................................................................. 585

Index ................................................................................................................... 593
20 Contents
 Chapter 1
Understanding Veritas
Volume Manager
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About Veritas Volume Manager

■ VxVM and the operating system

■ How VxVM handles storage management

■ Volume layouts in VxVM

■ Online relayout

■ Volume resynchronization

■ Dirty region logging

■ Volume snapshots

■ FastResync

■ Hot-relocation

■ Volume sets

■ Configuration of volumes on SAN storage

About Veritas Volume Manager

VeritasTM Volume Manager (VxVM) by Symantec is a storage management
subsystem that allows you to manage physical disks and logical unit numbers
(LUNs) as logical devices called volumes. A VxVM volume appears to applications
22 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
VxVM and the operating system

and the operating system as a physical device on which file systems, databases
and other managed data objects can be configured.
VxVM provides easy-to-use online disk storage management for computing
environments and Storage Area Network (SAN) environments. By supporting the
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) model, VxVM can be configured
to protect against disk and hardware failure, and to increase I/O throughput.
Additionally, VxVM provides features that enhance fault tolerance and fast
recovery from disk failure or storage array failure.
VxVM overcomes restrictions imposed by hardware disk devices and by LUNs by
providing a logical volume management layer. This allows volumes to span multiple
disks and LUNs.
VxVM provides the tools to improve performance and ensure data availability
and integrity. You can also use VxVM to dynamically configure storage while the
system is active.

VxVM and the operating system

VxVM operates as a subsystem between your operating system and your data
management systems, such as file systems and database management systems.
VxVM is tightly coupled with the operating system. Before a disk or LUN can be
brought under VxVM control, the disk must be accessible through the operating
system device interface. VxVM is layered on top of the operating system interface
services, and is dependent upon how the operating system accesses physical disks.
VxVM is dependent upon the operating system for the following functionality:
■ operating system (disk) devices
■ device handles
■ VxVM Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) metadevice
VxVM relies on the following constantly-running daemons and kernel threads
for its operation:

vxconfigd The VxVM configuration daemon maintains disk and

group configurations and communicates configuration
changes to the kernel, and modifies configuration
information stored on disks.

vxiod VxVM I/O kernel threads provide extended I/O operations

without blocking calling processes. By default, 16 I/O
threads are started at boot time, and at least one I/O
thread must continue to run at all times.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 23
How VxVM handles storage management

vxrelocd The hot-relocation daemon monitors VxVM for events

that affect redundancy, and performs hot-relocation to
restore redundancy. If thin provision disks are configured
in the system, then the storage space of a deleted volume
is reclaimed by this daemon as configured by the policy.

How data is stored

Several methods are used to store data on physical disks. These methods organize
data on the disk so the data can be stored and retrieved efficiently. The basic
method of disk organization is called formatting. Formatting prepares the hard
disk so that files can be written to and retrieved from the disk by using a
prearranged storage pattern.
Two methods are used to store information on formatted hard disks:
physical-storage layout and logical-storage layout. VxVM uses the logical-storage
layout method.
See “How VxVM handles storage management” on page 23.

How VxVM handles storage management

VxVM uses the following types of objects to handle storage management:

Physical objects Physical disks, LUNs (virtual disks implemented in hardware), or

other hardware with block and raw operating system device
interfaces that are used to store data.

See “Physical objects” on page 23.

Virtual objects When one or more physical disks are brought under the control
of VxVM, it creates virtual objects called volumes on those physical
disks. Each volume records and retrieves data from one or more
physical disks. Volumes are accessed by file systems, databases,
or other applications in the same way that physical disks are
accessed. Volumes are also composed of other virtual objects
(plexes and subdisks) that are used in changing the volume
configuration. Volumes and their virtual components are called
virtual objects or VxVM objects.

See “Virtual objects” on page 28.

Physical objects
A physical disk is the basic storage device (media) where the data is ultimately
stored. You can access the data on a physical disk by using a device name to locate
24 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
How VxVM handles storage management

the disk. The physical disk device name varies with the computer system you use.
Not all parameters are used on all systems.
Typical device names are of the form c#t#d#s#, where c# specifies the controller,
t# specifies the target ID, d# specifies the disk, and s# specifies the partition or
slice. For example, device name c0t0d0s2 is the entire hard disk connected to
controller number 0 in the system, with a target ID of 0, and physical disk number
0.

Figure 1-1 shows how a physical disk and device name (devname) are illustrated
in this document.

Figure 1-1 Physical disk example

devname

VxVM writes identification information on physical disks under VxVM control

(VM disks). VxVM disks can be identified even after physical disk disconnection
or system outages. VxVM can then re-form disk groups and logical objects to
provide failure detection and to speed system recovery.

Partitions
Figure 1-2 shows how a physical disk can be divided into one or more slices, also
known as partitions.

Figure 1-2 Slice example

Physical disk with several slices Slice

devnames0 devnames0
devnames1
devnames2

The slice number is added at the end of the devname, and is denoted by s#. Note
that slice s2 refers to an entire physical disk for non-EFI disks.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 25
How VxVM handles storage management

Disk arrays
Performing I/O to disks is a relatively slow process because disks are physical
devices that require time to move the heads to the correct position on the disk
before reading or writing. If all of the read or write operations are done to
individual disks, one at a time, the read-write time can become unmanageable.
Performing these operations on multiple disks can help to reduce this problem.
A disk array is a collection of physical disks that VxVM can represent to the
operating system as one or more virtual disks or volumes. The volumes created
by VxVM look and act to the operating system like physical disks. Applications
that interact with volumes should work in the same way as with physical disks.
Figure 1-3 shows how VxVM represents the disks in a disk array as several volumes
to the operating system.

Figure 1-3 How VxVM presents the disks in a disk array as volumes to the
operating system

Operating system

Veritas Volume Manager

Volumes

Physical disks

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

Data can be spread across several disks within an array, or across disks spanning
multiple arrays, to distribute or balance I/O operations across the disks. Using
parallel I/O across multiple disks in this way improves I/O performance by
increasing data transfer speed and overall throughput for the array.

Multiple paths to disk arrays

Some disk arrays provide multiple ports to access their disk devices. These ports,
coupled with the host bus adaptor (HBA) controller and any data bus or I/O
processor local to the array, make up multiple hardware paths to access the disk
26 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
How VxVM handles storage management

devices. Such disk arrays are called multipathed disk arrays. This type of disk
array can be connected to host systems in many different configurations, (such
as multiple ports connected to different controllers on a single host, chaining of
the ports through a single controller on a host, or ports connected to different
hosts simultaneously).
See “How DMP works” on page 157.

Device discovery
Device discovery is the term used to describe the process of discovering the disks
that are attached to a host. This feature is important for DMP because it needs to
support a growing number of disk arrays from a number of vendors. In conjunction
with the ability to discover the devices attached to a host, the Device Discovery
service enables you to add support dynamically for new disk arrays. This operation,
which uses a facility called the Device Discovery Layer (DDL), is achieved without
the need for a reboot.
This means that you can dynamically add a new disk array to a host, and run a
command which scans the operating system’s device tree for all the attached disk
devices, and reconfigures DMP with the new device database.
See “How to administer the Device Discovery Layer” on page 90.

About enclosure-based naming

Enclosure-based naming provides an alternative to operating system-based device
naming. This allows disk devices to be named for enclosures rather than for the
controllers through which they are accessed. In a Storage Area Network (SAN)
that uses Fibre Channel switches, information about disk location provided by
the operating system may not correctly indicate the physical location of the disks.
For example, c#t#d#s# naming assigns controller-based device names to disks in
separate enclosures that are connected to the same host controller.
Enclosure-based naming allows VxVM to access enclosures as separate physical
entities. By configuring redundant copies of your data on separate enclosures,
you can safeguard against failure of one or more enclosures.
Figure 1-4 shows a typical SAN environment where host controllers are connected
to multiple enclosures through a Fibre Channel switch.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 27
How VxVM handles storage management

Figure 1-4 Example configuration for disk enclosures connected via a fibre
channel switch

Host

c1

Fibre Channel
switch

Disk enclosures

enc0 enc1 enc2

In such a configuration, enclosure-based naming can be used to refer to each disk

within an enclosure. For example, the device names for the disks in enclosure
enc0 are named enc0_0, enc0_1, and so on. The main benefit of this scheme is
that it allows you to quickly determine where a disk is physically located in a large
SAN configuration.
In most disk arrays, you can use hardware-based storage management to represent
several physical disks as one LUN to the operating system. In such cases, VxVM
also sees a single logical disk device rather than its component disks. For this
reason, when reference is made to a disk within an enclosure, this disk may be
either a physical disk or a LUN.
Another important benefit of enclosure-based naming is that it enables VxVM to
avoid placing redundant copies of data in the same enclosure. This is a good thing
to avoid as each enclosure can be considered to be a separate fault domain. For
example, if a mirrored volume were configured only on the disks in enclosure
enc1, the failure of the cable between the switch and the enclosure would make
the entire volume unavailable.
If required, you can replace the default name that VxVM assigns to an enclosure
with one that is more meaningful to your configuration.
See “Renaming an enclosure” on page 203.
28 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
How VxVM handles storage management

Figure 1-5 shows a High Availability (HA) configuration where redundant-loop

access to storage is implemented by connecting independent controllers on the
host to separate switches with independent paths to the enclosures.

Figure 1-5 Example HA configuration using multiple switches to provide

redundant loop access

Host
c1 c2

Fibre Channel
switches

Disk enclosures

enc0 enc1 enc2

Such a configuration protects against the failure of one of the host controllers
(c1 and c2), or of the cable between the host and one of the switches. In this
example, each disk is known by the same name to VxVM for all of the paths over
which it can be accessed. For example, the disk device enc0_0 represents a single
disk for which two different paths are known to the operating system, such as
c1t99d0 and c2t99d0.

See “Disk device naming in VxVM” on page 81.

See “Changing the disk-naming scheme” on page 104.
To take account of fault domains when configuring data redundancy, you can
control how mirrored volumes are laid out across enclosures.
See “Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures” on page 339.

Virtual objects
VxVM uses multiple virtualization layers to provide distinct functionality and
reduce physical limitations.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 29
How VxVM handles storage management

Virtual objects in VxVM include the following:

■ Disk groups
See “Disk groups” on page 31.
■ VM disks
See “VM disks” on page 31.
■ Subdisks
See “Subdisks” on page 32.
■ Plexes
See “Plexes” on page 33.
■ Volumes
See “Volumes” on page 34.
The connection between physical objects and VxVM objects is made when you
place a physical disk under VxVM control.
After installing VxVM on a host system, you must bring the contents of physical
disks under VxVM control by collecting the VM disks into disk groups and
allocating the disk group space to create logical volumes.
Bringing the contents of physical disks under VxVM control is accomplished only
if VxVM takes control of the physical disks and the disk is not under control of
another storage manager such as Sun Microsystems Solaris Volume Manager
software.
For more information on how Solaris Volume Manager and VM disks co-exist or
how to convert LVM disks to VM disks, see the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
VxVM creates virtual objects and makes logical connections between the objects.
The virtual objects are then used by VxVM to do storage management tasks.
The vxprint command displays detailed information about the VxVM objects
that exist on a system.
See “Displaying volume information” on page 356.
See the vxprint(1M) manual page.

Combining virtual objects in VxVM

VxVM virtual objects are combined to build volumes. The virtual objects contained
in volumes are VM disks, disk groups, subdisks, and plexes. VxVM virtual objects
are organized in the following ways:
■ VM disks are grouped into disk groups
30 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
How VxVM handles storage management

■ Subdisks (each representing a specific region of a disk) are combined to form

plexes
■ Volumes are composed of one or more plexes
Figure 1-6 shows the connections between Veritas Volume Manager virtual objects
and how they relate to physical disks.

Figure 1-6 Connection between objects in VxVM

Disk group
vol01 vol02

vol01-01 vol02-01 vol02-02 Volumes

vol01-01 vol02-01 vol02-02

disk01-01 disk02-01 disk03-01
Plexes

disk01-01 disk02-01 disk03-01 Subdisks

disk01-01 disk02-01 disk03-01

VM disks
disk01 disk02 disk03

Physical
devname1 devname2 devname3
disks

The disk group contains three VM disks which are used to create two volumes.
Volume vol01 is simple and has a single plex. Volume vol02 is a mirrored volume
with two plexes.
The various types of virtual objects (disk groups, VM disks, subdisks, plexes and
volumes) are described in the following sections. Other types of objects exist in
Veritas Volume Manager, such as data change objects (DCOs), and volume sets,
to provide extended functionality.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 31
How VxVM handles storage management

Disk groups
A disk group is a collection of disks that share a common configuration, and which
are managed by VxVM. A disk group configuration is a set of records with detailed
information about related VxVM objects, their attributes, and their connections.
A disk group name can be up to 31 characters long.
See “VM disks” on page 31.
In releases before VxVM 4.0, the default disk group was rootdg (the root disk
group). For VxVM to function, the rootdg disk group had to exist and it had to
contain at least one disk. This requirement no longer exists, and VxVM can work
without any disk groups configured (although you must set up at least one disk
group before you can create any volumes of other VxVM objects).
See “System-wide reserved disk groups” on page 230.
You can create additional disk groups when you need them. Disk groups allow
you to group disks into logical collections. A disk group and its components can
be moved as a unit from one host machine to another.
See “Reorganizing the contents of disk groups” on page 270.
Volumes are created within a disk group. A given volume and its plexes and
subdisks must be configured from disks in the same disk group.

VM disks
When you place a physical disk under VxVM control, a VM disk is assigned to the
physical disk. A VM disk is under VxVM control and is usually in a disk group.
Each VM disk corresponds to at least one physical disk or disk partition. VxVM
allocates storage from a contiguous area of VxVM disk space.
A VM disk typically includes a public region (allocated storage) and a small private
region where VxVM internal configuration information is stored.
Each VM disk has a unique disk media name (a virtual disk name). You can either
define a disk name of up to 31 characters, or allow VxVM to assign a default name
that takes the form diskgroup##, where diskgroup is the name of the disk group
to which the disk belongs.
See “Disk groups” on page 31.
Figure 1-7 shows a VM disk with a media name of disk01 that is assigned to the
physical disk, devname.
32 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
How VxVM handles storage management

Figure 1-7 VM disk example

disk01 VM disk

Physical disk
devname

Subdisks
A subdisk is a set of contiguous disk blocks. A block is a unit of space on the disk.
VxVM allocates disk space using subdisks. A VM disk can be divided into one or
more subdisks. Each subdisk represents a specific portion of a VM disk, which is
mapped to a specific region of a physical disk.
The default name for a VM disk is diskgroup## and the default name for a subdisk
is diskgroup##-##, where diskgroup is the name of the disk group to which the
disk belongs.
See “Disk groups” on page 31.
Figure 1-8 shows disk01-01 is the name of the first subdisk on the VM disk named
disk01.

Figure 1-8 Subdisk example

disk01-01 Subdisk

disk01-01 VM disk with one subdisk

disk01

A VM disk can contain multiple subdisks, but subdisks cannot overlap or share
the same portions of a VM disk. To ensure integrity, VxVM rejects any commands
that try to create overlapping subdisks.
Figure 1-9 shows a VM disk with three subdisks, which are assigned from one
physical disk.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 33
How VxVM handles storage management

Figure 1-9 Example of three subdisks assigned to one VM Disk

disk01-01 disk01-02 disk01-03 Subdisks

disk01-01
disk01-02 VM disk with three subdisks
disk01-03
disk01

Any VM disk space that is not part of a subdisk is free space. You can use free
space to create new subdisks.

Plexes
VxVM uses subdisks to build virtual objects called plexes. A plex consists of one
or more subdisks located on one or more physical disks.
Figure 1-10 shows an example of a plex with two subdisks.

Figure 1-10 Example of a plex with two subdisks

vol01-01
Plex with two subdisks
disk01-01 disk01-02

disk01-01 disk01-02 Subdisks

You can organize data on subdisks to form a plex by using the following methods:
■ concatenation
■ striping (RAID-0)
■ mirroring (RAID-1)
■ striping with parity (RAID-5)
Concatenation, striping (RAID-0), mirroring (RAID-1) and RAID-5 are types of
volume layout.
See “Volume layouts in VxVM” on page 35.
34 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
How VxVM handles storage management

Volumes
A volume is a virtual disk device that appears to applications, databases, and file
systems like a physical disk device, but does not have the physical limitations of
a physical disk device. A volume consists of one or more plexes, each holding a
copy of the selected data in the volume. Due to its virtual nature, a volume is not
restricted to a particular disk or a specific area of a disk. The configuration of a
volume can be changed by using VxVM user interfaces. Configuration changes
can be accomplished without causing disruption to applications or file systems
that are using the volume. For example, a volume can be mirrored on separate
disks or moved to use different disk storage.
VxVM uses the default naming conventions of vol## for volumes and vol##-##
for plexes in a volume. For ease of administration, you can choose to select more
meaningful names for the volumes that you create.
A volume may be created under the following constraints:
■ Its name can contain up to 31 characters.
■ It can consist of up to 32 plexes, each of which contains one or more subdisks.
■ It must have at least one associated plex that has a complete copy of the data
in the volume with at least one associated subdisk.
■ All subdisks within a volume must belong to the same disk group.
Figure 1-11 shows a volume vol01 with a single plex.

Figure 1-11 Example of a volume with one plex

vol01

vol01-01 Volume with one plex

vol01-01
Plex with one subdisk
disk01-01

The volume vol01 has the following characteristics:

■ It contains one plex named vol01-01.
■ The plex contains one subdisk named disk01-01.
■ The subdisk disk01-01 is allocated from VM disk disk01.
Figure 1-12 shows a mirrored volume, vol06, with two data plexes.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 35
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-12 Example of a volume with two plexes

vol06

vol06-01 vol06-02 Volume with two plexes

vol06-01 vol06-02
Plexes
disk01-01 disk02-01

Each plex of the mirror contains a complete copy of the volume data.
The volume vol06 has the following characteristics:
■ It contains two plexes named vol06-01 and vol06-02.
■ Each plex contains one subdisk.
■ Each subdisk is allocated from a different VM disk (disk01 and disk02).
See “Mirroring (RAID-1)” on page 42.
VxVM supports the concept of layered volumes in which subdisks can contain
volumes.
See “Layered volumes” on page 50.

Volume layouts in VxVM

A VxVM virtual device is defined by a volume. A volume has a layout defined by
the association of a volume to one or more plexes, each of which map to one or
more subdisks. The volume presents a virtual device interface that is exposed to
other applications for data access. These logical building blocks re-map the volume
address space through which I/O is re-directed at run-time.
Different volume layouts provide different levels of availability and performance.
A volume layout can be configured and changed to provide the desired level of
service.

Non-layered volumes
In a non-layered volume, a subdisk maps directly to a VM disk. This allows the
subdisk to define a contiguous extent of storage space backed by the public region
of a VM disk. When active, the VM disk is directly associated with an underlying
36 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

physical disk. The combination of a volume layout and the physical disks therefore
determines the storage service available from a given virtual device.

Layered volumes
A layered volume is constructed by mapping its subdisks to underlying volumes.
The subdisks in the underlying volumes must map to VM disks, and hence to
attached physical storage.
Layered volumes allow for more combinations of logical compositions, some of
which may be desirable for configuring a virtual device. For example, layered
volumes allow for high availability when using striping. Because permitting free
use of layered volumes throughout the command level would have resulted in
unwieldy administration, some ready-made layered volume configurations are
designed into VxVM.
See “Layered volumes” on page 50.
These ready-made configurations operate with built-in rules to automatically
match desired levels of service within specified constraints. The automatic
configuration is done on a “best-effort” basis for the current command invocation
working against the current configuration.
To achieve the desired storage service from a set of virtual devices, it may be
necessary to include an appropriate set of VM disks into a disk group, and to
execute multiple configuration commands.
To the extent that it can, VxVM handles initial configuration and on-line
re-configuration with its set of layouts and administration interface to make this
job easier and more deterministic.

Layout methods
Data in virtual objects is organized to create volumes by using the following layout
methods:
■ Concatenation, spanning, and carving
See “Concatenation, spanning, and carving” on page 37.
■ Striping (RAID-0)
See “Striping (RAID-0)” on page 39.
■ Mirroring (RAID-1)
See “Mirroring (RAID-1)” on page 42.
■ Striping plus mirroring (mirrored-stripe or RAID-0+1)
See “Striping plus mirroring (mirrored-stripe or RAID-0+1)” on page 43.
■ Mirroring plus striping (striped-mirror, RAID-1+0 or RAID-10)
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 37
Volume layouts in VxVM

See “Mirroring plus striping (striped-mirror, RAID-1+0 or RAID-10)”

on page 44.
■ RAID-5 (striping with parity)
See “RAID-5 (striping with parity)” on page 45.

Concatenation, spanning, and carving

Concatenation maps data in a linear manner onto one or more subdisks in a plex.
To access all of the data in a concatenated plex sequentially, data is first accessed
in the first subdisk from the beginning to the end. Data is then accessed in the
remaining subdisks sequentially from the beginning to the end of each subdisk,
until the end of the last subdisk.
The subdisks in a concatenated plex do not have to be physically contiguous and
can belong to more than one VM disk. Concatenation using subdisks that reside
on more than one VM disk is called spanning.
Figure 1-13 shows the concatenation of two subdisks from the same VM disk.
If a single LUN or disk is split into multiple subdisks, and each subdisk belongs
to a unique volume, it is called carving.

Figure 1-13 Example of concatenation

Data in Data in
disk01-01 disk01-03
n n+1 n+2 n+3 Data blocks

disk01-01 disk01-03 Plex with concatenated subdisks

disk01-01 disk01-03 Subdisks

disk01-01 disk01-02 disk01-03 VM disk

disk01

devname

n n+1 n+2 n+3 Physical disk

38 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

The blocks n, n+1, n+2 and n+3 (numbered relative to the start of the plex) are
contiguous on the plex, but actually come from two distinct subdisks on the same
physical disk.
The remaining free space in the subdisk, disk01-02, on VM disk, disk01, can be
put to other uses.
You can use concatenation with multiple subdisks when there is insufficient
contiguous space for the plex on any one disk. This form of concatenation can be
used for load balancing between disks, and for head movement optimization on
a particular disk.
Figure 1-14 shows data spread over two subdisks in a spanned plex.

Figure 1-14 Example of spanning

Data in Data in
disk01-01 disk02-01

n n+1 n+2 n+3 Data blocks

disk01-01 disk02-01 Plex with concatenated subdisks

disk01-01 disk02-01 Subdisks

disk01-01 disk02-01 disk02-02 VM disks

disk01 disk02

devname1 devname2

n n+1 n+2 n+3 Physical disks

The blocks n, n+1, n+2 and n+3 (numbered relative to the start of the plex) are
contiguous on the plex, but actually come from two distinct subdisks from two
distinct physical disks.
The remaining free space in the subdisk disk02-02 on VM disk disk02 can be put
to other uses.

Warning: Spanning a plex across multiple disks increases the chance that a disk
failure results in failure of the assigned volume. Use mirroring or RAID-5 to reduce
the risk that a single disk failure results in a volume failure.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 39
Volume layouts in VxVM

Striping (RAID-0)
Striping (RAID-0) is useful if you need large amounts of data written to or read
from physical disks, and performance is important. Striping is also helpful in
balancing the I/O load from multi-user applications across multiple disks. By
using parallel data transfer to and from multiple disks, striping significantly
improves data-access performance.
Striping maps data so that the data is interleaved among two or more physical
disks. A striped plex contains two or more subdisks, spread out over two or more
physical disks. Data is allocated alternately and evenly to the subdisks of a striped
plex.
The subdisks are grouped into “columns,” with each physical disk limited to one
column. Each column contains one or more subdisks and can be derived from one
or more physical disks. The number and sizes of subdisks per column can vary.
Additional subdisks can be added to columns, as necessary.

Warning: Striping a volume, or splitting a volume across multiple disks, increases

the chance that a disk failure will result in failure of that volume.

If five volumes are striped across the same five disks, then failure of any one of
the five disks will require that all five volumes be restored from a backup. If each
volume is on a separate disk, only one volume has to be restored. (As an alternative
to or in conjunction with striping, use mirroring or RAID-5 to substantially reduce
the chance that a single disk failure results in failure of a large number of volumes.)
Data is allocated in equal-sized stripe units that are interleaved between the
columns. Each stripe unit is a set of contiguous blocks on a disk. The default stripe
unit size is 64 kilobytes.
Figure 1-15 shows an example with three columns in a striped plex, six stripe
units, and data striped over the three columns.
40 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-15 Striping across three columns

Column 0 Column 1 Column 2

stripe unit stripe unit stripe unit

Stripe 1
1 2 3

stripe unit stripe unit stripe unit

Stripe 2
4 5 6

Subdisk Subdisk Subdisk

1 2 3
Plex

A stripe consists of the set of stripe units at the same positions across all columns.
In the figure, stripe units 1, 2, and 3 constitute a single stripe.
Viewed in sequence, the first stripe consists of:
■ stripe unit 1 in column 0
■ stripe unit 2 in column 1
■ stripe unit 3 in column 2
The second stripe consists of:
■ stripe unit 4 in column 0
■ stripe unit 5 in column 1
■ stripe unit 6 in column 2
Striping continues for the length of the columns (if all columns are the same
length), or until the end of the shortest column is reached. Any space remaining
at the end of subdisks in longer columns becomes unused space.
Figure 1-16 shows a striped plex with three equal sized, single-subdisk columns.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 41
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-16 Example of a striped plex with one subdisk per column

su1 su2 su3 su4 su5 su6 Stripe units

Column 0 Column 1 Column 2

Striped plex
disk01-01 disk02-01 disk03-01

disk01-01 disk02-01 disk03-01 Subdisks

disk01-01 disk02-01 disk03-01

VM disks
disk01 disk02 disk03

devname1 devname2 devname3

Physical disk
su1 su4 su2 su5 su3 su6

There is one column per physical disk. This example shows three subdisks that
occupy all of the space on the VM disks. It is also possible for each subdisk in a
striped plex to occupy only a portion of the VM disk, which leaves free space for
other disk management tasks.
Figure 1-17 shows a striped plex with three columns containing subdisks of
different sizes.
42 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-17 Example of a striped plex with concatenated subdisks per column

su1 su2 su3 su4 su5 su6 Stripe units

Column 0 Column 1 Column 2

disk02-01 disk03-01
disk01-01 disk03-02
Striped plex
disk02-02 disk03-03

disk02-01 disk03-01
disk01-01 disk03-02 Subdisks
disk02-02 disk03-03

disk02-01 disk03-01
disk01-01 disk03-02
disk02-02
VM disks
disk03-03
disk01 disk02 disk03

devname1 devname2 devname3

Physical disks
su1 su4 su2 su5 su3 su6

Each column contains a different number of subdisks. There is one column per
physical disk. Striped plexes can be created by using a single subdisk from each
of the VM disks being striped across. It is also possible to allocate space from
different regions of the same disk or from another disk (for example, if the size
of the plex is increased). Columns can also contain subdisks from different VM
disks.
See “Creating a striped volume” on page 337.

Mirroring (RAID-1)
Mirroring uses multiple mirrors (plexes) to duplicate the information contained
in a volume. In the event of a physical disk failure, the plex on the failed disk
becomes unavailable, but the system continues to operate using the unaffected
mirrors. Similarly, mirroring two LUNs from two separate controllers lets the
system operate if there is a controller failure.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 43
Volume layouts in VxVM

Although a volume can have a single plex, at least two plexes are required to
provide redundancy of data. Each of these plexes must contain disk space from
different disks to achieve redundancy.
When striping or spanning across a large number of disks, failure of any one of
those disks can make the entire plex unusable. Because the likelihood of one out
of several disks failing is reasonably high, you should consider mirroring to
improve the reliability (and availability) of a striped or spanned volume.
See “Creating a mirrored volume” on page 331.
See “Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures” on page 339.

Striping plus mirroring (mirrored-stripe or RAID-0+1)

VxVM supports the combination of mirroring above striping. The combined layout
is called a mirrored-stripe layout. A mirrored-stripe layout offers the dual benefits
of striping to spread data across multiple disks, while mirroring provides
redundancy of data.
For mirroring above striping to be effective, the striped plex and its mirrors must
be allocated from separate disks.
Figure 1-18 shows an example where two plexes, each striped across three disks,
are attached as mirrors to the same volume to create a mirrored-stripe volume.

Figure 1-18 Mirrored-stripe volume laid out on six disks

Mirrored-stripe
volume
Striped
column 0 column 1 column 2
plex

Mirror
column 0 column 1 column 2
Striped
plex

See “Creating a mirrored-stripe volume” on page 338.

The layout type of the data plexes in a mirror can be concatenated or striped. Even
if only one is striped, the volume is still termed a mirrored-stripe volume. If they
are all concatenated, the volume is termed a mirrored-concatenated volume.
44 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

Mirroring plus striping (striped-mirror, RAID-1+0 or RAID-10)

VxVM supports the combination of striping above mirroring. This combined layout
is called a striped-mirror layout. Putting mirroring below striping mirrors each
column of the stripe. If there are multiple subdisks per column, each subdisk can
be mirrored individually instead of each column.
A striped-mirror volume is an example of a layered volume.
See “Layered volumes” on page 50.
As for a mirrored-stripe volume, a striped-mirror volume offers the dual benefits
of striping to spread data across multiple disks, while mirroring provides
redundancy of data. In addition, it enhances redundancy, and reduces recovery
time after disk failure.
Figure 1-19 shows an example where a striped-mirror volume is created by using
each of three existing 2-disk mirrored volumes to form a separate column within
a striped plex.

Figure 1-19 Striped-mirror volume laid out on six disks

Underlying mirrored volumes
Striped-mirror
volume
column 0 column 1 column 2

Mirror
column 0 column 1 column 2

Striped plex

See “Creating a striped-mirror volume” on page 339.

Figure 1-20 shows that the failure of a disk in a mirrored-stripe layout detaches
an entire data plex, thereby losing redundancy on the entire volume.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 45
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-20 How the failure of a single disk affects mirrored-stripe and
striped-mirror volumes

Mirrored-stripe volume
with no
Striped plex redundancy

Mirror

Detached
striped plex

Failure of disk detaches plex

Striped-mirror volume
with partial
redundancy

Mirror

Striped plex

Failure of disk removes redundancy from a mirror

When the disk is replaced, the entire plex must be brought up to date. Recovering
the entire plex can take a substantial amount of time. If a disk fails in a
striped-mirror layout, only the failing subdisk must be detached, and only that
portion of the volume loses redundancy. When the disk is replaced, only a portion
of the volume needs to be recovered. Additionally, a mirrored-stripe volume is
more vulnerable to being put out of use altogether should a second disk fail before
the first failed disk has been replaced, either manually or by hot-relocation.
Compared to mirrored-stripe volumes, striped-mirror volumes are more tolerant
of disk failure, and recovery time is shorter.
If the layered volume concatenates instead of striping the underlying mirrored
volumes, the volume is termed a concatenated-mirror volume.

RAID-5 (striping with parity)

Although both mirroring (RAID-1) and RAID-5 provide redundancy of data, they
use different methods. Mirroring provides data redundancy by maintaining
multiple complete copies of the data in a volume. Data being written to a mirrored
46 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

volume is reflected in all copies. If a portion of a mirrored volume fails, the system
continues to use the other copies of the data.
RAID-5 provides data redundancy by using parity. Parity is a calculated value
used to reconstruct data after a failure. While data is being written to a RAID-5
volume, parity is calculated by doing an exclusive OR (XOR) procedure on the
data. The resulting parity is then written to the volume. The data and calculated
parity are contained in a plex that is “striped” across multiple disks. If a portion
of a RAID-5 volume fails, the data that was on that portion of the failed volume
can be recreated from the remaining data and parity information. It is also possible
to mix concatenation and striping in the layout.
Figure 1-21 shows parity locations in a RAID-5 array configuration.

Figure 1-21 Parity locations in a RAID-5 model

Stripe 1
Data Data Parity
Stripe 2
Data Parity Data
Data
Stripe 3
Parity Data Data
Stripe 4
Data Data Parity

Every stripe has a column containing a parity stripe unit and columns containing
data. The parity is spread over all of the disks in the array, reducing the write
time for large independent writes because the writes do not have to wait until a
single parity disk can accept the data.
RAID-5 volumes can additionally perform logging to minimize recovery time.
RAID-5 volumes use RAID-5 logs to keep a copy of the data and parity currently
being written. RAID-5 logging is optional and can be created along with RAID-5
volumes or added later.
See “Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 arrays” on page 47.

Note: VxVM supports RAID-5 for private disk groups, but not for shareable disk
groups in a CVM environment. In addition, VxVM does not support the mirroring
of RAID-5 volumes that are configured using Veritas Volume Manager software.
RAID-5 LUNs hardware may be mirrored.

Traditional RAID-5 arrays

A traditional RAID-5 array is several disks organized in rows and columns. A
column is a number of disks located in the same ordinal position in the array. A
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 47
Volume layouts in VxVM

row is the minimal number of disks necessary to support the full width of a parity
stripe.
Figure 1-22 shows the row and column arrangement of a traditional RAID-5 array.

Figure 1-22 Traditional RAID-5 array

Stripe 1
Stripe3
Row 0

Stripe 2

Row 1

Column 0 Column 1 Column 2 Column 3

This traditional array structure supports growth by adding more rows per column.
Striping is accomplished by applying the first stripe across the disks in Row 0,
then the second stripe across the disks in Row 1, then the third stripe across the
Row 0 disks, and so on. This type of array requires all disks columns, and rows to
be of equal size.

Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 arrays

The RAID-5 array structure in Veritas Volume Manager differs from the traditional
structure. Due to the virtual nature of its disks and other objects, VxVM does not
use rows.
Figure 1-23 shows how VxVM uses columns consisting of variable length subdisks,
where each subdisk represents a specific area of a disk.
48 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-23 Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 array

Stripe 1
Stripe 2

SD SD

SD

SD

SD SD SD SD SD = subdisk

Column 0 Column 1 Column 2 Column 3

VxVM allows each column of a RAID-5 plex to consist of a different number of

subdisks. The subdisks in a given column can be derived from different physical
disks. Additional subdisks can be added to the columns as necessary. Striping is
implemented by applying the first stripe across each subdisk at the top of each
column, then applying another stripe below that, and so on for the length of the
columns. Equal-sized stripe units are used for each column. For RAID-5, the default
stripe unit size is 16 kilobytes.
See “Striping (RAID-0)” on page 39.

Note: Mirroring of RAID-5 volumes is not supported.

See “Creating a RAID-5 volume” on page 341.

Left-symmetric layout
There are several layouts for data and parity that can be used in the setup of a
RAID-5 array. The implementation of RAID-5 in VxVM uses a left-symmetric
layout. This provides optimal performance for both random I/O operations and
large sequential I/O operations. However, the layout selection is not as critical
for performance as are the number of columns and the stripe unit size.
Left-symmetric layout stripes both data and parity across columns, placing the
parity in a different column for every stripe of data. The first parity stripe unit is
located in the rightmost column of the first stripe. Each successive parity stripe
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 49
Volume layouts in VxVM

unit is located in the next stripe, shifted left one column from the previous parity
stripe unit location. If there are more stripes than columns, the parity stripe unit
placement begins in the rightmost column again.
Figure 1-24 shows a left-symmetric parity layout with five disks (one per column).

Figure 1-24 Left-symmetric layout

Column
Parity stripe unit

0 1 2 3 P0

Stripe 5 6 7 P1 4

10 11 P2 8 9

15 P3 12 13 14 Data stripe unit

P4 16 17 18 19

For each stripe, data is organized starting to the right of the parity stripe unit. In
the figure, data organization for the first stripe begins at P0 and continues to
stripe units 0-3. Data organization for the second stripe begins at P1, then
continues to stripe unit 4, and on to stripe units 5-7. Data organization proceeds
in this manner for the remaining stripes.
Each parity stripe unit contains the result of an exclusive OR (XOR) operation
performed on the data in the data stripe units within the same stripe. If one
column’s data is inaccessible due to hardware or software failure, the data for
each stripe can be restored by XORing the contents of the remaining columns
data stripe units against their respective parity stripe units.
For example, if a disk corresponding to the whole or part of the far left column
fails, the volume is placed in a degraded mode. While in degraded mode, the data
from the failed column can be recreated by XORing stripe units 1-3 against parity
stripe unit P0 to recreate stripe unit 0, then XORing stripe units 4, 6, and 7 against
parity stripe unit P1 to recreate stripe unit 5, and so on.
Failure of more than one column in a RAID-5 plex detaches the volume. The volume
is no longer allowed to satisfy read or write requests. Once the failed columns
have been recovered, it may be necessary to recover user data from backups.
50 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume layouts in VxVM

RAID-5 logging
Logging is used to prevent corruption of data during recovery by immediately
recording changes to data and parity to a log area on a persistent device such as
a volume on disk or in non-volatile RAM. The new data and parity are then written
to the disks.
Without logging, it is possible for data not involved in any active writes to be lost
or silently corrupted if both a disk in a RAID-5 volume and the system fail. If this
double-failure occurs, there is no way of knowing if the data being written to the
data portions of the disks or the parity being written to the parity portions have
actually been written. Therefore, the recovery of the corrupted disk may be
corrupted itself.
Figure 1-25 shows a RAID-5 volume configured across three disks (A, B and C).

Figure 1-25 Incomplete write to a RAID-5 volume

Disk A Disk B Disk C

Completed Corrupted data Incomplete

data write parity write

In this volume, recovery of disk B’s corrupted data depends on disk A’s data and
disk C’s parity both being complete. However, only the data write to disk A is
complete. The parity write to disk C is incomplete, which would cause the data on
disk B to be reconstructed incorrectly.
This failure can be avoided by logging all data and parity writes before committing
them to the array. In this way, the log can be replayed, causing the data and parity
updates to be completed before the reconstruction of the failed drive takes place.
Logs are associated with a RAID-5 volume by being attached as log plexes. More
than one log plex can exist for each RAID-5 volume, in which case the log areas
are mirrored.
See “Adding a RAID-5 log” on page 403.

Layered volumes
A layered volume is a virtual Veritas Volume Manager object that is built on top
of other volumes. The layered volume structure tolerates failure better and has
greater redundancy than the standard volume structure. For example, in a
striped-mirror layered volume, each mirror (plex) covers a smaller area of storage
space, so recovery is quicker than with a standard mirrored volume.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 51
Volume layouts in VxVM

Figure 1-26 shows a typical striped-mirror layered volume where each column is
represented by a subdisk that is built from an underlying mirrored volume.

Figure 1-26 Example of a striped-mirror layered volume

vol01
Striped mirror
vol01-01 volume

vol01-01

Managed Striped plex

Column 0 Column 1
by user

vop01 vop02 Subdisks

Managed
by VxVM
vop01 vop02 Underlying
mirrored
volumes

Concatenated
disk04-01 disk05-01 disk06-01 disk07-01
plexes

Subdisks on
disk04-01 disk05-01 disk06-01 disk07-01 VM disks

The volume and striped plex in the “Managed by User” area allow you to perform
normal tasks in VxVM. User tasks can be performed only on the top-level volume
of a layered volume.
Underlying volumes in the “Managed by VxVM” area are used exclusively by
VxVM and are not designed for user manipulation. You cannot detach a layered
volume or perform any other operation on the underlying volumes by manipulating
the internal structure. You can perform all necessary operations in the “Managed
by User” area that includes the top-level volume and striped plex (for example,
resizing the volume, changing the column width, or adding a column).
System administrators can manipulate the layered volume structure for
troubleshooting or other operations (for example, to place data on specific disks).
Layered volumes are used by VxVM to perform the following tasks and operations:
52 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Online relayout

Creating striped-mirrors See “Creating a striped-mirror volume”

on page 339.

See the vxassist(1M) manual page.

Creating concatenated-mirrors See “Creating a concatenated-mirror volume”

on page 332.

See the vxassist(1M) manual page.

Online Relayout See “Online relayout” on page 52.

See the vxassist(1M) manual page.

See the vxrelayout(1M) manual page.

Moving RAID-5 subdisks See the vxsd(1M) manual page.

Creating Snapshots See the Veritas Storage Foundation Advanced

Features Administrator's Guide

See the vxassist(1M) manual page.

See the vxsnap(1M) manual page.

Online relayout
Online relayout allows you to convert between storage layouts in VxVM, with
uninterrupted data access. Typically, you would do this to change the redundancy
or performance characteristics of a volume. VxVM adds redundancy to storage
either by duplicating the data (mirroring) or by adding parity (RAID-5).
Performance characteristics of storage in VxVM can be changed by changing the
striping parameters, which are the number of columns and the stripe width.
See “Performing online relayout” on page 396.
See “Converting between layered and non-layered volumes” on page 402.

How online relayout works

Online relayout allows you to change the storage layouts that you have already
created in place without disturbing data access. You can change the performance
characteristics of a particular layout to suit your changed requirements. You can
transform one layout to another by invoking a single command.
For example, if a striped layout with a 128KB stripe unit size is not providing
optimal performance, you can use relayout to change the stripe unit size.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 53
Online relayout

File systems mounted on the volumes do not need to be unmounted to achieve

this transformation provided that the file system (such as Veritas File System)
supports online shrink and grow operations.
Online relayout reuses the existing storage space and has space allocation policies
to address the needs of the new layout. The layout transformation process converts
a given volume to the destination layout by using minimal temporary space that
is available in the disk group.
The transformation is done by moving one portion of data at a time in the source
layout to the destination layout. Data is copied from the source volume to the
temporary area, and data is removed from the source volume storage area in
portions. The source volume storage area is then transformed to the new layout,
and the data saved in the temporary area is written back to the new layout. This
operation is repeated until all the storage and data in the source volume has been
transformed to the new layout.
The default size of the temporary area used during the relayout depends on the
size of the volume and the type of relayout. For volumes larger than 50MB, the
amount of temporary space that is required is usually 10% of the size of the
volume, from a minimum of 50MB up to a maximum of 1GB. For volumes smaller
than 50MB, the temporary space required is the same as the size of the volume.
The following error message displays the number of blocks required if there is
insufficient free space available in the disk group for the temporary area:

tmpsize too small to perform this relayout (nblks minimum required)

You can override the default size used for the temporary area by using the tmpsize
attribute to vxassist.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
As well as the temporary area, space is required for a temporary intermediate
volume when increasing the column length of a striped volume. The amount of
space required is the difference between the column lengths of the target and
source volumes. For example, 20GB of temporary additional space is required to
relayout a 150GB striped volume with 5 columns of length 30GB as 3 columns of
length 50GB. In some cases, the amount of temporary space that is required is
relatively large. For example, a relayout of a 150GB striped volume with 5 columns
as a concatenated volume (with effectively one column) requires 120GB of space
for the intermediate volume.
Additional permanent disk space may be required for the destination volumes,
depending on the type of relayout that you are performing. This may happen, for
example, if you change the number of columns in a striped volume.
54 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Online relayout

Figure 1-27 shows how decreasing the number of columns can require disks to be
added to a volume.

Figure 1-27 Example of decreasing the number of columns in a volume

Five columns of length L Three columns of length 5L/3

Note that the size of the volume remains the same but an extra disk is needed to
extend one of the columns.
The following are examples of operations that you can perform using online
relayout:
■ Remove parity from a RAID-5 volume to change it to a concatenated, striped,
or layered volume.
Figure 1-28 shows an example of applying relayout a RAID-5 volume.

Figure 1-28 Example of relayout of a RAID-5 volume to a striped volume

RAID-5 volume Striped volume

Note that removing parity decreases the overall storage space that the volume
requires.
■ Add parity to a volume to change it to a RAID-5 volume.
Figure 1-29 shows an example.

Figure 1-29 Example of relayout of a concatenated volume to a RAID-5 volume

Concatenated
volume

RAID-5 volume
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 55
Online relayout

Note that adding parity increases the overall storage space that the volume
requires.
■ Change the number of columns in a volume.
Figure 1-30 shows an example of changing the number of columns.

Figure 1-30 Example of increasing the number of columns in a volume

Two columns Three columns

Note that the length of the columns is reduced to conserve the size of the volume.
■ Change the column stripe width in a volume.
Figure 1-31 shows an example of changing the column stripe width.

Figure 1-31 Example of increasing the stripe width for the columns in a volume

See “Performing online relayout” on page 396.

See “Permitted relayout transformations” on page 396.

Limitations of online relayout

Note the following limitations of online relayout:
■ Log plexes cannot be transformed.
■ Volume snapshots cannot be taken when there is an online relayout operation
running on the volume.
■ Online relayout cannot create a non-layered mirrored volume in a single step.
It always creates a layered mirrored volume even if you specify a non-layered
mirrored layout, such as mirror-stripe or mirror-concat. Use the vxassist
56 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Online relayout

convert command to turn the layered mirrored volume that results from a
relayout into a non-layered volume.
See “Converting between layered and non-layered volumes” on page 402.
■ The usual restrictions apply for the minimum number of physical disks that
are required to create the destination layout. For example, mirrored volumes
require at least as many disks as mirrors, striped and RAID-5 volumes require
at least as many disks as columns, and striped-mirror volumes require at least
as many disks as columns multiplied by mirrors.
■ To be eligible for layout transformation, the plexes in a mirrored volume must
have identical stripe widths and numbers of columns. Relayout is not possible
unless you make the layouts of the individual plexes identical.
■ Online relayout cannot transform sparse plexes, nor can it make any plex
sparse. (A sparse plex is a plex that is not the same size as the volume, or that
has regions that are not mapped to any subdisk.)
■ The number of mirrors in a mirrored volume cannot be changed using relayout.
Instead, use alternative commands, such as the vxassist mirror command.
■ Only one relayout may be applied to a volume at a time.

Transformation characteristics
Transformation of data from one layout to another involves rearrangement of
data in the existing layout to the new layout. During the transformation, online
relayout retains data redundancy by mirroring any temporary space used. Read
and write access to data is not interrupted during the transformation.
Data is not corrupted if the system fails during a transformation. The
transformation continues after the system is restored and both read and write
access are maintained.
You can reverse the layout transformation process at any time, but the data may
not be returned to the exact previous storage location. Before you reverse a
transformation that is in process, you must stop it.
You can determine the transformation direction by using the vxrelayout status
volume command.

These transformations are protected against I/O failures if there is sufficient

redundancy and space to move the data.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 57
Volume resynchronization

Transformations and volume length

Some layout transformations can cause the volume length to increase or decrease.
If either of these conditions occurs, online relayout uses the vxresize command
to shrink or grow a file system.
See “Resizing a volume” on page 371.

Volume resynchronization
When storing data redundantly and using mirrored or RAID-5 volumes, VxVM
ensures that all copies of the data match exactly. However, under certain conditions
(usually due to complete system failures), some redundant data on a volume can
become inconsistent or unsynchronized. The mirrored data is not exactly the
same as the original data. Except for normal configuration changes (such as
detaching and reattaching a plex), this can only occur when a system crashes
while data is being written to a volume.
Data is written to the mirrors of a volume in parallel, as is the data and parity in
a RAID-5 volume. If a system crash occurs before all the individual writes complete,
it is possible for some writes to complete while others do not. This can result in
the data becoming unsynchronized. For mirrored volumes, it can cause two reads
from the same region of the volume to return different results, if different mirrors
are used to satisfy the read request. In the case of RAID-5 volumes, it can lead to
parity corruption and incorrect data reconstruction.
VxVM ensures that all mirrors contain exactly the same data and that the data
and parity in RAID-5 volumes agree. This process is called volume
resynchronization. For volumes that are part of the disk group that is automatically
imported at boot time (usually aliased as the reserved system-wide disk group,
bootdg), resynchronization takes place when the system reboots.

Not all volumes require resynchronization after a system failure. Volumes that
were never written or that were quiescent (that is, had no active I/O) when the
system failure occurred could not have had outstanding writes and do not require
resynchronization.

Dirty flags
VxVM records when a volume is first written to and marks it as dirty. When a
volume is closed by all processes or stopped cleanly by the administrator, and all
writes have been completed, VxVM removes the dirty flag for the volume. Only
volumes that are marked dirty require resynchronization.
58 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Dirty region logging

Resynchronization process
The process of resynchronization depends on the type of volume. For mirrored
volumes, resynchronization is done by placing the volume in recovery mode (also
called read-writeback recovery mode). Resynchronization of data in the volume
is done in the background. This allows the volume to be available for use while
recovery is taking place. RAID-5 volumes that contain RAID-5 logs can “replay”
those logs. If no logs are available, the volume is placed in reconstruct-recovery
mode and all parity is regenerated.
Resynchronization can impact system performance. The recovery process reduces
some of this impact by spreading the recoveries to avoid stressing a specific disk
or controller.
For large volumes or for a large number of volumes, the resynchronization process
can take time. These effects can be minimized by using dirty region logging (DRL)
and FastResync (fast mirror resynchronization) for mirrored volumes, or by using
RAID-5 logs for RAID-5 volumes.
See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.
See “FastResync” on page 63.
For mirrored volumes used by Oracle, you can use the SmartSync feature, which
further improves performance.
See “SmartSync recovery accelerator” on page 59.

Dirty region logging

Dirty region logging (DRL), if enabled, speeds recovery of mirrored volumes after
a system crash. DRL tracks the regions that have changed due to I/O writes to a
mirrored volume. DRL uses this information to recover only those portions of the
volume.
If DRL is not used and a system failure occurs, all mirrors of the volumes must be
restored to a consistent state. Restoration is done by copying the full contents of
the volume between its mirrors. This process can be lengthy and I/O intensive.

Note: DRL adds a small I/O overhead for most write access patterns. This overhead
is reduced by using SmartSync.

If a version 20 DCO volume is associated with a volume, a portion of the DCO

volume can be used to store the DRL log. There is no need to create a separate
DRL log for a volume which has a version 20 DCO volume.
See “DCO volume versioning” on page 66.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 59
Dirty region logging

Log subdisks and plexes

DRL log subdisks store the dirty region log of a mirrored volume that has DRL
enabled. A volume with DRL has at least one log subdisk; multiple log subdisks
can be used to mirror the dirty region log. Each log subdisk is associated with one
plex of the volume. Only one log subdisk can exist per plex. If the plex contains
only a log subdisk and no data subdisks, that plex is referred to as a log plex.
The log subdisk can also be associated with a regular plex that contains data
subdisks. In that case, the log subdisk risks becoming unavailable if the plex must
be detached due to the failure of one of its data subdisks.
If the vxassist command is used to create a dirty region log, it creates a log plex
containing a single log subdisk by default. A dirty region log can also be set up
manually by creating a log subdisk and associating it with a plex. The plex then
contains both a log and data subdisks.

Sequential DRL
Some volumes, such as those that are used for database replay logs, are written
sequentially and do not benefit from delayed cleaning of the DRL bits. For these
volumes, sequential DRL can be used to limit the number of dirty regions. This
allows for faster recovery. However, if applied to volumes that are written to
randomly, sequential DRL can be a performance bottleneck as it limits the number
of parallel writes that can be carried out.
The maximum number of dirty regions allowed for sequential DRL is controlled
by a tunable as detailed in the description of voldrl_max_seq_dirty.
See “Tunable parameters for VxVM” on page 520.
See “Adding traditional DRL logging to a mirrored volume” on page 386.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.

SmartSync recovery accelerator

The SmartSync feature of Veritas Volume Manager increases the availability of
mirrored volumes by only resynchronizing changed data. (The process of
resynchronizing mirrored databases is also sometimes referred to as resilvering.)
SmartSync reduces the time required to restore consistency, freeing more I/O
bandwidth for business-critical applications. SmartSync uses an extended interface
between VxVM volumes, VxFS file systems, and the Oracle database to avoid
unnecessary work during mirror resynchronization and to reduce the I/O overhead
of the DRL. For example, Oracle® automatically takes advantage of SmartSync to
perform database resynchronization when it is available.
60 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Dirty region logging

Note: To use SmartSync with volumes that contain file systems, see the discussion
of the Oracle Resilvering feature of Veritas File System (VxFS).

The following section describes how to configure VxVM raw volumes and
SmartSync. The database uses the following types of volumes:
■ Data volumes are the volumes used by the database (control files and tablespace
files).
■ Redo log volumes contain redo logs of the database.
SmartSync works with these two types of volumes differently, so they must be
configured as described in the following sections.
To enable the use of SmartSync with database volumes in shared disk groups, set
the value of the volcvm_smartsync tunable to 1.
See “Tunable parameters for VxVM” on page 520.

Data volume configuration

The recovery takes place when the database software is started, not at system
startup. This reduces the overall impact of recovery when the system reboots.
Because the recovery is controlled by the database, the recovery time for the
volume is the resilvering time for the database (that is, the time required to replay
the redo logs).
Because the database keeps its own logs, it is not necessary for VxVM to do logging.
Data volumes should be configured as mirrored volumes without dirty region
logs. In addition to improving recovery time, this avoids any run-time I/O overhead
due to DRL, and improves normal database write access.

Redo log volume configuration

A redo log is a log of changes to the database data. Because the database does not
maintain changes to the redo logs, it cannot provide information about which
sections require resilvering. Redo logs are also written sequentially, and since
traditional dirty region logs are most useful with randomly-written data, they are
of minimal use for reducing recovery time for redo logs. However, VxVM can
reduce the number of dirty regions by modifying the behavior of its dirty region
logging feature to take advantage of sequential access patterns. Sequential DRL
decreases the amount of data needing recovery and reduces recovery time impact
on the system.
The enhanced interfaces for redo logs allow the database software to inform VxVM
when a volume is to be used as a redo log. This allows VxVM to modify the DRL
behavior of the volume to take advantage of the access patterns. Since the
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 61
Volume snapshots

improved recovery time depends on dirty region logs, redo log volumes should
be configured as mirrored volumes with sequential DRL.
See “Sequential DRL” on page 59.

Volume snapshots
Veritas Volume Manager provides the capability for taking an image of a volume
at a given point in time. Such an image is referred to as a volume snapshot. Such
snapshots should not be confused with file system snapshots, which are
point-in-time images of a Veritas File System.
Figure 1-32 shows how a snapshot volume represents a copy of an original volume
at a given point in time.

Figure 1-32 Volume snapshot as a point-in-time image of a volume

T1 Original volume

Snapshot volume is created

T2 Original volume Snapshot volume
at time T2

Snapshot volume retains

T3 Original volume Snapshot volume
image taken at time T2

T4 Original volume Snapshot volume Snapshot volume is updated

at time T4
Time Resynchronize snapshot volume
from the original volume

Even though the contents of the original volume can change, the snapshot volume
preserves the contents of the original volume as they existed at an earlier time.
The snapshot volume provides a stable and independent base for making backups
of the contents of the original volume, or for other applications such as decision
support. In the figure, the contents of the snapshot volume are eventually
resynchronized with the original volume at a later point in time.
Another possibility is to use the snapshot volume to restore the contents of the
original volume. This may be useful if the contents of the original volume have
become corrupted in some way.
62 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Volume snapshots

Warning: If you write to the snapshot volume, it may no longer be suitable for use
in restoring the contents of the original volume.

One type of volume snapshot in VxVM is the third-mirror break-off type. This
name comes from its implementation where a snapshot plex (or third mirror) is
added to a mirrored volume. The contents of the snapshot plex are then
synchronized from the original plexes of the volume. When this synchronization
is complete, the snapshot plex can be detached as a snapshot volume for use in
backup or decision support applications. At a later time, the snapshot plex can be
reattached to the original volume, requiring a full resynchronization of the
snapshot plex’s contents.
The FastResync feature was introduced to track writes to the original volume.
This tracking means that only a partial, and therefore much faster,
resynchronization is required on reattaching the snapshot plex. In later releases,
the snapshot model was enhanced to allow snapshot volumes to contain more
than a single plex, reattachment of a subset of a snapshot volume’s plexes, and
persistence of FastResync across system reboots or cluster restarts.
See “FastResync” on page 63.
Release 4.0 of VxVM introduced full-sized instant snapshots and space-optimized
instant snapshots, which offer advantages over traditional third-mirror snapshots
such as immediate availability and easier configuration and administration. You
can also use the third-mirror break-off usage model with full-sized snapshots,
where this is necessary for write-intensive applications.
See “Comparison of snapshot features” on page 62.
For details about the snapshots and how to use them, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
See the vxsnap(1M) manual page.

Comparison of snapshot features

Table 1-1 compares the features of the various types of snapshots that are
supported in VxVM.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 63
FastResync

Table 1-1 Comparison of snapshot features for supported snapshot types

Snapshot feature Full-sized Space-optimized Break-off

instant instant (vxassist or
(vxsnap) (vxsnap) vxsnap)

Immediately available for use on Yes Yes No

creation

Requires less storage space than No Yes No

original volume

Can be reattached to original volume Yes No Yes

Can be used to restore contents of Yes Yes Yes

original volume

Can quickly be refreshed without being Yes Yes No

reattached

Snapshot hierarchy can be split Yes No No

Can be moved into separate disk group Yes No Yes

from original volume

Can be turned into an independent Yes No Yes

volume

FastResync ability persists across Yes Yes Yes

system reboots or cluster restarts

Synchronization can be controlled Yes No No

Can be moved off-host Yes No Yes

Full-sized instant snapshots are easier to configure and offer more flexibility of
use than do traditional third-mirror break-off snapshots. For preference, new
volumes should be configured to use snapshots that have been created using the
vxsnap command rather than using the vxassist command. Legacy volumes can
also be reconfigured to use vxsnap snapshots, but this requires rewriting of
administration scripts that assume the vxassist snapshot model.

FastResync
Note: Only certain Storage Foundation products have a license to use this feature.
64 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
FastResync

The FastResync feature (previously called Fast Mirror Resynchronization or FMR)

performs quick and efficient resynchronization of stale mirrors (a mirror that is
not synchronized). This increases the efficiency of the VxVM snapshot mechanism,
and improves the performance of operations such as backup and decision support
applications. Typically, these operations require that the volume is quiescent,
and that they are not impeded by updates to the volume by other activities on the
system. To achieve these goals, the snapshot mechanism in VxVM creates an exact
copy of a primary volume at an instant in time. After a snapshot is taken, it can
be accessed independently of the volume from which it was taken. In a Cluster
Volume Manager (CVM) environment with shared access to storage, it is possible
to eliminate the resource contention and performance overhead of using a snapshot
simply by accessing it from a different node.
See “Enabling FastResync on a volume” on page 394.

FastResync enhancements
FastResync provides the following enhancements to VxVM:

Faster mirror FastResync optimizes mirror resynchronization by keeping

resynchronization track of updates to stored data that have been missed by a
mirror. (A mirror may be unavailable because it has been
detached from its volume, either automatically by VxVM as
the result of an error, or directly by an administrator using
a utility such as vxplex or vxassist. A returning mirror
is a mirror that was previously detached and is in the process
of being re-attached to its original volume as the result of
the vxrecover or vxplex att operation.) When a mirror
returns to service, only the updates that it has missed need
to be re-applied to resynchronize it. This requires much less
effort than the traditional method of copying all the stored
data to the returning mirror.

Once FastResync has been enabled on a volume, it does not

alter how you administer mirrors. The only visible effect is
that repair operations conclude more quickly.

Re-use of snapshots FastResync allows you to refresh and re-use snapshots

rather than discard them. You can quickly re-associate (snap
back) snapshot plexes with their original volumes. This
reduces the system overhead required to perform cyclical
operations such as backups that rely on the volume
snapshots.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 65
FastResync

Non-persistent FastResync
Non-persistent FastResync allocates its change maps in memory. They do not
reside on disk nor in persistent store. This has the advantage that updates to the
FastResync map have little impact on I/O performance, as no disk updates needed
to be performed. However, if a system is rebooted, the information in the map is
lost, so a full resynchronization is required on snapback. This limitation can be
overcome for volumes in cluster-shareable disk groups, provided that at least one
of the nodes in the cluster remained running to preserve the FastResync map in
its memory. However, a node crash in a High Availability (HA) environment
requires the full resynchronization of a mirror when it is reattached to its parent
volume.

How non-persistent FastResync works with snapshots

The snapshot feature of VxVM takes advantage of FastResync change tracking
to record updates to the original volume after a snapshot plex is created. After a
snapshot is taken, the snapback option is used to reattach the snapshot plex.
Provided that FastResync is enabled on a volume before the snapshot is taken,
and that it is not disabled at any time before the snapshot is reattached, the
changes that FastResync records are used to resynchronize the volume during
the snapback. This considerably reduces the time needed to resynchronize the
volume.
Non-Persistent FastResync uses a map in memory to implement change tracking.
Each bit in the map represents a contiguous number of blocks in a volume’s address
space. The default size of the map is 4 blocks. The kernel tunable vol_fmr_logsz
can be used to limit the maximum size in blocks of the map
See “Tunable parameters for VxVM” on page 520.

Persistent FastResync
Unlike non-persistent FastResync, persistent FastResync keeps the FastResync
maps on disk so that they can survive system reboots, system crashes and cluster
crashes. Persistent FastResync can also track the association between volumes
and their snapshot volumes after they are moved into different disk groups. When
the disk groups are rejoined, this allows the snapshot plexes to be quickly
resynchronized. This ability is not supported by non-persistent FastResync.
See “Reorganizing the contents of disk groups” on page 270.
If persistent FastResync is enabled on a volume or on a snapshot volume, a data
change object (DCO) and a DCO volume are associated with the volume.
66 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
FastResync

DCO volume versioning

The internal layout of the DCO volume changed in VxVM 4.0 to support new
features such as full-sized and space-optimized instant snapshots, and a unified
DRL/DCO. Because the DCO volume layout is versioned, VxVM software continues
to support the version 0 layout for legacy volumes. However, you must configure
a volume to have a version 20 DCO volume if you want to take instant snapshots
of the volume. Future releases of Veritas Volume Manager may introduce new
versions of the DCO volume layout.
See “Determining the DCO version number” on page 383.

Version 0 DCO volume layout

In earlier releases of VxVM, the DCO object only managed information about the
FastResync maps. These maps track writes to the original volume and to each of
up to 32 snapshot volumes since the last snapshot operation. Each plex of the
DCO volume on disk holds 33 maps, each of which is 4 blocks in size by default.
Persistent FastResync uses the maps in a version 0 DCO volume on disk to
implement change tracking. As for non-persistent FastResync, each bit in the
map represents a region (a contiguous number of blocks) in a volume’s address
space. The size of each map can be changed by specifying the dcolen attribute to
the vxassist command when the volume is created. The default value of dcolen
is 132 512-byte blocks (the plex contains 33 maps, each of length 4 blocks). To use
a larger map size, multiply the desired map size by 33 to calculate the value of
dcolen that you need to specify. For example, to use an 8-block map, you would
specify dcolen=264. The maximum possible map size is 64 blocks, which
corresponds to a dcolen value of 2112 blocks.
The size of a DCO plex is rounded up to the nearest integer multiple of the disk
group alignment value. The alignment value is 8KB for disk groups that support
the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature. Otherwise, the alignment value
is 1 block.
Only traditional (third-mirror) volume snapshots that are administered using the
vxassist command are supported for the version 0 DCO volume layout. Full-sized
and space-optimized instant snapshots are not supported.

Version 20 DCO volume layout

In VxVM 4.0 and later releases, the DCO object is used not only to manage the
FastResync maps, but also to manage DRL recovery maps and special maps called
copymaps that allow instant snapshot operations to resume correctly following
a system crash.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 67
FastResync

See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.

Each bit in a map represents a region (a contiguous number of blocks) in a volume’s
address space. A region represents the smallest portion of a volume for which
changes are recorded in a map. A write to a single byte of storage anywhere within
a region is treated in the same way as a write to the entire region.
The layout of a version 20 DCO volume includes an accumulator that stores the
DRL map and a per-region state map for the volume, plus 32 per-volume maps
(by default) including a DRL recovery map, and a map for tracking detaches that
are initiated by the kernel due to I/O error. The remaining 30 per-volume maps
(by default) are used either for tracking writes to snapshots, or as copymaps. The
size of the DCO volume is determined by the size of the regions that are tracked,
and by the number of per-volume maps. Both the region size and the number of
per-volume maps in a DCO volume may be configured when a volume is prepared
for use with snapshots. The region size must be a power of 2 and be greater than
or equal to 16KB.
As the accumulator is approximately 3 times the size of a per-volume map, the
size of each plex in the DCO volume can be estimated from this formula:

DCO_plex_size = ( 3 + number_of_per-volume_maps ) * map_size

where the size of each map in bytes is:

map_size = 512 + ( volume_size / ( region_size * 8 ))

rounded up to the nearest multiple of 8KB. Note that each map includes a 512-byte
header.
For the default number of 32 per-volume maps and region size of 64KB, a 10GB
volume requires a map size of 24KB, and so each plex in the DCO volume requires
840KB of storage.

Note: Full-sized and space-optimized instant snapshots, which are administered

using the vxsnap command, are supported for a version 20 DCO volume layout.
The use of the vxassist command to administer traditional (third-mirror
break-off) snapshots is not supported for a version 20 DCO volume layout.

How persistent FastResync works with snapshots

Persistent FastResync uses a map in a DCO volume on disk to implement change
tracking. As for non-persistent FastResync, each bit in the map represents a
contiguous number of blocks in a volume’s address space.
Figure 1-33 shows an example of a mirrored volume with two plexes on which
Persistent FastResync is enabled.
68 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
FastResync

Figure 1-33 Mirrored volume with persistent FastResync enabled

Mirrored volume

Data plex Data plex Data change object

DCO volume

DCO plex DCO plex

Associated with the volume are a DCO object and a DCO volume with two plexes.
To create a traditional third-mirror snapshot or an instant (copy-on-write)
snapshot, the vxassist snapstart or vxsnap make operation respectively is
performed on the volume.
Figure 1-34 shows how a snapshot plex is set up in the volume, and how a disabled
DCO plex is associated with it.

Figure 1-34 Mirrored volume after completion of a snapstart operation

Mirrored volume

Data plex Data plex Data plex Data change object

DCO volume

Disabled DCO plex DCO plex

DCO plex

Multiple snapshot plexes and associated DCO plexes may be created in the volume
by re-running the vxassist snapstart command for traditional snapshots, or
the vxsnap make command for space-optimized snapshots. You can create up to
a total of 32 plexes (data and log) in a volume.
Space-optimized instant snapshots do not require additional full-sized plexes to
be created. Instead, they use a storage cache that typically requires only 10% of
the storage that is required by full-sized snapshots. There is a trade-off in
functionality in using space-optimized snapshots. The storage cache is formed
within a cache volume, and this volume is associated with a cache object. For
convenience of operation, this cache can be shared by all the space-optimized
instant snapshots within a disk group.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 69
FastResync

See “Comparison of snapshot features” on page 62.

A traditional snapshot volume is created from a snapshot plex by running the
vxassist snapshot operation on the volume. For instant snapshots, however,
the vxsnap make command makes an instant snapshot volume immediately
available for use. There is no need to run an additional command.
Figure 1-35 shows how the creation of the snapshot volume also sets up a DCO
object and a DCO volume for the snapshot volume.

Figure 1-35 Mirrored volume and snapshot volume after completion of a

snapshot operation

Mirrored volume

Data plex Data plex Data change object Snap object

DCO volume

DCO DCO
log plex log plex

Snapshot volume

Data plex Data change object Snap object

DCO volume

DCO
log plex

The DCO volume contains the single DCO plex that was associated with the
snapshot plex. If two snapshot plexes were taken to form the snapshot volume,
the DCO volume would contain two plexes. For space-optimized instant snapshots,
the DCO object and DCO volume are associated with a snapshot volume that is
created on a cache object and not on a VM disk.
Associated with both the original volume and the snapshot volume are snap
objects. The snap object for the original volume points to the snapshot volume,
and the snap object for the snapshot volume points to the original volume. This
70 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
FastResync

allows VxVM to track the relationship between volumes and their snapshots even
if they are moved into different disk groups.
The snap objects in the original volume and snapshot volume are automatically
deleted in the following circumstances:
■ For traditional snapshots, the vxassist snapback operation is run to return
all of the plexes of the snapshot volume to the original volume.
■ For traditional snapshots, the vxassist snapclear operation is run on a
volume to break the association between the original volume and the snapshot
volume. If the volumes are in different disk groups, the command must be run
separately on each volume.
■ For full-sized instant snapshots, the vxsnap reattach operation is run to
return all of the plexes of the snapshot volume to the original volume.
■ For full-sized instant snapshots, the vxsnap dis or vxsnap split operations
are run on a volume to break the association between the original volume and
the snapshot volume. If the volumes are in different disk groups, the command
must be run separately on each volume.

Note: The vxsnap reattach, dis and split operations are not supported for
space-optimized instant snapshots.

For details about the snapshots and how to use them, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
See the vxsnap(1M) manual page.

Effect of growing a volume on the FastResync map

It is possible to grow the replica volume, or the original volume, and still use
FastResync. According to the DCO volume layout, growing the volume has the
following different effects on the map that FastResync uses to track changes to
the original volume:
■ For a version 20 DCO volume, the size of the map is increased and the size of
the region that is tracked by each bit in the map stays the same.
■ For a version 0 DCO volume, the size of the map remains the same and the
region size is increased.
In either case, the part of the map that corresponds to the grown area of the
volume is marked as “dirty” so that this area is resynchronized. The snapback
operation fails if it attempts to create an incomplete snapshot plex. In such cases,
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 71
FastResync

you must grow the replica volume, or the original volume, before invoking any of
the commands vxsnap reattach, vxsnap restore, or vxassist snapback.
Growing the two volumes separately can lead to a snapshot that shares physical
disks with another mirror in the volume. To prevent this, grow the volume after
the snapback command is complete.

FastResync limitations
The following limitations apply to FastResync:
■ Persistent FastResync is supported for RAID-5 volumes, but this prevents the
use of the relayout or resize operations on the volume while a DCO is associated
with it.
■ Neither non-persistent nor persistent FastResync can be used to resynchronize
mirrors after a system crash. Dirty region logging (DRL), which can coexist
with FastResync, should be used for this purpose. In VxVM 4.0 and later
releases, DRL logs may be stored in a version 20 DCO volume.
■ When a subdisk is relocated, the entire plex is marked “dirty” and a full
resynchronization becomes necessary.
■ If a snapshot volume is split off into another disk group, non-persistent
FastResync cannot be used to resynchronize the snapshot plexes with the
original volume when the disk group is rejoined with the original volume’s
disk group. Persistent FastResync must be used for this purpose.
■ If you move or split an original volume (on which persistent FastResync is
enabled) into another disk group, and then move or join it to a snapshot
volume’s disk group, you cannot use vxassist snapback to resynchronize
traditional snapshot plexes with the original volume. This restriction arises
because a snapshot volume references the original volume by its record ID at
the time that the snapshot volume was created. Moving the original volume
to a different disk group changes the volume’s record ID, and so breaks the
association. However, in such a case, you can use the vxplex snapback
command with the -f (force) option to perform the snapback.

Note: This restriction only applies to traditional snapshots. It does not apply
to instant snapshots.

■ Any operation that changes the layout of a replica volume can mark the
FastResync change map for that snapshot “dirty” and require a full
resynchronization during snapback. Operations that cause this include subdisk
split, subdisk move, and online relayout of the replica. It is safe to perform
these operations after the snapshot is completed.
72 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Hot-relocation

See the vxassist (1M) manual page.

See the vxplex (1M) manual page.
See the vxvol (1M) manual page.

Hot-relocation
Hot-relocation is a feature that allows a system to react automatically to I/O
failures on redundant objects (mirrored or RAID-5 volumes) in VxVM and restore
redundancy and access to those objects. VxVM detects I/O failures on objects and
relocates the affected subdisks. The subdisks are relocated to disks designated as
spare disks or to free space within the disk group. VxVM then reconstructs the
objects that existed before the failure and makes them accessible again.
When a partial disk failure occurs (that is, a failure affecting only some subdisks
on a disk), redundant data on the failed portion of the disk is relocated. Existing
volumes on the unaffected portions of the disk remain accessible.
See “How hot-relocation works” on page 428.

Volume sets
Volume sets are an enhancement to VxVM that allow several volumes to be
represented by a single logical object. All I/O from and to the underlying volumes
is directed via the I/O interfaces of the volume set. The Veritas File System (VxFS)
uses volume sets to manage multi-volume file systems and the SmartTier feature.
This feature allows VxFS to make best use of the different performance and
availability characteristics of the underlying volumes. For example, file system
metadata can be stored on volumes with higher redundancy, and user data on
volumes with better performance.
See “Creating a volume set” on page 408.

Configuration of volumes on SAN storage

Storage Area Networks (SANs) provide a networking paradigm that provides easily
reconfigurable connectivity between any subset of computers, disk storage, and
switches. A SAN can contain a huge number of devices connected using switched
fabric. A SAN that has thousands or tens of thousands of connected devices is
difficult to administer using a simple disk group model. Veritas CommandCentral
Storage software allows you to configure storage groups and storage accounts.
Using the CommandCentral Storage software, you can allocate SAN storage more
prudently and administer your complex SAN environments more effectively.
 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager 73
Configuration of volumes on SAN storage

Note: This feature of vxassist is designed to work in conjunction with SAL (SAN
Access Layer) in Veritas CommandCentral Storage. When VxVM with SAN-aware
vxassist is installed on a host where SAL is also installed, it is recommended
that you create a user named root under SAL. This allows vxassist to use the
root login to contact the SAL daemon (sald) on the primary SAL server without
needing to specify the sal_username attribute to vxassist.

Figure 1-36, shows how you might choose to set up storage groups within a SAN.

Figure 1-36 Dividing a Storage Area Network into storage groups

Storage Area Network

Storage groups
Location 1

High Low
performance performance
storage storage

Location 2

In this example, the boundaries of the storage groups are based on the performance
characteristics of different makes of disk array and on geographic location.
The vxassist utility in Veritas Volume Manager understands storage groups that
you have defined using the CommandCentral Storage software. vxassist supports
a simple language that you can use to specify how disks are to be allocated from
pre-defined storage groups. This specification language defines the confinement
and separation criteria that vxassist applies to the available storage to choose
disks for creating, resizing or moving a volume.
To use the CommandCentral Storage storage groups with vxassist, perform the
following steps in the order listed:
74 Understanding Veritas Volume Manager
Configuration of volumes on SAN storage

■ Use the CommandCentral Storage software to define one or more storage

groups. Note that zoning is not an issue as it is completely independent of
storage group creation.
■ Use the CommandCentral Storage software to attach attribute-value pairs to
each storage group’s property sheet. Typically, you would assign values for
the following attributes: location, storage group, and protection.
■ Use the vxspcshow command to discover the device names of disks that have
a specified set of attributes, or to list the attributes of specified disks.
■ Use the vxdiskadm command or the VEA to configure the disks that you found
in the previous step into VxVM disk groups.
■ Use vxassist to create volumes on disks that are selected by matching specified
criteria for the values of storage group attributes. The usual restriction applies
that a volume may only be created using disks from a single disk group.
 Chapter 2
Provisioning new usable
storage
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ Provisioning new usable storage

■ Growing the existing storage by adding a new LUN

■ Growing the existing storage by growing the LUN

Provisioning new usable storage

The following procedure describes how to provision new usable storage.
To provision new usable storage
1 Set up the LUN. See the documentation for your storage array for information
about how to create, mask, and bind the LUN.
2 Initialize the LUNs for Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM), using one of the
following commands:

# vxdisksetup -i 3PARDATA0_1
# vxdisk init 3PARDATA0_1

3 Add the LUN to a disk group.

■ If you do not have a disk group for your LUN, create the disk group:

# vxdg init dg1 dev1=3PARDATA0_1

■ If you already have a disk group for your LUN, add the LUN to the disk
group:
76 Provisioning new usable storage
Growing the existing storage by adding a new LUN

# vxdg -g dg1 adddisk 3PARDATA0_1

4 Create the volume on the LUN:

# vxassist -b -g dg1 make vol1 100g 3PARDATA0_1

5 Create a file system on the volume:

# mkfs -F vxfs /dev/vx/rdsk/dg1/vol1

6 Create a mount point on the file system:

# mkdir mount1

7 Mount the file system:

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/dg1/vol1 /mount1

Growing the existing storage by adding a new LUN

The following procedure describes how to grow the existing storage by adding a
new LUN.
To grow the existing storage by adding a new LUN
1 Create and set up the LUN.
2 Add the LUN to the disk group.

# vxdg -g dg1 adddisk 3PARDATA0_2

3 Grow the volume and the file system to the desired size. For example:

# vxresize -b -F vxfs -g dg1 vol1 100g

Growing the existing storage by growing the LUN

The following procedure describes how to grow the existing storage by growing
a LUN.
 Provisioning new usable storage 77
Growing the existing storage by growing the LUN

To grow the existing storage by growing a LUN

1 Grow the existing LUN. See the documentation for your storage array for
information about how to create, mask, and bind the LUN.
2 Make VxVM aware of the new LUN size.

# vxdisk -g dg1 resize c0t1d0s4

3 Calculate the new maximum volume size:

# vxassist -b maxgrow vol1

4 Grow the volume and the file system to the desired size:

# vxresize -b -F vxfs -g dg1 vol1 150g

78 Provisioning new usable storage
Growing the existing storage by growing the LUN
 Chapter 3
Administering disks
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About disk management

■ Disk devices

■ Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

■ Disks under VxVM control

■ VxVM coexistence with SVM and ZFS

■ Changing the disk-naming scheme

■ About the Array Volume Identifier (AVID) attribute

■ Discovering the association between enclosure-based disk names and OS-based

disk names

■ About disk installation and formatting

■ Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes

■ Adding a disk to VxVM

■ RAM disk support in VxVM

■ Encapsulating a disk

■ Rootability

■ Unencapsulating the root disk

■ Displaying disk information

■ Removing disks

■ Removing a disk from VxVM control

80 Administering disks
About disk management

■ Removing and replacing disks

■ Enabling a disk

■ Taking a disk offline

■ Renaming a disk

■ Reserving disks

About disk management

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) allows you to place LUNs and disks under VxVM
control, to initialize or encapsulate disks, and to remove and replace disks.

Note: Most VxVM commands require superuser or equivalent privileges.

Disks that are controlled by the Sun Microsystems Solaris Volume Manager
software cannot be used directly as VxVM disks, but the disks can be converted
so that their volumes become VxVM volumes.
For detailed information about migrating volumes, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) is used to administer multiported disk
arrays.
See “How DMP works” on page 157.

Disk devices
When performing disk administration, it is important to understand the difference
between a disk name and a device name.
The disk name (also known as a disk media name) is the symbolic name assigned
to a VM disk. When you place a disk under VxVM control, a VM disk is assigned
to it. The disk name is used to refer to the VM disk for the purposes of
administration. A disk name can be up to 31 characters long. When you add a disk
to a disk group, you can assign a disk name or allow VxVM to assign a disk name.
The default disk name is diskgroup## where diskgroup is the name of the disk
group to which the disk is being added, and ## is a sequence number. Your system
may use device names that differ from those given in the examples.
The device name (sometimes referred to as devname or disk access name) defines
the name of a disk device as it is known to the operating system.
 Administering disks 81
Disk devices

Such devices are usually, but not always, located in the /dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk
directories. Devices that are specific to hardware from certain vendors may use
their own path name conventions.
VxVM uses the device names to create metadevices in the /dev/vx/[r]dmp
directories. Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) uses these metadevices (or DMP nodes)
to represent disks that can be accessed by one or more physical paths, perhaps
via different controllers. The number of access paths that are available depends
on whether the disk is a single disk, or is part of a multiported disk array that is
connected to a system.
You can use the vxdisk utility to display the paths that are subsumed by a DMP
metadevice, and to display the status of each path (for example, whether it is
enabled or disabled).
See “How DMP works” on page 157.
Device names may also be remapped as enclosure-based names.
See “Disk device naming in VxVM” on page 81.

Disk device naming in VxVM

Device names for disks are assigned according to the naming scheme which you
specify to VxVM. The format of the device name may vary for different categories
of disks.
See “Disk categories” on page 88.
Device names can use one of the following naming schemes:
■ Operating system-based naming
■ Enclosure-based naming
Devices with device names longer than 31 characters always use enclosure-based
names.
By default, VxVM uses enclosure-based naming.
You can change the disk-naming scheme if required.
See “Changing the disk-naming scheme” on page 104.

Operating system-based naming

In the OS-based naming scheme, all disk devices are named using the c#t#d#s#
format.
82 Administering disks
Disk devices

The syntax of a device name is c#t#d#s#, where c# represents a controller on a

host bus adapter, t# is the target controller ID, d# identifies a disk on the target
controller, and s# represents a partition (or slice) on the disk.

Note: For non-EFI disks, the slice s2 represents the entire disk. For both EFI and
non-EFI disks, the entire disk is implied if the slice is omitted from the device
name.

DMP assigns the name of the DMP meta-device (disk access name) from the
multiple paths to the disk. DMP sorts the names by controller, and selects the
smallest controller number. For example, c1 rather than c2. If multiple paths are
seen from the same controller, then DMP uses the path with the smallest target
name. This behavior make it easier to correlate devices with the underlying storage.
If a CVM cluster is symmetric, each node in the cluster accesses the same set of
disks. This naming scheme makes the naming consistent across nodes in a
symmetric cluster.
The boot disk (which contains the root file system and is used when booting the
system) is often identified to VxVM by the device name c0t0d0.
By default, OS-based names are not persistent, and are regenerated if the system
configuration changes the device name as recognized by the operating system. If
you do not want the OS-based names to change after reboot, set the persistence
attribute for the naming scheme.
See “Changing the disk-naming scheme” on page 104.

Enclosure-based naming
By default, VxVM uses enclosure-based naming.
Enclosure-based naming operates as follows:
■ All fabric or non-fabric disks in supported disk arrays are named using the
enclosure_name_# format. For example, disks in the supported disk array,
enggdept are named enggdept_0, enggdept_1, enggdept_2 and so on.
You can use the vxdmpadm command to administer enclosure names.
See “Renaming an enclosure” on page 203.
See the vxdmpadm(1M) manual page.
■ Disks in the DISKS category (JBOD disks) are named using the Disk_# format.
■ Disks in the OTHER_DISKS category (disks that are not multipathed by DMP)
are named using the c#t#d#s# format.
 Administering disks 83
Disk devices

By default, enclosure-based names are persistent, so they do not change after

reboot.
If a CVM cluster is symmetric, each node in the cluster accesses the same set of
disks. Enclosure-based names provide a consistent naming system so that the
device names are the same on each node.
To display the native OS device names of a VxVM disk (such as mydg01), use the
following command:

# vxdisk path | grep diskname

See “Renaming an enclosure” on page 203.

See “Disk categories” on page 88.

Private and public disk regions

Most VM disks consist of the following regions:

private region A small area where configuration information is stored, including a

disk header label, configuration records for VxVM objects, and an
intent log for the configuration database.

The default private region size is 32 megabytes, which is large enough

to record the details of several thousand VxVM objects in a disk group.

Under most circumstances, the default private region size should be

sufficient. For administrative purposes, it is usually much simpler to
create more disk groups that contain fewer volumes, or to split large
disk groups into several smaller ones.

See “Splitting disk groups” on page 280.

If required, the value for the private region size may be overridden
when you add or replace a disk using the vxdiskadm command.

Each disk that has a private region holds an entire copy of the
configuration database for the disk group. The size of the configuration
database for a disk group is limited by the size of the smallest copy of
the configuration database on any of its member disks.

public region An area that covers the remainder of the disk, and which is used for
the allocation of storage space to subdisks.

A disk’s type identifies how VxVM accesses a disk, and how it manages the disk’s
private and public regions.
The following disk access types are used by VxVM:
84 Administering disks
Disk devices

auto When the vxconfigd daemon is started, VxVM obtains a list of known
disk device addresses from the operating system and configures disk
access records for them automatically.

nopriv There is no private region (only a public region for allocating subdisks).
This is the simplest disk type consisting only of space for allocating
subdisks. Such disks are most useful for defining special devices (such
as RAM disks, if supported) on which private region data would not
persist between reboots. They can also be used to encapsulate disks
where there is insufficient room for a private region. The disks cannot
store configuration and log copies, and they do not support the use
of the vxdisk addregion command to define reserved regions.
VxVM cannot track the movement of nopriv disks on a SCSI chain
or between controllers.

simple The public and private regions are on the same disk area (with the
public area following the private area).

sliced The public and private regions are on different disk partitions.

Auto-configured disks (with disk access type auto) support the following disk
formats:

cdsdisk The disk is formatted as a Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) disk

that is suitable for moving between different operating systems. This
is the default format for disks that are not used to boot the system.
Typically, most disks on a system are configured as this disk type.
However, it is not a suitable format for boot, root or swap disks, or for
mirrors or hot-relocation spares of such disks.

simple The disk is formatted as a simple disk that can be converted to a CDS
disk.

sliced The disk is formatted as a sliced disk. This format can be applied to
disks that are used to boot the system. The disk can be converted to
a CDS disk if it was not initialized for use as a boot disk.

The vxcdsconvert utility can be used to convert disks to the cdsdisk format.
See the vxcdsconvert(1M) manual page.

Warning: If a disk is initialized by VxVM as a CDS disk, the CDS header occupies
the portion of the disk where the VTOC would usually be located. If you
subsequently use a command such as fdisk or format to create a partition table
on a CDS disk, it erases the CDS information and could cause data corruption.
 Administering disks 85
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

By default, all auto-configured disks are formatted as cdsdisk disks when they
are initialized for use with VxVM. You can change the default format by using the
vxdiskadm(1M) command to update the /etc/default/vxdisk defaults file.

VxVM initializes each new disk with the smallest possible number of partitions.
For non-EFI disks of type sliced, VxVM usually configures partition s3 as the
private region, s4 as the public region, and s2 as the entire physical disk. An
exception is an encapsulated root disk, on which s3 is usually configured as the
public region and s4 as the private region.
See “Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes” on page 113.
See the vxdisk(1M) manual page.

Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

The vxdiskconfig utility scans and configures new disk devices attached to the
host, disk devices that become online, or fibre channel devices that are zoned to
host bus adapters connected to this host. The command calls platform specific
interfaces to configure new disk devices and brings them under control of the
operating system. It scans for disks that were added since VxVM’s configuration
daemon was last started. These disks are then dynamically configured and
recognized by VxVM.
vxdiskconfig should be used whenever disks are physically connected to the host
or when fibre channel devices are zoned to the host.
vxdiskconfig calls vxdctl enable to rebuild volume device node directories and
update the DMP internal database to reflect the new state of the system.
You can also use the vxdisk scandisks command to scan devices in the operating
system device tree, and to initiate dynamic reconfiguration of multipathed disks.
If you want VxVM to scan only for new devices that have been added to the system,
and not for devices that have been enabled or disabled, specify the -f option to
either of the commands, as shown here:

# vxdctl -f enable
# vxdisk -f scandisks

However, a complete scan is initiated if the system configuration has been modified
by changes to:
■ Installed array support libraries.
■ The list of devices that are excluded from use by VxVM.
■ DISKS (JBOD), SCSI3, or foreign device definitions.
86 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

See the vxdctl(1M) manual page.

See the vxdisk(1M) manual page.

Partial device discovery

Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) supports partial device discovery where you can
include or exclude sets of disks or disks attached to controllers from the discovery
process.
The vxdisk scandisks command rescans the devices in the OS device tree and
triggers a DMP reconfiguration. You can specify parameters to vxdisk scandisks
to implement partial device discovery. For example, this command makes VxVM
discover newly added devices that were unknown to it earlier:

# vxdisk scandisks new

The next example discovers fabric devices:

# vxdisk scandisks fabric

The above command discovers devices with the characteristic DDI_NT_FABRIC

property set on them.
The following command scans for the devices c1t1d0 and c2t2d0:

# vxdisk scandisks device=c1t1d0,c2t2d0

Alternatively, you can specify a ! prefix character to indicate that you want to
scan for all devices except those that are listed.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following examples
show how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxdisk scandisks \!device=c1t1d0,c2t2d0

You can also scan for devices that are connected (or not connected) to a list of
logical or physical controllers. For example, this command discovers and configures
all devices except those that are connected to the specified logical controllers:

# vxdisk scandisks \!ctlr=c1,c2

The next command discovers devices that are connected to the specified physical
controller:

# vxdisk scandisks pctlr=/pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/

 Administering disks 87
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

The items in a list of physical controllers are separated by + characters.

You can use the command vxdmpadm getctlr all to obtain a list of physical
controllers.
You should specify only one selection argument to the vxdisk scandisks
command. Specifying multiple options results in an error.
See the vxdisk(1M) manual page.

Discovering disks and dynamically adding disk arrays

DMP uses array support libraries (ASLs) to provide array-specific support for
multi-pathing. An array support library (ASL) is a dynamically loadable shared
library (plug-in for DDL). The ASL implements hardware-specific logic to discover
device attributes during device discovery. DMP provides the device discovery
layer (DDL) to determine which ASLs should be associated to each disk array
In some cases, DMP can also provide basic multi-pathing and failover functionality
by treating LUNs as disks (JBODs).

How DMP claims devices

For fully optimized support of any array and for support of more complicated
array types, DMP requires the use of array-specific array support libraries (ASLs),
possibly coupled with array policy modules (APMs). ASLs and APMs effectively
are array-specific plugins that allow close tie-in of DMP with any specific array
model.
See the Hardware Compatibility List for the complete list of supported arrays.
http://entsupport.symantec.com/docs/330441
During device discovery, the DDL checks the installed ASL for each device to find
which ASL claims the device. If no ASL is found to claim the device, the DDL checks
for a corresponding JBOD definition. You can add JBOD definitions for unsupported
arrays to enable DMP to provide multi-pathing for the array. If a JBOD definition
is found, the DDL claims the devices in the DISKS category, which adds the LUNs
to the list of JBOD (physical disk) devices used by DMP. If the JBOD definition
includes a cabinet number, DDL uses the cabinet number to group the LUNs into
enclosures.
See “Adding unsupported disk arrays to the DISKS category” on page 97.
DMP can provide basic multi-pathing to ALUA-compliant arrays even if there is
no ASL or JBOD definition. DDL claims the LUNs as part of the aluadisk enclosure.
The array type is shown as ALUA. Adding a JBOD definition also enables you to
group the LUNs into enclosures.
88 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Disk categories
Disk arrays that have been certified for use with Veritas Volume Manager are
supported by an array support library (ASL), and are categorized by the vendor
ID string that is returned by the disks (for example, “HITACHI”).
Disks in JBODs which are capable of being multipathed by DMP, are placed in the
DISKS category. Disks in unsupported arrays can also be placed in the DISKS
category.
See “Adding unsupported disk arrays to the DISKS category” on page 97.
Disks in JBODs that do not fall into any supported category, and which are not
capable of being multipathed by DMP are placed in the OTHER_DISKS category.

Adding support for a new disk array

You can dynamically add support for a new type of disk array. The support comes
in the form of Array Support Libraries (ASLs) that are developed by Symantec.
Symantec provides support for new disk arrays through updates to the VRTSaslapm
package. To determine if an updated VRTSaslapm package is available for download,
refer to the hardware compatibility list tech note. The hardware compatibility list
provides a link to the latest package for download and instructions for installing
the VRTSaslapm package. You can upgrade the VRTSaslapm package while the
system is online; you do not need to stop the applications.
To access the hardware compatibility list, go to the following URL:
http://entsupport.symantec.com/docs/330441
The new disk array does not need to be already connected to the system when the
VRTSaslapm package is installed. If any of the disks in the new disk array are
subsequently connected, and if vxconfigd is running, vxconfigd immediately
invokes the Device Discovery function and includes the new disks in the VxVM
device list.
See “Adding new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID” on page 216.
If you need to remove the latest VRTSaslapm package, you can revert to the
previously installed version. For the detailed procedure, refer to the Veritas Volume
Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

Enabling discovery of new disk arrays

The vxdctl enable command scans all of the disk devices and their attributes,
updates the VxVM device list, and reconfigures DMP with the new device database.
There is no need to reboot the host.
 Administering disks 89
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Warning: This command ensures that Dynamic Multi-Pathing is set up correctly

for the array. Otherwise, VxVM treats the independent paths to the disks as
separate devices, which can result in data corruption.

To enable discovery of a new disk array

◆ Type the following command:

# vxdctl enable

Third-party driver coexistence

The third-party driver (TPD) coexistence feature of VxVM allows I/O that is
controlled by some third-party multi-pathing drivers to bypass DMP while
retaining the monitoring capabilities of DMP. If a suitable ASL is available and
installed, devices that use TPDs can be discovered without requiring you to set
up a specification file, or to run a special command. In previous releases, VxVM
only supported TPD coexistence if the code of the third-party driver was intrusively
modified. Now, the TPD coexistence feature maintains backward compatibility
with such methods, but it also permits coexistence without requiring any change
in a third-party multi-pathing driver.
See “Changing device naming for TPD-controlled enclosures” on page 107.
See “Displaying information about TPD-controlled devices” on page 181.

Autodiscovery of EMC Symmetrix arrays

In VxVM 4.0, there were two possible ways to configure EMC Symmetrix arrays:
■ With EMC PowerPath installed, EMC Symmetrix arrays could be configured
as foreign devices.
See “Foreign devices” on page 101.
■ Without EMC PowerPath installed, DMP could be used to perform
multi-pathing.
On upgrading a system to VxVM 4.1 or later release, existing EMC PowerPath
devices can be discovered by DDL, and configured into DMP as autoconfigured
disks with DMP nodes, even if PowerPath is being used to perform multi-pathing.
There is no need to configure such arrays as foreign devices.
Table 3-1 shows the scenarios for using DMP with PowerPath.
The ASLs are all included in the ASL-APM package, which is installed when you
install Storage Foundation products.
90 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Table 3-1 Scenarios for using DMP with PowerPath

PowerPath DMP Array configuration

mode

Installed. The libvxpp ASL handles EMC EMC Symmetrix - Any

Symmetrix arrays and DGC
DGC CLARiiON -
CLARiiON claiming internally.
Active/Passive (A/P),
PowerPath handles failover.
Active/Passive in
Explicit Failover mode
(A/P-F) and ALUA
Explicit failover

Not installed; the array is EMC DMP handles multi-pathing. Active/Active

Symmetrix.
The ASL name is libvxemc.

Not installed; the array is DGC DMP handles multi-pathing. Active/Passive (A/P),
CLARiioN (CXn00). Active/Passive in
The ASL name is
Explicit Failover mode
libvxCLARiiON.
(A/P-F) and ALUA

If any EMCpower disks are configured as foreign disks, use the vxddladm
rmforeign command to remove the foreign definitions, as shown in this example:

# vxddladm rmforeign blockpath=/dev/dsk/emcpower10 \

charpath=/dev/rdsk/emcpower10

To allow DMP to receive correct inquiry data, the Common Serial Number (C-bit)
Symmetrix Director parameter must be set to enabled.

How to administer the Device Discovery Layer

The Device Discovery Layer (DDL) allows dynamic addition of disk arrays. DDL
discovers disks and their attributes that are required for VxVM operations.
The DDL is administered using the vxddladm utility to perform the following tasks:
■ List the hierarchy of all the devices discovered by DDL including iSCSI devices.
■ List all the Host Bus Adapters including iSCSI
■ List the ports configured on a Host Bus Adapter
■ List the targets configured from a Host Bus Adapter
■ List the devices configured from a Host Bus Adapter
■ Get or set the iSCSI operational parameters
 Administering disks 91
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

■ List the types of arrays that are supported.

■ Add support for an array to DDL.
■ Remove support for an array from DDL.
■ List information about excluded disk arrays.
■ List disks that are supported in the DISKS (JBOD) category.
■ Add disks from different vendors to the DISKS category.
■ Remove disks from the DISKS category.
■ Add disks as foreign devices.
The following sections explain these tasks in more detail.
See the vxddladm(1M) manual page.

Listing all the devices including iSCSI

You can display the hierarchy of all the devices discovered by DDL, including
iSCSI devices.
To list all the devices including iSCSI
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm list

The following is a sample output:

HBA c2 (20:00:00:E0:8B:19:77:BE)
Port c2_p0 (50:0A:09:80:85:84:9D:84)
Target c2_p0_t0 (50:0A:09:81:85:84:9D:84)
LUN c2t0d0s2
. . .
HBA c3 (iqn.1986-03.com.sun:01:0003ba8ed1b5.45220f80)
Port c3_p0 (10.216.130.10:3260)
Target c3_p0_t0 (iqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.84188548)
LUN c3t0d0s2
LUN c3t0d1s2
Target c3_t1 (iqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.84190939)
. . .

Listing all the Host Bus Adapters including iSCSI

You can obtain information about all the Host Bus Adapters configured on the
system, including iSCSI adapters. This includes the following information:
92 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Driver Driver controlling the HBA.

Firmware Firmware version.

Discovery The discovery method employed for the targets.

State Whether the device is Online or Offline.

Address The hardware address.

To list all the Host Bus Adapters including iSCSI

◆ Use the following command to list all of the HBAs, including iSCSI devices,
configured on the system:

# vxddladm list hbas

Listing the ports configured on a Host Bus Adapter

You can obtain information about all the ports configured on an HBA. The display
includes the following information:

HBA-ID The parent HBA.

State Whether the device is Online or Offline.

Address The hardware address.

To list the ports configured on a Host Bus Adapter

◆ Use the following command to obtain the ports configured on an HBA:

# vxddladm list ports

PortID HBA-ID State Address

-------------------------------------------------------------------
c2_p0 c2 Online 50:0A:09:80:85:84:9D:84
c3_p0 c3 Online 10.216.130.10:3260

Listing the targets configured from a Host Bus Adapter or a

port
You can obtain information about all the targets configured from a Host Bus
Adapter or a port. This includes the following information:

Alias The alias name, if available.

 Administering disks 93
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

HBA-ID Parent HBA or port.

State Whether the device is Online or Offline.

Address The hardware address.

To list the targets

◆ To list all of the targets, use the following command:

# vxddladm list targets

The following is a sample output:

TgtID Alias HBA-ID State Address

-----------------------------------------------------------------
c2_p0_t0 - c2 Online 50:0A:09:80:85:84:9D:84
c3_p0_t1 - c3 Online iqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.84190939

To list the targets configured from a Host Bus Adapter or port

◆ You can filter based on a HBA or port, using the following command:

# vxddladm list targets [hba=hba_name|port=port_name]

For example, to obtain the targets configured from the specified HBA:

# vxddladm list targets hba=c2

TgtID Alias HBA-ID State Address

-----------------------------------------------------------------
c2_p0_t0 - c2 Online 50:0A:09:80:85:84:9D:84

Listing the devices configured from a Host Bus Adapter and

target
You can obtain information about all the devices configured from a Host Bus
Adapter. This includes the following information:

Target-ID The parent target.

State Whether the device is Online or Offline.

DDL status Whether the device is claimed by DDL. If claimed, the output
also displays the ASL name.
94 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

To list the devices configured from a Host Bus Adapter

◆ To obtain the devices configured, use the following command:

# vxddladm list devices

Device Target-ID State DDL status (ASL)

------------------------------------------------------------
c2t0d2s2 c2_p0_t0 Online CLAIMED (libvxemc.so)
c3t1d2s2 c3_p0_t1 Online SKIPPED
c4t1d2s2 c4_p0_t1 Offline ERROR
c4t1d2s2 c4_p0_t2 Online EXCLUDED
c4t5d2s2 c4_p0_t5 Offline MASKED

To list the devices configured from a Host Bus Adapter and target
◆ To obtain the devices configured from a particular HBA and target, use the
following command:

# vxddladm list devices target=target_name

Getting or setting the iSCSI operational parameters

DDL provides an interface to set and display certain parameters that affect the
performance of the iSCSI device path. However, the underlying OS framework
must support the ability to set these values. The vxddladm set command returns
an error if the OS support is not available.

Table 3-2 Parameters for iSCSI devices

Parameter Default Minimum Maximum

value value value

DataPDUInOrder yes no yes

DataSequenceInOrder yes no yes

DefaultTime2Retain 20 0 3600

DefaultTime2Wait 2 0 3600

ErrorRecoveryLevel 0 0 2

FirstBurstLength 65535 512 16777215

InitialR2T yes no yes

ImmediateData yes no yes

 Administering disks 95
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Table 3-2 Parameters for iSCSI devices (continued)

Parameter Default Minimum Maximum

value value value

MaxBurstLength 262144 512 16777215

MaxConnections 1 1 65535

MaxOutStandingR2T 1 1 65535

MaxRecvDataSegmentLength 8182 512 16777215

To get the iSCSI operational parameters on the initiator for a specific iSCSI target
◆ Type the following commands:

# vxddladm getiscsi target=tgt-id {all | parameter}

You can use this command to obtain all the iSCSI operational parameters.
The following is a sample output:

# vxddladm getiscsi target=c2_p2_t0

PARAMETER CURRENT DEFAULT MIN MAX

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DataPDUInOrder yes yes no yes
DataSequenceInOrder yes yes no yes
DefaultTime2Retain 20 20 0 3600
DefaultTime2Wait 2 2 0 3600
ErrorRecoveryLevel 0 0 0 2
FirstBurstLength 65535 65535 512 16777215
InitialR2T yes yes no yes
ImmediateData yes yes no yes
MaxBurstLength 262144 262144 512 16777215
MaxConnections 1 1 1 65535
MaxOutStandingR2T 1 1 1 65535
MaxRecvDataSegmentLength 8192 8182 512 16777215

To set the iSCSI operational parameters on the initiator for a specific iSCSI target
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm setiscsi target=tgt-id

parameter=value
96 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Listing all supported disk arrays

Use this procedure to obtain values for the vid and pid attributes that are used
with other forms of the vxddladm command.
To list all supported disk arrays
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm listsupport all

Excluding support for a disk array library

To exclude support for a disk array library
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm excludearray libname=libvxenc.so

This example excludes support for disk arrays that depends on the library
libvxenc.so. You can also exclude support for disk arrays from a particular
vendor, as shown in this example:

# vxddladm excludearray vid=ACME pid=X1

See the vxddladm (1M) manual page.

Re-including support for an excluded disk array library

To re-include support for an excluded disk array library
◆ If you have excluded support for all arrays that depend on a particular disk
array library, you can use the includearray keyword to remove the entry
from the exclude list, as shown in the following example:

# vxddladm includearray libname=libvxenc.so

This command adds the array library to the database so that the library can
once again be used in device discovery. If vxconfigd is running, you can use
the vxdisk scandisks command to discover the arrays and add their details
to the database.

Listing excluded disk arrays

To list all disk arrays that are currently excluded from use by VxVM
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm listexclude
 Administering disks 97
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Listing supported disks in the DISKS category

To list disks that are supported in the DISKS (JBOD) category
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm listjbod

Displaying details about a supported array library

To display details about a supported array library
◆ Type the following command:

# vxddladm listsupport libname=library_name.so

This command displays the vendor ID (VID), product IDs (PIDs) for the arrays,
array types (for example, A/A or A/P), and array names. The following is
sample output.

# vxddladm listsupport libname=libvxfujitsu.so

ATTR_NAME ATTR_VALUE
=================================================
LIBNAME libvxfujitsu.so
VID vendor
PID GR710, GR720, GR730
GR740, GR820, GR840
ARRAY_TYPE A/A, A/P
ARRAY_NAME FJ_GR710, FJ_GR720, FJ_GR730
FJ_GR740, FJ_GR820, FJ_GR840

Adding unsupported disk arrays to the DISKS category

Disk arrays should be added as JBOD devices if no ASL is available for the array.
JBODs are assumed to be Active/Active (A/A) unless otherwise specified. If a
suitable ASL is not available, an A/A-A, A/P or A/PF array must be claimed as an
Active/Passive (A/P) JBOD to prevent path delays and I/O failures. If a JBOD is
ALUA-compliant, it is added as an ALUA array.
See “How DMP works” on page 157.
98 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Warning: This procedure ensures that Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) is set up

correctly on an array that is not supported by Veritas Volume Manager. Otherwise,
Veritas Volume Manager treats the independent paths to the disks as separate
devices, which can result in data corruption.

To add an unsupported disk array to the DISKS category

1 Use the following command to identify the vendor ID and product ID of the
disks in the array:

# /etc/vx/diag.d/vxscsiinq device_name

where device_name is the device name of one of the disks in the array. Note
the values of the vendor ID (VID) and product ID (PID) in the output from this
command. For Fujitsu disks, also note the number of characters in the serial
number that is displayed.
The following example shows the output for the example disk with the device
name /dev/rdsk/c1t20d0s2

# /etc/vx/diag.d/vxscsiinq /dev/rdsk/c1t20d0s2

Vendor id (VID) : SEAGATE

Product id (PID) : ST318404LSUN18G
Revision : 8507
Serial Number : 0025T0LA3H

In this example, the vendor ID is SEAGATE and the product ID is

ST318404LSUN18G.

2 Stop all applications, such as databases, from accessing VxVM volumes that
are configured on the array, and unmount all file systems and Storage
Checkpoints that are configured on the array.
3 If the array is of type A/A-A, A/P or A/PF, configure it in autotrespass mode.
 Administering disks 99
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

4 Enter the following command to add a new JBOD category:

# vxddladm addjbod vid=vendorid [pid=productid] \

[serialnum=opcode/pagecode/offset/length]
[cabinetnum=opcode/pagecode/offset/length] policy={aa|ap}]

where vendorid and productid are the VID and PID values that you found
from the previous step. For example, vendorid might be FUJITSU, IBM, or
SEAGATE. For Fujitsu devices, you must also specify the number of characters
in the serial number as the argument to the length argument (for example,
10). If the array is of type A/A-A, A/P or A/PF, you must also specify the
policy=ap attribute.

Continuing the previous example, the command to define an array of disks

of this type as a JBOD would be:

# vxddladm addjbod vid=SEAGATE pid=ST318404LSUN18G

5 Use the vxdctl enable command to bring the array under VxVM control.

# vxdctl enable

See “Enabling discovery of new disk arrays” on page 88.

6 To verify that the array is now supported, enter the following command:

# vxddladm listjbod

The following is sample output from this command for the example array:

VID PID SerialNum CabinetNum Policy

(Cmd/PageCode/off/len) (Cmd/PageCode/off/len)
==============================================================
SEAGATE ALL PIDs 18/-1/36/12 18/-1/10/11 Disk
SUN SESS01 18/-1/36/12 18/-1/12/11 Disk
100 Administering disks
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

7 To verify that the array is recognized, use the vxdmpadm listenclosure

command as shown in the following sample output for the example array:

# vxdmpadm listenclosure
ENCLR_NAME ENCLR_TYPE ENCLR_SNO STATUS ARRAY_TYPE LUN_COUNT
==============================================================
Disk Disk DISKS CONNECTED Disk 2

The enclosure name and type for the array are both shown as being set to
Disk. You can use the vxdisk list command to display the disks in the array:

# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
Disk_0 auto:none - - online invalid
Disk_1 auto:none - - online invalid
...

8 To verify that the DMP paths are recognized, use the vxdmpadm getdmpnode
command as shown in the following sample output for the example array:

# vxdmpadm getdmpnode enclosure=Disk

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME
=====================================================
Disk_0 ENABLED Disk 2 2 0 Disk
Disk_1 ENABLED Disk 2 2 0 Disk
...

This shows that there are two paths to the disks in the array.
For more information, enter the command vxddladm help addjbod.
See the vxddladm(1M) manual page.
See the vxdmpadm(1M) manual page.

Removing disks from the DISKS category

To remove disks from the DISKS category
◆ Use the vxddladm command with the rmjbod keyword. The following example
illustrates the command for removing disks which have the vendor id of
SEAGATE:

# vxddladm rmjbod vid=SEAGATE

 Administering disks 101
Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices

Foreign devices
DDL may not be able to discover some devices that are controlled by third-party
drivers, such as those that provide multi-pathing or RAM disk capabilities. For
these devices it may be preferable to use the multi-pathing capability that is
provided by the third-party drivers for some arrays rather than using Dynamic
Multi-Pathing (DMP). Such foreign devices can be made available as simple disks
to VxVM by using the vxddladm addforeign command. This also has the effect
of bypassing DMP for handling I/O. The following example shows how to add
entries for block and character devices in the specified directories:

# vxddladm addforeign blockdir=/dev/foo/dsk \

chardir=/dev/foo/rdsk

By default, this command suppresses any entries for matching devices in the
OS-maintained device tree that are found by the autodiscovery mechanism. You
can override this behavior by using the -f and -n options as described on the
vxddladm(1M) manual page.

After adding entries for the foreign devices, use either the vxdisk scandisks or
the vxdctl enable command to discover the devices as simple disks. These disks
then behave in the same way as autoconfigured disks.
The foreign device feature was introduced in VxVM 4.0 to support non-standard
devices such as RAM disks, some solid state disks, and pseudo-devices such as
EMC PowerPath.
Foreign device support has the following limitations:
■ A foreign device is always considered as a disk with a single path. Unlike an
autodiscovered disk, it does not have a DMP node.
■ It is not supported for shared disk groups in a clustered environment. Only
standalone host systems are supported.
■ It is not supported for Persistent Group Reservation (PGR) operations.
■ It is not under the control of DMP, so enabling of a failed disk cannot be
automatic, and DMP administrative commands are not applicable.
■ Enclosure information is not available to VxVM. This can reduce the availability
of any disk groups that are created using such devices.
■ The I/O Fencing and Cluster File System features are not supported for foreign
devices.
If a suitable ASL is available and installed for an array, these limitations are
removed.
See “Third-party driver coexistence” on page 89.
102 Administering disks
Disks under VxVM control

Disks under VxVM control

When you add a disk to a system that is running VxVM, you need to put the disk
under VxVM control so that VxVM can control the space allocation on the disk.
See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.
Unless you specify a disk group, VxVM places new disks in a default disk group
according to the rules for determining the default disk group.
See “Rules for determining the default disk group” on page 230.
The method by which you place a disk under VxVM control depends on the
following circumstances:
■ If the disk is new, it must be initialized and placed under VxVM control. You
can use the menu-based vxdiskadm utility to do this.

Warning: Initialization destroys existing data on disks.

■ If the disk is not needed immediately, it can be initialized (but not added to a
disk group) and reserved for future use. To do this, enter none when asked to
name a disk group. Do not confuse this type of “spare disk” with a
hot-relocation spare disk.
■ If the disk was previously initialized for future use by VxVM, it can be
reinitialized and placed under VxVM control.
■ If the disk was previously in use, but not under VxVM control, you may wish
to preserve existing data on the disk while still letting VxVM take control of
the disk. This can be accomplished using encapsulation.
Encapsulation preserves existing data on disks.
■ Multiple disks on one or more controllers can be placed under VxVM control
simultaneously. Depending on the circumstances, all of the disks may not be
processed the same way.
It is possible to configure the vxdiskadm utility not to list certain disks or
controllers as being available. For example, this may be useful in a SAN
environment where disk enclosures are visible to a number of separate systems.
To exclude a device from the view of VxVM, select Prevent
multipathing/Suppress devices from VxVM’s view from the vxdiskadm main
menu.
See “Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible to VxVM” on page 165.
 Administering disks 103
VxVM coexistence with SVM and ZFS

VxVM coexistence with SVM and ZFS

Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) is a logical volume manager software provided
by Sun. ZFS is a type of file system presenting a pooled storage model that Sun
developed. File systems can directly draw from a common storage pool (zpool).
Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) can be used on the same system as SVM and
ZFS disks.
VxVM protects devices in use by SVM or ZFS from any VxVM operations that may
overwrite the disk. These operations include initializing the disk for use by VxVM
or encapsulating the disk. If you attempt to perform one of these VxVM operations
a device that is in use by SVM or ZFS, VxVM displays an error message.
Before you can manage an SVM disk or a ZFS disk with VxVM, you must remove
it from SVM or ZFS control. Similarly, to begin managing a VxVM disk with SVM
or ZFS, you must remove the disk from VxVM control.
To determine if a disk is in use by SVM or ZFS
◆ Use the vxdisk list command:

# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
c1t0d0s2 auto:none - - online invalid
c1t1d0s2 auto:none - - online invalid
c2t5006016130603AE5d2s2 auto:ZFS - - ZFS
c2t5006016130603AE5d3s2 auto:SVM - - SVM
c2t5006016130603AE5d4s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online
c2t5006016130603AE5d5s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online
104 Administering disks
Changing the disk-naming scheme

To reuse a VxVM disk as a ZFS disk or an SVM disk

1 If the disk is in a disk group, remove the disk from the disk group or destroy
the disk group.
To remove the disk from the disk group:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] rmdisk diskname

To destroy the disk group:

# vxdg destroy diskgroup

2 Remove the disk from VxVM control

# /usr/lib/vxvm/bin/vxdiskunsetup diskname

3 You can now initialize the disk as a SVM/ZFS device using ZFS/SVM tools.
See the Sun documentation for details.
You must perform step 1 and step 2 in order for VxVM to recognize a disk as
SVM or ZFS device.
To reuse a ZFS disk or an SVM disk as a VxVM disk
1 Remove the disk from the zpool or SVM metadevice, or destroy the zpool or
SVM metadevice.
See the Sun documentation for details.
2 Clear the signature block using the dd command:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c#t#d#s# oseek=16 bs=512 count=1

Where c#t#d#s# is the disk slice on which the ZFS device or the SVM device
is configured. If the whole disk is used as the ZFS device, clear the signature
block on slice 0.
3 You can now initialize the disk as a VxVM device using the vxdiskadm
command or the vxdisksetup command.

Changing the disk-naming scheme

You can either use enclosure-based naming for disks or the operating system’s
naming scheme. VxVM commands display device names according to the current
naming scheme.
 Administering disks 105
Changing the disk-naming scheme

The default naming scheme is enclosure-based naming (EBN). When you use DMP
with native volumes, the disk naming scheme must be EBN, the use_avid attribute
must be on, and the persistence attribute must be set to yes.

Note: Devices with very long device names (longer than 31 characters) are
represented by enclosure-based names regardless of the naming scheme. If the
OS-based names include WWN identifiers, the device name displays with the
WWN identifier as long as the device name is less than 31 characters. If any device
name is longer than 31 characters, that device name displays with an enclosure
name.
106 Administering disks
Changing the disk-naming scheme

To change the disk-naming scheme

◆ Select Change the disk naming scheme from the vxdiskadm main menu to
change the disk-naming scheme that you want VxVM to use. When prompted,
enter y to change the naming scheme.
Alternatively, you can change the naming scheme from the command line.
Use the following command to select enclosure-based naming:

# vxddladm set namingscheme=ebn [persistence={yes|no}] \

[lowercase=yes|no] [use_avid=yes|no]

Use the following command to select operating system-based naming:

# vxddladm set namingscheme=osn [persistence={yes|no}] \

[lowercase=yes|no]

The optional persistence argument allows you to select whether the names
of disk devices that are displayed by VxVM remain unchanged after disk
hardware has been reconfigured and the system rebooted. By default,
enclosure-based naming is persistent. Operating system-based naming is not
persistent by default.
To change only the naming persistence without changing the naming scheme,
run the vxddladm set namingscheme command for the current naming
scheme, and specify the persistence attribute.
By default, the names of the enclosure are converted to lowercase, regardless
of the case of the name specified by the ASL. The enclosure-based device
names are therefore in lower case. Set the lowercase=no option to suppress
the conversion to lowercase.
For enclosure-based naming, the use_avid option specifies whether the Array
Volume ID is used for the index number in the device name. By default,
use_avid=yes, indicating the devices are named as enclosure_avid. If use_avid
is set to no, DMP devices are named as enclosure_index. The index number
is assigned after the devices are sorted by LUN serial number.
The change is immediate whichever method you use.
See “Regenerating persistent device names” on page 107.

Displaying the disk-naming scheme

VxVM disk naming can be operating-system based naming or enclosure-based
naming. This command displays whether the VxVM disk naming scheme is
currently set. It also displays the attributes for the disk naming scheme, such as
whether persistence is enabled.
 Administering disks 107
Changing the disk-naming scheme

To display the current disk-naming scheme and its mode of operations, use the
following command:

# vxddladm get namingscheme

See “Disk device naming in VxVM” on page 81.

Regenerating persistent device names

The persistent device naming feature makes the names of disk devices persistent
across system reboots. DDL assigns device names according to the persistent
device name database.
If operating system-based naming is selected, each disk name is usually set to the
name of one of the paths to the disk. After hardware reconfiguration and a
subsequent reboot, the operating system may generate different names for the
paths to the disks. Therefore, the persistent device names may no longer
correspond to the actual paths. This does not prevent the disks from being used,
but the association between the disk name and one of its paths is lost.
Similarly, if enclosure-based naming is selected, the device name depends on the
name of the enclosure and an index number. If a hardware configuration changes
the order of the LUNs exposed by the array, the persistent device name may not
reflect the current index.
To regenerate persistent device names
◆ To regenerate the persistent names repository, use the following command:

# vxddladm [-c] assign names

The -c option clears all user-specified names and replaces them with
autogenerated names.
If the -c option is not specified, existing user-specified names are maintained,
but OS-based and enclosure-based names are regenerated.
The disk names now correspond to the new path names.

Changing device naming for TPD-controlled enclosures

By default, TPD-controlled enclosures use pseudo device names based on the
TPD-assigned node names. If you change the device naming to native, the devices
are named in the same format as other VxVM devices. The devices use either
operating system names (OSN) or enclosure-based names (EBN), depending on
which naming scheme is set.
See “Displaying the disk-naming scheme” on page 106.
108 Administering disks
Changing the disk-naming scheme

To change device naming for TPD-controlled enclosures

◆ For disk enclosures that are controlled by third-party drivers (TPD) whose
coexistence is supported by an appropriate ASL, the default behavior is to
assign device names that are based on the TPD-assigned node names. You
can use the vxdmpadm command to switch between these names and the device
names that are known to the operating system:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enclosure_name tpdmode=native|pseudo

The argument to the tpdmode attribute selects names that are based on those
used by the operating system (native), or TPD-assigned node names (pseudo).
The use of this command to change between TPD and operating system-based
naming is illustrated in the following example for the enclosure named EMC0.
In this example, the device-naming scheme is set to OSN.

# vxdisk list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

emcpower10s2 auto:sliced disk1 mydg online
emcpower11s2 auto:sliced disk2 mydg online
emcpower12s2 auto:sliced disk3 mydg online
emcpower13s2 auto:sliced disk4 mydg online
emcpower14s2 auto:sliced disk5 mydg online
emcpower15s2 auto:sliced disk6 mydg online
emcpower16s2 auto:sliced disk7 mydg online
emcpower17s2 auto:sliced disk8 mydg online
emcpower18s2 auto:sliced disk9 mydg online
emcpower19s2 auto:sliced disk10 mydg online

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure EMC0 tpdmode=native

# vxdisk list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

c6t0d10s2 auto:sliced disk1 mydg online
c6t0d11s2 auto:sliced disk2 mydg online
c6t0d12s2 auto:sliced disk3 mydg online
c6t0d13s2 auto:sliced disk4 mydg online
c6t0d14s2 auto:sliced disk5 mydg online
c6t0d15s2 auto:sliced disk6 mydg online
c6t0d16s2 auto:sliced disk7 mydg online
c6t0d17s2 auto:sliced disk8 mydg online
c6t0d18s2 auto:sliced disk9 mydg online
c6t0d19s2 auto:sliced disk10 mydg online
 Administering disks 109
Changing the disk-naming scheme

If tpdmode is set to native, the path with the smallest device number is
displayed.

Simple or nopriv disks with enclosure-based naming

If you change from OS-based naming to enclosure-based naming, simple or nopriv
disks may be put in the error state and cause VxVM objects on those disks to fail.
You can use the vxdarestore command to handle simple and nopriv disk failures
that arise from changing to the enclosure-based naming scheme. You do not need
to use this command if your system does not have any simple or nopriv disks, or
if the devices on which any simple or nopriv disks are present are not automatically
configured by VxVM (for example, non-standard disk devices such as ramdisks).

Note: You cannot run vxdarestore if OS-based naming is in use. Additionally,

vxdarestore does not handle failures on simple or nopriv disks that are caused
by renaming enclosures, by hardware reconfiguration that changes device names,
or by changing the naming scheme on a system that includes persistent sliced
disk records.

See “Removing the error state for simple or nopriv disks in the boot disk group”
on page 109.
See “Removing the error state for simple or nopriv disks in non-boot disk groups”
on page 110.
See the vxdarestore(1M) manual page.

Removing the error state for simple or nopriv disks in the boot
disk group
If the boot disk group (usually aliased as bootdg) is comprised of only simple
and/or nopriv disks, the vxconfigd daemon goes into the disabled state after the
naming scheme change.
110 Administering disks
About the Array Volume Identifier (AVID) attribute

To remove the error state for simple or nopriv disks in the boot disk group
1 Use vxdiskadm to change back to c#t#d#s# naming.
2 Enter the following command to restart the VxVM configuration daemon:

# vxconfigd -kr reset

3 If you want to use enclosure-based naming, use vxdiskadm to add a sliced

disk to the bootdg disk group, change back to the enclosure-based naming
scheme, and then run the following command:

# vxdarestore

Removing the error state for simple or nopriv disks in non-boot

disk groups
If an imported disk group, other than bootdg, is comprised of only simple and/or
nopriv disks, the disk group is in the “online dgdisabled” state after the change
to the enclosure-based naming scheme.
To remove the error state for simple or nopriv disks in non-boot disk groups
1 Deport the disk group using the following command:

# vxdg deport diskgroup

2 Use the vxdarestore command to restore the failed disks, and to recover the
objects on those disks:

# vxdarestore

3 Re-import the disk group using the following command:

# vxdg import diskgroup

About the Array Volume Identifier (AVID) attribute

DMP assigns enclosure-based names to DMP meta-devices using an array-specific
attribute called the Array Volume ID (AVID). The AVID is a unique identifier for
the LUN that is provided by the array. The ASL corresponding to the array provides
the AVID property. Within an array enclosure, DMP uses the Array Volume
Identifier (AVID) as an index in the DMP metanode name. The DMP metanode
name is in the format enclosureID_AVID.
 Administering disks 111
Discovering the association between enclosure-based disk names and OS-based disk names

The VxVM utilities such as vxdisk list display the DMP metanode name, which
includes the AVID property. Use the AVID to correlate the DMP metanode name
to the LUN displayed in the array management interface (GUI or CLI) .
If the ASL does not provide the array volume ID property, then DMP generates
an index number. DMP sorts the devices seen from an array by the LUN serial
number and then assigns the index number. In this case, the DMP metanode name
is in the format enclosureID_index.
In a cluster environment, the DMP device names are the same across all nodes in
the cluster.
For example, on an EMC CX array where the enclosure is emc_clariion0 and the
array volume ID provided by the ASL is 91, the DMP metanode name is
emc_clariion0_91. The following sample output shows the DMP metanode names:

$ vxdisk list
emc_clariion0_91 auto:cdsdisk emc_clariion0_91 dg1 online shared
emc_clariion0_92 auto:cdsdisk emc_clariion0_92 dg1 online shared
emc_clariion0_93 auto:cdsdisk emc_clariion0_93 dg1 online shared
emc_clariion0_282 auto:cdsdisk emc_clariion0_282 dg1 online shared
emc_clariion0_283 auto:cdsdisk emc_clariion0_283 dg1 online shared
emc_clariion0_284 auto:cdsdisk emc_clariion0_284 dg1 online shared

Discovering the association between enclosure-based

disk names and OS-based disk names
If you enable enclosure-based naming, the vxprint command displays the structure
of a volume using enclosure-based disk device names (disk access names) rather
than OS-based names.
112 Administering disks
About disk installation and formatting

To discover the association between enclosure-based disk names and OS-based

disk names
◆ To discover the operating system-based names that are associated with a
given enclosure-based disk name, use either of the following commands:

# vxdisk list enclosure-based_name

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths dmpnodename=enclosure-based_name

For example, to find the physical device that is associated with disk ENC0_21,
the appropriate commands would be:

# vxdisk list ENC0_21

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths dmpnodename=ENC0_21

To obtain the full pathname for the block disk device and the character disk
device from these commands, append the displayed device name to
/dev/vx/dmp or /dev/vx/rdmp.

About disk installation and formatting

Depending on the hardware capabilities of your disks and of your system, you
may either need to shut down and power off your system before installing the
disks, or you may be able to hot-insert the disks into the live system. Many
operating systems can detect the presence of the new disks on being rebooted. If
the disks are inserted while the system is live, you may need to enter an operating
system-specific command to notify the system.
If the disks require low or intermediate-level formatting before use, use the
operating system-specific formatting command to do this.
For Solaris SPARC systems, if a disk is not formatted, the status field in the vxdisk
list output shows as nolabel. The disk must be formatted before you add it to
VxVM control.

Note: SCSI disks are usually preformatted. Reformatting is needed only if the
existing formatting has become damaged.

See “Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes” on page 113.

See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.
 Administering disks 113
Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes

Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes

To display or change the default values for initializing the layout of disks
◆ Select Change/display the default disk layout from the vxdiskadm main
menu. For disk initialization, you can change the default format and the
default length of the private region. The attribute settings for initializing
disks are stored in the file, /etc/default/vxdisk.
See the vxdisk(1M) manual page.
For disk encapsulation, you can additionally change the offset values for both
the private and public regions. The attribute settings for encapsulating disks
are stored in the file, /etc/default/vxencap.
See the vxencap(1M) manual page.

Adding a disk to VxVM

Formatted disks being placed under VxVM control may be new or previously used
outside VxVM. The set of disks can consist of all disks on the system, all disks on
a controller, selected disks, or a combination of these.
Depending on the circumstances, all of the disks may not be processed in the same
way.
For example, some disks may be initialized, while others may be encapsulated to
preserve existing data on the disks.
When initializing multiple disks at one time, it is possible to exclude certain disks
or certain controllers.
You can also exclude certain disks or certain controllers when encapsulating
multiple disks at one time.
To exclude a device from the view of VxVM, select Prevent
multipathing/Suppress devices from VxVM’s view from the vxdiskadm main
menu.

Warning: Initialization does not preserve the existing data on the disks.

See “Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible to VxVM” on page 165.
114 Administering disks
Adding a disk to VxVM

To initialize disks for VxVM use

1 Select Add or initialize one or more disks from the vxdiskadm main
menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the disk device name of the disk to be added
to VxVM control (or enter list for a list of disks):

Select disk devices to add:

[<pattern-list>,all,list,q,?]

The pattern-list can be a single disk, or a series of disks and/or controllers

(with optional targets). If pattern-list consists of multiple items, separate
them using white space. For example, specify four disks at separate target
IDs on controller 3 as follows:

c3t0d0 c3t1d0 c3t2d0 c3t3d0

If you enter list at the prompt, the vxdiskadm program displays a list of the
disks available to the system:

DEVICE DISK GROUP STATUS

c0t0d0 mydg01 mydg online
c0t1d0 mydg02 mydg online
c0t2d0 mydg03 mydg online
c0t3d0 - - online
c1t0d0 mydg10 mydg online
c1t0d1 - - online invalid
.
.
.
c3t0d0 - - online invalid
sena0_0 mydg33 mydg online
sena0_1 mydg34 mydg online
sena0_2 mydg35 mydg online

The phrase online invalid in the STATUS line indicates that a disk has yet
to be added or initialized for VxVM control. Disks that are listed as online
with a disk name and disk group are already under VxVM control.
Enter the device name or pattern of the disks that you want to initialize at
the prompt and press Return.
 Administering disks 115
Adding a disk to VxVM

3 To continue with the operation, enter y (or press Return) at the following
prompt:

Here are the disks selected. Output format: [Device]

list of device names

Continue operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

4 At the following prompt, specify the disk group to which the disk should be
added, or none to reserve the disks for future use:

You can choose to add these disks to an existing disk group,

a new disk group, or you can leave these disks available for use
by future add or replacement operations. To create a new disk
group, select a disk group name that does not yet exist. To
leave the disks available for future use, specify a disk group
name of none.

Which disk group [<group>,none,list,q,?]

5 If you specified the name of a disk group that does not already exist, vxdiskadm
prompts for confirmation that you really want to create this new disk group:

There is no active disk group named disk group name.

Create a new group named disk group name? [y,n,q,?]

(default: y)y

You are then prompted to confirm whether the disk group should support
the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature:

Create the disk group as a CDS disk group? [y,n,q,?]

(default: n)

If the new disk group may be moved between different operating system
platforms, enter y. Otherwise, enter n.
6 At the following prompt, either press Return to accept the default disk name
or enter n to allow you to define your own disk names:

Use default disk names for the disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) n

116 Administering disks
Adding a disk to VxVM

7 When prompted whether the disks should become hot-relocation spares,

enter n (or press Return):

Add disks as spare disks for disk group name? [y,n,q,?]

(default: n) n

8 When prompted whether to exclude the disks from hot-relocation use, enter
n (or press Return).

Exclude disks from hot-relocation use? [y,n,q,?}

(default: n) n

9 You are next prompted to choose whether you want to add a site tag to the
disks:

Add site tag to disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

A site tag is usually applied to disk arrays or enclosures, and is not required
unless you want to use the Remote Mirror feature.
If you enter y to choose to add a site tag, you are prompted to the site name
at step 11.
10 To continue with the operation, enter y (or press Return) at the following
prompt:

The selected disks will be added to the disk group

disk group name with default disk names.
list of device names
Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

11 If you chose to tag the disks with a site in step 9, you are now prompted to
enter the site name that should be applied to the disks in each enclosure:

The following disk(s):

list of device names

belong to enclosure(s):
list of enclosure names

Enter site tag for disks on enclosure enclosure name

[<name>,q,?] site_name
 Administering disks 117
Adding a disk to VxVM

12 If you see the following prompt, it lists any disks that have already been
initialized for use by VxVM:

The following disk devices appear to have been initialized

already.
The disks are currently available as replacement disks.
Output format: [Device]

list of device names

Use these devices? [Y,N,S(elect),q,?] (default: Y) Y

This prompt allows you to indicate “yes” or “no” for all of these disks (Y or N)
or to select how to process each of these disks on an individual basis (S).
If you are sure that you want to reinitialize all of these disks, enter Y at the
following prompt:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-366 The following disks you selected for use
appear to already have been initialized for the Volume
Manager. If you are certain the disks already have been
initialized for the Volume Manager, then you do not need to
reinitialize these disk devices.
Output format: [Device]

list of device names

Reinitialize these devices? [Y,N,S(elect),q,?] (default: Y) Y

118 Administering disks
Adding a disk to VxVM

13 vxdiskadm may now indicate that one or more disks is a candidate for
encapsulation. Encapsulation allows you to add an active disk to VxVM control
and preserve the data on that disk.If you want to preserve the data on the
disk, enter y. If you are sure that there is no data on the disk that you want
to preserve, enter n to avoid encapsulation.

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-355 The following disk device has a valid

partition table, but does not appear to have been initialized
for the Volume Manager. If there is data on the disk that
should NOT be destroyed you should encapsulate the existing
disk partitions as volumes instead of adding the disk as a new
disk.
Output format: [Device]

device name

Encapsulate this device? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

 Administering disks 119
Adding a disk to VxVM

14 If you choose to encapsulate the disk vxdiskadm confirms its device name
and prompts you for permission to proceed. Enter y (or press Return) to
continue encapsulation:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-311 The following disk device has been

selected for encapsulation.
Output format: [Device]

device name

Continue with encapsulation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

vxdiskadm now displays an encapsulation status and informs you
that you must perform a shutdown and reboot as soon as
possible:
VxVM INFO V-5-2-333 The disk device device name will be
encapsulated and added to the disk group disk group name with the
disk name disk name.

You can now choose whether the disk is to be formatted as a CDS disk that is
portable between different operating systems, or as a non-portable sliced or
simple disk:

Enter the desired format [cdsdisk,sliced,simple,q,?]

(default: cdsdisk)

Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the
default format, cdsdisk.
At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private
region size of 65536 blocks (32MB). Press Return to confirm that you want
to use the default value, or enter a different value. (The maximum value that
you can specify is 524288 blocks.)

Enter desired private region length [<privlen>,q,?]

(default: 65536)

If you entered cdsdisk as the format, you are prompted for the action to be
taken if the disk cannot be converted this format:

Do you want to use sliced as the format should cdsdisk fail?

[y,n,q,?] (default: y)

If you enter y, and it is not possible to encapsulate the disk as a CDS disk, it
is encapsulated as a sliced disk. Otherwise, the encapsulation fails.
120 Administering disks
Adding a disk to VxVM

vxdiskadm then proceeds to encapsulate the disks. You should now reboot
your system at the earliest possible opportunity, for example by running this
command:

# shutdown -g0 -y -i6

The /etc/vfstab file is updated to include the volume devices that are used
to mount any encapsulated file systems. You may need to update any other
references in backup scripts, databases, or manually created swap devices.
The original /etc/vfstab file is saved as /etc/vfstab.prevm.
15 If you choose not to encapsulate the disk vxdiskadm asks if you want to
initialize the disk instead. Enter y to confirm this:
Instead of encapsulating, initialize? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) yvxdiskadm now
confirms those disks that are being initialized and added to VxVM control
with messages similar to the following. In addition, you may be prompted to
perform surface analysis.

VxVM INFO V-5-2-205 Initializing device device name.

16 You can now choose whether the disk is to be formatted as a CDS disk that is
portable between different operating systems, or as a non-portable sliced or
simple disk:

Enter the desired format [cdsdisk,sliced,simple,q,?]

(default: cdsdisk)

Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the
default format, cdsdisk.
17 At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private
region size of 65536 blocks (32MB). Press Return to confirm that you want
to use the default value, or enter a different value. (The maximum value that
you can specify is 524288 blocks.)
vxdiskadm then proceeds to add the disks.

VxVM INFO V-5-2-88 Adding disk device device name to disk group
disk group name with disk name disk name.
.
.
.
 Administering disks 121
Adding a disk to VxVM

18 If you choose not to use the default disk names, vxdiskadm prompts you to
enter the disk name.
19 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to continue to initialize
more disks (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Add or initialize other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

The default layout for disks can be changed.

See “Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes” on page 113.

Disk reinitialization
You can reinitialize a disk that has previously been initialized for use by VxVM
by putting it under VxVM control as you would a new disk.
See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.

Warning: Reinitialization does not preserve data on the disk. If you want to
reinitialize the disk, make sure that it does not contain data that should be
preserved.

If the disk you want to add has been used before, but not with VxVM, you can
encapsulate the disk to preserve its information. If the disk you want to add has
previously been under the control of Solaris Volume Manager, you can preserve
the data it contains on a VxVM disk by the process of conversion.
For detailed information about migrating volumes, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
122 Administering disks
RAM disk support in VxVM

Using vxdiskadd to put a disk under VxVM control

To use the vxdiskadd command to put a disk under VxVM control.
◆ Type the following command:

# vxdiskadd disk

For example, to initialize the second disk on the first controller:

# vxdiskadd c0t1d0

The vxdiskadd command examines your disk to determine whether it has

been initialized and also checks for disks that have been added to VxVM, and
for other conditions.
The vxdiskadd command also checks for disks that can be encapsulated.
See “Encapsulating a disk” on page 124.
If you are adding an uninitialized disk, warning and error messages are
displayed on the console by the vxdiskadd command. Ignore these messages.
These messages should not appear after the disk has been fully initialized;
the vxdiskadd command displays a success message when the initialization
completes.
The interactive dialog for adding a disk using vxdiskadd is similar to that for
vxdiskadm.

See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.

RAM disk support in VxVM

Some systems support the creation of RAM disks. A RAM disk is a device made
from system memory that looks like a small disk device. Often, the contents of a
RAM disk are erased when the system is rebooted. RAM disks that are erased on
reboot prevent VxVM from identifying physical disks. This is because information
stored on the physical disks (now erased on reboot) is used to identify the disk.
nopriv devices have a special feature to support RAM disks: a volatile option
which indicates to VxVM that the device contents do not survive reboots. Volatile
devices receive special treatment on system startup. If a volume is mirrored,
plexes made from volatile devices are always recovered by copying data from
nonvolatile plexes.
To use a RAM disk with VxVM, both block and character device nodes must exist
for the RAM disk.
 Administering disks 123
RAM disk support in VxVM

To create a RAM disk with VxVM

1 Create the RAM disk:

# ramdiskadm -a ramdiskname size

2 Create links to the RAM disk:

# ln -s /dev/ramdisk/ramdiskname /dev/dsk/ramdiskname
# ln -s /dev/rramdisk/rramdiskname /dev/rdsk/rramdiskname

3 Add the RAM disk as a foreign device to VxVM:

# vxddladm addforeign blockpath=/dev/ramdiskname

charpath=/dev/rramdiskname

4 Define the RAM disk using the vxdisk define command:

# vxdisk scandisks
# vxdisk define ramdiskname type=nopriv volatile len=size

5 Add the RAM disk to a diskgroup:

# vxdg -g diskgroup adddisk ramdiskname

Note: An existing diskgroup must exist in order to validate configuration

copies.

6 Create VxVM volumes on the RAM disk:

# vxassist -g diskgroup make volume size ramdiskname

Normally, VxVM does not start volumes that are formed entirely from plexes with
volatile subdisks. That is because there is no plex that is guaranteed to contain
the most recent volume contents.
Some RAM disks are used in situations where all volume contents are recreated
after reboot. In these situations, you can force volumes formed from RAM disks
to be started at reboot by using the following command:

# vxvol set startopts=norecov volume

This option can be used only with volumes of type gen.

See the vxvol(1M) manual page.
124 Administering disks
Encapsulating a disk

Encapsulating a disk
Warning: Encapsulating a disk requires that the system be rebooted several times.
Schedule performance of this procedure for a time when this does not
inconvenience users.

This section describes how to encapsulate a disk for use in VxVM. Encapsulation
preserves any existing data on the disk when the disk is placed under VxVM
control.
To prevent the encapsulation from failing, make sure that the following conditions
apply:
■ The disk has two free partitions for the public and private regions.
■ The disk has an s2 slice.
■ The disk has a small amount of free space (at least 1 megabyte at the beginning
or end of the disk) that does not belong to any partition. If the disk being
encapsulated is the root disk, and this does not have sufficient free space
available, a similar sized portion of the swap partition is used instead.
Only encapsulate a root disk if you also intend to mirror it. There is no benefit in
root-disk encapsulation for its own sake.
See “Rootability” on page 129.
Use the format or fdisk commands to obtain a printout of the root disk partition
table before you encapsulate a root disk. For more information, see the appropriate
manual pages. You may need this information should you subsequently need to
recreate the original root disk.
You cannot grow or shrink any volume (rootvol, usrvol, varvol, optvol, swapvol,
and so on) that is associated with an encapsulated root disk. This is because these
volumes map to physical partitions on the disk, and these partitions must be
contiguous.
When the boot disk is encapsulated or mirrored, a device path alias is added to
the NVRAMRC in the SPARC EEPROM. These device aliases can be used to set the
system's boot device.
For more information, see the devalias and boot-device settings in the SUN
documentation.
 Administering disks 125
Encapsulating a disk

Warning: If the root disk is encapsulated and the dump device is covered by the
swap volume, it is not safe to use the savecore -L operation because this
overwrites the swap area. Configure a dedicated dump device on a partition other
than the swap area.

To encapsulate a disk for use in VxVM

1 Select Encapsulate one or more disks from the vxdiskadm main menu.
Your system may use device names that differ from the examples shown here.
At the following prompt, enter the disk device name for the disks to be
encapsulated:

Select disk devices to encapsulate:

[<pattern-list>,all,list,q,?] device name

The pattern-list can be a single disk, or a series of disks and/or controllers

(with optional targets). If pattern-list consists of multiple items, those items
must be separated by white space.
If you do not know the address (device name) of the disk to be encapsulated,
enter l or list at the prompt for a complete listing of available disks.
2 To continue the operation, enter y (or press Return) at the following prompt:

Here is the disk selected. Output format: [Device]

device name

Continue operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

3 Select the disk group to which the disk is to be added at the following prompt:

You can choose to add this disk to an existing disk group or to

a new disk group. To create a new disk group, select a disk
group name that does not yet exist.

Which disk group [<group>,list,q,?]

4 At the following prompt, either press Return to accept the default disk name
or enter a disk name:

Use a default disk name for the disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

126 Administering disks
Encapsulating a disk

5 To continue with the operation, enter y (or press Return) at the following
prompt:

The selected disks will be encapsulated and added to the

disk group name disk group with default disk names.

device name

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

6 To confirm that encapsulation should proceed, enter y (or press Return) at

the following prompt:

The following disk has been selected for encapsulation.

Output format: [Device]

device name

Continue with encapsulation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

A message similar to the following confirms that the disk is being encapsulated
for use in VxVM and tells you that a reboot is needed:

The disk device device name will be encapsulated and added to

the disk group diskgroup with the disk name diskgroup01.

7 For non-root disks, you can now choose whether the disk is to be formatted
as a CDS disk that is portable between different operating systems, or as a
non-portable sliced disk:

Enter the desired format [cdsdisk,sliced,q,?]

(default: cdsdisk)

Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the
default format, cdsdisk. Note that only the sliced format is suitable for use
with root, boot or swap disks.
8 At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private
region size of 65536 blocks (32MB). Press Return to confirm that you want
to use the default value, or enter a different value. (The maximum value that
you can specify is 524288 blocks.)

Enter desired private region length [<privlen>,q,?]

(default: 65536)
 Administering disks 127
Encapsulating a disk

9 If you entered cdsdisk as the format in step 7, you are prompted for the
action to be taken if the disk cannot be converted this format:

Do you want to use sliced as the format should cdsdisk

fail? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

If you enter y, and it is not possible to encapsulate the disk as a CDS disk, it
is encapsulated as a sliced disk. Otherwise, the encapsulation fails.
10 vxdiskadm then proceeds to encapsulate the disks. You should now reboot
your system at the earliest possible opportunity, for example by running this
command:

# shutdown -g0 -y -i6

The /etc/vfstab file is updated to include the volume devices that are used
to mount any encapsulated file systems. You may need to update any other
references in backup scripts, databases, or manually created swap devices.
The original /etc/vfstab file is saved as /etc/vfstab.prevm.
11 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to encapsulate more
disks (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Encapsulate other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) n

The default layout that is used to encapsulate disks can be changed.

See “Displaying or changing default disk layout attributes” on page 113.

Failure of disk encapsulation

Under some circumstances, encapsulation of a disk can fail because there is not
enough free space available on the disk to accommodate the private region. If
there is insufficient free space , the encapsulation process ends abruptly with an
error message similar to the following:

VxVM ERROR V-5-2-338 The encapsulation operation failed with the

following error:
It is not possible to encapsulate device, for the following
reason:
<VxVM vxslicer ERROR V-5-1-1108 Unsupported disk layout.>

One solution is to configure the disk with the nopriv format.

See “Using nopriv disks for encapsulation” on page 128.
128 Administering disks
Encapsulating a disk

Using nopriv disks for encapsulation

Encapsulation converts existing partitions on a specified disk to volumes. If any
partitions contain file systems, their /etc/vfstab entries are modified so the file
systems are mounted on volumes instead.
Disk encapsulation requires that enough free space be available on the disk (by
default, 32 megabytes) for storing the private region that VxVM uses for disk
identification and configuration information. This free space cannot be included
in any other partitions.
See the vxencap(1M) manual page.
You can encapsulate a disk that does not have space available for the VxVM private
region partition by using the vxdisk utility. To do this, configure the disk as a
nopriv device that does not have a private region.

The drawback with using nopriv devices is that VxVM cannot track changes in
the address or controller of the disk. Normally, VxVM uses identifying information
stored in the private region on the physical disk to track changes in the location
of a physical disk. Because nopriv devices do not have private regions and have
no identifying information stored on the physical disk, tracking cannot occur.
One use of nopriv devices is to encapsulate a disk so that you can use VxVM to
move data off the disk. When space has been made available on the disk, remove
the nopriv device, and encapsulate the disk as a standard disk device.
A disk group cannot be formed entirely from nopriv devices. This is because
nopriv devices do not provide space for storing disk group configuration
information. Configuration information must be stored on at least one disk in the
disk group.

Creating a nopriv disk for encapsulation

Warning: Do not use nopriv disks to encapsulate a root disk. If insufficient free
space exists on the root disk for the private region, part of the swap area can be
used instead.
 Administering disks 129
Rootability

To create a nopriv disk for encapsulation

1 If it does not exist already, set up a partition on the disk for the area that you
want to access using VxVM.
2 Use the following command to map a VM disk to the partition:

# vxdisk define partition-device type=nopriv

where partition-device is the basename of the device in the /dev/dsk directory.

For example, to map partition 3 of disk device c0t4d0, use the following
command:

# vxdisk define c0t4d0s3 type=nopriv

Creating volumes for other partitions on a nopriv disk

To create volumes for other partitions on a nopriv disk
1 Add the partition to a disk group.
2 Determine where the partition resides within the encapsulated partition.
3 If no data is to be preserved on the partition, use vxassist to create a volume
with the required length.

Warning: By default, vxassist re-initializes the data area of a volume that it

creates. If there is data to be preserved on the partition, do not use vxassist.
Instead, create the volume with vxmake and start the volume with the
command vxvol init active.

Rootability
VxVM can place various files from the root file system, swap device, and other file
systems on the root disk under VxVM control. This is called rootability. The root
disk (that is, the disk containing the root file system) can be put under VxVM
control through the process of encapsulation.
The root disk can be encapsulated using the vxdiskadm command.
See “Encapsulating a disk” on page 124.
Once encapsulated, the root disk can also be mirrored by using the vxdiskadm.
command.
See “Mirroring an encapsulated root disk” on page 132.
130 Administering disks
Rootability

Encapsulation converts existing partitions on that disk to volumes. Once under

VxVM control, the root and swap devices appear as volumes and provide the same
characteristics as other VxVM volumes. A volume that is configured for use as a
swap area is referred to as a swap volume, and a volume that contains the root
file system is referred to as a root volume.

Note: Only encapsulate your root disk if you also intend to mirror it. There is no
benefit in root-disk encapsulation for its own sake.

You can mirror the rootvol, and swapvol volumes, as well as other parts of the
root disk that are required for a successful boot of the system (for example, /usr).
This provides complete redundancy and recovery capability in the event of disk
failure. Without mirroring, the loss of the root, swap, or usr partition prevents
the system from being booted from surviving disks.
Mirroring disk drives that are critical to booting ensures that no single disk failure
renders the system unusable. A suggested configuration is to mirror the critical
disk onto another available disk (using the vxdiskadm command). If the disk
containing root and swap partitions fails, the system can be rebooted from a disk
containing mirrors of these partitions.
Recovering a system after the failure of an encapsulated root disk requires the
application of special procedures.
See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

Booting root volumes

When the operating system is booted, the root file system and swap area must be
available for use before the vxconfigd daemon can load the VxVM configuration
or start any volumes. During system startup, the operating system must see the
rootvol and swapvol volumes as regular partitions so that it can access them as
ordinary disk partitions.
Due to this restriction, each of the rootvol and swapvol plexes must be created
from contiguous space on a disk that is mapped to a single partition. It is not
possible to stripe, concatenate or span the plex of a rootvol or swapvol volume
that is used for booting. Any mirrors of these plexes that are potentially bootable
also cannot be striped, concatenated or spanned.
For information on how to configure your system BIOS to boot from a disk other
than the default boot disk, refer to the documentation from your hardware vendor.
 Administering disks 131
Rootability

Boot-time volume restrictions

When the operating system is booted, the root file system and swap area must be
available for use before the vxconfigd daemon can load the VxVM configuration
or start any volumes. During system startup, the operating system must see the
rootvol and swapvol volumes as regular partitions so that it can access them as
ordinary disk partitions.
Due to this restriction, each of the rootvol and swapvol plexes must be created
from contiguous space on a disk that is mapped to a single partition. It is not
possible to stripe, concatenate or span the plex of a rootvol or swapvol volume
that is used for booting. Any mirrors of these plexes that are potentially bootable
also cannot be striped, concatenated or spanned.
Volumes on the root disk have the following restrictions on their configuration:
■ For the x64 platform, root encapsulation is supported for Update 1 and later
releases of the Solaris 10 OS that include the GRUB boat loader.
■ The root volume (rootvol) must exist in the disk group that is chosen to be
the boot disk group, bootdg. Although other volumes named rootvol can be
created in other disk groups, only the rootvol in bootdg can be used to boot
the system.
■ If the volumes that are required to boot the system span multiple disks, all
these disks must be in the boot disk group.
■ The rootvol and swapvol volumes always have minor device numbers 0 and
1 respectively. Other volumes on the root disk do not have specific minor
device numbers.
■ Restricted mirrors of volumes on the root disk have overlay partitions created
for them. An overlay partition is one that exactly includes the disk space
occupied by the restricted mirror. During boot, before the rootvol, varvol,
usrvol and swapvol volumes are fully configured, the default volume
configuration uses the overlay partition to access the data on the disk.
■ Although it is possible to add a striped mirror to a rootvol device for
performance reasons, you cannot stripe the primary plex or any mirrors of
rootvol that may be needed for system recovery or booting purposes if the
primary plex fails.
■ rootvol and swapvol cannot be spanned or contain a primary plex with
multiple noncontiguous subdisks. You cannot grow or shrink any volume
associated with an encapsulated boot disk (rootvol, usrvol, varvol, optvol,
swapvol, and so on) because these map to a physical underlying partition on
the disk and must be contiguous. A workaround is to unencapsulate the boot
132 Administering disks
Rootability

disk, repartition the boot disk as desired (growing or shrinking partitions as

needed), and then re-encapsulating.
■ When mirroring parts of the boot disk, the disk being mirrored to must be
large enough to hold the data on the original plex, or mirroring may not work.
■ The volumes on the root disk cannot use dirty region logging (DRL).
In addition to these requirements, it is a good idea to have at least one contiguous,
(cylinder-aligned if appropriate) mirror for each of the volumes for root, usr, var,
opt and swap. This makes it easier to convert these from volumes back to regular
disk partitions (during an operating system upgrade, for example).

Creating redundancy for the root disk

You can create an active backup of the root disk, in case of a single disk failure.
Use the vxrootadm command to create a mirror of the booted root disk, and other
volumes in the root disk group.
To create a back-up root disk
◆ Create a mirror with the vxrootadm addmirror command.

# vxrootadm [-v] [-Y] addmirror targetdisk

Creating an archived back-up root disk for disaster recovery

In addition to having an active backup of the root disk, you can keep an archived
back-up copy of the bootable root disk. Use the vxrootadm command to create a
snapshot of the booted root disk, which creates a mirror and breaks it off into a
separate disk group.
To create an archived back-up root disk
1 Add a disk to the booted root disk group.
2 Create a snapshot of the booted root disk.

# vxrootadm [-v] mksnap targetdisk targetdg

3 Archive the back-up root disk group for disaster recovery.

Mirroring an encapsulated root disk

VxVM allows you to mirror the root volume and other areas needed for booting
onto another disk. Mirroring the root volume enables you to recover from a failure
of your root disk by replacing it with one of its mirrors.
 Administering disks 133
Rootability

For Sun x64 systems, mirroring a root disk creates a GRUB boot menu entry for
the Primary and Alternate (mirror) Boot disk.
For Sun SPARC systems, after mirroring the root disk, you can configure the
system to boot from the alternate boot drive to recover from a primary boot drive
failure.
See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide for more information
about recovering from boot drive failure.
To mirror your root disk onto another disk
1 Choose a disk that is at least as large as the existing root disk.
2 If the selected disk is not already under VxVM control, use the vxdiskadd or
vxdiskadm command, or the Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA) to add
it to the bootdg disk group. Ensure that you specify the sliced format for
the disk.
3 Select Mirror Volumes on a Disk from the vxdiskadm main menu, or use the
VEA to create a mirror of the root disk. Doing so automatically invokes the
vxmirror command if the mirroring operation is performed on the root disk.

Alternatively, to mirror only those file systems on the root disk that are
required to boot the system, run the following command:

# vxmirror altboot_disk

where altboot_disk is the disk media name of the mirror for the root disk.
vxmirror creates a mirror for rootvol (the volume for the root file system
on an alternate disk). The alternate root disk is configured to enable booting
from it if the primary root disk fails.
4 Monitor the progress of the mirroring operation with the vxtask list
command.

# vxtask list
TASKID PTID TYPE/STATE PCT PROGRESS
161 PARENT/R 0.00% 3/0(1) VXRECOVER dg01 dg
162 162 ATCOPY/R 04.77% 0/41945715/2000896 PLXATT home home-01 dg

Booting from alternate boot disks

If the root disk is encapsulated and mirrored, you can use one of its mirrors to
boot the system if the primary boot disk fails. This procedure differs between
Solaris SPARC systems and Solaris x64 systems.
134 Administering disks
Rootability

Booting from an alternate (mirror) boot disk on Solaris x64

systems
On a Solaris x64 system, the alternate boot disk is added to the GRUB boot menu
when a boot disk is mirrored. If one root disk fails, the system stays up and lets
you replace the disk. No reboot is required to perform this maintenance with
internal SAS controllers and other CRU-type drives that are hot swappable. Replace
the disk, then rescan with the vxdctl enable command to discover the
replacement.
Alternatively, the bootpath can be redefined in the EEPROM without changing
the GRUB configuration.
See “The boot process on x64 systems ” on page 134.
Console access and the ability to select from the GRUB menu is required for the
following procedure. The system should not have rebooted because of plex failure,
but may have rebooted for other reasons.
To boot from an alternate boot disk on a Solaris x64 system
1 Select the "Alternate" GRUB menu entry:

title Solaris 10 11/06 s10x_u3wos_10 x64 <VxVM: Alternate Boot Disk>

root (hd0,0,a)
kernel /platform/i64pc/multiboot
module /platform/i64pc/boot_archive.alt

2 After the system has booted, replace the failed drive.

See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

The boot process on x64 systems

From Update 1 of the Solaris 10 OS, x64 systems are configured to use the GRUB
boot loader. The devices from which a system may be booted are defined in the
GRUB configuration file, /boot/grub/menu.lst. From the GRUB menu, you can
select from the available bootable partitions that are known to the system. By
default, the system will boot from the device that is defined by the bootpath
variable in the EEPROM.

Defining root disk mirrors as bootable

After creating a root disk mirror, you can make it available for booting.
On Sun x64 systems, VxVM automatically creates a GRUB menu entry for the
alternate boot disk when the boot disk is mirrored. During the booting process,
select the alternate GRUB menu entry from the system console.
 Administering disks 135
Rootability

An alternate method is to change the 'default' GRUB menu setting in the

/boot/grub/menu.lst file to select this entry automatically during the booting
process.
For details, see the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

Booting from an alternate boot disk on Solaris SPARC systems

If the root disk is encapsulated and mirrored, you can use one of its mirrors to
boot the system if the primary boot disk fails.
On a Solaris SPARC system, booting from an alternate boot disk requires that
some EEPROM settings are changed.
See “The boot process on Solaris SPARC systems” on page 135.

The boot process on Solaris SPARC systems

A Solaris SPARC® system prompts for a boot command unless the autoboot flag
has been set in the nonvolatile storage area used by the firmware. Machines with
older PROMs have different prompts than that for the newer V2 and V3 versions.
These newer versions of PROM are also known as OpenBoot PROMs (OBP). The
boot command syntax for the newer types of PROMs is:

ok boot [OBP names] [filename] [boot-flags]

The OBP names specify the OpenBoot PROM designations. For example, on Desktop
SPARC systems, the designation sbus/esp@0,800000/sd@3,0:a indicates a SCSI
disk (sd) at target 3, lun 0 on the SCSI bus, with the esp host bus adapter plugged
into slot 0.
You can use Veritas Volume Manager boot disk alias names instead of OBP names.
Example aliases are vx-rootdisk or vx-disk01. To list the available boot devices,
use the devalias command at the OpenBoot prompt.
The filename argument is the name of a file that contains the kernel. The default
is /kernel/unix in the root partition. If necessary, you can specify another
program (such as /stand/diag) by specifying the -a flag. (Some versions of the
firmware allow the default filename to be saved in the nonvolatile storage area
of the system.)

Warning: Do not boot a system running VxVM with rootability enabled using all
the defaults presented by the -a flag.

Boot flags are not interpreted by the boot program. The boot program passes all
boot-flags to the file identified by filename.
136 Administering disks
Rootability

See the kadb (1M) manual page.

See the kernel (1) manual page.

Mirroring other file systems on the root disk

There may be other volumes on the root disk, such as volumes for /home or /tmp
file systems. If necessary, these can be mirrored separately using the vxassist
utility. For example, if you have a /home file system on a volume homevol, you can
mirror it to alternate_disk using the command:

# vxassist mirror homevol alternate_disk

If you do not have space for a copy of some of these file systems on your alternate
boot disk, you can mirror them to other disks. You can also span or stripe these
other volumes across other disks attached to your system.
To list all volumes on your primary boot disk, use the command:

# vxprint -t -v -e'aslist.aslist.sd_disk="boot_disk"'

Encapsulating SAN disks

Most fourth generation servers do not have local storage. They support booting
from a SAN; that is, booting directly from a multi-pathed storage array.
A Solaris system may be booted from a SAN disk under the following conditions:
■ For Solaris 9, the operating system must first be installed on an internal boot
disk. The ufsdump and ufsrestore commands can then be used to create a
bootable SAN disk. For more information, refer to the Sun document
Automating the Installation of an FC-Fabric SAN-Booted System at
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/fc_fabric_san.html.
■ For Solaris 10, the operating system can also be installed directly onto a fabric
disk in a SAN environment.
Veritas Volume Manager can encapsulate a bootable SAN disk provided that the
disk is listed as being supported for this purpose in the Hardware Compatibility
List (HCL) on the support site at http://support.veritas.com.
For some disk arrays, special hardware configuration may be required to allow a
system to be booted from one of the LUNs in the array. Refer to the documentation
supplied by the array vendor for more information. Having configured the disk
array so that you can boot your system from it, you can proceed to encapsulate
it using VxVM.
 Administering disks 137
Rootability

To migrate from an internal boot disk to a SAN boot disk:

1 Verify that the HCL lists the target SAN disk as being supported for SAN
booting.
2 Use Add or initialize one or more disks from the vxdiskadm main menu,
or the VEA to add the target SAN disk to the boot disk group (aliased as
bootdg).
3 Use Mirror Volumes on a Disk from the vxdiskadm main menu, or the VEA
to create a mirror of the root disk on the target disk.
4 Boot from the mirror disk to verify that the system is still bootable.
Once you have booted the system from the SAN disk, you can mirror it to
another SAN disk that has been added to the boot disk group.
If required, you can remove the plexes of the original boot disk by using the
vxplex command. For example, the following command removes the plexes
rootvol-01, swapvol-01, and home-01 that are configured on the boot disk:

# vxplex -o rm dis rootvol-01 swapvol-01 home-01

Best practices and guidelines for booting from SAN LUNS

When using an A/A array to boot from a SAN, complete the following steps in the
order presented:
■ Configure SAN boot LUNs with the lowest host target id. For example, target
id 0, 1.
■ Encapsulate the root disk (SAN LUN) into VxVM.
■ Mirror the encapsulated root disk to another LUN on the same or different
enclosure.
■ Create boot aliases/sequence so that server will boot from an alternate path
if the primary boot path is not available.
When using A/P, A/P-F, and ALUA arrays to boot from a SAN, the following
additional best practices need to be applied.
■ If the SAN Boot LUN and its mirror are on the same enclosure, they should
have the same default owner (A/P array) or optimized path (ALUA) on the
same controller. Otherwise, there are issues with "mirroring" the SAN boot
LUN with its mirror.
■ Boot aliases/sequence should be configured on the paths of the array controller
which is the LUN owner (A/P and A/PF ) and optimized path (ALUA) for the
SAN boot LUNs and its mirror.
138 Administering disks
Rootability

Administering an encapsulated boot disk

The vxrootadm command lets you grow an encapsulated boot disk or make a
snapshot of it.
vxrootadm has the following format:

vxrootadm [-v] [-g dg] [-s srcdisk] ... keyword arg ...

Valid keyword and argument combinations are as follows:

■ vxrootadm -s srcdisk mksnap destdisk newdg

■ vxrootadm -s srcdisk grow destdisk volumename=newsize ...

■ vxrootadm grow continue

See “Growing an encapsulated boot disk” on page 139.

vxrootadm includes the following options:

vxrootadm [-v ] [-D] These are verbose and debug message

options and are optional.

vxrootadm [-g dg] The disk group argument is optional;

however, it is only used with the
mksnap keyword or during phase 1 of
a grow operation.

Creating a snapshot of an encapsulated boot disk

When you create a snapshot of an encapsulated boot disk, the vxrootadm command
has the following format:
vxrootadm -s srcdisk [-g dg] mksnap destdisk newdg

The target disk for the snapshot must be as large (or bigger) than the source disk
(boot disk). You must use a new disk group name to associate the target disk.
To create a snapshot of an encapsulated boot disk
◆ Enter the following command:

# vxrootadm -s disk_0 -g rootdg mksnap disk_1 snapdg

In this example, disk_0 is the encapsulated boot disk, and rootdg is the
associate boot disk group. disk_1 is the target disk, and snapdg is the new
disk group name
See “Booting from alternate boot disks” on page 133.
 Administering disks 139
Rootability

Growing an encapsulated boot disk

When you grow an encapsulated boot disk, the format of the grow keyword depends
on whether the operation can be completed in one or more phases.
To grow a non-booted root disk created as a snapshot or using the mksnap keyword,
use the following format.
vxrootadm -s srcdisk [-g dg] grow destdisk volumename=newsize
volumename=newsize ...

Because the disk is not the currently booted root disk, you can complete all
operations in a single phase without a reboot.
Growing a booted root disk requires four phases. For phase 1, use the command
above. For phases 2 to 4, specify vxrootadm grow continue.
The target disk for the grow operation must be of equal or greater size of the
source disk (boot disk). The grow operation can be performed on the active boot
disk or a snapshot boot disk.
To grow an active encapsulated boot disk
1 To complete the grow operation on the active boot disk requires three reboots
to complete the grow operations for the selected volume (rootvol, usrvol,
or swapvol).
2 Enter the following command:

# vxrootadm -s disk_0 -g rootdg grow disk_1 rootvol=80g

In this example, disk_0 is an encapsulated boot disk associated with the boot
disk group rootdg. disk_1 is the target disk and rootvol is a 60g volume to
be grown.
You are prompted when a reboot is required (with specific command needed),
and how to continue the grow operation after the reboot is completed.
When the grow operation completes, the target disk is the active boot disk,
the volume has grown to the selected size, and the source boot disk is removed
from the boot disk group (rootdg).
140 Administering disks
Unencapsulating the root disk

To grow a snapshot (not active) encapsulated boot disk

1 For a grow operation on the snapshot (not active) boot disk, no reboots are
required to complete the grow operations for the selected volume (rootvol,
usrvol, or swapvol).

2 Enter the following command:

# vxrootadm -s disk_1 -g snapdg grow disk_2 rootvol=80g

In this example, disk_1 is a snapshot encapsulated boot disk associated with

the disk group snapdg. disk_2 is the target disk and rootvol is a 60g volume
to be grown.
When the grow operation completes, the target disk volume is grown to the
indicated size, and the source disk is removed from the disk group (snapdg).
See “Booting from alternate boot disks” on page 133.

Unencapsulating the root disk

You can use the vxunroot utility to remove rootability support from a system.
This makes root, swap, home and other file systems on the root disk directly
accessible through disk partitions, instead of through volume devices.
The vxunroot utility also makes the necessary configuration changes to allow the
system to boot without any dependency on VxVM.
Only the volumes that were present on the root disk when it was encapsulated
can be unencapsulated using vxunroot. Before running vxunroot, evacuate all
other volumes that were created on the root disk after it was encapsulated.
Do not remove the plexes on the root disk that correspond to the original disk
partitions.

Warning: This procedure requires a reboot of the system.

 Administering disks 141
Displaying disk information

To remove rootability from a system

1 Use the vxplex command to remove all the plexes of the volumes rootvol,
swapvol, usr, var, opt and home on the disks other than the root disk.

For example, the following command removes the plexes rootvol-02,

swapvol-02, and home-02 that are configured on the boot disk mirror:

# vxplex -g bootdg -o rm dis rootvol-02 swapvol-02 home-02

2 Run the vxunroot utility:

# vxunroot

vxunroot does not perform any conversion to disk partitions if any plexes
remain on other disks.

Displaying disk information

Before you use a disk, you need to know if it has been initialized and placed under
VxVM control. You also need to know if the disk is part of a disk group, because
you cannot create volumes on a disk that is not part of a disk group. The vxdisk
list command displays device names for all recognized disks, the disk names,
the disk group names associated with each disk, and the status of each disk.
To display information on all disks that are known to VxVM
◆ Type the following command:

# vxdisk list

VxVM returns a display similar to the following:

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

c0t0d0s2 auto:sliced mydg04 mydg online
c1t0d0s2 auto:sliced mydg03 mydg online
c1t1d0s2 auto:sliced - - online invalid
enc0_2 auto:sliced mydg02 mydg online
enc0_3 auto:sliced mydg05 mydg online
sena0_0 auto:sliced - - online thinrclm
sena0_1 auto:sliced - - online

The phrase online invalid in the STATUS line indicates that a disk has not
yet been added to VxVM control. These disks may or may not have been
initialized by VxVM previously. Disks that are listed as online are already
under VxVM control.
142 Administering disks
Removing disks

To display information about an individual disk

◆ Type the following command:

# vxdisk [-v] list diskname

The -v option causes the command to additionally list all tags and tag values
that are defined for the disk. Without this option, no tags are displayed.

Displaying disk information with vxdiskadm

Displaying disk information shows you which disks are initialized, to which disk
groups they belong, and the disk status. The list command displays device names
for all recognized disks, the disk names, the disk group names associated with
each disk, and the status of each disk.
To display disk information
1 Start the vxdiskadm program, and select list (List disk information)
from the main menu.
2 At the following display, enter the address of the disk you want to see, or
enter all for a list of all disks:

List disk information

Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/ListDisk

VxVM INFO V-5-2-475 Use this menu operation to display a list of

disks. You can also choose to list detailed information about
the disk at a specific disk device address.

Enter disk device or "all" [<address>,all,q,?] (default: all)

■ If you enter all, VxVM displays the device name, disk name, group, and
status.
■ If you enter the address of the device for which you want information,
complete disk information (including the device name, the type of disk,
and information about the public and private areas of the disk) is displayed.
Once you have examined this information, press Return to return to the main
menu.

Removing disks
You must disable a disk group before you can remove the last disk in that group.
 Administering disks 143
Removing disks

See “Disabling a disk group” on page 283.

As an alternative to disabling the disk group, you can destroy the disk group.
See “Destroying a disk group” on page 284.
You can remove a disk from a system and move it to another system if the disk is
failing or has failed.
To remove a disk
1 Stop all activity by applications to volumes that are configured on the disk
that is to be removed. Unmount file systems and shut down databases that
are configured on the volumes.
2 Use the following command to stop the volumes:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] stop vol1 vol2 ...

3 Move the volumes to other disks or back up the volumes. To move a volume,
use vxdiskadm to mirror the volume on one or more disks, then remove the
original copy of the volume. If the volumes are no longer needed, they can
be removed instead of moved.
4 Check that any data on the disk has either been moved to other disks or is no
longer needed.
5 Select Remove a disk from the vxdiskadm main menu.
6 At the following prompt, enter the disk name of the disk to be removed:

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg01

7 If there are any volumes on the disk, VxVM asks you whether they should be
evacuated from the disk. If you wish to keep the volumes, answer y. Otherwise,
answer n.
144 Administering disks
Removing disks

8 At the following verification prompt, press Return to continue:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-284 Requested operation is to remove disk

mydg01 from group mydg.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

The vxdiskadm utility removes the disk from the disk group and displays the
following success message:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-268 Removal of disk mydg01 is complete.

You can now remove the disk or leave it on your system as a replacement.
9 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to remove other disks
(y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Remove another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Removing a disk with subdisks

You can remove a disk on which some subdisks are defined. For example, you can
consolidate all the volumes onto one disk. If you use the vxdiskadm program to
remove a disk, you can choose to move volumes off that disk.
Some subdisks are not movable. A subdisk may not be movable for one of the
following reasons:
■ There is not enough space on the remaining disks in the subdisks disk group.
■ Plexes or striped subdisks cannot be allocated on different disks from existing
plexes or striped subdisks in the volume.
If the vxdiskadm program cannot move some subdisks, remove some plexes from
some disks to free more space before proceeding with the disk removal operation.
See “Removing a volume” on page 392.
See “Taking plexes offline” on page 307.
 Administering disks 145
Removing a disk from VxVM control

To remove a disk with subdisks

1 Run the vxdiskadm program and select Remove a disk from the main menu.
If the disk is used by some subdisks, the following message is displayed:

VxVM ERROR V-5-2-369 The following volumes currently use part of

disk mydg02:

home usrvol

Volumes must be moved from mydg02 before it can be removed.

Move volumes to other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

2 Choose y to move all subdisks off the disk, if possible.

Removing a disk with no subdisks

To remove a disk that contains no subdisks from its disk group
◆ Run the vxdiskadm program and select Remove a disk from the main menu,
and respond to the prompts as shown in this example to remove mydg02:

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg02

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-284 Requested operation is to remove disk

mydg02 from group mydg.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

VxVM INFO V-5-2-268 Removal of disk mydg02 is complete.
Clobber disk headers? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y

Enter y to remove the disk completely from VxVM control. If you do not want
to remove the disk completely from VxVM control, enter n.

Removing a disk from VxVM control

After removing a disk from a disk group, you can permanently remove it from
Veritas Volume Manager control.
146 Administering disks
Removing and replacing disks

Warning: The vxdiskunsetup command removes a disk from Veritas Volume

Manager control by erasing the VxVM metadata on the disk. To prevent data loss,
any data on the disk should first be evacuated from the disk. The vxdiskunsetup
command should only be used by a system administrator who is trained and
knowledgeable about Veritas Volume Manager.

To remove a disk from VxVM control

◆ Type the following command:

# /usr/lib/vxvm/bin/vxdiskunsetup c#t#d#

See the vxdiskunsetup(1m) manual page.

Removing and replacing disks

A replacement disk should have the same disk geometry as the disk that failed.
That is, the replacement disk should have the same bytes per sector, sectors per
track, tracks per cylinder and sectors per cylinder, same number of cylinders, and
the same number of accessible cylinders.
You can use the prtvtoc command to obtain disk information.

Note: You may need to run commands that are specific to the operating system
or disk array before removing a physical disk.

The removal and replacement of a disk in a Sun StorEdgeTM A5x00 or similar

type of array, requires a different procedure.
See “Removing and replacing a disk in a Sun StorEdge A5x00 disk array”
on page 152.
If failures are starting to occur on a disk, but the disk has not yet failed completely,
you can replace the disk. This involves detaching the failed or failing disk from
its disk group, followed by replacing the failed or failing disk with a new one.
Replacing the disk can be postponed until a later date if necessary.
If removing a disk causes a volume to be disabled, you can restart the volume so
that you can restore its data from a backup.
See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.
 Administering disks 147
Removing and replacing disks

To replace a disk
1 Select Remove a disk for replacement from the vxdiskadm main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the name of the disk to be replaced (or enter
list for a list of disks):

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg02

3 When you select a disk to remove for replacement, all volumes that are
affected by the operation are displayed, for example:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-371 The following volumes will lose mirrors

as a result of this operation:

home src

No data on these volumes will be lost.

The following volumes are in use, and will be disabled as a

result of this operation:

mkting

Any applications using these volumes will fail future

accesses. These volumes will require restoration from backup.

Are you sure you want do this? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

To remove the disk, causing the named volumes to be disabled and data to
be lost when the disk is replaced, enter y or press Return.
To abandon removal of the disk, and back up or move the data associated
with the volumes that would otherwise be disabled, enter n or q and press
Return.
For example, to move the volume mkting to a disk other than mydg02, use the
following command.
The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist move mkting \!mydg02

After backing up or moving the data in the volumes, start again from step 1.
148 Administering disks
Removing and replacing disks

4 At the following prompt, either select the device name of the replacement
disk (from the list provided), press Return to choose the default disk, or enter
none if you are going to replace the physical disk:

The following devices are available as replacements:

c0t1d0

You can choose one of these disks now, to replace mydg02.

Select none if you do not wish to select a replacement disk.

Choose a device, or select none

[<device>,none,q,?] (default: c0t1d0)

Do not choose the old disk drive as a replacement even though it appears in
the selection list. If necessary, you can choose to initialize a new disk.
You can enter none if you intend to replace the physical disk.
See “Replacing a failed or removed disk” on page 150.
5 If you chose to replace the disk in step 4, press Return at the following prompt
to confirm this:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-285 Requested operation is to remove mydg02

from group mydg. The removed disk will be replaced with disk device
c0t1d0. Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

vxdiskadm displays the following messages to indicate that the original disk
is being removed:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-265 Removal of disk mydg02 completed

successfully.
VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-260 Proceeding to replace mydg02 with device
c0t1d0.
 Administering disks 149
Removing and replacing disks

6 If the disk was previously an encapsulated root disk, vxdiskadm displays the
following message. Enter y to confirm that you want to reinitialize the disk:

The disk c1t0d0 was a previously encapsulated root disk. Due

to the disk layout that results from root disk encapsulation,
the preferred action is to reinitialize and reorganize this
disk. However, if you have any non-redundant data on this disk
you should not reorganize this disk, as the data will be lost.
Reorganize the disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

Warning: It is recommended that you do not enter n at this prompt. This

results in an invalid VTOC that makes the disk unbootable.

Entering y at the prompt destroys any data that is on the disk. Ensure that
you have at least one valid copy of the data on other disks before proceeding.
7 You can now choose whether the disk is to be formatted as a CDS disk that is
portable between different operating systems, or as a non-portable sliced or
simple disk:

Enter the desired format [cdsdisk,sliced,simple,q,?]

(default: cdsdisk)

Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the
default format, cdsdisk.
8 At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private
region size of 65536 blocks (32 MB). Press Return to confirm that you want
to use the default value, or enter a different value. (The maximum value that
you can specify is 524288 blocks.)

Enter desired private region length [<privlen>,q,?]

(default: 65536)
150 Administering disks
Removing and replacing disks

9 If one of more mirror plexes were moved from the disk, you are now prompted
whether FastResync should be used to resynchronize the plexes:

Use FMR for plex resync? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y

vxdiskadm displays the following success message:
VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-158 Disk replacement completed successfully.

10 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to remove another disk
(y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Remove another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

It is possible to move hot-relocate subdisks back to a replacement disk.

See “Configuring hot-relocation to use only spare disks” on page 438.

Replacing a failed or removed disk

The following procedure describes how to replace a failed or removed disk.
A different procedure is required to remove and replace a disk in a Sun StorEdge
A5x00 or similar type of array.
See “Removing and replacing a disk in a Sun StorEdge A5x00 disk array”
on page 152.
To specify a disk that has replaced a failed or removed disk
1 Select Replace a failed or removed disk from the vxdiskadm main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the name of the disk to be replaced (or enter
list for a list of disks):

Select a removed or failed disk [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg02

3 The vxdiskadm program displays the device names of the disk devices available
for use as replacement disks. Your system may use a device name that differs
from the examples. Enter the device name of the disk or press Return to select
the default device:

The following devices are available as replacements:

c0t1d0 c1t1d0

You can choose one of these disks to replace mydg02.

Choose "none" to initialize another disk to replace mydg02.

Choose a device, or select "none"

[<device>,none,q,?] (default: c0t1d0)
 Administering disks 151
Removing and replacing disks

4 Depending on whether the replacement disk was previously initialized,

perform the appropriate step from the following:
■ If the disk has not previously been initialized, press Return at the following
prompt to replace the disk:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-378 The requested operation is to initialize

disk device c0t1d0 and to then use that device to
replace the removed or failed disk mydg02 in disk group mydg.
Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

■ If the disk has already been initialized, press Return at the following
prompt to replace the disk:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-382 The requested operation is to use the

initialized device c0t1d0 to replace the removed or
failed disk mydg02 in disk group mydg.
Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

■ If the disk was previously an encapsulated root disk, vxdiskadm displays

the following message. Enter y to confirm that you want to reinitialize
the disk:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-876 The disk c0t1d0 was a previously

encapsulated root disk. Due to the disk layout that results
from root disk encapsulation, the preferred action is to
reinitialize and reorganize this disk. However, if you have
any non-redundant data on this disk you should not reorganize
this disk, as the data will be lost.
Reorganize the disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

Warning: It is recommended that you do not enter n at this prompt. This can
result in an invalid VTOC that makes the disk unbootable.

Entering y at the prompt destroys any data that is on the disk. Ensure that
you have at least one valid copy of the data on other disks before proceeding.
152 Administering disks
Removing and replacing disks

5 You can now choose whether the disk is to be formatted as a CDS disk that is
portable between different operating systems, or as a non-portable sliced or
simple disk:

Enter the desired format [cdsdisk,sliced,simple,q,?]

(default: cdsdisk)

Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the
default format, cdsdisk.
6 At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private
region size of 65536 blocks (32 MB). Press Return to confirm that you want
to use the default value, or enter a different value. (The maximum value that
you can specify is 524288 blocks.)

Enter desired private region length [<privlen>,q,?]

(default: 65536)

7 The vxdiskadm program then proceeds to replace the disk, and returns the
following message on success:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-158 Disk replacement completed successfully.

At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to replace another disk
(y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Replace another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Removing and replacing a disk in a Sun StorEdge A5x00 disk array

Note: The following procedure is suitable for use with any array that is
administered by using the Solaris luxadm command.

To replace a disk in a Sun StorEdge A5x00 disk array

1 Run the vxdiskadm command, and select Remove a disk for replacement
from the main men. Enter none when prompted to name a replacement disk.
2 Use the following command to remove the disk from VxVM:

# vxdisk rm daname

where daname is the disk access name of the device (for example, c1t5d0s2).
 Administering disks 153
Enabling a disk

3 Use the Solaris luxadm command to obtain the array name and slot number
of the disk, and then use these values with luxadm to remove the disk:

# luxadm disp /dev/rdsk/daname

# luxadm remove_device array_name,slot_number

Follow the luxadm prompts, and pull out the disk when instructed.
4 Run the following luxadm command when you are ready to insert the
replacement disk:

# luxadm insert_device array_name,slot_number

Follow the luxadm prompts, and insert the replacement disk when instructed.
5 Run the following command to scan for the new disk and update the system:

# vxdiskconfig

6 Run the vxdiskadm command, select Replace a failed or removed disk

from the main menu, and follow the instructions.
See “Replacing a failed or removed disk” on page 150.

Enabling a disk
If you move a disk from one system to another during normal system operation,
VxVM does not recognize the disk automatically. The enable disk task enables
VxVM to identify the disk and to determine if this disk is part of a disk group.
Also, this task re-enables access to a disk that was disabled by either the disk
group deport task or the disk device disable (offline) task.
To enable a disk
1 Select Enable (online) a disk device from the vxdiskadm main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the device name of the disk to be enabled (or
enter list for a list of devices):

Select a disk device to enable [<address>,list,q,?]

c0t2d0s2

vxdiskadm enables the specified device.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to enable another device
(y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Enable another device? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

154 Administering disks
Taking a disk offline

Taking a disk offline

There are instances when you must take a disk offline. If a disk is corrupted, you
must disable the disk before removing it. You must also disable a disk before
moving the physical disk device to another location to be connected to another
system.

Warning: Taking a disk offline is only useful on systems that support hot-swap
removal and insertion of disks. If a system does not support hot-swap removal
and insertion of disks, you must shut down the system.

To take a disk offline

1 Select Disable (offline) a disk device from the vxdiskadm main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the address of the disk you want to disable:

Select a disk device to disable [<address>,list,q,?]

c0t2d0s2

The vxdiskadm program disables the specified disk.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to disable another device
(y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Disable another device? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Renaming a disk
If you do not specify a VM disk name, VxVM gives the disk a default name when
you add the disk to VxVM control. The VM disk name is used by VxVM to identify
the location of the disk or the disk type.
 Administering disks 155
Reserving disks

To rename a disk
◆ Type the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] rename old_diskname new_diskname

By default, VxVM names subdisk objects after the VM disk on which they are
located. Renaming a VM disk does not automatically rename the subdisks on
that disk.
For example, you might want to rename disk mydg03, as shown in the following
output from vxdisk list, to mydg02:

# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
c0t0d0s2 auto:sliced mydg01 mydg online
c1t0d0s2 auto:sliced mydg03 mydg online
c1t1d0s2 auto:sliced - - online

You would use the following command to rename the disk.

# vxedit -g mydg rename mydg03 mydg02

To confirm that the name change took place, use the vxdisk list command
again:

# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
c0t0d0s2 auto:sliced mydg01 mydg online
c1t0d0s2 auto:sliced mydg02 mydg online
c1t1d0s2 auto:sliced - - online

Reserving disks
By default, the vxassist command allocates space from any disk that has free
space. You can reserve a set of disks for special purposes, such as to avoid general
use of a particularly slow or a particularly fast disk.
156 Administering disks
Reserving disks

To reserve a disk
◆ Type the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set reserve=on diskname

After you enter this command, the vxassist program does not allocate space
from the selected disk unless that disk is specifically mentioned on the
vxassist command line. For example, if mydg03 is reserved, use the following
command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make vol03 20m mydg03

The vxassist command overrides the reservation and creates a 20 megabyte

volume on mydg03. However, this command does not use mydg03, even if
there is no free space on any other disk:

# vxassist -g mydg make vol04 20m

To turn off reservation of a disk

◆ Type the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set reserve=off diskname

See the vxedit(1M) manual page.

 Chapter 4
Administering Dynamic
Multi-Pathing
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ How DMP works

■ Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible to VxVM

■ Enabling multi-pathing and making devices visible to VxVM

■ About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and storage processors

■ About displaying DMP database information

■ Displaying the paths to a disk

■ Setting customized names for DMP nodes

■ DMP coexistence with native multipathing

■ Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

How DMP works

Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) provides greater availability, reliability,
and performance by using path failover and load balancing. This feature is available
for multiported disk arrays from various vendors.
Multiported disk arrays can be connected to host systems through multiple paths.
To detect the various paths to a disk, DMP uses a mechanism that is specific to
each supported array. DMP can also differentiate between different enclosures
of a supported array that are connected to the same host system.
See “Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices” on page 85.
158 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
How DMP works

The multi-pathing policy that is used by DMP depends on the characteristics of

the disk array.
DMP supports the following standard array types:

Active/Active (A/A) Allows several paths to be used concurrently for

I/O. Such arrays allow DMP to provide greater I/O
throughput by balancing the I/O load uniformly
across the multiple paths to the LUNs. In the
event that one path fails, DMP automatically
routes I/O over the other available paths.

Asymmetric Active/Active (A/A-A) A/A-A or Asymmetric Active/Active arrays can

be accessed through secondary storage paths with
little performance degradation. Usually an A/A-A
array behaves like an A/P array rather than an
A/A array. However, during failover, an A/A-A
array behaves like an A/A array.

An ALUA array behaves like an A/A-A array.

Active/Passive (A/P) Allows access to its LUNs (logical units; real disks
or virtual disks created using hardware) via the
primary (active) path on a single controller (also
known as an access port or a storage processor)
during normal operation.

In implicit failover mode (or autotrespass mode),

an A/P array automatically fails over by
scheduling I/O to the secondary (passive) path on
a separate controller if the primary path fails.
This passive port is not used for I/O until the
active port fails. In A/P arrays, path failover can
occur for a single LUN if I/O fails on the primary
path.

This policy supports concurrent I/O and load

balancing by having multiple primary paths into
a controller. This functionality is provided by a
controller with multiple ports, or by the insertion
of a SAN switch between an array and a controller.
Failover to the secondary (passive) path occurs
only if all the active primary paths fail.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 159
How DMP works

Active/Passive in explicit failover mode The appropriate command must be issued to the
or non-autotrespass mode (A/P-F) array to make the LUNs fail over to the secondary
path.

This policy supports concurrent I/O and load

balancing by having multiple primary paths into
a controller. This functionality is provided by a
controller with multiple ports, or by the insertion
of a SAN switch between an array and a controller.
Failover to the secondary (passive) path occurs
only if all the active primary paths fail.

Active/Passive with LUN group failover For Active/Passive arrays with LUN group failover
(A/P-G) (A/PG arrays), a group of LUNs that are connected
through a controller is treated as a single failover
entity. Unlike A/P arrays, failover occurs at the
controller level, and not for individual LUNs. The
primary controller and the secondary controller
are each connected to a separate group of LUNs.
If a single LUN in the primary controller’s LUN
group fails, all LUNs in that group fail over to the
secondary controller.

This policy supports concurrent I/O and load

balancing by having multiple primary paths into
a controller. This functionality is provided by a
controller with multiple ports, or by the insertion
of a SAN switch between an array and a controller.
Failover to the secondary (passive) path occurs
only if all the active primary paths fail.

An array policy module (APM) may define array types to DMP in addition to the
standard types for the arrays that it supports.
VxVM uses DMP metanodes (DMP nodes) to access disk devices connected to the
system. For each disk in a supported array, DMP maps one node to the set of paths
that are connected to the disk. Additionally, DMP associates the appropriate
multi-pathing policy for the disk array with the node. For disks in an unsupported
array, DMP maps a separate node to each path that is connected to a disk. The
raw and block devices for the nodes are created in the directories /dev/vx/rdmp
and /dev/vx/dmp respectively.
Figure 4-1 shows how DMP sets up a node for a disk in a supported disk array.
160 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
How DMP works

Figure 4-1 How DMP represents multiple physical paths to a disk as one node

VxVM
Host

c1 c2 Single DMP node

Mapped by DMP
DMP
Multiple paths
Multiple paths

Disk

VxVM implements a disk device naming scheme that allows you to recognize to
which array a disk belongs.
Figure 4-2 shows an example where two paths, c1t99d0 and c2t99d0, exist to a
single disk in the enclosure, but VxVM uses the single DMP node, enc0_0, to access
it.

Figure 4-2 Example of multi-pathing for a disk enclosure in a SAN environment

Host
c1 c2 VxVM

enc0_0
Mapped
Fibre Channel by DMP
switches DMP

c1t99d0 c2t99d0
Disk enclosure
enc0

Disk is c1t99d0 or c2t99d0

depending on the path

See “About enclosure-based naming” on page 26.

See “Changing the disk-naming scheme” on page 104.
See “Discovering and configuring newly added disk devices” on page 85.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 161
How DMP works

How DMP monitors I/O on paths

In older releases of VxVM, DMP had one kernel daemon (errord) that performed
error processing, and another (restored) that performed path restoration
activities.
From release 5.0, DMP maintains a pool of kernel threads that are used to perform
such tasks as error processing, path restoration, statistics collection, and SCSI
request callbacks. The vxdmpadm stat command can be used to provide
information about the threads. The names errord and restored have been retained
for backward compatibility.
One kernel thread responds to I/O failures on a path by initiating a probe of the
host bus adapter (HBA) that corresponds to the path. Another thread then takes
the appropriate action according to the response from the HBA. The action taken
can be to retry the I/O request on the path, or to fail the path and reschedule the
I/O on an alternate path.
The restore kernel task is woken periodically (typically every 5 minutes) to check
the health of the paths, and to resume I/O on paths that have been restored. As
some paths may suffer from intermittent failure, I/O is only resumed on a path
if the path has remained healthy for a given period of time (by default, 5 minutes).
DMP can be configured with different policies for checking the paths.
See “Configuring DMP path restoration policies” on page 208.
The statistics-gathering task records the start and end time of each I/O request,
and the number of I/O failures and retries on each path. DMP can be configured
to use this information to prevent the SCSI driver being flooded by I/O requests.
This feature is known as I/O throttling.
If an I/O request relates to a mirrored volume, VxVM specifies the FAILFAST flag.
In such cases, DMP does not retry failed I/O requests on the path, and instead
marks the disks on that path as having failed.
See “Path failover mechanism” on page 161.
See “I/O throttling” on page 162.

Path failover mechanism

DMP enhances system reliability when used with multiported disk arrays. In the
event of the loss of a path to a disk array, DMP automatically selects the next
available path for I/O requests without intervention from the administrator.
DMP is also informed when a connection is repaired or restored, and when you
add or remove devices after the system has been fully booted (provided that the
operating system recognizes the devices correctly).
162 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
How DMP works

If required, the response of DMP to I/O failure on a path can be tuned for the paths
to individual arrays. DMP can be configured to time out an I/O request either after
a given period of time has elapsed without the request succeeding, or after a given
number of retries on a path have failed.
See “Configuring the response to I/O failures” on page 203.

Subpaths Failover Group (SFG)

An SFG represents a group of paths which could fail and restore together. When
an I/O error is encountered on a path in an SFG group, DMP does proactive path
probing on the other paths of that SFG as well. This behavior adds greatly to the
performance of path failover thus improving IO performance. Currently the
criteria followed by DMP to form the subpath failover groups is to bundle the
paths with the same endpoints from the host to the array into one logical storage
failover group.
See “Configuring Subpaths Failover Groups (SFG)” on page 206.

Low Impact Path Probing (LIPP)

The restore daemon in DMP keeps probing the LUN paths periodically. This
behavior helps DMP to keep the path states up-to-date even though IO activity is
not there on the paths. Low Impact Path Probing adds logic to the restore daemon
to optimize the number of the probes performed while the path status is being
updated by the restore daemon. This optimization is achieved with the help of
the logical subpaths failover groups. With LIPP logic in place, DMP probes only
limited number of paths within an SFG, instead of probing all the paths in an SFG.
Based on these probe results, DMP determines the states of all the paths in that
SFG.
See “Configuring Low Impact Path Probing” on page 207.

I/O throttling
If I/O throttling is enabled, and the number of outstanding I/O requests builds up
on a path that has become less responsive, DMP can be configured to prevent new
I/O requests being sent on the path either when the number of outstanding I/O
requests has reached a given value, or a given time has elapsed since the last
successful I/O request on the path. While throttling is applied to a path, the new
I/O requests on that path are scheduled on other available paths. The throttling
is removed from the path if the HBA reports no error on the path, or if an
outstanding I/O request on the path succeeds.
See “Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism” on page 205.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 163
How DMP works

Load balancing
By default, the DMP uses the Minimum Queue policy for load balancing across
paths for Active/Active (A/A), Active/Passive (A/P), Active/Passive with explicit
failover (A/P-F) and Active/Passive with group failover (A/P-G) disk arrays. Load
balancing maximizes I/O throughput by using the total bandwidth of all available
paths. I/O is sent down the path which has the minimum outstanding I/Os.
For A/P disk arrays, I/O is sent down the primary paths. If the primary paths fail,
I/O is switched over to the available secondary paths. As the continuous transfer
of ownership of LUNs from one controller to another results in severe I/O
slowdown, load balancing across primary and secondary paths is not performed
for A/P disk arrays unless they support concurrent I/O.
For A/P, A/P-F and A/P-G arrays, load balancing is performed across all the
currently active paths as is done for A/A arrays.
You can use the vxdmpadm command to change the I/O policy for the paths to an
enclosure or disk array.
See “Specifying the I/O policy” on page 195.

Disabling Sun Multipath IO (MPxIO)

Plan for system downtime for the following procedure.
This procedure describes steps to migrate devices from MPxIO control to DMP.
The migration steps involve system downtime on a host due to the following:
■ Need to stop applications
■ Need to stop the VCS services if using VCS
■ The procedure involves one or more host reboots
To take devices out of MPxIO control and enable DMP on the devices
1 Stop the applications that use MPxIO devices.
2 Unmount all the file systems that use MPxIO devices.
3 Disable MPxIO using the following command.

# stmsboot -d

4 Reboot the system.

5 Mount the file systems.
6 Restart the applications.
164 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
How DMP works

Dynamic Reconfiguration
Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) is a feature that is available on some high-end
enterprise systems. It allows some components (such as CPUs, memory, and other
controllers or I/O boards) to be reconfigured while the system is still running.
The reconfigured component might be handling the disks controlled by VxVM.
See “About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and storage processors”
on page 167.

About booting from DMP devices

When the root disk is placed under VxVM control, it is automatically accessed as
a DMP device with one path if it is a single disk, or with multiple paths if the disk
is part of a multiported disk array. By encapsulating and mirroring the root disk,
system reliability is enhanced against loss of one or more of the existing physical
paths to a disk.
The vxrootadm utility can be used to clone the encapsulated boot disk group to a
self-contained disk group specified by the user.

DMP in a clustered environment

Note: You need an additional license to use the cluster feature of VxVM.

Clustering is only supported for VxVM.

In a clustered environment where Active/Passive type disk arrays are shared by
multiple hosts, all nodes in the cluster must access the disk via the same physical
storage controller port. Accessing a disk via multiple paths simultaneously can
severely degrade I/O performance (sometimes referred to as the ping-pong effect).
Path failover on a single cluster node is also coordinated across the cluster so that
all the nodes continue to share the same physical path.
Prior to release 4.1 of VxVM, the clustering and DMP features could not handle
automatic failback in A/P arrays when a path was restored, and did not support
failback for explicit failover mode arrays. Failback could only be implemented
manually by running the vxdctl enable command on each cluster node after the
path failure had been corrected. From release 4.1, failback is now an automatic
cluster-wide operation that is coordinated by the master node. Automatic failback
in explicit failover mode arrays is also handled by issuing the appropriate low-level
command.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 165
Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible to VxVM

Note: Support for automatic failback of an A/P array requires that an appropriate
ASL (and APM, if required) is available for the array, and has been installed on
the system.

See “Discovering disks and dynamically adding disk arrays” on page 87.
For Active/Active type disk arrays, any disk can be simultaneously accessed
through all available physical paths to it. In a clustered environment, the nodes
do not all need to access a disk via the same physical path.
See “How to administer the Device Discovery Layer” on page 90.
See “Configuring array policy modules” on page 210.

About enabling or disabling controllers with shared disk groups

Prior to release 5.0, VxVM did not allow enabling or disabling of paths or
controllers connected to a disk that is part of a shared Veritas Volume Manager
disk group. From VxVM 5.0 onward, such operations are supported on shared
DMP nodes in a cluster.

Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible

to VxVM
Use this procedure to prevent a device from being multi-pathed by the VxVM
DMP driver (vxdmp), or to exclude a device from the view of VxVM.
166 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Enabling multi-pathing and making devices visible to VxVM

To disable multi-pathing and make devices invisible to VxVM

1 Run the vxdiskadm command, and select Prevent multipathing/Suppress
devices from VxVM’s view from the main menu. You are prompted to
confirm whether you want to continue.
2 Select the operation you want to perform from the following options:

Option 1 Suppresses all paths through the specified controller from the
view of VxVM.

Option 2 Suppresses specified paths from the view of VxVM.

Option 3 Suppresses disks from the view of VxVM that match a specified
Vendor ID and Product ID combination.

The root disk cannot be suppressed.

The operation fails if the VID:PID of an external disk is the same

VID:PID as the root disk and the root disk is encapsulated under
VxVM.

Option 4 Suppresses all but one path to a disk. Only one path is made
visible to VxVM.

Option 5 Prevents multi-pathing for all disks on a specified controller by

VxVM.

Option 6 Prevents multi-pathing of a disk by VxVM. The disks that

correspond to a specified path are claimed in the OTHER_DISKS
category and are not multi-pathed.

Option 7 Prevents multi-pathing for the disks that match a specified

Vendor ID and Product ID combination. The disks that correspond
to a specified Vendor ID and Product ID combination are claimed
in the OTHER_DISKS category and are not multi-pathed.

Option 8 Lists the devices that are currently suppressed or not

multi-pathed.

Enabling multi-pathing and making devices visible to

VxVM
Use this procedure to re-enable multi-pathing for a device, or to make a device
visible to VxVM again.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 167
About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and storage processors

To enable multi-pathing and make devices visible to VxVM

1 Run the vxdiskadm command, and select Allow multipathing/Unsuppress
devices from VxVM’s view from the main menu. You are prompted to
confirm whether you want to continue.
2 Select the operation you want to perform from the following options:

Option 1 Unsuppresses all paths through the specified controller from

the view of VxVM.

Option 2 Unsuppresses specified paths from the view of VxVM.

Option 3 Unsuppresses disks from the view of VxVM that match a specified
Vendor ID and Product ID combination.

Option 4 Removes a pathgroup definition. (A pathgroup explicitly defines

alternate paths to the same disk.) Once a pathgroup has been
removed, all paths that were defined in that pathgroup become
visible again.

Option 5 Allows multi-pathing of all disks that have paths through the
specified controller.

Option 6 Allows multi-pathing of a disk by VxVM.

Option 7 Allows multi-pathing of disks that match a specified Vendor ID

and Product ID combination.

Option 8 Lists the devices that are currently suppressed or not

multipathed.

About enabling and disabling I/O for controllers and

storage processors
DMP allows you to turn off I/O for a controller or the array port of a storage
processor so that you can perform administrative operations. This feature can be
used for maintenance of HBA controllers on the host, or array ports that are
attached to disk arrays supported by VxVM. I/O operations to the controller or
array port can be turned back on after the maintenance task is completed. You
can accomplish these operations using the vxdmpadm command.
For Active/Active type disk arrays, after disabling the I/O through an HBA
controller or array port, the I/O continues on the remaining paths. For
Active/Passive type disk arrays, if disabling I/O through an HBA controller or
168 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
About displaying DMP database information

array port resulted in all primary paths being disabled, DMP will failover to active
secondary paths and I/O will continue on them.
After the operation is over, you can use vxdmpadm to re-enable the paths through
the controllers.
See “Disabling I/O for paths, controllers or array ports” on page 201.
See “Enabling I/O for paths, controllers or array ports” on page 202.

Note: From release 5.0 of VxVM, these operations are supported for controllers
that are used to access disk arrays on which cluster-shareable disk groups are
configured.

You can also perform certain reconfiguration operations dynamically online.

See “About online dynamic reconfiguration” on page 213.

About displaying DMP database information

You can use the vxdmpadm command to list DMP database information and perform
other administrative tasks. This command allows you to list all controllers that
are connected to disks, and other related information that is stored in the DMP
database. You can use this information to locate system hardware, and to help
you decide which controllers need to be enabled or disabled.
The vxdmpadm command also provides useful information such as disk array serial
numbers, which DMP devices (disks) are connected to the disk array, and which
paths are connected to a particular controller, enclosure or array port.
See “Administering DMP using vxdmpadm” on page 173.

Displaying the paths to a disk

The vxdisk command is used to display the multi-pathing information for a
particular metadevice. The metadevice is a device representation of a particular
physical disk having multiple physical paths from one of the system’s HBA
controllers. In DMP, all the physical disks in the system are represented as
metadevices with one or more physical paths.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 169
Displaying the paths to a disk

To display the multi-pathing information on a system

◆ Use the vxdisk path command to display the relationships between the
device paths, disk access names, disk media names and disk groups on a
system as shown here:

# vxdisk path

SUBPATH DANAME DMNAME GROUP STATE

c1t0d0s2 c1t0d0s2 mydg01 mydg ENABLED
c4t0d0s2 c1t0d0s2 mydg01 mydg ENABLED
c1t1d0s2 c1t1d0s2 mydg02 mydg ENABLED
c4t1d0s2 c1t1d0s2 mydg02 mydg ENABLED
.
.
.

This shows that two paths exist to each of the two disks, mydg01 and mydg02,
and also indicates that each disk is in the ENABLED state.
170 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Displaying the paths to a disk

To view multi-pathing information for a particular metadevice

1 Use the following command:

# vxdisk list devicename

For example, to view multi-pathing information for c2t0d0s2, use the

following command:

# vxdisk list c2t0d0s2

The output from the vxdisk list command displays the multi-pathing
information, as shown in the following example:

Device c2t0d0
devicetag c2t0d0
type sliced
hostid system01
.
.
.
Multipathing information:
numpaths: 2
c2t0d0s2 state=enabled type=primary
c1t0d0s2 state=disabled type=secondary

The numpaths line shows that there are 2 paths to the device. The next two
lines in the "Multipathing information" section show that one path is active
(state=enabled) and that the other path has failed (state=disabled).
The type field is shown for disks on Active/Passive type disk arrays such as
the EMC CLARiiON, Hitachi HDS 9200 and 9500, Sun StorEdge 6xxx, and Sun
StorEdge T3 array. This field indicates the primary and secondary paths to
the disk.
The type field is not displayed for disks on Active/Active type disk arrays
such as the EMC Symmetrix, Hitachi HDS 99xx and Sun StorEdge 99xx Series,
and IBM ESS Series. Such arrays have no concept of primary and secondary
paths.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 171
Setting customized names for DMP nodes

2 Alternately, you can use the following command to view multi-pathing

information:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths dmpnodename=devicename

For example, to view multi-pathing information for eva4k6k0_6, use the

following command:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths dmpnodename=eva4k6k0_6

Typical output from the vxdmpadm getsubpaths command is as follows:

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] CTLR-NAME ENCLR-TYPE ENCLR-NAME ATTRS

======================================================================================
c0t50001FE1500A8F08d7s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c0 EVA4K6K eva4k6k0 -
c0t50001FE1500A8F09d7s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c0 EVA4K6K eva4k6k0 -
c0t50001FE1500A8F0Cd7s2 ENABLED SECONDARY c0 EVA4K6K eva4k6k0 -
c0t50001FE1500A8F0Dd7s2 ENABLED SECONDARY c0 EVA4K6K eva4k6k0 -

Setting customized names for DMP nodes

The DMP node name is the meta device name which represents the multiple paths
to a disk. The DMP node name is generated from the device name according to
the VxVM naming scheme.
See “Disk device naming in VxVM” on page 81.
You can specify a customized name for a DMP node. User-specified names are
persistent even if names persistence is turned off.
You cannot assign a customized name that is already in use by a device. However,
if you assign names that follow the same naming conventions as the names that
the DDL generates, a name collision can potentially occur when a device is added.
If the user-defined name for a DMP device is the same as the DDL-generated name
for another DMP device, the vxdisk list command output displays one of the
devices as 'error'.
To specify a custom name for a DMP node
◆ Use the following command:

# vxdmpadm setattr dmpnode dmpnodename name=name

You can also assign names from an input file. This enables you to customize the
DMP nodes on the system with meaningful names.
172 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
DMP coexistence with native multipathing

To assign DMP nodes from a file

1 Use the script vxgetdmpnames to get a sample file populated from the devices
in your configuration. The sample file shows the format required and serves
as a template to specify your customized names.
2 To assign the names, use the following command:

# vxddladm assign names file=pathname

To clear custom names

◆ To clear the names, and use the default OSN or EBN names, use the following
command:

# vxddladm -c assign names

DMP coexistence with native multipathing

Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) supports using multipathing with raw devices. The
dmp_native_multipathing tunable controls the behavior. If the
dmp_native_multipathing tunable is set to on, DMP intercepts I/O requests,
operations such as open, close, and ioctls sent on the raw device path.
If the dmp_native_multipathing tunable is set to off, these requests are sent
directly to the raw device. In A/PF arrays, the format command on Solaris platform
does not show the extra attributes (like vendor ID, product ID and geometry
information) of the passive paths. To avoid this issue, enable the
dmp_native_multipathing tunable. DMP intercepts the request and routes it on
the primary path.
For A/P arrays, turning on the dmp_native_multipathing feature enables the
commands to succeed without trespassing. The feature has no benefit for A/A or
A/A-A arrays.
DMP Native Multipathing should not be enabled if one of the following tools are
already managing multipathing:
■ EMC PowerPath
■ Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager (also called MPxIO)
If EMC PowerPath is installed first, the command to set dmp_native_multipathing
to on fails. If VxVM is installed first, ensure that dmp_native_multipathing is
set to off before installing EMC PowerPath.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 173
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

The vxdmpadm utility is a command line administrative interface to DMP.
You can use the vxdmpadm utility to perform the following tasks:
■ Retrieve the name of the DMP device corresponding to a particular path.
■ Display the members of a LUN group.
■ List all paths under a DMP device node, HBA controller or array port.
■ Display information about the HBA controllers on the host.
■ Display information about enclosures.
■ Display information about array ports that are connected to the storage
processors of enclosures.
■ Display information about devices that are controlled by third-party
multi-pathing drivers.
■ Gather I/O statistics for a DMP node, enclosure, path or controller.
■ Configure the attributes of the paths to an enclosure.
■ Set the I/O policy that is used for the paths to an enclosure.
■ Enable or disable I/O for a path, HBA controller or array port on the system.
■ Upgrade disk controller firmware.
■ Rename an enclosure.
■ Configure how DMP responds to I/O request failures.
■ Configure the I/O throttling mechanism.
■ Control the operation of the DMP path restoration thread.
■ Get or set the values of various tunables used by DMP.
The following sections cover these tasks in detail along with sample output.
See “Changing the values of VxVM tunables” on page 519.
See “DMP tunable parameters” on page 530.
See the vxdmpadm(1M) manual page.

Retrieving information about a DMP node

The following command displays the DMP node that controls a particular physical
path:
174 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

# vxdmpadm getdmpnode nodename=c0t5006016041E03B33d0s2

The physical path is specified by argument to the nodename attribute, which must
be a valid path listed in the /dev/rdsk directory.
The command displays output similar to the following:

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME

====================================================================
emc_clariion0_16 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 6 6 0 emc_clariion0

Use the -v option to display the LUN serial number and the array volume ID.

# vxdmpadm -v getdmpnode nodename=c0t5006016041E03B33d0s2

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME SERIAL-NO ARRAY_VOL_ID

==========================================================================================
emc_clariion0_16 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 6 6 0 emc_clariion0 600601606 16

Use the enclosure attribute with getdmpnode to obtain a list of all DMP nodes for
the specified enclosure.

# vxdmpadm getdmpnode enclosure=enc0

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME

=========================================================
c2t1d0s2 ENABLED T300 2 2 0 enc0
c2t1d1s2 ENABLED T300 2 2 0 enc0
c2t1d2s2 ENABLED T300 2 2 0 enc0
c2t1d3s2 ENABLED T300 2 2 0 enc0

Use the dmpnodename attribute with getdmpnode to display the DMP information
for a given DMP node.

# vxdmpadm getdmpnode dmpnodename=emc_clariion0_158

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME

==================================================================
emc_clariion0_158 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 1 1 0 emc_clariion0

Displaying consolidated information about the DMP nodes

The vxdmpadm list dmpnode command displays the detail information of a DMP
node. The information includes the enclosure name, LUN serial number, port id
information, device attributes, etc.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 175
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

The following command displays the consolidated information for all of the DMP
nodes in the system:

# vxdmpadm list dmpnode all

Use the enclosure attribute with list dmpnode to obtain a list of all DMP nodes
for the specified enclosure.

# vxdmpadm list dmpnode enclosure=enclosure name

For example, the following command displays the consolidated information for
all of the DMP nodes in the enc0 enclosure.

#vxdmpadm list dmpnode enclosure=enc0

Use the dmpnodename attribute with list dmpnode to display the DMP information
for a given DMP node. The DMP node can be specified by name or by specifying
a path name. The detailed information for the specified DMP node includes path
information for each subpath of the listed dmpnode.
The path state differentiates between a path that is disabled due to a failure and
a path that has been manually disabled for administrative purposes. A path that
has been manually disabled using the vxdmpadm disable command is listed as
disabled(m).

# vxdmpadm list dmpnode dmpnodename=dmpnodename

For example, the following command displays the consolidated information for
the DMP node emc_clariion0_158.

# vxdmpadm list dmpnode dmpnodename=emc_clariion0_158

dmpdev = emc_clariion0_158
state = enabled
enclosure = emc_clariion0
cab-sno = CK200070400359
asl = libvxCLARiiON.so
vid = DGC
pid = DISK
array-name = EMC_CLARiiON
array-type = CLR-A/PF
iopolicy = MinimumQ
avid = 158
lun-sno = 600601606D121B008FB6E0CA8EDBDB11
udid = DGC%5FDISK%5FCK200070400359%5F600601606D121B008FB6E0CA8EDBDB11
dev-attr = lun
176 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

###path = name state type transport ctlr hwpath aportID aportWWN attr
path = c0t5006016141E03B33d1s2 enabled(a) primary FC c0
/pci@1e,600000/SUNW,emlxs@3/fp@0,0 A5 50:06:01:61:41:e0:3b:33 -
path = c0t5006016041E03B33d1s2 enabled(a) primary FC c0
/pci@1e,600000/SUNW,emlxs@3/fp@0,0 A4 50:06:01:60:41:e0:3b:33 -
path = c0t5006016841E03B33d1s2 enabled secondary FC c0
/pci@1e,600000/SUNW,emlxs@3/fp@0,0 B4 50:06:01:68:41:e0:3b:33 -
path = c1t5006016141E03B33d1s2 enabled(a) primary FC c1
/pci@1e,600000/SUNW,emlxs@3,1/fp@0,0 A5 50:06:01:61:41:e0:3b:33 -
path = c1t5006016841E03B33d1s2 enabled secondary FC c1
/pci@1e,600000/SUNW,emlxs@3,1/fp@0,0 B4 50:06:01:68:41:e0:3b:33 -
path = c1t5006016041E03B33d1s2 enabled(a) primary FC c1
/pci@1e,600000/SUNW,emlxs@3,1/fp@0,0 A4 50:06:01:60:41:e0:3b:33 -

Displaying the members of a LUN group

The following command displays the DMP nodes that are in the same LUN group
as a specified DMP node:

# vxdmpadm getlungroup dmpnodename=c11t0d10s2

The above command displays output such as the following:

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME

===============================================================
c11t0d8s2 ENABLED ACME 2 2 0 enc1
c11t0d9s2 ENABLED ACME 2 2 0 enc1
c11t0d10s2 ENABLED ACME 2 2 0 enc1
c11t0d11s2 ENABLED ACME 2 2 0 enc1

Displaying paths controlled by a DMP node, controller, enclosure, or

array port
The vxdmpadm getsubpaths command lists all of the paths known to DMP. The
vxdmpadm getsubpaths command also provides options to list the subpaths
through a particular DMP node, controller, enclosure, or array port. To list the
paths through an array port, specify either a combination of enclosure name and
array port id, or array port WWN. You can also display paths for devices controlled
by third-party drivers.
See “Displaying information about TPD-controlled devices” on page 181.
To list all subpaths known to DMP:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 177
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] DMPNODENAME ENCLR-NAME CTLR ATTRS

=======================================================================
c1t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_1 Disk c1 -
c1t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_2 Disk c1 -
c2t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_1 Disk c2 -
c2t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_2 Disk c2 -
c3t2d0s2 ENABLED(A) - EMC0_1 EMC0 c3 -
c3t2d1s2 ENABLED(A) - EMC0_2 EMC0 c3 -
c4t2d0s2 ENABLED(A) - EMC0_1 EMC0 c4 -
c4t2d1s2 ENABLED(A) - EMC0_2 EMC0 c4 -

The vxdmpadm getsubpaths command combined with the dmpnodename attribute

displays all the paths to a LUN that are controlled by the specified DMP node
name from the /dev/vx/rdmp directory:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths dmpnodename=c2t66d0s2

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] CTLR-NAME ENCLR-TYPE ENCLR-NAME ATTRS

=======================================================================
c2t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c2 ACME enc0 -
c1t66d0s2 ENABLED PRIMARY c1 ACME enc0 -

For A/A arrays, all enabled paths that are available for I/O are shown as
ENABLED(A).

For A/P arrays in which the I/O policy is set to singleactive, only one path is
shown as ENABLED(A). The other paths are enabled but not available for I/O. If
the I/O policy is not set to singleactive, DMP can use a group of paths (all primary
or all secondary) for I/O, which are shown as ENABLED(A).
See “Specifying the I/O policy” on page 195.
Paths that are in the DISABLED state are not available for I/O operations.
A path that was manually disabled by the system administrator displays as
DISABLED(M). A path that failed displays as DISABLED.
You can use getsubpaths to obtain information about all the paths that are
connected to a particular HBA controller:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths ctlr=c2

NAME STATE[-] PATH-TYPE[-] CTLR-NAME ENCLR-TYPE ENCLR-NAME ATTRS

======================================================================
c2t1d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c2t1d0s2 ACME enc0 -
c2t2d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c2t2d0s2 ACME enc0 -
178 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

c2t3d0s2 DISABLED SECONDARY c2t3d0s2 ACME enc0 -

c2t4d0s2 ENABLED SECONDARY c2t4d0s2 ACME enc0 -

You can also use getsubpaths to obtain information about all the paths that are
connected to a port on an array. The array port can be specified by the name of
the enclosure and the array port ID, or by the worldwide name (WWN) identifier
of the array port:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths enclosure=enclosure portid=portid

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths pwwn=pwwn

For example, to list subpaths through an array port through the enclosure and
the array port ID:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths enclosure=HDS9500-ALUA0 portid=1A

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] DMPNODENAME ENCLR-NAME CTLR ATTRS

=======================================================================
c1t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c1t65d0s2 HDS9500-ALUA0 c1 -
c1t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c1t66d0s2 HDS9500-ALUA0 c1 -

For example, to list subpaths through an array port through the WWN:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths pwwn=20:00:00:E0:8B:06:5F:19

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] DMPNODENAME ENCLR-NAME CTLR ATTRS

=======================================================================
c1t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c1t65d0s2 HDS9500-ALUA0 c1 -
c1t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) PRIMARY c1t66d0s2 HDS9500-ALUA0 c1 -

You can use getsubpaths to obtain information about all the subpaths of an
enclosure.

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths enclosure=enclosure_name [ctlr=ctlrname]

To list all subpaths of an enclosure:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths enclosure=Disk

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] DMPNODENAME ENCLR-NAME CTLR ATTRS
=====================================================================
c1t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_1 Disk c1 -
c1t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_2 Disk c1 -
c2t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_1 Disk c2 -
c2t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_2 Disk c2 -

To list all subpaths of a controller on an enclosure:

 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 179
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths enclosure=Disk ctlr=c1

NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] DMPNODENAME ENCLR-NAME CTLR ATTRS

=====================================================================
c1t65d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_1 Disk c1 -
c1t66d0s2 ENABLED(A) - Disk_2 Disk c1 -

By default, the output of the vxdmpadm getsubpaths command is sorted by

enclosure name, DMP node name, and within that, path name. To sort the output
based on the pathname, the DMP node name, the enclosure name, or the host
controller name, use the -s option.
To sort subpaths information, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm -s {path | dmpnode | enclosure | ctlr} getsubpaths \

[all | ctlr=ctlr_name | dmpnodename=dmp_device_name | \
enclosure=enclr_name [ctlr=ctlr_name | portid=array_port_ID] | \
pwwn=port_WWN | tpdnodename=tpd_node_name]

Displaying information about controllers

The following command lists attributes of all HBA controllers on the system:

# vxdmpadm listctlr all

CTLR-NAME ENCLR-TYPE STATE ENCLR-NAME

===============================================================
c1 OTHER ENABLED other0
c2 X1 ENABLED jbod0
c3 ACME ENABLED enc0
c4 ACME ENABLED enc0

This output shows that the controller c1 is connected to disks that are not in any
recognized DMP category as the enclosure type is OTHER.
The other controllers are connected to disks that are in recognized DMP categories.
All the controllers are in the ENABLED state which indicates that they are available
for I/O operations.
The state DISABLED is used to indicate that controllers are unavailable for I/O
operations. The unavailability can be due to a hardware failure or due to I/O
operations being disabled on that controller by using the vxdmpadm disable
command.
The following forms of the command lists controllers belonging to a specified
enclosure or enclosure type:
180 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

# vxdmpadm listctlr enclosure=enc0

or

# vxdmpadm listctlr type=ACME

CTLR-NAME ENCLR-TYPE STATE ENCLR-NAME

===============================================================
c2 ACME ENABLED enc0
c3 ACME ENABLED enc0

The vxdmpadm getctlr command displays HBA vendor details and the Controller
ID. For iSCSI devices, the Controller ID is the IQN or IEEE-format based name.
For FC devices, the Controller ID is the WWN. Because the WWN is obtained from
ESD, this field is blank if ESD is not running. ESD is a daemon process used to
notify DDL about occurance of events. The WWN shown as ‘Controller ID’ maps
to the WWN of the HBA port associated with the host controller.

# vxdmpadm getctlr c5

LNAME PNAME VENDOR CTLR-ID

===================================================
c5 c5 qlogic 20:07:00:a0:b8:17:e1:37

Displaying information about enclosures

To display the attributes of a specified enclosure, including its enclosure type,
enclosure serial number, status, array type, and number of LUNs, use the following
command:

# vxdmpadm listenclosure enc0

ENCLR_NAME ENCLR_TYPE ENCLR_SNO STATUS ARRAY_TYPE LUN_COUNT

=============================================================================
enc0 T3 60020f20000001a90000 CONNECTED A/P 30

The following command lists attributes for all enclosures in a system:

# vxdmpadm listenclosure all

ENCLR_NAME ENCLR_TYPE ENCLR_SNO STATUS ARRAY_TYPE LUN_COUNT

==============================================================================
Disk Disk DISKS CONNECTED Disk 6
SENA0 SENA 508002000001d660 CONNECTED A/A 57
enc0 T3 60020f20000001a90000 CONNECTED A/P 30
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 181
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

If an A/P or ALUA array is under the control of MPxIO, then DMP claims the
devices in A/A mode. The output of the above commands shows the ARRAY_TYPE
as A/A. For arrays under MPxIO control, DMP does not store A/P-specific attributes
or ALUA-specific attributes. These attributes include primary/secondary paths,
port serial number, and the array controller ID.

Displaying information about array ports

Use the commands in this section to display information about array ports. The
information displayed for an array port includes the name of its enclosure, and
its ID and worldwide name (WWN) identifier.

Note: DMP does not report information about array ports for LUNs that are
controlled by the native multi-pathing driver..DMP reports pWWN information
only if the dmp_monitor_fabric tunable is on, and the event source daemon (esd)
is running.

To display the attributes of an array port that is accessible via a path, DMP node
or HBA controller, use one of the following commands:

# vxdmpadm getportids path=path-name

# vxdmpadm getportids dmpnodename=dmpnode-name
# vxdmpadm getportids ctlr=ctlr-name

The following form of the command displays information about all of the array
ports within the specified enclosure:

# vxdmpadm getportids enclosure=enclr-name

The following example shows information about the array port that is accessible
via DMP node c2t66d0s2:

# vxdmpadm getportids dmpnodename=c2t66d0s2

NAME ENCLR-NAME ARRAY-PORT-ID pWWN

==============================================================
c2t66d0s2 HDS9500V0 1A 20:00:00:E0:8B:06:5F:19

Displaying information about TPD-controlled devices

The third-party driver (TPD) coexistence feature allows I/O that is controlled by
third-party multi-pathing drivers to bypass DMP while retaining the monitoring
capabilities of DMP. The following commands allow you to display the paths that
182 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

DMP has discovered for a given TPD device, and the TPD device that corresponds
to a given TPD-controlled node discovered by DMP:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths tpdnodename=TPD_node_name

# vxdmpadm gettpdnode nodename=TPD_path_name

See “Changing device naming for TPD-controlled enclosures” on page 107.

For example, consider the following disks in an EMC Symmetrix array controlled
by PowerPath, which are known to DMP:

# vxdisk list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

emcpower10s2 auto:sliced disk1 ppdg online
emcpower11s2 auto:sliced disk2 ppdg online
emcpower12s2 auto:sliced disk3 ppdg online
emcpower13s2 auto:sliced disk4 ppdg online
emcpower14s2 auto:sliced disk5 ppdg online
emcpower15s2 auto:sliced disk6 ppdg online
emcpower16s2 auto:sliced disk7 ppdg online
emcpower17s2 auto:sliced disk8 ppdg online
emcpower18s2 auto:sliced disk9 ppdg online
emcpower19s2 auto:sliced disk10 ppdg online

The following command displays the paths that DMP has discovered, and which
correspond to the PowerPath-controlled node, emcpower10s2:

# vxdmpadm getsubpaths tpdnodename=emcpower10s2

NAME TPDNODENAME PATH-TYPE[-]DMP-NODENAME ENCLR-TYPE ENCLR-NAME

===================================================================
c7t0d10s2emcpower10s2- emcpower10s2 EMC EMC0
c6t0d10s2emcpower10s2- emcpower10s2 EMC EMC0

Conversely, the next command displays information about the PowerPath node
that corresponds to the path, c7t0d10s2, discovered by DMP:

# vxdmpadm gettpdnode nodename=c7t0d10s2

NAME STATE PATHS ENCLR-TYPE ENCLR-NAME

===================================================================
emcpower10s2 ENABLED 2 EMC EMC0
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Displaying extended device attributes

Device Discovery Layer (DDL) extended attributes are attributes or flags
corresponding to a VxVM or DMP LUN or Disk and which are discovered by DDL.
These attributes identify a LUN to a specific hardware category.
The list of categories includes:

Hardware RAID types Displays what kind of Storage RAID Group the
LUN belongs to

Thin Provisioning Discovery and Displays the LUN’s thin reclamation abilities
Reclamation

Device Media Type Displays the type of media –whether SSD (solid
state disk )

Storage-based Snapshot/Clone Displays whether the LUN is a SNAPSHOT or a

CLONE of a PRIMARY LUN

Storage-based replication Displays if the LUN is part of a replicated group

across a remote site

Transport Displays what kind of HBA is used to connect to

this LUN (FC, SATA, iSCSI)

Each LUN can have one or more of these attributes discovered during device
discovery. ASLs furnish this information to DDL through the property
DDL_DEVICE_ATTR. The vxdisk -p list command displays DDL extended
attributes. For example, the following command shows attributes of “std”, “fc”,
and “RAID_5” for this LUN:

# vxdisk -p list
DISK : tagmastore-usp0_0e18
DISKID : 1253585985.692.rx2600h11
VID : HITACHI
UDID : HITACHI%5FOPEN-V%5F02742%5F0E18
REVISION : 5001
PID : OPEN-V
PHYS_CTLR_NAME : 0/4/1/1.0x50060e8005274246
LUN_SNO_ORDER : 411
LUN_SERIAL_NO : 0E18
LIBNAME : libvxhdsusp.sl
HARDWARE_MIRROR: no
DMP_DEVICE : tagmastore-usp0_0e18
DDL_THIN_DISK : thick
DDL_DEVICE_ATTR: std fc RAID_5
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CAB_SERIAL_NO : 02742
ATYPE : A/A
ARRAY_VOLUME_ID: 0E18
ARRAY_PORT_PWWN: 50:06:0e:80:05:27:42:46
ANAME : TagmaStore-USP
TRANSPORT : FC

The vxdisk -x attribute -p list command displays the one-line listing for
the property list and the attributes. The following example shows two Hitachi
LUNs that support Thin Reclamation via the attribute hdprclm:

# vxdisk -x DDL_DEVICE_ATTR -p list

DEVICE DDL_DEVICE_ATTR
tagmastore-usp0_0a7a std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_065a hdprclm fc
tagmastore-usp0_065b hdprclm fc

User can specify multiple -x options in the same command to display multiple
entries. For example:

# vxdisk -x DDL_DEVICE_ATTR -x VID -p list

DEVICE VID DDL_DEVICE_ATTR

tagmastore-usp0_0a7a HITACHI std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_0a7b HITACHI std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_0a78 HITACHI std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_0a79 HITACHI std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_065a HITACHI hdprclm fc
tagmastore-usp0_065b HITACHI hdprclm fc
tagmastore-usp0_065c HITACHI hdprclm fc
tagmastore-usp0_065d HITACHI hdprclm fc

Use the vxdisk -e list command to show the DLL_DEVICE_ATTR property in

the last column named ATTR.

# vxdisk -e list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS OS_NATIVE_NAME ATTR
tagmastore-usp0_0a7a auto - - online c10t0d2 std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_0a7b auto - - online c10t0d3 std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_0a78 auto - - online c10t0d0 std fc RAID_5
tagmastore-usp0_0655 auto - - online c13t2d7 hdprclm fc
tagmastore-usp0_0656 auto - - online c13t3d0 hdprclm fc
tagmastore-usp0_0657 auto - - online c13t3d1 hdprclm fc
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For a list of ASLs that supports Extended Attributes, and descriptions of these
attributes, refer to the hardware compatibility list at the following URL:
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/330441.htm

Note: DMP does not support Extended Attributes for LUNs that are controlled by
the native multi-pathing driver.

Suppressing or including devices for VxVM or DMP control

The vxdmpadm exclude command suppresses devices from VxVM or DMP based
on the criteria that you specify. The devices can be added back into VxVM or DMP
control by using the vxdmpadm include command. The devices can be included
or excluded based on VID:PID combination, paths, controllers, or disks. You can
use the bang symbol (!) to exclude or include any paths or controllers except the
one specified.
The root disk cannot be suppressed. The operation fails if the VID:PID of an
external disk is the same VID:PID as the root disk and the root disk is encapsulated
under VxVM.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following syntax
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxdmpadm exclude [vxvm | vxdmp] { all | product=VID:PID |

ctlr=[\!]ctlr | dmpnodename=diskname [ path=\!pathname] }

# vxdmpadm include [vxvm | vxdmp] { all | product=VID:PID |

ctlr=[\!]ctlr | dmpnodename=diskname [ path=\!pathname] }

where:
all – all devices
product=VID:PID – all devices with the specified VID:PID
ctlr=ctlr – all devices through the given controller
dmpnodename=diskname - all paths under the DMP node
dmpnodename=diskname path=\!pathname - all paths under the DMP node except
the one specified.
186 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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Gathering and displaying I/O statistics

You can use the vxdmpadm iostat command to gather and display I/O statistics
for a specified DMP node, enclosure, path or controller.
To enable the gathering of statistics, enter this command:

# vxdmpadm iostat start [memory=size]

To reset the I/O counters to zero, use this command:

# vxdmpadm iostat reset

The memory attribute can be used to limit the maximum amount of memory that
is used to record I/O statistics for each CPU. The default limit is 32k (32 kilobytes)
per CPU.
To display the accumulated statistics at regular intervals, use the following
command:

# vxdmpadm iostat show {all | ctlr=ctlr-name \

| dmpnodename=dmp-node \
| enclosure=enclr-name [portid=array-portid ] \
| pathname=path-name | pwwn=array-port-wwn } \
[interval=seconds [count=N]]

This command displays I/O statistics for all paths (all), or for a specified
controller, DMP node, enclosure, path or port ID. The statistics displayed are the
CPU usage and amount of memory per CPU used to accumulate statistics, the
number of read and write operations, the number of kilobytes read and written,
and the average time in milliseconds per kilobyte that is read or written.
The interval and count attributes may be used to specify the interval in seconds
between displaying the I/O statistics, and the number of lines to be displayed. The
actual interval may be smaller than the value specified if insufficient memory is
available to record the statistics.
To disable the gathering of statistics, enter this command:

# vxdmpadm iostat stop

Examples of using the vxdmpadm iostat command

The following is an example session using the vxdmpadm iostat command. The
first command enables the gathering of I/O statistics:

# vxdmpadm iostat start

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The next command displays the current statistics including the accumulated total
numbers of read and write operations and kilobytes read and written, on all paths:

# vxdmpadm iostat show all

cpu usage = 7952us per cpu memory = 8192b
OPERATIONS KBYTES AVG TIME(ms)
PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c0t0d0 1088 0 557056 0 0.00 0.00
c2t118d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t118d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t122d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t122d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t115d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t115d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t103d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t103d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t102d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t102d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t121d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t121d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t112d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t112d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t96d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t96d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t106d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t106d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t113d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t113d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t119d0 87 0 44544 0 0.00 0.00
c3t119d0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00

The following command changes the amount of memory that vxdmpadm can use
to accumulate the statistics:

# vxdmpadm iostat start memory=4096

The displayed statistics can be filtered by path name, DMP node name, and
enclosure name (note that the per-CPU memory has changed following the previous
command):

# vxdmpadm iostat show pathname=c3t115d0s2

cpu usage = 8132us per cpu memory = 4096b
OPERATIONS BYTES AVG TIME(ms)
PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c3t115d0s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
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# vxdmpadm iostat show dmpnodename=c0t0d0s2

cpu usage = 8501us per cpu memory = 4096b
OPERATIONS BYTES AVG TIME(ms)
PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c0t0d0s2 1088 0 557056 0 0.00 0.00

# vxdmpadm iostat show enclosure=Disk

cpu usage = 8626us per cpu memory = 4096b
OPERATIONS BYTES AVG TIME(ms)
PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c0t0d0s2 1088 0 57056 0 0.00 0.00

You can also specify the number of times to display the statistics and the time
interval. Here the incremental statistics for a path are displayed twice with a
2-second interval:

# vxdmpadm iostat show dmpnodename=emc_clariion0_342 interval=1 count=2

cpu usage = 164687us per cpu memory = 409600b
OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)
PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c0t5006016041E03B33d6s2 3 0 33 0 0.02 0.00
c0t5006016141E03B33d6s2 3 0 3 0 0.16 0.00
c0t5006016841E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c1t5006016041E03B33d6s2 1 0 16 0 0.02 0.00
c1t5006016141E03B33d6s2 2 0 2 0 0.18 0.00
c1t5006016841E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00

c0t5006016041E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00

c0t5006016141E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c0t5006016841E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c1t5006016041E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c1t5006016141E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c1t5006016841E03B33d6s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00

Displaying statistics for queued or erroneous I/Os

Use the vxdmpadm iostat show command with the -q option to display the I/Os
queued in DMP for a specified DMP node, or for a specified path or controller. For
a DMP node, the -q option displays the I/Os on the specified DMP node that were
sent to underlying layers. If a path or controller is specified, the -q option displays
I/Os that were sent to the given path or controller and not yet returned to DMP.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 189
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See the vxdmpadm(1m) manual page for more information about the vxdmpadm
iostat command.

To display queued I/O counts on a DMP node:

# vxdmpadm -q iostat show [filter]

[interval=n [count=m]]

For example:

# vxdmpadm -q iostat show dmpnodename=c5t2d1s2

QUEUED I/Os Pending I/Os

DMPNODENAME READS WRITES
c5t2d1s2 2 15 30

To display the count of I/Os that returned with errors on a DMP node, path or
controller:

# vxdmpadm -e iostat show [filter]

[interval=n [count=m]]

For example, to show the I/O counts that returned errors on a path:

# vxdmpadm -e iostat show pathname=c1t5006016041E03B33d6s2 interval=1

cpu usage = 168144us per cpu memory = 409600b

ERROR I/Os
PATHNAME READS WRITES
c1t5006016041E03B33d6s2 0 0
c1t5006016041E03B33d6s2 0 0

Displaying cumulative I/O statistics

Use the groupby clause of the vxdmpadm iostat command to display cumulative
I/O statistics listings per DMP node, controller, array port id, or host-array
controller pair and enclosure. If the groupby clause is not specified, then the
statistics are displayed per path.
To group by DMP node:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=dmpnode [all | dmpnodename=dmpnodename

| enclosure=enclr-name]

For example:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=dmpnode dmpnodename=c5t0d1s2

190 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

DMPNODENAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c5t0d1s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00

To group by controller:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=ctlr [ all | ctlr=ctlr ]

For example:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=ctlr ctlr=c5

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

CTLRNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c5 224 14 54 7 4.20 11.10

To group by arrayport:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=arrayport [ all | pwwn=array_pwwn

| enclosure=enclr portid=array-port-id ]

For example:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=arrayport enclosure=HDS9500-ALUA0 \

portid=1A

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

PORTNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
1A 224 14 54 7 4.20 11.10

To group by enclosure:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=enclosure [ all | enclosure=enclr ]

For example:

# vxdmpadm iostat show groupby=enclosure enclosure=EMC_CLARiiON0

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

ENCLRNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
EMC_CLARiiON 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00

You can also filter out entities for which all data entries are zero. This option is
especially useful in a cluster environment which contains many failover devices.
You can display only the statistics for the active paths.
To filter all zero entries from the output of the iostat show command:
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 191
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# vxdmpadm -z iostat show [all|ctlr=ctlr_name |

dmpnodename=dmp_device_name | enclosure=enclr_name [portid=portid] |
pathname=path_name|pwwn=port_WWN][interval=seconds [count=N]]

For example:

# vxdmpadm -z iostat show dmpnodename=c2t16d4s2

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c3t16d4s2 10 110 2 25 12.00 27.96
c2t17d4s2 20 126 4 29 9.50 19.41

You can now specify the units in which the statistics data is displayed. By default,
the read/write times are displayed in milliseconds up to 2 decimal places. The
throughput data is displayed in terms of ‘BLOCKS’ and the output is scaled,
meaning that the small values are displayed in small units and the larger values
are displayed in bigger units, keeping significant digits constant.The -u option
accepts the following options:

k Displays throughput in kiloblocks.

m Displays throughput in megablocks.

g Displays throughput in gigablocks.

bytes Displays throughput in exact number of bytes.

us Displays average read/write time in microseconds.

For example: To display average read/write times in microseconds.

# vxdmpadm -u us iostat show pathname=c2t17d4s2

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(microsec)

PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c2t17d4s2 20 126 4 29 9500.00 19413.79

Setting the attributes of the paths to an enclosure

You can use the vxdmpadm setattr command to set the attributes of the paths to
an enclosure or disk array.
The attributes set for the paths are persistent and are stored in the file
/etc/vx/dmppolicy.info.

You can set the following attributes:

192 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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active Changes a standby (failover) path to an active path. The following

example specifies an active path for an array:

# vxdmpadm setattr path c2t10d0s2 pathtype=active

nomanual Restores the original primary or secondary attributes of a path.

This example restores the path to a JBOD disk:

# vxdmpadm setattr path c3t10d0s2 \

pathtype=nomanual

nopreferred Restores the normal priority of a path. The following example

restores the default priority to a path:

# vxdmpadm setattr path c1t20d0s2 \

pathtype=nopreferred

preferred Specifies a path as preferred, and optionally assigns a priority

[priority=N] number to it. If specified, the priority number must be an integer
that is greater than or equal to one. Higher priority numbers
indicate that a path is able to carry a greater I/O load.

See “Specifying the I/O policy” on page 195.

This example first sets the I/O policy to priority for an

Active/Active disk array, and then specifies a preferred path with
an assigned priority of 2:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 \

iopolicy=priority
# vxdmpadm setattr path c1t20d0s2 \
pathtype=preferred priority=2

primary Defines a path as being the primary path for a JBOD disk array.
The following example specifies a primary path for a JBOD disk
array:

# vxdmpadm setattr path c3t10d0s2 \

pathtype=primary

secondary Defines a path as being the secondary path for a JBOD disk array.
The following example specifies a secondary path for a JBOD disk
array:

# vxdmpadm setattr path c4t10d0s2 \

pathtype=secondary
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standby Marks a standby (failover) path that it is not used for normal I/O
scheduling. This path is used if there are no active paths available
for I/O. The next example specifies a standby path for an A/P-C
disk array:

# vxdmpadm setattr path c2t10d0s2 \

pathtype=standby

Displaying the redundancy level of a device or enclosure

Use the vxdmpadm getdmpnode command to list the devices with less than the
required redundancy level.
To list the devices on a specified enclosure with fewer than a given number of
enabled paths, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm getdmpnode enclosure=encl_name redundancy=value

For example, to list the devices with fewer than 3 enabled paths, use the following
command:

# vxdmpadm getdmpnode enclosure=EMC_CLARiiON0 redundancy=3

NAME STATE ENCLR-TYPE PATHS ENBL DSBL ENCLR-NAME

=====================================================================
emc_clariion0_162 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 3 2 1 emc_clariion0
emc_clariion0_182 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 2 2 0 emc_clariion0
emc_clariion0_184 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 3 2 1 emc_clariion0
emc_clariion0_186 ENABLED EMC_CLARiiON 2 2 0 emc_clariion0

To display the minimum redundancy level for a particular device, use the vxdmpadm
getattr command, as follows:

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure|arrayname|arraytype \

component-name redundancy

For example, to show the minimum redundancy level for the enclosure
HDS9500-ALUA0:

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure HDS9500-ALUA0 redundancy

ENCLR_NAME DEFAULT CURRENT

=============================================
HDS9500-ALUA0 0 4
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Specifying the minimum number of active paths

You can set the minimum redundancy level for a device or an enclosure. The
minimum redundancy level is the minimum number of paths that should be active
for the device or the enclosure. If the number of paths falls below the minimum
redundancy level for the enclosure, a message is sent to the system console and
also logged to the DMP log file. Also, notification is sent to vxnotify clients.
The value set for minimum redundancy level is stored in the dmppolicy.info file,
and is persistent. If no minimum redundancy level is set, the default value is 0.
You can use the vxdmpadm setattr command to set the minimum redundancy
level.
To specify the minimum number of active paths
◆ Use the vxdmpadm setattr command with the redundancy attribute as
follows:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure|arrayname|arraytype component-name

redundancy=value

where value is the number of active paths.

For example, to set the minimum redundancy level for the enclosure
HDS9500-ALUA0:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure HDS9500-ALUA0 redundancy=2

Displaying the I/O policy

To display the current and default settings of the I/O policy for an enclosure, array
or array type, use the vxdmpadm getattr command.
The following example displays the default and current setting of iopolicy for
JBOD disks:

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure Disk iopolicy

ENCLR_NAME DEFAULT CURRENT

---------------------------------------
Disk MinimumQ Balanced

The next example displays the setting of partitionsize for the enclosure enc0,
on which the balanced I/O policy with a partition size of 2MB has been set:

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure enc0 partitionsize

ENCLR_NAME DEFAULT CURRENT
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---------------------------------------
enc0 512 4096

Specifying the I/O policy

You can use the vxdmpadm setattr command to change the I/O policy for
distributing I/O load across multiple paths to a disk array or enclosure. You can
set policies for an enclosure (for example, HDS01), for all enclosures of a particular
type (such as HDS), or for all enclosures of a particular array type (such as A/A for
Active/Active, or A/P for Active/Passive).

Warning: Starting with release 4.1 of VxVM, I/O policies are recorded in the file
/etc/vx/dmppolicy.info, and are persistent across reboots of the system.

Do not edit this file yourself.

The following policies may be set:

adaptive This policy attempts to maximize overall I/O throughput

from/to the disks by dynamically scheduling I/O on the
paths. It is suggested for use where I/O loads can vary over
time. For example, I/O from/to a database may exhibit both
long transfers (table scans) and short transfers (random
look ups). The policy is also useful for a SAN environment
where different paths may have different number of hops.
No further configuration is possible as this policy is
automatically managed by DMP.

In this example, the adaptive I/O policy is set for the

enclosure enc1:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc1 \

iopolicy=adaptive
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balanced This policy is designed to optimize the use of caching in disk

[partitionsize=size] drives and RAID controllers. The size of the cache typically
ranges from 120KB to 500KB or more, depending on the
characteristics of the particular hardware. During normal
operation, the disks (or LUNs) are logically divided into a
number of regions (or partitions), and I/O from/to a given
region is sent on only one of the active paths. Should that
path fail, the workload is automatically redistributed across
the remaining paths.

You can use the size argument to the partitionsize attribute

to specify the partition size. The partition size in blocks is
adjustable in powers of 2 from 2 up to 231. A value that is
not a power of 2 is silently rounded down to the nearest
acceptable value.

Specifying a partition size of 0 is equivalent to specifying

the default partition size.

The default value for the partition size is 512 blocks (256k).
Specifying a partition size of 0 is equivalent to the default
partition size of 512 blocks (256k).

The default value can be changed by adjusting the value of

the dmp_pathswitch_blks_shift tunable parameter.

See “DMP tunable parameters” on page 530.

Note: The benefit of this policy is lost if the value is set
larger than the cache size.

For example, the suggested partition size for an Hitachi

HDS 9960 A/A array is from 32,768 to 131,072 blocks (16MB
to 64MB) for an I/O activity pattern that consists mostly of
sequential reads or writes.

The next example sets the balanced I/O policy with a

partition size of 4096 blocks (2MB) on the enclosure enc0:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 \

iopolicy=balanced partitionsize=4096
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minimumq This policy sends I/O on paths that have the minimum
number of outstanding I/O requests in the queue for a LUN.
No further configuration is possible as DMP automatically
determines the path with the shortest queue.

The following example sets the I/O policy to minimumq for

a JBOD:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure Disk \

iopolicy=minimumq

This is the default I/O policy for all arrays.

priority This policy is useful when the paths in a SAN have unequal
performance, and you want to enforce load balancing
manually. You can assign priorities to each path based on
your knowledge of the configuration and performance
characteristics of the available paths, and of other aspects
of your system.

See “Setting the attributes of the paths to an enclosure”

on page 191.

In this example, the I/O policy is set to priority for all

SENA arrays:

# vxdmpadm setattr arrayname SENA \

iopolicy=priority

round-robin This policy shares I/O equally between the paths in a

round-robin sequence. For example, if there are three paths,
the first I/O request would use one path, the second would
use a different path, the third would be sent down the
remaining path, the fourth would go down the first path,
and so on. No further configuration is possible as this policy
is automatically managed by DMP.

The next example sets the I/O policy to round-robin for

all Active/Active arrays:

# vxdmpadm setattr arraytype A/A \

iopolicy=round-robin
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singleactive This policy routes I/O down the single active path. This
policy can be configured for A/P arrays with one active path
per controller, where the other paths are used in case of
failover. If configured for A/A arrays, there is no load
balancing across the paths, and the alternate paths are only
used to provide high availability (HA). If the current active
path fails, I/O is switched to an alternate active path. No
further configuration is possible as the single active path
is selected by DMP.

The following example sets the I/O policy to singleactive

for JBOD disks:

# vxdmpadm setattr arrayname Disk \

iopolicy=singleactive

Scheduling I/O on the paths of an Asymmetric Active/Active

array
You can specify the use_all_paths attribute in conjunction with the adaptive,
balanced, minimumq, priority and round-robin I/O policies to specify whether
I/O requests are to be scheduled on the secondary paths in addition to the primary
paths of an Asymmetric Active/Active (A/A-A) array. Depending on the
characteristics of the array, the consequent improved load balancing can increase
the total I/O throughput. However, this feature should only be enabled if
recommended by the array vendor. It has no effect for array types other than
A/A-A.
For example, the following command sets the balanced I/O policy with a partition
size of 4096 blocks (2MB) on the enclosure enc0, and allows scheduling of I/O
requests on the secondary paths:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 iopolicy=balanced \

partitionsize=4096 use_all_paths=yes

The default setting for this attribute is use_all_paths=no.

You can display the current setting for use_all_paths for an enclosure, arrayname
or arraytype. To do this, specify the use_all_paths option to the vxdmpadm
gettattr command.

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure HDS9500-ALUA0 use_all_paths

ENCLR_NAME DEFAULT CURRENT

===========================================
HDS9500-ALUA0 no yes
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The use_all_paths attribute only applies to A/A-A arrays. For other arrays, the
above command displays the message:

Attribute is not applicable for this array.

Example of applying load balancing in a SAN

This example describes how to configure load balancing in a SAN environment
where there are multiple primary paths to an Active/Passive device through
several SAN switches. As can be seen in this sample output from the vxdisk list
command, the device c3t2d15s2 has eight primary paths:

# vxdisk list c3t2d15s2

Device: c3t2d15s2
.
.
.
numpaths: 8
c2t0d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c2t1d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c3t1d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c3t2d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c4t2d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c4t3d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c5t3d15s2 state=enabled type=primary
c5t4d15s2 state=enabled type=primary

In addition, the device is in the enclosure ENC0, belongs to the disk group mydg,
and contains a simple concatenated volume myvol1.
The first step is to enable the gathering of DMP statistics:

# vxdmpadm iostat start

Next the dd command is used to apply an input workload from the volume:

# dd if=/dev/vx/rdsk/mydg/myvol1 of=/dev/null &

By running the vxdmpadm iostat command to display the DMP statistics for the
device, it can be seen that all I/O is being directed to one path, c5t4d15s2:

# vxdmpadm iostat show dmpnodename=c3t2d15s2 interval=5 count=2

.
.
.
200 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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cpu usage = 11294us per cpu memory = 32768b

OPERATIONS KBYTES AVG TIME(ms)
PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c2t0d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c2t1d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c3t1d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c3t2d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c4t2d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c4t3d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c5t3d15s2 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00
c5t4d15s2 10986 0 5493 0 0.41 0.00

The vxdmpadm command is used to display the I/O policy for the enclosure that
contains the device:

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure ENC0 iopolicy

ENCLR_NAME DEFAULT CURRENT

============================================
ENC0 MinimumQ Single-Active

This shows that the policy for the enclosure is set to singleactive, which explains
why all the I/O is taking place on one path.
To balance the I/O load across the multiple primary paths, the policy is set to
round-robin as shown here:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure ENC0 iopolicy=round-robin

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure ENC0 iopolicy

ENCLR_NAME DEFAULT CURRENT

============================================
ENC0 MinimumQ Round-Robin

The DMP statistics are now reset:

# vxdmpadm iostat reset

With the workload still running, the effect of changing the I/O policy to balance
the load across the primary paths can now be seen.

# vxdmpadm iostat show dmpnodename=c3t2d15s2 interval=5 count=2

.
.
.
cpu usage = 14403us per cpu memory = 32768b
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 201
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OPERATIONS KBYTES AVG TIME(ms)

PATHNAME READS WRITES READS WRITES READS WRITES
c2t0d15s2 2041 0 1021 0 0.39 0.00
c2t1d15s2 1894 0 947 0 0.39 0.00
c3t1d15s2 2008 0 1004 0 0.39 0.00
c3t2d15s2 2054 0 1027 0 0.40 0.00
c4t2d15s2 2171 0 1086 0 0.39 0.00
c4t3d15s2 2095 0 1048 0 0.39 0.00
c5t3d15s2 2073 0 1036 0 0.39 0.00
c5t4d15s2 2042 0 1021 0 0.39 0.00

The enclosure can be returned to the single active I/O policy by entering the
following command:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure ENC0 iopolicy=singleactive

Disabling I/O for paths, controllers or array ports

Disabling I/O through a path, HBA controller or array port prevents DMP from
issuing I/O requests through the specified path, or the paths that are connected
to the specified controller or array port. The command blocks until all pending
I/O requests issued through the paths are completed.

Note: From release 5.0 of VxVM, this operation is supported for controllers that
are used to access disk arrays on which cluster-shareable disk groups are
configured.

Before detaching a system board, stop all I/O to the HBA controllers that are
located on the board. To do this, execute the vxdmpadm disable command, and
then run the Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) facility provided by Sun.
To disable I/O for a path, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm [-c|-f] disable path=path_name

To disable I/O for multiple paths, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm [-c|-f] disable path=path_name1,path_name2,path_nameN

To disable I/O for the paths connected to an HBA controller, use the following
command:

# vxdmpadm [-c|-f] disable ctlr=ctlr_name

202 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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To disable I/O for the paths connected to an array port, use one of the following
commands:

# vxdmpadm [-c|-f] disable enclosure=enclr_name portid=array_port_ID

# vxdmpadm [-c|-f] disable pwwn=array_port_WWN

where the array port is specified either by the enclosure name and the array port
ID, or by the array port’s worldwide name (WWN) identifier.
The following are examples of using the command to disable I/O on an array port:

# vxdmpadm disable enclosure=HDS9500V0 portid=1A

# vxdmpadm disable pwwn=20:00:00:E0:8B:06:5F:19

You can use the -c option to check if there is only a single active path to the disk.
If so, the disable command fails with an error message unless you use the -f
option to forcibly disable the path.
The disable operation fails if it is issued to a controller that is connected to the
root disk through a single path, and there are no root disk mirrors configured on
alternate paths. If such mirrors exist, the command succeeds.

Enabling I/O for paths, controllers or array ports

Enabling a controller allows a previously disabled path, HBA controller or array
port to accept I/O again. This operation succeeds only if the path, controller or
array port is accessible to the host, and I/O can be performed on it. When
connecting Active/Passive disk arrays, the enable operation results in failback
of I/O to the primary path. The enable operation can also be used to allow I/O to
the controllers on a system board that was previously detached.

Note: From release 5.0 of VxVM, this operation is supported for controllers that
are used to access disk arrays on which cluster-shareable disk groups are
configured.

To enable I/O for a path, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm enable path=path_name

To enable I/O for multiple paths, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm enable path=path_name1,path_name2,path_nameN

To enable I/O for the paths connected to an HBA controller, use the following
command:
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 203
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

# vxdmpadm enable ctlr=ctlr_name

To enable I/O for the paths connected to an array port, use one of the following
commands:

# vxdmpadm enable enclosure=enclr_name portid=array_port_ID

# vxdmpadm [-f] enable pwwn=array_port_WWN

where the array port is specified either by the enclosure name and the array port
ID, or by the array port’s worldwide name (WWN) identifier.
The following are examples of using the command to enable I/O on an array port:

# vxdmpadm enable enclosure=HDS9500V0 portid=1A

# vxdmpadm enable pwwn=20:00:00:E0:8B:06:5F:19

Renaming an enclosure
The vxdmpadm setattr command can be used to assign a meaningful name to an
existing enclosure, for example:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 name=GRP1

This example changes the name of an enclosure from enc0 to GRP1.

Note: The maximum length of the enclosure name prefix is 23 characters.

The following command shows the changed name:

# vxdmpadm listenclosure all

ENCLR_NAME ENCLR_TYPE ENCLR_SNO STATUS

============================================================
other0 OTHER OTHER_DISKS CONNECTED
jbod0 X1 X1_DISKS CONNECTED
GRP1 ACME 60020f20000001a90000 CONNECTED

Configuring the response to I/O failures

You can configure how DMP responds to failed I/O requests on the paths to a
specified enclosure, disk array name, or type of array. By default, DMP is configured
to retry a failed I/O request up to five times for a single path.
204 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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To display the current settings for handling I/O request failures that are applied
to the paths to an enclosure, array name or array type, use the vxdmpadm getattr
command.
See “Displaying recovery option values” on page 207.
To set a limit for the number of times that DMP attempts to retry sending an I/O
request on a path, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm setattr \
{enclosure enc-name|arrayname name|arraytype type} \
recoveryoption=fixedretry retrycount=n

The value of the argument to retrycount specifies the number of retries to be

attempted before DMP reschedules the I/O request on another available path, or
fails the request altogether.
As an alternative to specifying a fixed number of retries, you can specify the
amount of time DMP allows for handling an I/O request. If the I/O request does
not succeed within that time, DMP fails the I/O request. To specify an iotimeout
value, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm setattr \
{enclosure enc-name|arrayname name|arraytype type} \
recoveryoption=timebound iotimeout=seconds

The default value of iotimeout is 300 seconds. For some applications such as
Oracle, it may be desirable to set iotimeout to a larger value. The iotimeout value
for DMP should be greater than the I/O service time of the underlying operating
system layers.

Note: The fixedretry and timebound settings are mutually exclusive.

The following example configures time-bound recovery for the enclosure enc0,
and sets the value of iotimeout to 360 seconds:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 recoveryoption=timebound \

iotimeout=360

The next example sets a fixed-retry limit of 10 for the paths to all Active/Active
arrays:

# vxdmpadm setattr arraytype A/A recoveryoption=fixedretry \

retrycount=10
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 205
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Specifying recoveryoption=default resets DMP to the default settings

corresponding to recoveryoption=fixedretry retrycount=5, for example:

# vxdmpadm setattr arraytype A/A recoveryoption=default

The above command also has the effect of configuring I/O throttling with the
default settings.
See “Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism” on page 205.

Note: The response to I/O failure settings is persistent across reboots of the system.

Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism

By default, DMP is configured with I/O throttling turned off for all paths. To
display the current settings for I/O throttling that are applied to the paths to an
enclosure, array name or array type, use the vxdmpadm getattr command.
See “Displaying recovery option values” on page 207.
If enabled, I/O throttling imposes a small overhead on CPU and memory usage
because of the activity of the statistics-gathering daemon. If I/O throttling is
disabled, the daemon no longer collects statistics, and remains inactive until I/O
throttling is re-enabled.
To turn off I/O throttling, use the following form of the vxdmpadm setattr
command:

# vxdmpadm setattr \
{enclosure enc-name|arrayname name|arraytype type} \
recoveryoption=nothrottle

The following example shows how to disable I/O throttling for the paths to the
enclosure enc0:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 recoveryoption=nothrottle

The vxdmpadm setattr command can be used to enable I/O throttling on the paths
to a specified enclosure, disk array name, or type of array:

# vxdmpadm setattr \
{enclosure enc-name|arrayname name|arraytype type}\
recoveryoption=throttle [iotimeout=seconds]

If the iotimeout attribute is specified, its argument specifies the time in seconds
that DMP waits for an outstanding I/O request to succeed before invoking I/O
206 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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throttling on the path. The default value of iotimeout is 10 seconds. Setting

iotimeout to a larger value potentially causes more I/O requests to become queued
up in the SCSI driver before I/O throttling is invoked.
The following example sets the value of iotimeout to 60 seconds for the enclosure
enc0:

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure enc0 recoveryoption=throttle \

iotimeout=60

Specify recoveryoption=default to reset I/O throttling to the default settings,

as follows:

# vxdmpadm setattr arraytype A/A recoveryoption=default

The above command configures the default behavior, corresponding to

recoveryoption=nothrottle. The above command also configures the default
behavior for the response to I/O failures.
See “Configuring the response to I/O failures” on page 203.

Note: The I/O throttling settings are persistent across reboots of the system.

Configuring Subpaths Failover Groups (SFG)

The Subpaths Failover Groups (SFG) feature can be turned on or off using the
tunable dmp_sfg_threshold.
To turn off the feature, set the tunable dmp_sfg_threshold value to 0:

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_sfg_threshold=0

To turn on the feature, set the dmp_sfg_threshold value to the required number
of path failures which triggers SFG. The default is 1.

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_sfg_threshold=N

The default value of the tunable is “1” which represents that the feature is on.
To see the Subpaths Failover Groups ID, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm getportids {ctlr=ctlr_name | dmpnodename=dmp_device_name \

| enclosure=enclr_name | path=path_name}
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 207
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Configuring Low Impact Path Probing

The Low Impact Path Probing (LIPP) feature can be turned on or off using the
vxdmpadm settune command:

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_low_impact_probe=[on|off]

Path probing will be optimized by probing a subset of paths connected to same

HBA and array port. The size of the subset of paths can be controlled by the
dmp_probe_threshold tunable. The default value is set to 5.

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_probe_threshold=N

Displaying recovery option values

To display the current settings for handling I/O request failures that are applied
to the paths to an enclosure, array name or array type, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm getattr \
{enclosure enc-name|arrayname name|arraytype type} \
recoveryoption

The following example shows the vxdmpadm getattr command being used to
display the recoveryoption option values that are set on an enclosure.

# vxdmpadm getattr enclosure HDS9500-ALUA0 recoveryoption

ENCLR-NAME RECOVERY-OPTION DEFAULT[VAL] CURRENT[VAL]
===============================================================
HDS9500-ALUA0 Throttle Nothrottle[0] Timebound[60]
HDS9500-ALUA0 Error-Retry Fixed-Retry[5] Timebound[20]

This shows the default and current policy options and their values.
Table 4-1 summarizes the possible recovery option settings for retrying I/O after
an error.

Table 4-1 Recovery options for retrying I/O after an error

Recovery option Possible settings Description

recoveryoption=fixedretry Fixed-Retry (retrycount) DMP retries a failed I/O

request for the specified
number of times if I/O fails.

recoveryoption=timebound Timebound (iotimeout) DMP retries a failed I/O

request for the specified time
in seconds if I/O fails.
208 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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Table 4-2 summarizes the possible recovery option settings for throttling I/O.

Table 4-2 Recovery options for I/O throttling

Recovery option Possible settings Description

recoveryoption=nothrottle None I/O throttling is not used.

recoveryoption=throttle Timebound (iotimeout) DMP throttles the path if an

I/O request does not return
within the specified time in
seconds.

Configuring DMP path restoration policies

DMP maintains a kernel thread that re-examines the condition of paths at a
specified interval. The type of analysis that is performed on the paths depends
on the checking policy that is configured.

Note: The DMP path restoration thread does not change the disabled state of the
path through a controller that you have disabled using vxdmpadm disable.

When configuring DMP path restoration policies, you must stop the path
restoration thread, and then restart it with new attributes.
See “Stopping the DMP path restoration thread” on page 210.
Use the vxdmpadm start restore command to configure one of the following
restore policies. The policy will remain in effect until the restore thread is stopped
or the values are changed using vxdmpadm settune command.
■ check_all
The path restoration thread analyzes all paths in the system and revives the
paths that are back online, as well as disabling the paths that are inaccessible.
The command to configure this policy is:

# vxdmpadm start restore [interval=seconds] policy=check_all

■ check_alternate
The path restoration thread checks that at least one alternate path is healthy.
It generates a notification if this condition is not met. This policy avoids inquiry
commands on all healthy paths, and is less costly than check_all in cases
where a large number of paths are available. This policy is the same as
check_all if there are only two paths per DMP node. The command to configure
this policy is:
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 209
Administering DMP using vxdmpadm

# vxdmpadm start restore [interval=seconds] \

policy=check_alternate

■ check_disabled
This is the default path restoration policy. The path restoration thread checks
the condition of paths that were previously disabled due to hardware failures,
and revives them if they are back online. The command to configure this policy
is:

# vxdmpadm start restore [interval=seconds] \

policy=check_disabled

■ check_periodic
The path restoration thread performs check_all once in a given number of
cycles, and check_disabled in the remainder of the cycles. This policy may
lead to periodic slowing down (due to check_all) if there is a large number of
paths available. The command to configure this policy is:

# vxdmpadm start restore interval=seconds \

policy=check_periodic [period=number]

The interval attribute must be specified for this policy. The default number
of cycles between running the check_all policy is 10.
The interval attribute specifies how often the path restoration thread examines
the paths. For example, after stopping the path restoration thread, the polling
interval can be set to 400 seconds using the following command:

# vxdmpadm start restore interval=400

Starting with the 5.0MP3 release, you can also use the vxdmpadm settune command
to change the restore policy, restore interval, and restore period. This method
stores the values for these arguments as DMP tunables. The settings are
immediately applied and are persistent across reboots. Use the vxdmpadm gettune
to view the current settings.
See “DMP tunable parameters” on page 530.
If the vxdmpadm start restore command is given without specifying a policy or
interval, the path restoration thread is started with the persistent policy and
interval settings previously set by the administrator with the vxdmpadm settune
command. If the administrator has not set a policy or interval, the system defaults
are used. The system default restore policy is check_disabled. The system default
interval is 300 seconds.
210 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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Warning: Decreasing the interval below the system default can adversely affect
system performance.

Stopping the DMP path restoration thread

Use the following command to stop the DMP path restoration thread:

# vxdmpadm stop restore

Warning: Automatic path failback stops if the path restoration thread is stopped.

Displaying the status of the DMP path restoration thread

Use the following command to display the status of the automatic path restoration
kernel thread, its polling interval, and the policy that it uses to check the condition
of paths:

# vxdmpadm stat restored

This produces output such as the following:

The number of daemons running : 1

The interval of daemon: 300
The policy of daemon: check_disabled

Displaying information about the DMP error-handling thread

To display information about the kernel thread that handles DMP errors, use the
following command:

# vxdmpadm stat errord

One daemon should be shown as running.

Configuring array policy modules

An array policy module (APM) is a dynamically loadable kernel module (plug-in
for DMP) for use in conjunction with an array. An APM defines array-specific
procedures and commands to:
■ Select an I/O path when multiple paths to a disk within the array are available.
■ Select the path failover mechanism.
■ Select the alternate path in the case of a path failure.
 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing 211
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■ Put a path change into effect.

■ Respond to SCSI reservation or release requests.
DMP supplies default procedures for these functions when an array is registered.
An APM may modify some or all of the existing procedures that are provided by
DMP or by another version of the APM.
You can use the following command to display all the APMs that are configured
for a system:

# vxdmpadm listapm all

The output from this command includes the file name of each module, the
supported array type, the APM name, the APM version, and whether the module
is currently loaded and in use. To see detailed information for an individual module,
specify the module name as the argument to the command:

# vxdmpadm listapm module_name

To add and configure an APM, use the following command:

# vxdmpadm -a cfgapm module_name [attr1=value1 \

[attr2=value2 ...]]

The optional configuration attributes and their values are specific to the APM for
an array. Consult the documentation that is provided by the array vendor for
details.

Note: By default, DMP uses the most recent APM that is available. Specify the -u
option instead of the -a option if you want to force DMP to use an earlier version
of the APM. The current version of an APM is replaced only if it is not in use.

Specifying the -r option allows you to remove an APM that is not currently loaded:

# vxdmpadm -r cfgapm module_name

See the vxdmpadm(1M) manual page.

212 Administering Dynamic Multi-Pathing
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 Chapter 5
Online dynamic
reconfiguration
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About online dynamic reconfiguration

■ Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

■ Upgrading the array controller firmware online

■ Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

About online dynamic reconfiguration

You can perform the following kinds of online dynamic reconfigurations:
■ Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control
■ Updating the array controller firmware, also known as a nondisruptive upgrade
■ Replacing a host bus adapter (HBA) online

Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

System administrators and storage administrators may need to modify the set of
LUNs provisioned to a server. You can change the LUN configuration dynamically,
without performing a reconfiguration reboot on the host.
Dynamic LUN reconfigurations require array configuration commands, operating
system commands, and Veritas Volume manager commands. To complete the
operations correctly, you must issue the commands in the proper sequence on
the host.
214 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

The operations are as follows:

■ Dynamic LUN removal from an existing target ID
See “Removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID” on page 214.
■ Dynamic new LUN addition to a new target ID
See “Adding new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID” on page 216.

Removing LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID

In this case, a group of LUNs is unmapped from the host HBA ports and an
operating system device scan is issued. To add subsequent LUNs seamlessly,
perform additional steps to cleanup the operating system device tree.
The high-level procedure and the VxVM commands are generic. However, the
operating system commands may vary depending on the Solaris version. For
example, the following procedure uses Solaris 10 with the Leadville stack.
To remove LUNs dynamically from an existing target ID
1 Prior to any dynamic reconfiguration, ensure that the dmp_cache_open tunable
is set to on. This setting is the default.

# vxdmpadm gettune dmp_cache_open

If the tunable is set to off, set the dmp_cache_open tunable to on.

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_cache_open=on

2 Identify which LUNs to remove from the host. Do one of the following:
■ Use Storage Array Management to identify the Array Volume ID (AVID)
for the LUNs.
■ If the array does not report the AVID, use the LUN index.

3 For LUNs under VxVM, perform the following steps:

■ Evacuate the data from the LUNs using the vxevac command.
See the vxevac(1M) online manual page.
After the data has been evacuated, enter the following command to remove
the LUNs from the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup rmdisk da-name

■ If the data has not been evacuated and the LUN is part of a subdisk or disk
group, enter the following command to remove the LUNs from the disk
 Online dynamic reconfiguration 215
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

group. If the disk is part of a shared disk group, you must use the -k option
to force the removal.

# vxdg -g diskgroup -k rmdisk da-name

4 For LUNs that are in use by ZFS, export or destroy the zpool.
5 Using the AVID or LUN index, use Storage Array Management to unmap or
unmask the LUNs you identified in step 2.
6 Remove the LUNs from the vxdisk list. Enter the following command on all
nodes in a cluster:

# vxdisk rm da-name

This is a required step. If you do not perform this step, the DMP device tree
shows ghost paths.
7 Clean up the Solaris SCSI device tree for the devices that you removed in step
6.
See “Cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs”
on page 219.
This step is required. You must clean up the operating system SCSI device
tree to release the SCSI target ID for reuse if a new LUN is added to the host
later.
8 Scan the operating system device tree.
See “Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or removing
LUNs” on page 219.
9 Use VxVM to perform a device scan. You must perform this operation on all
nodes in a cluster. Enter one of the following commands:
■ # vxdctl enable

■ # vxdisk scandisks

10 Refresh the DMP device name database using the following command:
# vxddladm assign names

11 Verify that the LUNs were removed cleanly by answering the following
questions:
■ Is the device tree clean?
216 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

Verify that the operating system metanodes are removed from the /dev
directory.
■ Were all the appropriate LUNs removed?
Use the DMP disk reporting tools such as the vxdisk list command
output to determine if the LUNs have been cleaned up successfully.
■ Is the vxdisk list output correct?
Verify that the vxdisk list output shows the correct number of paths
and does not include any ghost disks.
If the answer to any of these questions is "No," return to step 5 and perform
the required steps.
If the answer to all of the questions is "Yes," the LUN remove operation is
successful.

Adding new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID

In this case, a new group of LUNs is mapped to the host via multiple HBA ports.
An operating system device scan is issued for the LUNs to be recognized and added
to DMP control.
The high-level procedure and the VxVM commands are generic. However, the
operating system commands may vary depending on the Solaris version. For
example, the following procedure uses Solaris 10 with the Leadville stack.
 Online dynamic reconfiguration 217
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

To add new LUNs dynamically to a new target ID

1 Prior to any dynamic reconfiguration, ensure that the dmp_cache_open tunable
is set to on. This setting is the default.

# vxdmpadm gettune dmp_cache_open

If the tunable is set to off, set the dmp_cache_open tunable to on.

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_cache_open=on

2 If DMP co-exists with EMC PowerPath, make sure the dmp_monitor_osevent

parameter is set to off. The vxesd daemon will not monitor operating system
events.
If you install DMP on a system that already has PowerPath installed, DMP
sets the dmp_monitor_osevent to off by default.

# vxdmpadm gettune dmp_monitor_osevent

If required, turn off the dmp_monitor_osevent parameter explicitly:

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_monitor_osevent=off

3 Identify which LUNs to add to the host. Do one of the following:

■ Use Storage Array Management to identify the Array Volume ID (AVID)
for the LUNs.
■ If the array does not report the AVID, use the LUN index.

4 Map/mask the LUNs to the new target IDs on multiple hosts.

5 Scan the operating system device.
See “Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or removing
LUNs” on page 219.
Repeat step 3 and step 4 until you see that all the LUNs have been added.
6 Use VxVM to perform a device scan. You must perform this operation on all
nodes in a cluster. Enter one of the following commands:
■ # vxdctl enable

■ # vxdisk scandisks
218 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

7 Refresh the DMP device name database using the following command:

# vxddladm assign names

8 Verify that the LUNs were added correctly by answering the following
questions:
■ Do the newly provisioned LUNs appear in the vxdisk list output?
■ Are the configured paths present for each LUN?
If the answer to any of these questions is "No," return to step 3 and begin the
procedure again.
If the answer to all of the questions is "Yes," the LUNs have been successfully
added. You can now add the LUNs to a disk group, create new volumes, or
grow existing volumes.
If the dmp_native_support tunable is set to ON and the new LUN does not
have a VxVM label or is not claimed by a TPD driver then the LUN is available
for use by ZFS.

About detecting target ID reuse if the operating system device tree is

not cleaned up
If you try to reprovision a LUN or set of LUNs whose previously-valid operating
system device entries are not cleaned up, the following messages are displayed.
Also, DMP reconfiguration during the DMP device scan and DMP reconfiguration
are temporarily inhibited.
See “Cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs”
on page 219.
VxVM vxdisk ERROR V-5-1-14519 Data Corruption Protection Activated
- User Corrective Action Needed

VxVM vxdisk INFO V-5-1-14521 To recover, first ensure that the OS

device tree is up to date (requires OS specific commands).

VxVM vxdisk INFO V-5-1-14520 Then, execute 'vxdisk rm' on the

following devices before reinitiating device discovery. <DA names>

The message above indicates that a new LUN is trying to reuse the target ID of
an older LUN. The device entries have not been cleaned, so the new LUN cannot
use the target ID. Until the operating system device tree is cleaned up, DMP
prevents this operation.
 Online dynamic reconfiguration 219
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

Scanning an operating system device tree after adding or removing

LUNs
After you add or remove LUNs, scan the operating system device tree to verify
that the operation completed successfully.
The operating system commands may vary, depending on the Solaris version. The
following procedure uses Solaris 10 with the Leadville stack.
To scan an operating system device tree after adding or removing LUNs
1 Enter the following command:

# cfgadm -c configure c2

where c2 is the controller ID 2.

2 Enter the following command:

# devfsadm -Cv

Cleaning up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs

After you remove LUNs, you must clean up the operating system device tree.
The operating system commands may vary, depending on the Solaris version. The
following procedure uses Solaris 10 with the Leadville stack. If any of these steps
do not produce the desired result, contact Sun support.
220 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control

To clean up the operating system device tree after removing LUNs

1 Run the format command. In the command output, a device that has been
removed includes the text <drive not available>.

413. c3t5006048ACAFE4A7Cd252 <drive not available>

/pci@1d,700000/SUNW,qlc@1,1/fp@0,0/ssd@w5006048acafe4a7c,fc

2 Use Storage Array Management or the command line to unmap the LUNs.
After they are unmapped, Solaris indicates the devices are either unusable
or failing.

# cfgadm -al -o show_SCSI_LUN | grep -i unusable

c2::5006048acafe4a73,256 disk connected configured unusable
c3::5006048acafe4a7c,255 disk connected configured unusable
# cfgadm -al -o show_SCSI_LUN | grep -i failing
c2::5006048acafe4a73,71 disk connected configured failing
c3::5006048acafe4a7c,252 disk connected configured failing

See “Reconfiguring a LUN online that is under DMP control” on page 213.
3 If the output indicates the LUNs are failing, you must force an LIP on the
HBA.

# luxadm -e forcelip /devices/pci@1d,700000/SUNW,qlc@1,1/fp

@0,0:devctl

This operation probes the targets again, so that output indicates the devices
are unstable. To remove a device from the operating system device tree, it
must be unstable.
4 Remove the device from the cfgadm database. On the HBA, enter the following
commands:

# cfgadm -c unconfigure -o unusable_SCSI_LUN c2::5006048acafe4a73

# cfgadm -c unconfigure -o unusable_SCSI_LUN c3::5006048acafe4a7c

5 To verify that the LUNs have been removed, repeat step 2.

6 Clean up the device tree. The following command removes the /dev/dsk links
to /devices.

# devfsadm -Cv
 Online dynamic reconfiguration 221
Upgrading the array controller firmware online

Upgrading the array controller firmware online

Storage array subsystems need code upgrades as fixes, patches, or feature
upgrades. You can perform these upgrades online when the file system is mounted
and I/Os are being served to the storage.
Legacy storage subsystems contain two controllers for redundancy. An online
upgrade is done one controller at a time. DMP fails over all I/O to the second
controller while the first controller is undergoing an Online Controller Upgrade.
After the first controller has completely staged the code, it reboots, resets, and
comes online with the new version of the code. The second controller goes through
the same process, and I/O fails over to the first controller.

Note: Throughout this process, application I/O is not affected.

Array vendors have different names for this process. For example, EMC calls it a
nondisruptive upgrade (NDU) for CLARiiON arrays.
A/A type arrays require no special handling during this online upgrade process.
For A/P, A/PF, and ALUA type arrays, DMP performs array-specific handling
through vendor-specific array policy modules (APMs) during an online controller
code upgrade.
When a controller resets and reboots during a code upgrade, DMP detects this
state through the SCSI Status. DMP immediately fails over all I/O to the next
controller.
If the array does not fully support NDU, all paths to the controllers may be
unavailable for I/O for a short period of time. Before beginning the upgrade, set
the dmp_lun_retry_timeout tunable to a period greater than the time that you
expect the controllers to be unavailable for I/O. DMP retries the I/Os until the end
of the dmp_lun_retry_timeout period, or until the I/O succeeds, whichever
happens first. Therefore, you can perform the firmware upgrade without
interrupting the application I/Os.
For example, if you expect the paths to be unavailable for I/O for 300 seconds, use
the following command:

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_lun_retry_timeout=300

DMP retries the I/Os for 300 seconds, or until the I/O succeeds.
To verify which arrays support Online Controller Upgrade or NDU, see the
hardware compatibility list (HCL) at the following URL:
http://entsupport.symantec.com/docs/330441
222 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

This section contains the procedure to replace an online host bus adapter (HBA)
when DMP is managing multi-pathing in a Cluster File System (CFS) cluster. The
HBA World Wide Port Name (WWPN) changes when the HBA is replaced. Following
are the prerequisites to replace an online host bus adapter:
■ A single node or two or more node CFS or RAC cluster.
■ I/O running on CFS file system.
■ An M5000 server with at least two HBAs in separate PCIe slots and
recommended Solaris patch level for HBA replacement.
 Online dynamic reconfiguration 223
Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

To replace an online host bus adapter on an M5000 server

1 Identify the HBAs on the M5000 server. Enter the following command:

/usr/platform/sun4u/sbin/prtdiag -v | grep emlx ( emulex HBA)

/usr/platform/sun4u/sbin/prtdiag -v | grep qlc ( qlogic HBA )
00 PCIe 0 2, fc20, 10df 119, 0, 0 okay 4,
4 SUNW,emlxs-pci10df,fc20 LPe 11002-S
/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@9/SUNW,emlxs@0
00 PCIe 0 2, fc20, 10df 119, 0, 1 okay 4,
4 SUNW,emlxs-pci10df,fc20 LPe 11002-S
/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@9/SUNW,emlxs@0,1
00 PCIe 3 2, fc20, 10df 2, 0, 0 okay 4,
4 SUNW,emlxs-pci10df,fc20 LPe 11002-S
/pci@3,700000/SUNW,emlxs@0
00 PCIe 3 2, fc20, 10df 2, 0, 1 okay 4,
4 SUNW,emlxs-pci10df,fc20 LPe 11002-S
/pci@3,700000/SUNW,emlxs@0,1
224 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

2 Identify the HBA and its WWPN(s), which you want to replace using the
cfgadm command.

To identify the HBA, enter the following:

# cfgadm -al | grep -i fibre

iou#0-pci#1 fibre/hp connected configured ok
iou#0-pci#4 fibre/hp connected configured ok

To lists all HBAs, enter the following:

# luxadm -e port ( will list all HBAs )

/devices/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@9/SUNW,emlxs@0/fp@0,0:devctl
NOT CONNECTED
/devices/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@9/SUNW,emlxs@0,1/fp@0,0:devctl
CONNECTED
/devices/pci@3,700000/SUNW,emlxs@0/fp@0,0:devctl
NOT CONNECTED
/devices/pci@3,700000/SUNW,emlxs@0,1/fp@0,0:devctl
CONNECTED

To select the HBA to dump the portap and get the WWPN, enter the following:

# luxadm -e dump_map /devices/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@9/SUNW,emlxs@0,1/

fp@0,0:devctl
0 304700 0 203600a0b847900c 200600a0b847900c 0x0
(Disk device)
1 30a800 0 20220002ac00065f 2ff70002ac00065f 0x0
(Disk device)
2 30a900 0 21220002ac00065f 2ff70002ac00065f 0x0
(Disk device)
3 560500 0 10000000c97c3c2f 20000000c97c3c2f 0x1f
(Unknown Type)
4 560700 0 10000000c97c9557 20000000c97c9557 0x1f
(Unknown Type)
5 560b00 0 10000000c97c34b5 20000000c97c34b5 0x1f
(Unknown Type)
6 560900 0 10000000c973149f 20000000c973149f 0x1f
(Unknown Type,Host Bus Adapter)

Alternately, you can run the fcinfo hba-port Solaris command to get the
WWPN(s) for the HBA ports.
3 Ensure you have a compatible spare HBA for hot-swap.
 Online dynamic reconfiguration 225
Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

4 Stop the I/O operations on the HBA port(s) and disable the DMP subpath(s)
for the HBA that you want to replace.

# vxdmpadm disable ctrl=ctrl#

5 Dynamically unconfigure the HBA in the PCIe slot using the cfgadm command.

# cfgadm -c unconfigure iou#0-pci#1

Look for console messages to check if the cfgadm command is unsuccessful.

If the cfgadm command is unsuccessful, proceed to troubleshooting using the
server hardware documentation. Check the Solaris 10 patch level
recommended for dynamic reconfiguration operations and contact SUN
support for further assistance.

console messages
Oct 24 16:21:44 m5000sb0 pcihp: NOTICE: pcihp (pxb_plx2):
card is removed from the slot iou 0-pci 1

6 Verify that the HBA card that is being replaced in step 5 is not in the
configuration. Enter the following command:

# cfgadm -al | grep -i fibre

iou 0-pci 4 fibre/hp connected configured ok

7 Mark the fiber cable(s).

8 Remove the fiber cable(s) and the HBA that you must replace.
For more information, see the HBA replacement procedures in SPARC
Enterprise M4000/M5000/M8000/M9000 Servers Dynamic Reconfiguration
(DR) User's Guide.
9 Replace the HBA with a new compatible HBA of similar type in the same slot.
The reinserted card shows up as follows:

console messages
iou 0-pci 1 unknown disconnected unconfigured unknown

10 Bring the replaced HBA back into the configuration. Enter the following:
# cfgadm -c configure iou 0-pci 1
console messages
Oct 24 16:21:57 m5000sb0 pcihp: NOTICE: pcihp (pxb_plx2):
card is inserted in the slot iou#0-pci#1 (pci dev 0)
226 Online dynamic reconfiguration
Replacing a host bus adapter on an M5000 server

11 Verify that the reinserted HBA is in the configuration. Enter the following:
# cfgadm -al | grep -i fibre
iou#0-pci 1 fibre/hp connected configured ok <====
iou#0-pci 4 fibre/hp connected configured ok

12 Modify fabric zoning to include the replaced HBA WWPN(s).

13 Enable LUN security on storage for the new WWPN(s).
14 Perform an operating system device scan to re-discover the LUNs. Enter the
following:

# cfgadm -c configure c3

15 Clean up the device tree for old LUNs. Enter the following:
# devfsadm -Cv

Note: Sometimes replacing an HBA creates new devices. Perform cleanup

operations for the LUN only when new devices are created.

16 If VxVM does not show a ghost path for the removed HBA path, enable the
path using the vxdmpadm command:. This performs the device scan for that
particular HBA subpath(s). Enter the following:

# vxdmpadm disable ctrl=ctrl#

17 Verify if I/O operations are scheduled on that path. If I/O operations are
running correctly on all paths, the dynamic HBA replacement operation is
complete.
 Chapter 6
Creating and administering
disk groups
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About disk groups

■ Displaying disk group information

■ Creating a disk group

■ Adding a disk to a disk group

■ Removing a disk from a disk group

■ Moving disks between disk groups

■ Deporting a disk group

■ Importing a disk group

■ Handling of minor number conflicts

■ Moving disk groups between systems

■ Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

■ Renaming a disk group

■ Handling conflicting configuration copies

■ Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

■ Disabling a disk group

■ Destroying a disk group

228 Creating and administering disk groups
About disk groups

■ Upgrading the disk group version

■ About the configuration daemon in VxVM

■ Backing up and restoring disk group configuration data

■ Using vxnotify to monitor configuration changes

■ Working with existing ISP disk groups

About disk groups

Disk groups are named collections of disks that share a common configuration.
Volumes are created within a disk group and are restricted to using disks within
that disk group.
Data related to a particular set of applications or a particular group of users may
need to be made accessible on another system. These situations include the
following:
■ A system has failed and its data needs to be moved to other systems.
■ The work load must be balanced across a number of systems.
You must place disks in one or more disk groups before VxVM can use the disks
for volumes. It is important that you locate data related to particular applications
or users on an identifiable set of disks. When you need to move these disks, this
lets you move only the application or user data that should be moved. The disk
group also provides a single object to move, rather than specifying all objects
within the disk group individually.
As system administrator, you can create additional disk groups to arrange your
system’s disks for different purposes. Many systems only use one disk group,
unless they have a large number of disks. You can initialize, reserve, and add disks
to disk groups at any time. You do not have to add disks to disk groups until the
disks are needed to create VxVM objects.
Veritas Volume Manager's Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature lets you
move VxVM disks and objects between machines that are running under different
operating systems. Disk groups may be made compatible with CDS.
For more information about CDS, see the Veritas Storage Foundation Advanced
Features Administrator’s Guide.
When you add a disk to a disk group, you name that disk (for example, mydg02).
This name identifies a disk for operations such as creating or mirroring a volume.
The name also relates directly to the underlying physical disk. If a physical disk
is moved to a different target address or to a different controller, the name mydg02
 Creating and administering disk groups 229
About disk groups

continues to refer to it. You can replace disks by first associating a different
physical disk with the name of the disk to be replaced and then recovering any
volume data that was stored on the original disk (from mirrors or backup copies).
Having disk groups that contain many disks and VxVM objects causes the private
region to fill. If you have large disk groups that are expected to contain more than
several hundred disks and VxVM objects, you should set up disks with larger
private areas. A major portion of a private region provides space for a disk group
configuration database that contains records for each VxVM object in that disk
group. Because each configuration record is approximately 256 bytes, you can
use the configuration database copy size to estimate the number of records that
you can create in a disk group. You can obtain the copy size in blocks from the
output of the vxdg list diskgroup command. It is the value of the permlen
parameter on the line starting with the string “config:”. This value is the smallest
of the len values for all copies of the configuration database in the disk group.
The value of the free parameter indicates the amount of remaining free space in
the configuration database.
See “Displaying disk group information” on page 236.
One way to overcome the problem of running out of free space is to split the
affected disk group into two separate disk groups.
See “Reorganizing the contents of disk groups” on page 270.
See “Backing up and restoring disk group configuration data” on page 286.
Before Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) 4.0, a system installed with VxVM was
configured with a default disk group, rootdg. This group had to contain at least
one disk. By default, operations were directed to the rootdg disk group. From
release 4.0 onward, VxVM can function without any disk group having been
configured. Only when the first disk is placed under VxVM control must a disk
group be configured. Now, you do not have to name any disk group rootdg. If you
name a disk group rootdg, it has no special properties because of this name.
See “Specification of disk groups to commands” on page 230.

Note: Most VxVM commands require superuser or equivalent privileges.

Additionally, before VxVM 4.0, some commands such as vxdisk were able to
deduce the disk group if the name of an object was uniquely defined in one disk
group among all the imported disk groups. Resolution of a disk group in this way
is no longer supported for any command.
230 Creating and administering disk groups
About disk groups

Specification of disk groups to commands

Many VxVM commands let you specify a disk group using the -g option. For
example, the following command creates a volume in the disk group, mktdg:

# vxassist -g mktdg make mktvol 5g

The block special device that corresponds to this volume is

/dev/vx/dsk/mktdg/mktvol.

System-wide reserved disk groups

The following disk group names are reserved, and cannot be used to name any
disk groups that you create:

bootdg Specifies the boot disk group. This is an alias for the disk group that
contains the volumes that are used to boot the system. VxVM sets
bootdg to the appropriate disk group if it takes control of the root
disk. Otherwise, bootdg is set to nodg (no disk group).

defaultdg Specifies the default disk group. This is an alias for the disk group
name that should be assumed if the -g option is not specified to a
command, or if the VXVM_DEFAULTDG environment variable is
undefined. By default, defaultdg is set to nodg (no disk group).

nodg Specifies to an operation that no disk group has been defined. For
example, if the root disk is not under VxVM control, bootdg is set to
nodg.

Warning: Do not try to change the assigned value of bootdg. If you change the
value, it may render your system unbootable.

If you have upgraded your system, you may find it convenient to continue to
configure a disk group named rootdg as the default disk group (defaultdg).
defaultdg and bootdg do not have to refer to the same disk group. Also, neither
the default disk group nor the boot disk group have to be named rootdg.

Rules for determining the default disk group

You should use the -g option to specify a disk group to VxVM commands that
accept this option. If you do not specify the disk group, VxVM applies rules in the
following order until it determines a disk group name:
 Creating and administering disk groups 231
About disk groups

■ Use the default disk group name that is specified by the environment variable
VXVM_DEFAULTDG. This variable can also be set to one of the reserved
system-wide disk group names: bootdg, defaultdg, or nodg. If the variable is
undefined, the following rule is applied.
■ Use the disk group that has been assigned to the system-wide default disk
group alias, defaultdg. If this alias is undefined, the following rule is applied.
See “Displaying and specifying the system-wide default disk group” on page 231.
■ If the operation can be performed without requiring a disk group name (for
example, an edit operation on disk access records), do so.
If none of these rules succeeds, the requested operation fails.

Warning: In releases of VxVM prior to 4.0, a subset of commands tried to determine

the disk group by searching for the object name that was being operated upon by
a command. This functionality is no longer supported. Scripts that rely on
determining the disk group from an object name may fail.

Displaying the system-wide boot disk group

To display the currently defined system-wide boot disk group, use the following
command:

# vxdg bootdg

See the vxdg(1M) manual page.

Displaying and specifying the system-wide default disk group

To display the currently defined system-wide default disk group, use the following
command:

# vxdg defaultdg

If a default disk group has not been defined, nodg is displayed. You can also use
the following command to display the default disk group:

# vxprint -Gng defaultdg 2>/dev/null

In this case, if there is no default disk group, nothing is displayed.

Use the following command to specify the name of the disk group that is aliased
by defaultdg:

# vxdctl defaultdg diskgroup

232 Creating and administering disk groups
About disk groups

If bootdg is specified as the argument to this command, the default disk group is
set to be the same as the currently defined system-wide boot disk group.
If nodg is specified as the argument to the vxdctl defaultdg command, the
default disk group is undefined.
The specified disk group is not required to exist on the system.
See the vxdctl(1M) manual page.
See the vxdg(1M) manual page.

Disk group versions

All disk groups have a version number associated with them. Each major Veritas
Volume Manager (VxVM) release introduces a disk group version. To support the
new features in the release, the disk group must be the latest disk group version.
By default, VxVM creates disk groups with the latest disk group version. For
example, Veritas Volume Manager 5.1SP1 creates disk groups with version 160.
Each VxVM release supports a specific set of disk group versions. VxVM can
import and perform operations on a disk group of any supported version. However,
the operations are limited by what features and operations the disk group version
supports. If you import a disk group from a previous version, the latest features
may not be available. If you attempt to use a feature from a newer version of
VxVM, you receive an error message similar to this:

VxVM vxedit ERROR V-5-1-2829 Disk group version doesn't support

feature

You must explicitly upgrade the disk group to the appropriate disk group version
to use the feature.
See “Upgrading the disk group version” on page 284.
Table 6-1 summarizes the Veritas Volume Manager releases that introduce and
support specific disk group versions. It also summarizes the features that are
supported by each disk group version.
 Creating and administering disk groups 233
About disk groups

Table 6-1 Disk group version assignments

VxVM release Introduces disk New features Supports disk

group version supported group versions

5.1SP1 160 ■ Automated 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,

bunker replay as 80, 90, 110, 120, 130,
part of GCO 140, 150, 160
failover
■ Ability to elect
primary during
GCO takeover
■ CVM support for
more than 32
nodes and up to
64 nodes
■ CDS layout
support for large
luns (> 1 TB)
■ vxrootadm
enhancements

5.1 150 SSD device support, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,
migration of ISP dg 80, 90, 110, 120, 130,
140, 150

5.0 140 Data migration, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,
Remote Mirror, 80, 90, 110, 120, 130,
coordinator disk 140
groups (used by VCS),
linked volumes,
snapshot LUN
import.

5.0 130 ■ VVR 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,

Enhancements 80, 90, 110, 120, 130

4.1 120 ■ Automatic 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,

Cluster-wide 80, 90, 110, 120
Failback for A/P
arrays
■ Persistent DMP
Policies
■ Shared Disk
Group Failure
Policy
234 Creating and administering disk groups
About disk groups

Table 6-1 Disk group version assignments (continued)

VxVM release Introduces disk New features Supports disk

group version supported group versions

4.0 110 ■ Cross-platform 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,

Data Sharing 80, 90, 110
(CDS)
■ Device Discovery
Layer (DDL) 2.0
■ Disk Group
Configuration
Backup and
Restore
■ Elimination of
rootdg as a
Special Disk
Group
■ Full-Sized and
Space-Optimized
Instant
Snapshots
■ Intelligent
Storage
Provisioning (ISP)
■ Serial Split Brain
Detection
■ Volume Sets
(Multiple Device
Support for VxFS)
 Creating and administering disk groups 235
About disk groups

Table 6-1 Disk group version assignments (continued)

VxVM release Introduces disk New features Supports disk

group version supported group versions

3.2, 3.5 90 ■ Cluster Support 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,
for Oracle 80, 90
Resilvering
■ Disk Group Move,
Split and Join
■ Device Discovery
Layer (DDL) 1.0
■ Layered Volume
Support in
Clusters
■ Ordered
Allocation
■ OS Independent
Naming Support
■ Persistent
FastResync

3.1.1 80 ■ VVR 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,

Enhancements 80

3.1 70 ■ Non-Persistent 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70

FastResync
■ Sequential DRL
■ Unrelocate
■ VVR
Enhancements

3.0 60 ■ Online Relayout 20, 30, 40, 60

■ Safe RAID-5
Subdisk Moves

2.5 50 ■ SRVM (now 20, 30, 40, 50

known as Veritas
Volume
Replicator or
VVR)

2.3 40 ■ Hot-Relocation 20, 30, 40

2.2 30 ■ VxSmartSync 20, 30

Recovery
Accelerator
236 Creating and administering disk groups
Displaying disk group information

Table 6-1 Disk group version assignments (continued)

VxVM release Introduces disk New features Supports disk

group version supported group versions

2.0 20 ■ Dirty Region 20

Logging (DRL)
■ Disk Group
Configuration
Copy Limiting
■ Mirrored
Volumes Logging
■ New-Style Stripes
■ RAID-5 Volumes
■ Recovery
Checkpointing

1.3 15 15

1.2 10 10

If you need to import a disk group on a system running an older version of Veritas
Volume Manager, you can create a disk group with an earlier disk group version.
See “Creating a disk group with an earlier disk group version” on page 239.

Displaying disk group information

To display information on existing disk groups, enter the following command:

# vxdg list
NAME STATE ID
rootdg enabled 730344554.1025.tweety
newdg enabled 731118794.1213.tweety

To display more detailed information on a specific disk group, use the following
command:

# vxdg list diskgroup

When you apply this command to a disk group named mydg, the output is similar
to the following:

# vxdg list mydg

Group: mydg
dgid: 962910960.1025.bass
 Creating and administering disk groups 237
Displaying disk group information

import-id: 0.1
flags:
version: 160
local-activation: read-write
alignment: 512 (bytes)
ssb: on
detach-policy: local
copies: nconfig=default nlog=default
config: seqno=0.1183 permlen=3448 free=3428 templen=12 loglen=522
config disk c0t10d0 copy 1 len=3448 state=clean online
config disk c0t11d0 copy 1 len=3448 state=clean online
log disk c0t10d0 copy 1 len=522
log disk c0t11d0 copy 1 len=522

To verify the disk group ID and name that is associated with a specific disk (for
example, to import the disk group), use the following command:

# vxdisk -s list devicename

This command provides output that includes the following information for the
specified disk. For example, output for disk c0t12d0 as follows:

Disk: c0t12d0
type: simple
flags: online ready private autoconfig autoimport imported
diskid: 963504891.1070.bass
dgname: newdg
dgid: 963504895.1075.bass
hostid: bass
info: privoffset=128

Displaying free space in a disk group

Before you add volumes and file systems to your system, make sure that you have
enough free disk space to meet your needs.
To display free space in the system, use the following command:

# vxdg free

The following is example output:

GROUP DISK DEVICE TAG OFFSET LENGTH FLAGS

mydg mydg01 c0t10d0 c0t10d0 0 4444228 -
mydg mydg02 c0t11d0 c0t11d0 0 4443310 -
newdg newdg01 c0t12d0 c0t12d0 0 4443310 -
238 Creating and administering disk groups
Creating a disk group

newdg newdg02 c0t13d0 c0t13d0 0 4443310 -

oradg oradg01 c0t14d0 c0t14d0 0 4443310 -

To display free space for a disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg -g diskgroup free

where -g diskgroup optionally specifies a disk group.

For example, to display the free space in the disk group, mydg, use the following
command:

# vxdg -g mydg free

The following example output shows the amount of free space in sectors:

DISK DEVICE TAG OFFSET LENGTH FLAGS

mydg01 c0t10d0 c0t10d0 0 4444228 -
mydg02 c0t11d0 c0t11d0 0 4443310 -

Creating a disk group

You must associate a disk group with at least one disk. You can create a new disk
group when you select Add or initialize one or more disks from the main
menu of the vxdiskadm command to add disks to VxVM control. The disks to be
added to a disk group must not belong to an existing disk group.
You can create a shared disk group.
See “Creating a shared disk group” on page 478.
You can also use the vxdiskadd command to create a new disk group:

# vxdiskadd c1t0d0

where c1t0d0 is the device name of a disk that is not currently assigned to a disk
group. The command dialog is similar to that described for the vxdiskadm
command.
See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.
You can also create disk groups using the following vxdg init command:

# vxdg init diskgroup [cds=on|off] diskname=devicename

For example, to create a disk group named mktdg on device c1t0d0s2, enter the
following:

# vxdg init mktdg mktdg01=c1t0d0s2

 Creating and administering disk groups 239
Adding a disk to a disk group

The disk that is specified by the device name, c1t0d0s2, must have been previously
initialized with vxdiskadd or vxdiskadm. The disk must not currently belong to
a disk group.
You can use the cds attribute with the vxdg init command to specify whether a
new disk group is compatible with the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature.
In Veritas Volume Manager 4.0 and later releases, newly created disk groups are
compatible with CDS by default (equivalent to specifying cds=on). If you want to
change this behavior, edit the file /etc/default/vxdg and set the attribute-value
pair cds=off in this file before creating a new disk group.
You can also use the following command to set this attribute for a disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set cds=on|off

Creating a disk group with an earlier disk group version

You may sometimes need to create a disk group that can be imported on a system
running an older version of Veritas Volume Manager. You must specify the disk
group version when you create the disk group, since you cannot downgrade a disk
group version.
For example, the default disk group version for a disk group created on a system
running Veritas Volume Manager 5.1SP1 is 160. Such a disk group cannot be
imported on a system running Veritas Volume Manager 4.1, as that release only
supports up to version 120. Therefore, to create a disk group on a system running
Veritas Volume Manager 5.1SP1 that can be imported by a system running Veritas
Volume Manager 4.1, the disk group must be created with a version of 120 or less.
To create a disk group with a previous version, specify the -T version option to
the vxdg init command.
For example, to create a disk group with version 120 that can be imported by a
system running VxVM 4.1, use the following command:

# vxdg -T 120 init newdg newdg01=c0t3d0s2

This creates a disk group, newdg, which can be imported by Veritas Volume
Manager 4.1. Note that while this disk group can be imported on the VxVM 4.1
system, attempts to use features from Veritas Volume Manager 5.0 or later releases
will fail.

Adding a disk to a disk group

To add a disk to an existing disk group, select Add or initialize one or more
disks from the main menu of the vxdiskadm command.
240 Creating and administering disk groups
Removing a disk from a disk group

You can also use the vxdiskadd command to add a disk to a disk group. Enter the
following:

# vxdiskadd c1t1d0

where c1t1d0 is the device name of a disk that is not currently assigned to a disk
group. The command dialog is similar to that described for the vxdiskadm
command.
See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.

Removing a disk from a disk group

Before you can remove the last disk from a disk group, you must disable the disk
group.
See “Disabling a disk group” on page 283.
As an alternative to disabling the disk group, you can destroy it.
See “Destroying a disk group” on page 284.
If a disk contains no subdisks, you can remove it from its disk group with the
following command:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup ] rmdisk diskname

For example, to remove mydg02 from the disk group mydg, enter the following:

# vxdg -g mydg rmdisk mydg02

If the disk has subdisks on it when you try to remove it, the following error message
is displayed:

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-552 Disk diskname is used by one or more

subdisks
Use -k to remove device assignment.

Using the -k option lets you remove the disk even if it has subdisks.
See the vxdg(1M) manual page.

Warning: Use of the -k option to vxdg can result in data loss.

After you remove the disk from its disk group, you can (optionally) remove it from
VxVM control completely. Enter the following:

# vxdiskunsetup devicename
 Creating and administering disk groups 241
Moving disks between disk groups

For example, to remove the disk c1t0d0s2 from VxVM control, enter the following:

# vxdiskunsetup c1t0d0s2

You can remove a disk on which some subdisks of volumes are defined. For
example, you can consolidate all the volumes onto one disk. If you use vxdiskadm
to remove a disk, you can choose to move volumes off that disk. To do this, run
vxdiskadm and select Remove a disk from the main menu.

If the disk is used by some volumes, this message is displayed:

VxVM ERROR V-5-2-369 The following volumes currently use part of

disk mydg02:

home usrvol

Volumes must be moved from mydg02 before it can be removed.

Move volumes to other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

If you choose y, all volumes are moved off the disk, if possible. Some volumes may
not be movable. The most common reasons why a volume may not be movable
are as follows:
■ There is not enough space on the remaining disks.
■ Plexes or striped subdisks cannot be allocated on different disks from existing
plexes or striped subdisks in the volume.
If vxdiskadm cannot move some volumes, you may need to remove some plexes
from some disks to free more space before proceeding with the disk removal
operation.

Moving disks between disk groups

To move a disk between disk groups, remove the disk from one disk group and
add it to the other. For example, to move the physical disk c0t3d0 (attached with
the disk name salesdg04) from disk group salesdg and add it to disk group mktdg,
use the following commands:

# vxdg -g salesdg rmdisk salesdg04

# vxdg -g mktdg adddisk mktdg02=c0t3d0

Warning: This procedure does not save the configurations nor data on the disks.
242 Creating and administering disk groups
Deporting a disk group

You can also move a disk by using the vxdiskadm command. Select Remove a disk
from the main menu, and then select Add or initialize a disk.
To move disks and preserve the data on these disks, along with VxVM objects,
such as volumes:
See “Moving objects between disk groups” on page 277.

Deporting a disk group

Deporting a disk group disables access to a disk group that is enabled (imported)
by the system. Deport a disk group if you intend to move the disks in a disk group
to another system.
To deport a disk group
1 Stop all activity by applications to volumes that are configured in the disk
group that is to be deported. Unmount file systems and shut down databases
that are configured on the volumes.
If the disk group contains volumes that are in use (for example, by mounted
file systems or databases), deportation fails.
2 To stop the volumes in the disk group, use the following command

# vxvol -g diskgroup stopall

3 From the vxdiskadm main menu, select Remove access to (deport) a disk
group .

4 At prompt, enter the name of the disk group to be deported. In the following
example it is newdg):

Enter name of disk group [<group>,list,q,?] (default: list)

newdg

5 At the following prompt, enter y if you intend to remove the disks in this disk
group:

Disable (offline) the indicated disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y

 Creating and administering disk groups 243
Importing a disk group

6 At the following prompt, press Return to continue with the operation:

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

After the disk group is deported, the vxdiskadm utility displays the following
message:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-269 Removal of disk group newdg was

successful.

7 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to disable another disk
group (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Disable another disk group? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

You can use the following vxdg command to deport a disk group:

# vxdg deport diskgroup

Importing a disk group

Importing a disk group enables access by the system to a disk group. To move a
disk group from one system to another, first disable (deport) the disk group on
the original system, and then move the disk between systems and enable (import)
the disk group.
By default, VxVM recovers and starts any disabled volumes in the disk group when
you import the disk group. To prevent VxVM from recovering the disabled volumes,
turn off the automatic recovery feature. For example, after importing the disk
group, you may want to do some maintenance before starting the volumes.
See “Setting the automatic recovery of volumes” on page 244.
To import a disk group
1 To ensure that the disks in the deported disk group are online, use the
following command:

# vxdisk -s list

2 From the vxdiskadm main menu, select Enable access to (import) a disk
group.
244 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling of minor number conflicts

3 At the following prompt, enter the name of the disk group to import (in this
example, newdg):

Select disk group to import [<group>,list,q,?] (default: list)

newdg

When the import finishes, the vxdiskadm utility displays the following success
message:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-374 The import of newdg was successful.

4 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to import another disk
group (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Select another disk group? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

You can also use the following vxdg command to import a disk group:

# vxdg import diskgroup

You can also import the disk group as a shared disk group.
See “Importing disk groups as shared” on page 478.

Setting the automatic recovery of volumes

By default, VxVM recovers and starts any disabled volumes in the disk group when
you import the disk group. To prevent VxVM from recovering the disabled volumes,
turn off the automatic volume recovery. For example, after importing the disk
group, you may want to do some maintenance before starting the volumes.
To turn off the automatic volume recovery feature
◆ Use the following vxdefault command to turn off automatic volume recovery.

# vxdefault set autostartvolumes off

Handling of minor number conflicts

If a minor conflict exists when a disk group is imported, VxVM automatically
assigns a new base minor to the disk group, and reminors the volumes in the disk
group, based on the new base minor. You do not need to run the vxdg reminor
command to resolve the minor conflicts.
To avoid any conflicts between shared and private disk groups, the minor numbers
are divided into shared and private pools. VxVM allocates minor numbers of
 Creating and administering disk groups 245
Handling of minor number conflicts

shared disk groups only from the shared pool, and VxVM allocates minor numbers
of private disk groups only from the private pool. If you import a private disk
group as a shared disk group or vice versa, the device minor numbers are
re-allocated from the correct pool. The disk group is dynamically reminored.
By default, private minor numbers range from 0-32999, and shared minor numbers
start from 33000. You can change the division, if required. For example, you can
set the range for shared minor numbers to start from a lower number. This range
provides more minor numbers for shared disk groups and fewer minor numbers
for private disk groups.
Normally, the minor numbers in private and shared pools are sufficient, so there
is no need to make changes to the division.

Note: To make the new division take effect, you must run vxdctl enable or restart
vxconfigd after the tunable is changed in the defaults file. The division on all the
cluster nodes must be exactly the same to prevent node failures for node join,
volume creation, or disk group import operations.

To change the division between shared and private minor numbers

1 Add the tunable sharedminorstart to the defaults file /etc/default/vxsf.
For example, to change the shared minor numbers so that the range starts
from 20000, set the following line in the /etc/default/vxsf file.

sharedminorstart=20000

You cannot set the shared minor numbers to start at less than 1000. If
sharedminorstart is set to values between 0 to 999, the division of private
minor numbers and shared disk group minor numbers is set to 1000. The
value of 0 disables dynamic renumbering.
2 Run the following command:

# vxdctl enable

In certain scenarios, you may need to disable the division between shared minor
numbers and private minor numbers. For example, you may need to prevent the
device minor numbers from being changed when you upgrade from a previous
release. In this case, disable the dynamic reminoring before you install the new
VxVM package.
246 Creating and administering disk groups
Moving disk groups between systems

To disable the division between shared and private minor numbers

1 Set the tunable sharedminorstart in the defaults file /etc/default/vxsf
to 0 (zero). Set the following line in the /etc/default/vxsf file.

sharedminorstart=0

2 Run the following command:

# vxdctl enable

Moving disk groups between systems

An important feature of disk groups is that they can be moved between systems.
If all disks in a disk group are moved from one system to another, then the disk
group can be used by the second system. You do not have to re-specify the
configuration.
To move a disk group between systems
1 Confirm that all disks in the diskgroup are visible on the target system. This
may require masking and zoning changes.
2 On the source system, stop all volumes in the disk group, then deport (disable
local access to) the disk group with the following command:

# vxdg deport diskgroup

3 Move all the disks to the target system and perform the steps necessary
(system-dependent) for the target system and VxVM to recognize the new
disks.
This can require a reboot, in which case the vxconfigd daemon is restarted
and recognizes the new disks. If you do not reboot, use the command vxdctl
enable to restart the vxconfigd program so VxVM also recognizes the disks.
 Creating and administering disk groups 247
Moving disk groups between systems

4 Import (enable local access to) the disk group on the target system with this
command:

# vxdg import diskgroup

Warning: All disks in the disk group must be moved to the other system. If
they are not moved, the import fails.

5 By default, VxVM enables and starts any disabled volumes after the disk
group is imported.
See “Setting the automatic recovery of volumes” on page 244.
If the automatic volume recovery feature is turned off, start all volumes with
the following command:

# vxrecover -g diskgroup -sb

You can also move disks from a system that has crashed. In this case, you
cannot deport the disk group from the source system. When a disk group is
created or imported on a system, that system writes a lock on all disks in the
disk group.

Warning: The purpose of the lock is to ensure that SAN-accessed disks are
not used by both systems at the same time. If two systems try to access the
same disks at the same time, this must be managed using software such as
the clustering functionality of VxVM. Otherwise, data and configuration
information stored on the disk may be corrupted, and may become unusable.

Handling errors when importing disks

When you move disks from a system that has crashed or that failed to detect the
group before the disk was moved, the locks stored on the disks remain and must
be cleared. The system returns the following error message:

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 disk group groupname: import failed:

Disk is in use by another host

The next message indicates that the disk group does not contains any valid disks
(not that it does not contains any disks):

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group groupname: import failed:

No valid disk found containing disk group
248 Creating and administering disk groups
Moving disk groups between systems

The disks may be considered invalid due to a mismatch between the host ID in
their configuration copies and that stored in the /etc/vx/volboot file.
To clear locks on a specific set of devices, use the following command:

# vxdisk clearimport devicename ...

To clear the locks during import, use the following command:

# vxdg -C import diskgroup

Warning: Be careful when using the vxdisk clearimport or vxdg -C import

command on systems that see the same disks via a SAN. Clearing the locks allows
those disks to be accessed at the same time from multiple hosts and can result in
corrupted data.

A disk group can be imported successfully if all the disks are accessible that were
visible when the disk group was last imported successfully. However, sometimes
you may need to specify the -f option to forcibly import a disk group if some disks
are not available. If the import operation fails, an error message is displayed.
The following error message indicates a fatal error that requires hardware repair
or the creation of a new disk group, and recovery of the disk group configuration
and data:

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group groupname: import failed:

Disk group has no valid configuration copies

The following error message indicates a recoverable error.

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group groupname: import failed:

Disk for disk group not found

If some of the disks in the disk group have failed, you can force the disk group to
be imported by specifying the -f option to the vxdg import command:

# vxdg -f import diskgroup

Warning: Be careful when using the -f option. It can cause the same disk group
to be imported twice from different sets of disks. This can cause the disk group
configuration to become inconsistent.

See “Handling conflicting configuration copies” on page 263.

 Creating and administering disk groups 249
Moving disk groups between systems

As using the -f option to force the import of an incomplete disk group counts as
a successful import, an incomplete disk group may be imported subsequently
without this option being specified. This may not be what you expect.
You can also import the disk group as a shared disk group.
See “Importing disk groups as shared” on page 478.
These operations can also be performed using the vxdiskadm utility. To deport a
disk group using vxdiskadm, select Remove access to (deport) a disk group
from the main menu. To import a disk group, select Enable access to (import)
a disk group. The vxdiskadm import operation checks for host import locks and
prompts to see if you want to clear any that are found. It also starts volumes in
the disk group.

Reserving minor numbers for disk groups

A device minor number uniquely identifies some characteristic of a device to the
device driver that controls that device. It is often used to identify some
characteristic mode of an individual device, or to identify separate devices that
are all under the control of a single controller. VxVM assigns unique device minor
numbers to each object (volume, plex, subdisk, disk, or disk group) that it controls.
When you move a disk group between systems, it is possible for the minor numbers
that it used on its previous system to coincide with those of objects known to
VxVM on the new system. To get around this potential problem, you can allocate
separate ranges of minor numbers for each disk group. VxVM uses the specified
range of minor numbers when it creates volume objects from the disks in the disk
group. This guarantees that each volume has the same minor number across
reboots or reconfigurations. Disk groups may then be moved between machines
without causing device number collisions.
VxVM chooses minor device numbers for objects created from this disk group
starting at the base minor number base_minor. Minor numbers can range from
this value up to 131,071. Try to leave a reasonable number of unallocated minor
numbers near the top of this range to allow for temporary device number
remapping in the event that a device minor number collision may still occur.
VxVM reserves the range of minor numbers from 0 to 999 for use with volumes
in the boot disk group. For example, the rootvol volume is always assigned minor
number 0.
If you do not specify the base of the minor number range for a disk group, VxVM
chooses one at random. The number chosen is at least 1000, is a multiple of 1000,
and yields a usable range of 1000 device numbers. The chosen number also does
not overlap within a range of 1000 of any currently imported disk groups, and it
does not overlap any currently allocated volume device numbers.
250 Creating and administering disk groups
Moving disk groups between systems

Note: The default policy ensures that a small number of disk groups can be merged
successfully between a set of machines. However, where disk groups are merged
automatically using failover mechanisms, select ranges that avoid overlap.

To view the base minor number for an existing disk group, use the vxprint
command as shown in the following examples for the disk group, mydg:

# vxprint -l mydg | grep minors

minors: >=45000

# vxprint -g mydg -m | egrep base_minor

base_minor=45000

To set a base volume device minor number for a disk group that is being created,
use the following command:

# vxdg init diskgroup minor=base_minor disk_access_name ...

For example, the following command creates the disk group, newdg, that includes
the specified disks, and has a base minor number of 30000:

# vxdg init newdg minor=30000 c1d0t0s2 c1t1d0s2

If a disk group already exists, you can use the vxdg reminor command to change
its base minor number:

# vxdg -g diskgroup reminor new_base_minor

For example, the following command changes the base minor number to 30000
for the disk group, mydg:

# vxdg -g mydg reminor 30000

If a volume is open, its old device number remains in effect until the system is
rebooted or until the disk group is deported and re-imported. If you close the open
volume, you can run vxdg reminor again to allow the renumbering to take effect
without rebooting or re-importing.
An example of where it is necessary to change the base minor number is for a
cluster-shareable disk group. The volumes in a shared disk group must have the
same minor number on all the nodes. If there is a conflict between the minor
numbers when a node attempts to join the cluster, the join fails. You can use the
reminor operation on the nodes that are in the cluster to resolve the conflict. In
a cluster where more than one node is joined, use a base minor number which
does not conflict on any node.
 Creating and administering disk groups 251
Moving disk groups between systems

See the vxdg(1M) manual page.

See “Handling of minor number conflicts” on page 244.

Compatibility of disk groups between platforms

For disk groups that support the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature, the
upper limit on the minor number range is restricted on AIX, HP-UX, Linux (with
a 2.6 or later kernel) and Solaris to 65,535 to ensure portability between these
operating systems.
On a Linux platform with a pre-2.6 kernel, the number of minor numbers per
major number is limited to 256 with a base of 0. This has the effect of limiting the
number of volumes and disks that can be supported system-wide to a smaller
value than is allowed on other operating system platforms. The number of disks
that are supported by a pre-2.6 Linux kernel is typically limited to a few hundred.
With the extended major numbering scheme that was implemented in VxVM 4.0
on Linux, a maximum of 4079 volumes could be configured, provided that a
contiguous block of 15 extended major numbers was available.
VxVM 4.1 and later releases run on a 2.6 version Linux kernel, which increases
the number of minor devices that are configurable from 256 to 65,536 per major
device number. This allows a large number of volumes and disk devices to be
configured on a system. The theoretical limit on the number of DMP and volume
devices that can be configured on such a system are 65,536 and 1,048,576
respectively. However, in practice, the number of VxVM devices that can be
configured in a single disk group is limited by the size of the private region.
When a CDS-compatible disk group is imported on a Linux system with a pre-2.6
kernel, VxVM attempts to reassign the minor numbers of the volumes, and fails
if this is not possible.
To help ensure that a CDS-compatible disk group is portable between operating
systems, including Linux with a pre-2.6 kernel, use the following command to set
the maxdev attribute on the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set maxdev=4079

Note: Such a disk group may still not be importable by VxVM 4.0 on Linux with a
pre-2.6 kernel if it would increase the number of minor numbers on the system
that are assigned to volumes to more than 4079, or if the number of available
extended major numbers is smaller than 15.

You can use the following command to discover the maximum number of volumes
that are supported by VxVM on a Linux host:
252 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

# cat /proc/sys/vxvm/vxio/vol_max_volumes
4079

See the vxdg(1M) manual page.

Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

A disk may be copied by creating a hardware snapshot (such as an EMC BCV™ or
Hitachi ShadowCopy™) or clone, by using dd or a similar command to replicate
the disk, or by building a new LUN from the space that was previously used by a
deleted LUN. To avoid the duplicate disk ID condition, the default action of VxVM
is to prevent such duplicated disks from being imported.
Advanced disk arrays provide hardware tools that you can use to create clones of
existing disks outside the control of VxVM. For example, these disks may have
been created as hardware snapshots or mirrors of existing disks in a disk group.
As a result, the VxVM private region is also duplicated on the cloned disk. When
the disk group containing the original disk is subsequently imported, VxVM detects
multiple disks that have the same disk identifier that is defined in the private
region. In releases prior to 5.0, if VxVM could not determine which disk was the
original, it would not import such disks into the disk group. The duplicated disks
would have to be re-initialized before they could be imported.
From release 5.0, a unique disk identifier (UDID) is added to the disk’s private
region when the disk is initialized or when the disk is imported into a disk group
(if this identifier does not already exist). Whenever a disk is brought online, the
current UDID value that is known to the Device Discovery Layer (DDL) is compared
with the UDID that is set in the disk’s private region. If the UDID values do not
match, the udid_mismatch flag is set on the disk. This flag can be viewed with the
vxdisk list command. This allows a LUN snapshot to be imported on the same
host as the original LUN. It also allows multiple snapshots of the same LUN to be
simultaneously imported on a single server, which can be useful for off-host
backup and processing.
A new set of vxdisk and vxdg operations are provided to handle such disks; either
by writing the DDL value of the UDID to a disk’s private region, or by tagging a
disk and specifying that it is a cloned disk to the vxdg import operation.
The following is sample output from the vxdisk list command showing that
disks c2t66d0s2, c2t67d0s2 and c2t68d0s2 are marked with the udid_mismatch
flag:

# vxdisk list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

 Creating and administering disk groups 253
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

c0t0d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online

c0t1d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online
.
.
.
c2t64d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online
c2t65d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online
c2t66d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online udid_mismatch
c2t67d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online udid_mismatch
c2t68d0s2 auto:cdsdisk - - online udid_mismatch

Writing a new UDID to a disk

You can use the following command to update the unique disk identifier (UDID)
for one or more disks. This is useful when building a new LUN from space
previously used by a deleted LUN, for example.

# vxdisk [-f] [-g diskgroup ] updateudid disk ...

This command uses the current value of the UDID that is stored in the Device
Discovery Layer (DDL) database to correct the value in the private region. The -f
option must be specified if VxVM has not set the udid_mismatch flag for a disk.
For example, the following command updates the UDIDs for the disks c2t66d0s2
and c2t67d0s2:

# vxdisk updateudid c2t66d0s2 c2t67d0s2

Importing a disk group containing cloned disks

By default, disks on which the udid_mismatch flag or the clone_disk flag has
been set are not imported by the vxdg import command unless all disks in the
disk group have at least one of these flags set, and no two of the disks have the
same UDID. You can then import the cloned disks by specifying the -o
useclonedev=on option to the vxdg import command, as shown in this example:

# vxdg -o useclonedev=on [-o updateid] import mydg

This form of the command allows only cloned disks to be imported. All non-cloned
disks remain unimported.
If the clone_disk flag is set on a disk, this indicates the disk was previously
imported into a disk group with the udid_mismatch flag set.
The -o updateid option can be specified to write new identification attributes to
the disks, and to set the clone_disk flag on the disks. (The vxdisk set clone=on
254 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

command can also be used to set the flag.) However, the import fails if multiple
copies of one or more cloned disks exist. In this case, you can use the following
command to tag all the disks in the disk group that are to be imported:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup ] settag tagname disk ...

where tagname is a string of up to 128 characters, not including spaces or tabs.

For example, the following command sets the tag, my_tagged_disks, on several
disks that are to be imported together:

# vxdisk settag my_tagged_disks c2t66d0s2 c2t67d0s2

Alternatively, you can update the UDIDs of the cloned disks.

See “Writing a new UDID to a disk” on page 253.
To check which disks are tagged, use the vxdisk listtag command:

# vxdisk listtag

DEVICE NAME VALUE

c0t0d0s2 - -
c0t1d0s2 - -
.
.
.
c2t64d0s2 my_tagged_disks -
c2t65d0s2 my_tagged_disks -
c2t66d0s2 my_tagged_disks -
c2t67d0s2 my_tagged_disks -
c2t68d0s2 - -

The configuration database in a VM disk’s private region contains persistent

configuration data (or metadata) about the objects in a disk group. This database
is consulted by VxVM when the disk group is imported. At least one of the cloned
disks that are being imported must contain a copy of the current configuration
database in its private region.
You can use the following command to ensure that a copy of the metadata is placed
on a disk, regardless of the placement policy for the disk group:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] set disk keepmeta=always

Alternatively, use the following command to place a copy of the configuration

database and kernel log on all disks in a disk group that share a given tag:
 Creating and administering disk groups 255
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] set tagmeta=on tag=tagname nconfig=all \

nlog=all

To check which disks in a disk group contain copies of this configuration

information, use the vxdg listmeta command:

# vxdg [-q] listmeta diskgroup

The -q option can be specified to suppress detailed configuration information

from being displayed.
The tagged disks in the disk group may be imported by specifying the tag to the
vxdg import command in addition to the -o useclonedev=on option:

# vxdg -o useclonedev=on -o tag=my_tagged_disks import mydg

If you have already imported the non-cloned disks in a disk group, you can use
the -n and -t option to specify a temporary name for the disk group containing
the cloned disks:

# vxdg -t -n clonedg -o useclonedev=on -o tag=my_tagged_disks \

import mydg

See “Renaming a disk group” on page 261.

To remove a tag from a disk, use the vxdisk rmtag command, as shown in the
following example:

# vxdisk rmtag tag=my_tagged_disks c2t67d0s2

See the vxdisk(1M) and vxdg(1M) manual pages.

Sample cases of operations on cloned disks

The following sections contain examples of operations that can be used with
cloned disks:
See “Enabling configuration database copies on tagged disks” on page 255.
See “Importing cloned disks without tags” on page 257.
See “Importing cloned disks with tags” on page 259.

Enabling configuration database copies on tagged disks

In this example, the following commands have been used to tag some of the disks
in an Hitachi TagmaStore array:
256 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

# vxdisk settag TagmaStore-USP0_28 t1=v1

# vxdisk settag TagmaStore-USP0_28 t2=v2
# vxdisk settag TagmaStore-USP0_24 t2=v2
# vxdisk settag TagmaStore-USP0_25 t1=v1

These tags can be viewed by using the vxdisk listtag command:

# vxdisk listtag

DEVICE NAME VALUE

TagmaStore-USP0_24 t2 v2
TagmaStore-USP0_25 t1 v1
TagmaStore-USP0_28 t1 v1
TagmaStore-USP0_28 t2 v2

The following command ensures that configuration database copies and kernel
log copies are maintained for all disks in the disk group mydg that are tagged as
t1:

# vxdg -g mydg set tagmeta=on tag=t1 nconfig=all nlog=all

The disks for which such metadata is maintained can be seen by using this
command:

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

TagmaStore-USP0_10 auto:cdsdisk - - online
TagmaStore-USP0_24 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
TagmaStore-USP0_25 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online tagmeta
TagmaStore-USP0_26 auto:cdsdisk - - online
TagmaStore-USP0_27 auto:cdsdisk - - online
TagmaStore-USP0_28 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online tagmeta

Alternatively, the following command can be used to ensure that a copy of the
metadata is kept with a disk:

# vxdisk set TagmaStore-USP0_25 keepmeta=always

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

TagmaStore-USP0_10 auto:cdsdisk - - online
TagmaStore-USP0_22 auto:cdsdisk - - online
TagmaStore-USP0_23 auto:cdsdisk - - online
TagmaStore-USP0_24 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
 Creating and administering disk groups 257
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

TagmaStore-USP0_25 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online keepmeta

TagmaStore-USP0_28 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online

Importing cloned disks without tags

In the first example, cloned disks (ShadowImage™ devices) from an Hitachi
TagmaStore array will be imported. The primary (non-cloned) disks, mydg01,
mydg02 and mydg03, are already imported, and the cloned disks are not tagged.

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

TagmaStore-USP0_3 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
TagmaStore-USP0_23 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
TagmaStore-USP0_25 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online
TagmaStore-USP0_30 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
TagmaStore-USP0_31 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
TagmaStore-USP0_32 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online

To import the cloned disks, they must be assigned a new disk group name, and
their UDIDs must be updated:

# vxdg -n snapdg -o useclonedev=on -o updateid import mydg

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

TagmaStore-USP0_3 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 snapdg online clone_disk
TagmaStore-USP0_23 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
TagmaStore-USP0_25 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online
TagmaStore-USP0_30 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 snapdg online clone_disk
TagmaStore-USP0_31 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 snapdg online clone_disk
TagmaStore-USP0_32 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online

Note that the state of the imported cloned disks has changed from online
udid_mismatch to online clone_disk.

In the next example, none of the disks (neither cloned nor non-cloned) have been
imported:

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

TagmaStore-USP0_3 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
TagmaStore-USP0_23 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
TagmaStore-USP0_25 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
258 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

TagmaStore-USP0_30 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch

TagmaStore-USP0_31 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
TagmaStore-USP0_32 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online

To import only the cloned disks into the mydg disk group:

# vxdg -o useclonedev=on -o updateid import mydg

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

TagmaStore-USP0_3 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online clone_disk
TagmaStore-USP0_23 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
TagmaStore-USP0_25 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
TagmaStore-USP0_30 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online clone_disk
TagmaStore-USP0_31 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online clone_disk
TagmaStore-USP0_32 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online

In the next example, a cloned disk (BCV device) from an EMC Symmetrix DMX
array is to be imported. Before the cloned disk, EMC0_27, has been split off from
the disk group, the vxdisk list command shows that it is in the error
udid_mismatch state:

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
EMC0_1 auto:cdsdisk EMC0_1 mydg online
EMC0_27 auto - - error udid_mismatch

The symmir command is used to split off the BCV device:

# /usr/symcli/bin/symmir -g mydg split DEV001

After updating VxVM’s information about the disk by running the vxdisk
scandisks command, the cloned disk is in the online udid_mismatch state:

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
EMC0_1 auto:cdsdisk EMC0_1 mydg online
EMC0_27 auto:cdsdisk - - online udid_mismatch

The following command imports the cloned disk into the new disk group newdg,
and updates the disk’s UDID:

# vxdg -n newdg -o useclonedev=on -o updateid import mydg

The state of the cloned disk is now shown as online clone_disk:

 Creating and administering disk groups 259
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
EMC0_1 auto:cdsdisk EMC0_1 mydg online
EMC0_27 auto:cdsdisk EMC0_1 newdg online clone_disk

Importing cloned disks with tags

In this example, cloned disks (BCV devices) from an EMC Symmetrix DMX array
will be imported. The primary (non-cloned) disks, mydg01, mydg02 and mydg03, are
already imported, and the cloned disks with the tag t1 are to be imported.

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

EMC0_4 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online
EMC0_6 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
EMC0_8 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
EMC0_15 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
EMC0_18 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online
EMC0_24 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch

The disks are tagged as follows:

# vxdisk listtag

DEVICE NAME VALUE

EMC0_4 t2 v2
EMC0_4 t1 v1
EMC0_6 t2 v2
EMC0_8 t1 v1
EMC0_15 t2 v2
EMC0_18 t1 v1
EMC0_24 t1 v1
EMC0_24 t2 v2

To import the cloned disks that are tagged as t1, they must be assigned a new
disk group name, and their UDIDs must be updated:

# vxdg -n bcvdg -o useclonedev=on -o tag=t1 -o updateid import mydg

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

EMC0_4 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online
EMC0_6 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
EMC0_8 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 bcvdg online clone_disk
260 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers

EMC0_15 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch

EMC0_18 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online
EMC0_24 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 bcvdg online clone_disk

As the cloned disk EMC0_15 is not tagged as t1, it is not imported. Note that the
state of the imported cloned disks has changed from online udid_mismatch to
online clone_disk.

By default, the state of imported cloned disks is shown as online clone_disk.

This can be removed by using the vxdisk set command as shown here:

# vxdisk set EMC0_8 clone=off

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

EMC0_4 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online
EMC0_6 auto:cdsdisk mydg02 mydg online
EMC0_8 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 bcvdg online
EMC0_15 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
EMC0_18 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online
EMC0_24 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 bcvdg online clone_disk

In the next example, none of the disks (neither cloned nor non-cloned) have been
imported:

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

EMC0_4 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
EMC0_6 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
EMC0_8 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
EMC0_15 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch
EMC0_18 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
EMC0_24 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch

To import only the cloned disks that have been tagged as t1 into the mydg disk
group:

# vxdg -o useclonedev=on -o tag=t1 -o updateid import mydg

# vxdisk -o alldgs list

DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS

EMC0_4 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
EMC0_6 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
EMC0_8 auto:cdsdisk mydg03 mydg online clone_disk
 Creating and administering disk groups 261
Renaming a disk group

EMC0_15 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online udid_mismatch

EMC0_18 auto:cdsdisk - (mydg) online
EMC0_24 auto:cdsdisk mydg01 mydg online clone_disk

As in the previous example, the cloned disk EMC0_15 is not tagged as t1, and so it
is not imported.

Considerations when using EMC CLARiiON SNAPSHOT LUNs

If you need to import the Snapshot LUN of a primary LUN to the same host as the
original LUN, be aware of the following limitation:
If you are using enclosure-based naming (EBN) with the Array Volume id (AVID)
enabled, turn off name persistence during device discovery before importing the
snapshot LUN to the original host.
To turn off name persistence, use the following command:

# vxddladm set namingscheme=ebn persistence=no use_avid=yes

After DDL recognizes the LUN, turn on name persistence using the following
command:

# vxddladm set namingscheme=ebn persistence=yes use_avid=yes

Renaming a disk group

Only one disk group of a given name can exist per system. It is not possible to
import or deport a disk group when the target system already has a disk group of
the same name. To avoid this problem, VxVM allows you to rename a disk group
during import or deport.
To rename a disk group during import, use the following command:

# vxdg [-t] -n newdg import diskgroup

If the -t option is included, the import is temporary and does not persist across
reboots. In this case, the stored name of the disk group remains unchanged on its
original host, but the disk group is known by the name specified by newdg to the
importing host. If the -t option is not used, the name change is permanent.
For example, this command temporarily renames the disk group, mydg, as mytempdg
on import:

# vxdg -t -n mytempdg import mydg

To rename a disk group during deport, use the following command:

262 Creating and administering disk groups
Renaming a disk group

# vxdg [-h hostname] -n newdg deport diskgroup

When renaming on deport, you can specify the -h hostname option to assign a
lock to an alternate host. This ensures that the disk group is automatically
imported when the alternate host reboots.
For example, this command renames the disk group, mydg, as myexdg, and deports
it to the host, jingo:

# vxdg -h jingo -n myexdg deport mydg

You cannot use this method to rename the boot disk group because it contains
volumes that are in use by mounted file systems (such as /). To rename the boot
disk group, you must first unmirror and unencapsulate the root disk, and then
re-encapsulate and remirror the root disk in a different disk group. This disk
group becomes the new boot disk group.
To temporarily move the boot disk group, bootdg, from one host to another (for
repair work on the root volume, for example) and then move it back
1 On the original host, identify the disk group ID of the bootdg disk group to
be imported with the following command:

# vxdisk -g bootdg -s list

dgname: rootdg
dgid: 774226267.1025.tweety

In this example, the administrator has chosen to name the boot disk group
as rootdg. The ID of this disk group is 774226267.1025.tweety.
This procedure assumes that all the disks in the boot disk group are accessible
by both hosts.
2 Shut down the original host.
 Creating and administering disk groups 263
Handling conflicting configuration copies

3 On the importing host, import and rename the rootdg disk group with this
command:

# vxdg -tC -n newdg import diskgroup

The -t option indicates a temporary import name, and the -C option clears
import locks. The -n option specifies an alternate name for the rootdg being
imported so that it does not conflict with the existing rootdg. diskgroup is
the disk group ID of the disk group being imported (for example,
774226267.1025.tweety).

If a reboot or crash occurs at this point, the temporarily imported disk group
becomes unimported and requires a reimport.
4 After the necessary work has been done on the imported disk group, deport
it back to its original host with this command:

# vxdg -h hostname deport diskgroup

Here hostname is the name of the system whose rootdg is being returned
(the system name can be confirmed with the command uname -n).
This command removes the imported disk group from the importing host
and returns locks to its original host. The original host can then automatically
import its boot disk group at the next reboot.

Handling conflicting configuration copies

If an incomplete disk group is imported on several different systems, this can
create inconsistencies in the disk group configuration copies that you may need
to resolve manually. This section and following sections describe how such a
condition can occur, and how to correct it. (When the condition occurs in a cluster
that has been split, it is usually referred to as a serial split brain condition).

Example of a serial split brain condition in a cluster

This section presents an example of how a serial split brain condition might occur
for a shared disk group in a cluster. Conflicts between configuration copies can
also occur for private disk groups in clustered and non-clustered configurations
where the disk groups have been partially imported on different systems.
A campus cluster (also known as a stretch cluster or remote mirror configuration)
typically consists of a 2-node cluster where each component (server, switch and
storage) of the cluster exists in a separate building.
264 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling conflicting configuration copies

Figure 6-1 shows a 2-node cluster with node 0, a fibre channel switch and disk
enclosure enc0 in building A, and node 1, another switch and enclosure enc1 in
building B.

Figure 6-1 Typical arrangement of a 2-node campus cluster

Node 0 Node 1
Redundant private
network

Fibre Channel switches

Disk enclosures

enc0 enc1

Building A Building B

The fibre channel connectivity is multiply redundant to implement redundant-loop

access between each node and each enclosure. As usual, the two nodes are also
linked by a redundant private network.
A serial split brain condition typically arises in a cluster when a private
(non-shared) disk group is imported on Node 0 with Node 1 configured as the
failover node.
If the network connections between the nodes are severed, both nodes think that
the other node has died. (This is the usual cause of the split brain condition in
clusters). If a disk group is spread across both enclosure enc0 and enc1, each
portion loses connectivity to the other portion of the disk group. Node 0 continues
to update to the disks in the portion of the disk group that it can access. Node 1,
operating as the failover node, imports the other portion of the disk group (with
the -f option set), and starts updating the disks that it can see.
 Creating and administering disk groups 265
Handling conflicting configuration copies

When the network links are restored, attempting to reattach the missing disks to
the disk group on Node 0, or to re-import the entire disk group on either node,
fails. VxVM increments the serial ID in the disk media record of each imported
disk in all the disk group configuration databases on those disks, and also in the
private region of each imported disk. The value that is stored in the configuration
database represents the serial ID that the disk group expects a disk to have. The
serial ID that is stored in a disk’s private region is considered to be its actual value.
VxVM detects the serial split brain when the actual serial ID of the disks that are
being attached mismatches with the serial ID in the disk group configuration
database of the imported disk group.
If some disks went missing from the disk group (due to physical disconnection or
power failure) and those disks were imported by another host, the serial IDs for
the disks in their copies of the configuration database, and also in each disk’s
private region, are updated separately on that host. When the disks are
subsequently re-imported into the original shared disk group, the actual serial
IDs on the disks do not agree with the expected values from the configuration
copies on other disks in the disk group.
Depending on what happened to the different portions of the split disk group,
there are two possibilities for resolving inconsistencies between the configuration
databases:
■ If the other disks in the disk group were not imported on another host, VxVM
resolves the conflicting values of the serial IDs by using the version of the
configuration database from the disk with the greatest value for the updated
ID (shown as update_id in the output from the vxdg list diskgroup
command).
Figure 6-2 shows an example of a serial split brain condition that can be
resolved automatically by VxVM.
266 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling conflicting configuration copies

Figure 6-2 Example of a serial split brain condition that can be resolved
automatically

Partial disk group Disk B not imported

imported on host X

Disk A Disk B
1. Disk A is imported on a separate
Disk A = 1 Disk B = 0 host. Disk B is not imported. The
actual and expected serial IDs are
Configuration Configuration updated only on Disk A.
database database
Expected A = 1 Expected A = 0
Expected B = 0 Expected B = 0

Imported shared disk group

Disk A Disk B
2. The disk group is re-imported
Disk A = 1 Disk B = 0 on the cluster. The configuration
Configuration Configuration copy on Disk A is used to correct
database database the configuration copy on Disk B
Expected A = 1 Expected A = 1 as the actual value of the updated
Expected B = 0 Expected B = 0 ID on Disk A is the greatest.

■ If the other disks were also imported on another host, no disk can be considered
to have a definitive copy of the configuration database.
Figure 6-3 shows an example of a true serial split brain condition that cannot
be resolved automatically by VxVM.
 Creating and administering disk groups 267
Handling conflicting configuration copies

Figure 6-3 Example of a true serial split brain condition that cannot be resolved
automatically

Partial disk group Partial disk group

imported on host X imported on host Y

Disk A Disk B 1. Disks A and B are imported

independently on separate hosts.
Disk A = 1 Disk B = 1 The actual and expected serial IDs
Configuration Configuration are updated independently on each
database database disk.
Expected A = 1 Expected A = 0
Expected B = 0 Expected B = 1

Shared disk group fails to import

Disk A Disk B 2. The disk group cannot be re-

imported on the cluster. This is
Disk A = 1 Disk B = 1 because the databases to not agree
Configuration Configuration on the actual and expected serial
database database IDs. You must choose which
Expected A = 1 Expected A = 0 configuration database to use.
Expected B = 0 Expected B = 1

In this case, the disk group import fails, and the vxdg utility outputs error messages
similar to the following before exiting:

VxVM vxconfigd NOTICE V-5-0-33 Split Brain. da id is 0.1, while dm id

is 0.0 for DM mydg01
VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group newdg: import failed: Serial
Split Brain detected. Run vxsplitlines

The import does not succeed even if you specify the -f flag to vxdg.
Although it is usually possible to resolve this conflict by choosing the version of
the configuration database with the highest valued configuration ID (shown as
the value of seqno in the output from the vxdg list diskgroup| grep config
command), this may not be the correct thing to do in all circumstances.
See “Correcting conflicting configuration information” on page 268.
See “About sites and remote mirrors” on page 489.
268 Creating and administering disk groups
Handling conflicting configuration copies

Correcting conflicting configuration information

To resolve conflicting configuration information, you must decide which disk
contains the correct version of the disk group configuration database. To assist
you in doing this, you can run the vxsplitlines command to show the actual
serial ID on each disk in the disk group and the serial ID that was expected from
the configuration database. For each disk, the command also shows the vxdg
command that you must run to select the configuration database copy on that
disk as being the definitive copy to use for importing the disk group.

Note: The disk group must have a version number of at least 110.

The following is sample output from running vxsplitlines on the disk group
newdg:

# vxsplitlines -v -g newdg

VxVM. vxsplitlines NOTICE V-0-0-0 There are 2 pools

All the disks in the first pool have the same config copies
All the disks in the second pool may not have the same config copies

To see the configuration copy from a disk, enter the following command:

# /etc/vx/diag.d/vxprivutil dumpconfig private path

To import the disk group with the configuration copy from a disk, enter the
following command:

# /usr/sbin/vxdg (-s) -o selectcp=diskid import newdg

Pool 0
DEVICE DISK DISK ID DISK PRIVATE PATH
newdg1 c2t5d0s2 1215378871.300.vm2850lx13 /dev/vx/rdmp/c2t5d0s2
newdg2 c2t6d0s2 1215378871.300.vm2850lx13 /dev/vx/rdmp/c2t6d0s2

Pool 1
DEVICE DISK DISK ID DISK PRIVATE PATH
newdg3 c2t7d0s2 1215378871.294.vm2850lx13 /dev/vx/rdmp/c2t7d0s2

If you do not specify the -v option, the command has the following output:

# vxsplitlines -g mydg listssbinfo

VxVM vxdg listssbinfo NOTICE V-0-0-0 There are 2 pools

 Creating and administering disk groups 269
Handling conflicting configuration copies

All the disks in the first pool have the same config copies
All the disks in the second pool may not have the same config copies
Number of disks in the first pool: 1
Number of disks in the second pool: 1

To import the disk group with the configuration copy from the first pool, enter
the following command:

# /usr/sbin/vxdg (-s) -o selectcp=1221451925.395.vm2850lx13 import mydg

To import the disk group with the configuration copy from the second pool, enter
the following command:

# /usr/sbin/vxdg (-s) -o selectcp=1221451927.401.vm2850lx13 import mydg

In this example, the disk group has four disks, and is split so that two disks appear
to be on each side of the split.
You can specify the -c option to vxsplitlines to print detailed information about
each of the disk IDs from the configuration copy on a disk specified by its disk
access name:

# vxsplitlines -g newdg -c c2t6d0s2

DANAME(DMNAME) || Actual SSB || Expected SSB
c2t5d0s2( c2t5d0s2 ) || 0.1 || 0.0 ssb ids don’t match
c2t6d0s2( c2t6d0s2 ) || 0.1 || 0.1 ssb ids match
c2t7d0s2( c2t7d0s2 ) || 0.1 || 0.1 ssb ids match
c2t8d0s2( c2t8d0s2 ) || 0.1 || 0.0 ssb ids don’t match

Please note that even though some disks ssb ids might match
that does not necessarily mean that those disks’ config copies
have all the changes. From some other configuration copies,
those disks’ ssb ids might not match. To see the configuration
from this disk, run
/etc/vx/diag.d/vxprivutil dumpconfig /dev/vx/dmp/c2t6d0s2

Based on your knowledge of how the serial split brain condition came about, you
must choose one disk’s configuration to be used to import the disk group. For
example, the following command imports the disk group using the configuration
copy that is on side 0 of the split:

# /usr/sbin/vxdg -o selectcp=1045852127.32.olancha import newdg

When you have selected a preferred configuration copy, and the disk group has
been imported, VxVM resets the serial IDs to 0 for the imported disks. The actual
270 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

and expected serial IDs for any disks in the disk group that are not imported at
this time remain unaltered.

Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

There are several circumstances under which you might want to reorganize the
contents of your existing disk groups:
■ To group volumes or disks differently as the needs of your organization change.
For example, you might want to split disk groups to match the boundaries of
separate departments, or to join disk groups when departments are merged.
■ To isolate volumes or disks from a disk group, and process them independently
on the same host or on a different host. This allows you to implement off-host
processing solutions for the purposes of backup or decision support.
See “About off-host processing solutions” on page 415.
■ To reduce the size of a disk group’s configuration database in the event that
its private region is nearly full. This is a much simpler solution than the
alternative of trying to grow the private region.
■ To perform online maintenance and upgrading of fault-tolerant systems that
can be split into separate hosts for this purpose, and then rejoined.
Use the vxdg command to reorganize your disk groups.
The vxdg command provides the following operations for reorganizing disk groups:
■ The move operation moves a self-contained set of VxVM objects between
imported disk groups. This operation fails if it would remove all the disks from
the source disk group. Volume states are preserved across the move.
Figure 6-4 shows the move operation.
 Creating and administering disk groups 271
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

Figure 6-4 Disk group move operation

Source Disk Group Target Disk Group

Move

Source Disk Group Target Disk Group

After move

■ The split operation removes a self-contained set of VxVM objects from an

imported disk group, and moves them to a newly created target disk group.
This operation fails if it would remove all the disks from the source disk group,
or if an imported disk group exists with the same name as the target disk group.
An existing deported disk group is destroyed if it has the same name as the
target disk group (as is the case for the vxdg init command).
Figure 6-5 shows the split operation.
272 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

Figure 6-5 Disk group split operation

Source disk group

Disks to be split into new disk group

Source disk group New target disk group

After split

■ The join operation removes all VxVM objects from an imported disk group
and moves them to an imported target disk group. The source disk group is
removed when the join is complete.
Figure 6-6 shows the join operation.
 Creating and administering disk groups 273
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

Figure 6-6 Disk group join operation

Source disk group Target disk group

Join

Target disk group

After join

These operations are performed on VxVM objects such as disks or top-level

volumes, and include all component objects such as sub-volumes, plexes and
subdisks. The objects to be moved must be self-contained, meaning that the disks
that are moved must not contain any other objects that are not intended for the
move.
For site-consistent disk groups, any of the move operations (move, split, and join)
fail if the VxVM objects that are moved would not meet the site consistency
conditions after the move. For example, a volume that is being moved may not
have a plex on one of the sites configured in the target disk group. The volume
would not meet the conditions for the allsites flag in the target disk group. Use
the -f (force) option to enable the operation to succeed, by turning off the allsites
flag on the object.
If you specify one or more disks to be moved, all VxVM objects on the disks are
moved. You can use the -o expand option to ensure that vxdg moves all disks on
which the specified objects are configured. Take care when doing this as the result
may not always be what you expect. You can use the listmove operation with
vxdg to help you establish what is the self-contained set of objects that corresponds
to a specified set of objects.
274 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

Warning: Before moving volumes between disk groups, stop all applications that
are accessing the volumes, and unmount all file systems that are configured on
these volumes.

If the system crashes or a hardware subsystem fails, VxVM attempts to complete

or reverse an incomplete disk group reconfiguration when the system is restarted
or the hardware subsystem is repaired, depending on how far the reconfiguration
had progressed. If one of the disk groups is no longer available because it has been
imported by another host or because it no longer exists, you must recover the disk
group manually.
See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

Limitations of disk group split and join

The disk group split and join feature has the following limitations:
■ Disk groups involved in a move, split or join must be version 90 or greater.
See “Upgrading the disk group version” on page 284.
■ The reconfiguration must involve an integral number of physical disks.
■ Objects to be moved must not contain open volumes.
■ Disks cannot be moved between CDS and non-CDS compatible disk groups.
■ By default, VxVM automatically recovers and starts the volumes following a
disk group move, split or join. If you have turned off the automatic recovery
feature, volumes are disabled after a move, split, or join. Use the vxrecover
-m and vxvol startall commands to recover and restart the volumes.
See “Setting the automatic recovery of volumes” on page 244.
■ Data change objects (DCOs) and snap objects that have been dissociated by
Persistent FastResync cannot be moved between disk groups.
■ Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) objects cannot be moved between disk groups.
■ For a disk group move to succeed, the source disk group must contain at least
one disk that can store copies of the configuration database after the move.
■ For a disk group split to succeed, both the source and target disk groups must
contain at least one disk that can store copies of the configuration database
after the split.
■ For a disk group move or join to succeed, the configuration database in the
target disk group must be able to accommodate information about all the
objects in the enlarged disk group.
 Creating and administering disk groups 275
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

■ Splitting or moving a volume into a different disk group changes the volume’s
record ID.
■ The operation can only be performed on the master node of a cluster if either
the source disk group or the target disk group is shared.
■ In a cluster environment, disk groups involved in a move or join must both be
private or must both be shared.
■ If a cache object or volume set that is to be split or moved uses ISP volumes,
the storage pool that contains these volumes must also be specified.

Listing objects potentially affected by a move

To display the VxVM objects that would be moved for a specified list of objects,
use the following command:

# vxdg [-o expand] listmove sourcedg targetdg object ...

The following example lists the objects that would be affected by moving volume
vol1 from disk group mydg to newdg:

# vxdg listmove mydg newdg vol1

mydg01 c0t1d0s2 mydg05 c1t96d0s2 vol1 vol1-01 vol1-02 mydg01-01
mydg05-01

However, the following command produces an error because only a part of the
volume vol1 is configured on the disk mydg01:

# vxdg listmove mydg newdg mydg01

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-2-4597 vxdg listmove mydg newdg failed
VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-2-3091 mydg05 : Disk not moving, but
subdisks on it are

Specifying the -o expand option, as shown below, ensures that the list of objects
to be moved includes the other disks (in this case, mydg05) that are configured in
vol1:

# vxdg -o expand listmove mydg newdg mydg01

mydg01 c0t1d0s2 mydg05 c1t96d0s2 vol1 vol1-01 vol1-02 mydg01-01 mydg05-01

Moving DCO volumes between disk groups

When you move the parent volume (such as a snapshot volume) to a different disk
group, its DCO volume must accompany it. If you use the vxassist addlog, vxmake
or vxdco commands to set up a DCO for a volume, you must ensure that the disks
that contain the plexes of the DCO volume accompany their parent volume during
276 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

the move. You can use the vxprint command on a volume to examine the
configuration of its associated DCO volume.
If you use the vxassist command to create both a volume and its DCO, or the
vxsnap prepare command to add a DCO to a volume, the DCO plexes are
automatically placed on different disks from the data plexes of the parent volume.
In previous releases, version 0 DCO plexes were placed on the same disks as the
data plexes for convenience when performing disk group split and move operations.
As version 20 DCOs support dirty region logging (DRL) in addition to Persistent
FastResync, it is preferable for the DCO plexes to be separated from the data
plexes. This improves the performance of I/O from/to the volume, and provides
resilience for the DRL logs.
Figure 6-7 shows some instances in which it is not be possible to split a disk group
because of the location of the DCO plexes on the disks of the disk group.
For more information about snapshots and DCO volumes, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
See “Specifying storage for version 20 DCO plexes” on page 382.
See “FastResync” on page 63.
See “Volume snapshots” on page 61.
 Creating and administering disk groups 277
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

Figure 6-7 Examples of disk groups that can and cannot be split

Volume Snapshot The disk group can be split as the DCO

data plexes plex plexes are on dedicated disks, and can
therefore accompany the disks that
contain the volume data
Split

Volume DCO Snapshot

plexes DCO plex

Volume Snapshot The disk group cannot be split as the DCO

data plexes plex plexes cannot accompany their volumes.
One solution is to relocate the DCO plexes. In
this example, use an additional disk in the
disk group as an intermediary to swap the
misplaced DCO plexes. Alternatively, to
improve DRL performance and resilience,
Volume Volume allocate the DCO plexes to dedicated disks.
DCO plex DCO plex
Snapshot
DCO plex

Volume Snapshot The disk group can be split as the DCO

data plexes plex plexes can accompany their volumes.
However, you may not wish the data in
the portions of the disks marked “?” to
? be moved as well.
Split
?

Volume Snapshot
DCO plexes DCO plex

Volume 1 Volume 2 Snapshot The disk group cannot be

data plexes data plexes plex split as this would separate
the disks containing
Volume 2’s data plexes.
Possible solutions are to
? ? relocate the snapshot DCO
plex to the snapshot plex
Snapshot disk, or to another suitable
Volume 1 DCO plex disk that can be moved.
DCO plexes

Moving objects between disk groups

To move a self-contained set of VxVM objects from an imported source disk group
to an imported target disk group, use the following command:
278 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

# vxdg [-o expand] [-o override|verify] move sourcedg targetdg \

object ...

The -o expand option ensures that the objects that are actually moved include
all other disks containing subdisks that are associated with the specified objects
or with objects that they contain.
The default behavior of vxdg when moving licensed disks in an EMC array is to
perform an EMC disk compatibility check for each disk involved in the move. If
the compatibility checks succeed, the move takes place. vxdg then checks again
to ensure that the configuration has not changed since it performed the
compatibility check. If the configuration has changed, vxdg attempts to perform
the entire move again.

Note: You should only use the -o override and -o verify options if you are
using an EMC array with a valid timefinder license. If you specify one of these
options and do not meet the array and license requirements, a warning message
is displayed and the operation is ignored.

The -o override option enables the move to take place without any EMC checking.
The -o verify option returns the access names of the disks that would be moved
but does not perform the move.
The following output from vxprint shows the contents of disk groups rootdg and
mydg.

The output includes two utility fields, TUTIL0 and PUTIL0.. VxVM creates these
fields to manage objects and communications between different commands and
Symantec products. The TUTIL0 values are temporary; they are not maintained
on reboot. The PUTIL0 values are persistent; they are maintained on reboot.
See “Changing subdisk attributes” on page 299.

# vxprint
Disk group: rootdg
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg rootdg rootdg - - - - - -
dm rootdg02 c1t97d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg03 c1t112d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg04 c1t114d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg06 c1t98d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -

Disk group: mydg

TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
 Creating and administering disk groups 279
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

dg mydg mydg - - - - - -
dm mydg01 c0t1d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg05 c1t96d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg07 c1t99d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg08 c1t100d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2048 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -
pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg05-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -

The following command moves the self-contained set of objects implied by

specifying disk mydg01 from disk group mydg to rootdg:

# vxdg -o expand move mydg rootdg mydg01

By default, VxVM automatically recovers and starts the volumes following a disk
group move. If you have turned off the automatic recovery feature, volumes are
disabled after a move. Use the following commands to recover and restart the
volumes in the target disk group:

# vxrecover -g targetdg -m [volume ...]

# vxvol -g targetdg startall

The output from vxprint after the move shows that not only mydg01 but also
volume vol1 and mydg05 have moved to rootdg, leaving only mydg07 and mydg08
in disk group mydg:

# vxprint
Disk group: rootdg
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg rootdg rootdg - - - - - -
dm mydg01 c0t1d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg02 c1t97d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg03 c1t112d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg04 c1t114d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg05 c1t96d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg06 c1t98d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2048 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -
pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg05-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -

Disk group: mydg

280 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0

dg mydg mydg - - - - - -
dm mydg07 c1t99d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg08 c1t100d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -

The following commands would also achieve the same result:

# vxdg move mydg rootdg mydg01 mydg05

# vxdg move mydg rootdg vol1

See “Moving objects between shared disk groups” on page 480.

Splitting disk groups

To remove a self-contained set of VxVM objects from an imported source disk
group to a new target disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg [-o expand] [-o override|verify] split sourcedg targetdg \

object ...

See “Moving objects between disk groups” on page 277.

The following output from vxprint shows the contents of disk group rootdg.
The output includes two utility fields, TUTIL0 and PUTIL0.. VxVM creates these
fields to manage objects and communications between different commands and
Symantec products. The TUTIL0 values are temporary; they are not maintained
on reboot. The PUTIL0 values are persistent; they are maintained on reboot.
See “Changing subdisk attributes” on page 299.

# vxprint
Disk group: rootdg
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg rootdg rootdg - - - - - -
dm rootdg01 c0t1d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg02 c1t97d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg03 c1t112d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg04 c1t114d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg05 c1t96d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg06 c1t98d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg07 c1t99d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg08 c1t100d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2048 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd rootdg01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -
 Creating and administering disk groups 281
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -

sd rootdg05-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -

The following command removes disks rootdg07 and rootdg08 from rootdg to
form a new disk group, mydg:

# vxdg -o expand split rootdg mydg rootdg07 rootdg08

By default, VxVM automatically recovers and starts the volumes following a disk
group split. If you have turned off the automatic recovery feature, volumes are
disabled after a split. Use the following commands to recover and restart the
volumes in the target disk group:

# vxrecover -g targetdg -m [volume ...]

# vxvol -g targetdg startall

The output from vxprint after the split shows the new disk group, mydg:

# vxprint
Disk group: rootdg
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg rootdg rootdg - - - - - -
dm rootdg01 c0t1d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg02 c1t97d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg03 c1t112d0s2- 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg04 c1t114d0s2- 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg05 c1t96d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg06 c1t98d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2048 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd rootdg01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -
pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd rootdg05-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -

Disk group: mydg

TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg mydg mydg - - - - - -
dm rootdg07 c1t99d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg08 c1t100d0s2- 17678493 - - - -

See “Splitting shared disk groups” on page 480.

282 Creating and administering disk groups
Reorganizing the contents of disk groups

Joining disk groups

To remove all VxVM objects from an imported source disk group to an imported
target disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg [-o override|verify] join sourcedg targetdg

See “Moving objects between disk groups” on page 277.

Note: You cannot specify rootdg as the source disk group for a join operation.

The following output from vxprint shows the contents of the disk groups rootdg
and mydg.
The output includes two utility fields, TUTIL0 and PUTIL0.. VxVM creates these
fields to manage objects and communications between different commands and
Symantec products. The TUTIL0 values are temporary; they are not maintained
on reboot. The PUTIL0 values are persistent; they are maintained on reboot.
See “Changing subdisk attributes” on page 299.

# vxprint
Disk group: rootdg
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg rootdg rootdg - - - - - -
dm rootdg01 c0t1d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg02 c1t97d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg03 c1t112d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg04 c1t114d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg07 c1t99d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg08 c1t100d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -

Disk group: mydg

TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg mydg mydg - - - - - -
dm mydg05 c1t96d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg06 c1t98d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2048 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -
pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg05-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -

The following command joins disk group mydg to rootdg:

 Creating and administering disk groups 283
Disabling a disk group

# vxdg join mydg rootdg

By default, VxVM automatically recovers and starts the volumes following a disk
group join. If you have turned off the automatic recovery feature, volumes are
disabled after a join. Use the following commands to recover and restart the
volumes in the target disk group:

# vxrecover -g targetdg -m [volume ...]

# vxvol -g targetdg startall

The output from vxprint after the join shows that disk group mydg has been
removed:

# vxprint
Disk group: rootdg
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg rootdg rootdg - - - - - -
dm mydg01 c0t1d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg02 c1t97d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg03 c1t112d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg04 c1t114d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm mydg05 c1t96d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg06 c1t98d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg07 c1t99d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
dm rootdg08 c1t100d0s2 - 17678493 - - - -
v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2048 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -
pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 3591 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg05-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 3591 0 - - -

See “Joining shared disk groups” on page 481.

Disabling a disk group

To disable a disk group, unmount and stop any volumes in the disk group, and
then use the following command to deport it:

# vxdg deport diskgroup

Deporting a disk group does not actually remove the disk group. It disables use
of the disk group by the system. Disks in a deported disk group can be reused,
reinitialized, added to other disk groups, or imported for use on other systems.
Use the vxdg import command to re-enable access to the disk group.
284 Creating and administering disk groups
Destroying a disk group

Destroying a disk group

The vxdg command provides a destroy option that removes a disk group from
the system and frees the disks in that disk group for reinitialization:

# vxdg destroy diskgroup

Warning: This command destroys all data on the disks.

When a disk group is destroyed, the disks that are released can be re-used in other
disk groups.

Recovering a destroyed disk group

If a disk group has been accidentally destroyed, you can recover it, provided that
the disks that were in the disk group have not been modified or reused elsewhere.
To recover a destroyed disk group
1 Enter the following command to find out the disk group ID (dgid) of one of
the disks that was in the disk group:

# vxdisk -s list disk_access_name

The disk must be specified by its disk access name, such as c0t12d0s2.
Examine the output from the command for a line similar to the following that
specifies the disk group ID.

dgid: 963504895.1075.bass

2 Use the disk group ID to import the disk group:

# vxdg import dgid

Upgrading the disk group version

All Veritas Volume Manager disk groups have an associated version number. Each
VxVM release supports a specific set of disk group versions and can import and
perform tasks on disk groups with those versions. Some new features and tasks
work only on disk groups with the current disk group version.
When you upgrade, VxVM does not automatically upgrade the versions of existing
disk groups. If the disk group is a supported version, the disk group can be used
“as is”, as long as you do not attempt to use the features of the current version.
 Creating and administering disk groups 285
About the configuration daemon in VxVM

Until the disk group is upgraded, it may still be deported back to the release from
which it was imported.
To use the features in the upgraded release, you must explicitly upgrade the
existing disk groups. There is no "downgrade" facility. After you upgrade a disk
group, the disk group is incompatible with earlier releases of VxVM that do not
support the new version. For disk groups that are shared among multiple servers
for failover or for off-host processing, verify that the VxVM release on all potential
hosts that may use the disk group supports the disk group version to which you
are upgrading.
After upgrading to Storage Foundation 5.1SP1, you must upgrade any existing
disk groups that are organized by ISP. Without the version upgrade, configuration
query operations continue to work fine. However, configuration change operations
will not function correctly.
To list the version of a disk group, use this command:

# vxdg list dgname

You can also determine the disk group version by using the vxprint command
with the -l format option.
To upgrade a disk group to the highest version supported by the release of VxVM
that is currently running, use this command:

# vxdg upgrade dgname

About the configuration daemon in VxVM

The VxVM configuration daemon (vxconfigd) provides the interface between
VxVM commands and the kernel device drivers. vxconfigd handles configuration
change requests from VxVM utilities, communicates the change requests to the
VxVM kernel, and modifies configuration information stored on disk. vxconfigd
also initializes VxVM when the system is booted.
The vxdctl command is the command-line interface to the vxconfigd daemon.
You can use vxdctl to:
■ Control the operation of the vxconfigd daemon.
■ Change the system-wide definition of the default disk group.
In VxVM 4.0 and later releases, disk access records are no longer stored in the
/etc/vx/volboot file. Non-persistent disk access records are created by scanning
the disks at system startup. Persistent disk access records for simple and nopriv
disks are permanently stored in the /etc/vx/darecs file in the root file system.
286 Creating and administering disk groups
Backing up and restoring disk group configuration data

The vxconfigd daemon reads the contents of this file to locate the disks and the
configuration databases for their disk groups.
The /etc/vx/darecs file is also used to store definitions of foreign devices that
are not autoconfigurable. Such entries may be added by using the vxddladm
addforeign command.

See the vxddladm(1M) manual page.

If your system is configured to use Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP), you can also
use vxdctl to:
■ Reconfigure the DMP database to include disk devices newly attached to, or
removed from the system.
■ Create DMP device nodes in the /dev/vx/dmp and /dev/vx/rdmp directories.
■ Update the DMP database with changes in path type for active/passive disk
arrays. Use the utilities provided by the disk-array vendor to change the path
type between primary and secondary.
See the vxdctl(1M) manual page.

Backing up and restoring disk group configuration

data
The disk group configuration backup and restoration feature allows you to back
up and restore all configuration data for disk groups, and for VxVM objects such
as volumes that are configured within the disk groups. The vxconfigbackupd
daemon monitors changes to the VxVM configuration and automatically records
any configuration changes that occur. By default, vxconfigbackup stores 5 copies
of the configuration backup and restoration (cbr) data. You can customize the
number of cbr copies, between 1 to 5 copies.
See the vxconfigbackupd(1M) manual page.
VxVM provides the utilities, vxconfigbackup and vxconfigrestore, for backing
up and restoring a VxVM configuration for a disk group.
See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.
See the vxconfigbackup(1M) manual page.
See the vxconfigrestore(1M) manual page.
 Creating and administering disk groups 287
Using vxnotify to monitor configuration changes

Using vxnotify to monitor configuration changes

You can use the vxnotify utility to display events relating to disk and
configuration changes that are managed by the vxconfigd configuration daemon.
If vxnotify is running on a system where the VxVM clustering feature is active,
it displays events that are related to changes in the cluster state of the system on
which it is running. The vxnotify utility displays the requested event types until
you kill it, until it has received a specified number of events, or until a specified
period of time has elapsed.
Examples of configuration events that can be detected include disabling and
enabling of controllers, paths and DMP nodes, RAID-5 volumes entering degraded
mode, detachment of disks, plexes and volumes, and nodes joining and leaving a
cluster.
For example, the following vxnotify command displays information about all
disk, plex, and volume detachments as they occur:

# vxnotify -f

The following command provides information about cluster configuration changes,

including the import and deport of shared disk groups:

# vxnotify -s -i

See the vxnotify(1M) manual page.

Working with existing ISP disk groups

The Intelligent Storage Provisioning (ISP) feature of Veritas Volume Manager
(VxVM) has been deprecated. This release does not support creating ISP disk
groups. If you have existing ISP disk groups, you can import the disk groups
without upgrading the disk group version. In this case, you cannot perform any
operations on ISP volumes that would result in a configuration change. In addition,
you cannot use any of the current release functionality that requires the upgraded
disk group version.
You can upgrade an ISP disk group to the current disk group version. This
operation converts all ISP volumes to standard (non-ISP) volumes and deletes
ISP-specific objects. The ISP-specific objects include storage pool (st), volume
template, capability, and rules. This operation does not affect non–ISP volumes.

Note: When you upgrade the ISP disk group, all intent and storage pools
information is lost. Only upgrade the disk group when this condition is acceptable.
288 Creating and administering disk groups
Working with existing ISP disk groups

To determine whether a disk group is an ISP disk group

◆ Check for the presence of storage pools, using the following command:

# vxprint

Sample output:

Disk group: mydg

TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg mydg mydg - - - ALLOC_SUP - -

dm mydg2 ams_wms0_359 - 4120320 - - - -

dm mydg3 ams_wms0_360 - 4120320 - - - -

st mypool - - - - DATA - -
dm mydg1 ams_wms0_358 - 4120320 - - - -

v myvol0 fsgen ENABLED 20480 - ACTIVE - -

pl myvol0-01 myvol0 ENABLED 20480 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg1-01 myvol0-01 ENABLED 20480 0 - - -

v myvol1 fsgen ENABLED 20480 - ACTIVE - -

pl myvol1-01 myvol1 ENABLED 20480 - ACTIVE - -
sd mydg1-02 myvol1-01 ENABLED 20480 0 - - -

In the sample output, st mypool indicates that mydg is an ISP disk group.
To upgrade an ISP disk group
◆ Upgrade the ISP disk group using the following command:

# vxdg upgrade ISP_diskgroup

To use an ISP disk group as is

◆ To import an ISP disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg import ISP_diskgroup

The ISP volumes in the disk group are not allowed to make any configuration
changes until the disk group is upgraded. Attempting any operations such as grow
shrink, add mirror, disk group split join, etc, on ISP volumes would give the
following error:
 Creating and administering disk groups 289
Working with existing ISP disk groups

This disk group is a ISP disk group. Dg needs to be migrated to

non-ISP dg to allow any configuration changes. Please upgrade
the dg to perform the migration.

Note: Non-ISP or VxVM volumes in the ISP disk group are not affected.

Operations that still work on ISP disk group without upgrading:

■ Setting, removing, and replacing volume tags.
See “About volume administration” on page 356.
■ Renaming any VxVM objects such as volume, disk group, plex, etc.
■ Plex attach and detach.
■ The vxconfigbackup and vxconfigrestore command can be used at the cost
of losing any intent information
290 Creating and administering disk groups
Working with existing ISP disk groups
 Chapter 7
Creating and administering
subdisks and plexes
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About subdisks

■ Creating subdisks

■ Displaying subdisk information

■ Moving subdisks

■ Splitting subdisks

■ Joining subdisks

■ Associating subdisks with plexes

■ Associating log subdisks

■ Dissociating subdisks from plexes

■ Removing subdisks

■ Changing subdisk attributes

■ About plexes

■ Creating plexes

■ Creating a striped plex

■ Displaying plex information

■ Attaching and associating plexes

292 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
About subdisks

■ Taking plexes offline

■ Detaching plexes

■ Reattaching plexes

■ Moving plexes

■ Copying volumes to plexes

■ Dissociating and removing plexes

■ Changing plex attributes

About subdisks
Subdisks are the low-level building blocks in a Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM)
configuration that are required to create plexes and volumes.
See “Creating a volume” on page 319.

Note: Most VxVM commands require superuser or equivalent privileges.

Creating subdisks
Use the vxmake command to create VxVM objects, such as subdisks:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] sd subdisk diskname,offset,length

where subdisk is the name of the subdisk, diskname is the disk name, offset is the
starting point (offset) of the subdisk within the disk, and length is the length of
the subdisk.
For example, to create a subdisk named mydg02-01 in the disk group, mydg, that
starts at the beginning of disk mydg02 and has a length of 8000 sectors, use the
following command:

# vxmake -g mydg sd mydg02-01 mydg02,0,8000

Note: As for all VxVM commands, the default size unit is s, representing a sector.
Add a suffix, such as k for kilobyte, m for megabyte or g for gigabyte, to change
the unit of size. For example, 500m would represent 500 megabytes.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 293
Displaying subdisk information

If you intend to use the new subdisk to build a volume, you must associate the
subdisk with a plex.
See “Associating subdisks with plexes” on page 295.
Subdisks for all plex layouts (concatenated, striped, RAID-5) are created the same
way.

Displaying subdisk information

The vxprint command displays information about VxVM objects. To display
general information for all subdisks, use this command:

# vxprint -st

The -s option specifies information about subdisks. The -t option prints a

single-line output record that depends on the type of object being listed.
The following is example output:

SD NAME PLEX DISK DISKOFFS LENGTH [COL/]OFF DEVICE MODE

SV NAME PLEX VOLNAME NVOLLAYR LENGTH [COL/]OFF AM/NM MODE
sd mydg01-01 vol1-01 mydg01 0 102400 0 c0t10d0 ENA
sd mydg02-01 vol2-01 mydg02 0 102400 0 c0t11d0 ENA

You can display complete information about a particular subdisk by using this
command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -l subdisk

For example, the following command displays all information for subdisk
mydg02-01 in the disk group, mydg:

# vxprint -g mydg -l mydg02-01

This command provides the following output:

Disk group: mydg

Subdisk: mydg02-01
info: disk=mydg02 offset=0 len=205632
assoc: vol=mvol plex=mvol-02 (offset=0)
flags: enabled
device: device=c0t11d0s2 path=/dev/vx/dmp/c0t11d0s2 diskdev=32/68
294 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Moving subdisks

Moving subdisks
Moving a subdisk copies the disk space contents of a subdisk onto one or more
other subdisks. If the subdisk being moved is associated with a plex, then the data
stored on the original subdisk is copied to the new subdisks. The old subdisk is
dissociated from the plex, and the new subdisks are associated with the plex. The
association is at the same offset within the plex as the source subdisk. To move
a subdisk, use the following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] mv old_subdisk new_subdisk [new_subdisk ...]

For example, if mydg03 in the disk group, mydg, is to be evacuated, and mydg12 has
enough room on two of its subdisks, use the following command:

# vxsd -g mydg mv mydg03-01 mydg12-01 mydg12-02

For the subdisk move to work correctly, the following conditions must be met:
■ The subdisks involved must be the same size.
■ The subdisk being moved must be part of an active plex on an active (ENABLED)
volume.
■ The new subdisk must not be associated with any other plex.
Subdisk can also be moved manually after hot-relocation.
See “Moving relocated subdisks” on page 439.

Splitting subdisks
Splitting a subdisk divides an existing subdisk into two separate subdisks. To split
a subdisk, use the following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] -s size split subdisk newsd1 newsd2

where subdisk is the name of the original subdisk, newsd1 is the name of the first
of the two subdisks to be created and newsd2 is the name of the second subdisk
to be created.
The -s option is required to specify the size of the first of the two subdisks to be
created. The second subdisk occupies the remaining space used by the original
subdisk.
If the original subdisk is associated with a plex before the task, upon completion
of the split, both of the resulting subdisks are associated with the same plex.
To split the original subdisk into more than two subdisks, repeat the previous
command as many times as necessary on the resulting subdisks.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 295
Joining subdisks

For example, to split subdisk mydg03-02, with size 2000 megabytes into subdisks
mydg03-02, mydg03-03, mydg03-04 and mydg03-05, each with size 500 megabytes,
all in the disk group, mydg, use the following commands:

# vxsd -g mydg -s 1000m split mydg03-02 mydg03-02 mydg03-04

# vxsd -g mydg -s 500m split mydg03-02 mydg03-02 mydg03-03
# vxsd -g mydg -s 500m split mydg03-04 mydg03-04 mydg03-05

Joining subdisks
Joining subdisks combines two or more existing subdisks into one subdisk. To join
subdisks, the subdisks must be contiguous on the same disk. If the selected subdisks
are associated, they must be associated with the same plex, and be contiguous in
that plex. To join several subdisks, use the following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] join subdisk1 subdisk2 ... new_subdisk

For example, to join the contiguous subdisks mydg03-02, mydg03-03, mydg03-04

and mydg03-05 as subdisk mydg03-02 in the disk group, mydg, use the following
command:

# vxsd -g mydg join mydg03-02 mydg03-03 mydg03-04 mydg03-05 \

mydg03-02

Associating subdisks with plexes

Associating a subdisk with a plex places the amount of disk space defined by the
subdisk at a specific offset within the plex. The entire area that the subdisk fills
must not be occupied by any portion of another subdisk. There are several ways
that subdisks can be associated with plexes, depending on the overall state of the
configuration.
If you have already created all the subdisks needed for a particular plex, to
associate subdisks at plex creation, use the following command:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] plex plex sd=subdisk,...

For example, to create the plex home-1 and associate subdisks mydg02-01,
mydg02-00, and mydg02-02 with plex home-1, all in the disk group, mydg, use the
following command:

# vxmake -g mydg plex home-1 sd=mydg02-01,mydg02-00,mydg02-02

Subdisks are associated in order starting at offset 0. If you use this type of
command, you do not have to specify the multiple commands needed to create
296 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Associating subdisks with plexes

the plex and then associate each of the subdisks with that plex. In this example,
the subdisks are associated to the plex in the order they are listed (after sd=). The
disk space defined as mydg02-01 is first, mydg02-00 is second, and mydg02-02 is
third. This method of associating subdisks is convenient during initial
configuration.
Subdisks can also be associated with a plex that already exists. To associate one
or more subdisks with an existing plex, use the following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] assoc plex subdisk1 [subdisk2 subdisk3 ...]

For example, to associate subdisks named mydg02-01, mydg02-00, and mydg02-02

with a plex named home-1, use the following command:

# vxsd -g mydg assoc home-1 mydg02-01 mydg02-00 mydg02-01

If the plex is not empty, the new subdisks are added after any subdisks that are
already associated with the plex, unless the -l option is specified with the
command. The -l option associates subdisks at a specific offset within the plex.
The -l option is required if you previously created a sparse plex (that is, a plex
with portions of its address space that do not map to subdisks) for a particular
volume, and subsequently want to make the plex complete. To complete the plex,
create a subdisk of a size that fits the hole in the sparse plex exactly. Then,
associate the subdisk with the plex by specifying the offset of the beginning of
the hole in the plex, using the following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] -l offset assoc sparse_plex exact_size_subdisk

For example, the following command would insert the subdisk, mydg15-01, in the
plex, vol10-01, starting at an offset of 4096 blocks:

# vxsd -g mydg -l 4096b assoc vol10-01 mydg15-01

Note: The subdisk must be exactly the right size. VxVM does not allow the space
defined for two subdisks to overlap within a plex.

For striped or RAID-5 plexes, use the following command to specify a column
number and column offset for the subdisk to be added:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] -l column_#/offset assoc plex subdisk ...

If only one number is specified with the -l option for striped plexes, the number
is interpreted as a column number and the subdisk is associated at the end of the
column.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 297
Associating log subdisks

For example, the following command would add the subdisk, mydg11-01, to the
end of column 1 of the plex, vol02-01:

# vxsd -g mydg -l 1 assoc vol02-01 mydg11-01

Alternatively, to add M subdisks at the end of each of the N columns in a striped

or RAID-5 volume, you can use the following form of the vxsd command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] assoc plex subdisk1:0 ... subdiskM:N-1

The following example shows how to append three subdisk to the ends of the three
columns in a striped plex, vol-01, in the disk group, mydg:

# vxsd -g mydg assoc vol01-01 mydg10-01:0 mydg11-01:1 mydg12-01:2

If a subdisk is filling a “hole” in the plex (that is, some portion of the volume logical
address space is mapped by the subdisk), the subdisk is considered stale. If the
volume is enabled, the association operation regenerates data that belongs on the
subdisk. Otherwise, it is marked as stale and is recovered when the volume is
started.

Associating log subdisks

Log subdisks are defined and added to a plex that is to become part of a volume
on which dirty region logging (DRL) is enabled. DRL is enabled for a volume when
the volume is mirrored and has at least one log subdisk.

Warning: Only one log subdisk can be associated with a plex. Because this log
subdisk is frequently written, care should be taken to position it on a disk that is
not heavily used. Placing a log subdisk on a heavily-used disk can degrade system
performance.

See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.

See “Dirty region logging in cluster environments” on page 471.
Log subdisks are ignored as far as the usual plex policies are concerned, and are
only used to hold the dirty region log.

Warning: The version 20 DCO volume layout includes space for a DRL. Do not use
procedures that are intended for manipulating log subdisks with a volume that
has a version 20 DCO volume associated with it.

See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.
298 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Dissociating subdisks from plexes

To add a log subdisk to an existing plex, use the following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] aslog plex subdisk

where subdisk is the name to be used for the log subdisk. The plex must be
associated with a mirrored volume before dirty region logging takes effect.
For example, to associate a subdisk named mydg02-01 with a plex named vol01-02,
which is already associated with volume vol01 in the disk group, mydg, use the
following command:

# vxsd -g mydg aslog vol01-02 mydg02-01

You can also add a log subdisk to an existing volume with the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] addlog volume disk

This command automatically creates a log subdisk within a log plex on the specified
disk for the specified volume.

Dissociating subdisks from plexes

To break an established connection between a subdisk and the plex to which it
belongs, the subdisk is dissociated from the plex. A subdisk is dissociated when
the subdisk is removed or used in another plex. To dissociate a subdisk, use the
following command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] [-o force] dis subdisk

For example, to dissociate a subdisk named mydg02-01 from the plex with which
it is currently associated in the disk group, mydg, use the following command:

# vxsd -g mydg dis mydg02-01

You can additionally remove the dissociated subdisks from VxVM control using
the following form of the command:

# vxsd [-g diskgroup] -o rm dis subdisk

Warning: If the subdisk maps a portion of a volume’s address space, dissociating

it places the volume in DEGRADED mode. In this case, the dis operation prints a
warning and must be forced using the -o force option to succeed. Also, if
removing the subdisk makes the volume unusable, because another subdisk in
the same stripe is unusable or missing and the volume is not DISABLED and empty,
the operation is not allowed.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 299
Removing subdisks

Removing subdisks
To remove a subdisk, use the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] rm subdisk

For example, to remove a subdisk named mydg02-01 from the disk group, mydg,
use the following command:

# vxedit -g mydg rm mydg02-01

Changing subdisk attributes

Warning: To avoid possible data loss, change subdisk attributes with extreme care.

The vxedit command changes attributes of subdisks and other VxVM objects. To
change subdisk attributes, use the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set attribute=value ... subdisk ...

The subdisk fields you can change with the vxedit command include the following:

name Subdisk name.

putiln Persistent utility field(s) used to manage objects and communication between
different commands and Symantec products.

putiln field attributes are maintained on reboot. putiln fields are organized
as follows:

■ putil0 is set by VxVM.

■ putil1 is set by other Symantec products such as Veritas Operations
Manager (VOM) or the Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA) console.
■ putil2 is available for you to set for site-specific purposes.

If a command is stopped in the middle of an operation, these fields may need

to be cleaned up.
300 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
About plexes

tutiln Nonpersistent (temporary) utility field(s) used to manage objects and

communication between different commands and Symantec products.

tutiln field attributes are not maintained on reboot. tutiln fields are
organized as follows:

■ tutil0 is set by VxVM.

■ tutil1 is set by other Symantec products such as Veritas Operations
Manager (VOM) or the Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA) console..
■ tutil2 is available for you to set for site-specific purposes.

If a command is stopped in the middle of an operation, these fields may need

to be cleaned up.

len Subdisk length. This value is a standard Veritas Volume Manager length number.

See the vxintro(1M) manual page.

You can only change the length of a subdisk if the subdisk is disassociated. You
cannot increase the length of a subdisk to the point where it extends past the
end of the disk or it overlaps a reserved disk region on another disk.

comment Comment.

For example, to change the comment field of a subdisk named mydg02-01 in the
disk group, mydg, use the following command:

# vxedit -g mydg set comment="subdisk comment" mydg02-01

To prevent a particular subdisk from being associated with a plex, set the putil0
field to a non-null string, as shown in the following command:

# vxedit -g mydg set putil0="DO-NOT-USE" mydg02-01

See the vxedit(1M) manual page.

About plexes
Plexes are logical groupings of subdisks that create an area of disk space
independent of physical disk size or other restrictions. Replication (mirroring) of
disk data is set up by creating multiple data plexes for a single volume. Each data
plex in a mirrored volume contains an identical copy of the volume data. Because
each data plex must reside on different disks from the other plexes, the replication
provided by mirroring prevents data loss in the event of a single-point
disk-subsystem failure. Multiple data plexes also provide increased data integrity
and reliability.
See “About subdisks” on page 292.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 301
Creating plexes

See “Creating a volume” on page 319.

Note: Most VxVM commands require superuser or equivalent privileges.

Creating plexes
Use the vxmake command to create VxVM objects, such as plexes. When creating
a plex, identify the subdisks that are to be associated with it:
To create a plex from existing subdisks, use the following command:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] plex plex sd=subdisk1[,subdisk2,...]

For example, to create a concatenated plex named vol01-02 from two existing
subdisks named mydg02-01 and mydg02-02 in the disk group, mydg, use the
following command:

# vxmake -g mydg plex vol01-02 sd=mydg02-01,mydg02-02

Creating a striped plex

To create a striped plex, you must specify additional attributes. For example, to
create a striped plex named pl-01 in the disk group, mydg, with a stripe width of
32 sectors and 2 columns, use the following command:

# vxmake -g mydg plex pl-01 layout=stripe stwidth=32 ncolumn=2 \

sd=mydg01-01,mydg02-01

To use a plex to build a volume, you must associate the plex with the volume.
See “Attaching and associating plexes” on page 306.

Displaying plex information

Listing plexes helps identify free plexes for building volumes. Use the plex (–p)
option to the vxprint command to list information about all plexes.
To display detailed information about all plexes in the system, use the following
command:

# vxprint -lp

To display detailed information about a specific plex, use the following command:
302 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Displaying plex information

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -l plex

The -t option prints a single line of information about the plex. To list free plexes,
use the following command:

# vxprint -pt

The following section describes the meaning of the various plex states that may
be displayed in the STATE field of vxprint output.

Plex states
Plex states reflect whether or not plexes are complete and are consistent copies
(mirrors) of the volume contents. VxVM utilities automatically maintain the plex
state. However, if a volume should not be written to because there are changes to
that volume and if a plex is associated with that volume, you can modify the state
of the plex. For example, if a disk with a particular plex located on it begins to fail,
you can temporarily disable that plex.
A plex does not have to be associated with a volume. A plex can be created with
the vxmake plex command and be attached to a volume later.
VxVM utilities use plex states to:
■ indicate whether volume contents have been initialized to a known state
■ determine if a plex contains a valid copy (mirror) of the volume contents
■ track whether a plex was in active use at the time of a system failure
■ monitor operations on plexes
This section explains the individual plex states in detail.
See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.
Table 7-1shows the states that may be associated with a plex.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 303
Displaying plex information

Table 7-1 Plex states

State Description

ACTIVE A plex can be in the ACTIVE state in the following ways:

■ when the volume is started and the plex fully participates in normal
volume I/O (the plex contents change as the contents of the volume
change)
■ when the volume is stopped as a result of a system crash and the
plex is ACTIVE at the moment of the crash

In the latter case, a system failure can leave plex contents in an

inconsistent state. When a volume is started, VxVM does the recovery
action to guarantee that the contents of the plexes marked as ACTIVE
are made identical.

On a system that is running well, ACTIVE should be the most common

state you see for any volume plexes.

CLEAN A plex is in a CLEAN state when it is known to contain a consistent

copy (mirror) of the volume contents and an operation has disabled
the volume. As a result, when all plexes of a volume are clean, no
action is required to guarantee that the plexes are identical when that
volume is started.

DCOSNP This state indicates that a data change object (DCO) plex attached to
a volume can be used by a snapshot plex to create a DCO volume during
a snapshot operation.

EMPTY Volume creation sets all plexes associated with the volume to the
EMPTY state to indicate that the plex is not yet initialized.

IOFAIL The IOFAIL plex state is associated with persistent state logging. When
the vxconfigd daemon detects an uncorrectable I/O failure on an
ACTIVE plex, it places the plex in the IOFAIL state to exclude it from
the recovery selection process at volume start time.

This state indicates that the plex is out-of-date with respect to the
volume, and that it requires complete recovery. It is likely that one or
more of the disks associated with the plex should be replaced.

LOG The state of a dirty region logging (DRL) or RAID-5 log plex is always
set to LOG.
304 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Displaying plex information

Table 7-1 Plex states (continued)

State Description

OFFLINE The vxmend off task indefinitely detaches a plex from a volume by
setting the plex state to OFFLINE. Although the detached plex
maintains its association with the volume, changes to the volume do
not update the OFFLINE plex. The plex is not updated until the plex
is put online and reattached with the vxplex att task. When this
occurs, the plex is placed in the STALE state, which causes its contents
to be recovered at the next vxvol start operation.

SNAPATT This state indicates a snapshot plex that is being attached by the
snapstart operation. When the attach is complete, the state for the
plex is changed to SNAPDONE. If the system fails before the attach
completes, the plex and all of its subdisks are removed.

SNAPDIS This state indicates a snapshot plex that is fully attached. A plex in
this state can be turned into a snapshot volume with the vxplex
snapshot command. If the system fails before the attach completes,
the plex is dissociated from the volume.

See the vxplex(1M) manual page.

SNAPDONE The SNAPDONE plex state indicates that a snapshot plex is ready for
a snapshot to be taken using vxassist snapshot.

SNAPTMP The SNAPTMP plex state is used during a vxassist snapstart

operation when a snapshot is being prepared on a volume.

STALE If there is a possibility that a plex does not have the complete and
current volume contents, that plex is placed in the STALE state. Also,
if an I/O error occurs on a plex, the kernel stops using and updating
the contents of that plex, and the plex state is set to STALE.

A vxplex att operation recovers the contents of a STALE plex from

an ACTIVE plex. Atomic copy operations copy the contents of the
volume to the STALE plexes. The system administrator can force a
plex to the STALE state with a vxplex det operation.

TEMP Setting a plex to the TEMP state eases some plex operations that
cannot occur in a truly atomic fashion. For example, attaching a plex
to an enabled volume requires copying volume contents to the plex
before it can be considered fully attached.

A utility sets the plex state to TEMP at the start of such an operation
and to an appropriate state at the end of the operation. If the system
fails for any reason, a TEMP plex state indicates that the operation is
incomplete. A later vxvol start dissociates plexes in the TEMP
state.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 305
Displaying plex information

Table 7-1 Plex states (continued)

State Description

TEMPRM A TEMPRM plex state is similar to a TEMP state except that at the
completion of the operation, the TEMPRM plex is removed. Some
subdisk operations require a temporary plex. Associating a subdisk
with a plex, for example, requires updating the subdisk with the volume
contents before actually associating the subdisk. This update requires
associating the subdisk with a temporary plex, marked TEMPRM, until
the operation completes and removes the TEMPRM plex.

If the system fails for any reason, the TEMPRM state indicates that
the operation did not complete successfully. A later operation
dissociates and removes TEMPRM plexes.

TEMPRMSD The TEMPRMSD plex state is used by vxassist when attaching new
data plexes to a volume. If the synchronization operation does not
complete, the plex and its subdisks are removed.

Plex condition flags

Table 7-2 shows the plex condition flags that vxprint may display in the STATE
field.

Table 7-2 Plex condition flags

Condition flag Description

IOFAIL The plex was detached as a result of an I/O failure detected during
normal volume I/O. The plex is out-of-date with respect to the volume,
and in need of complete recovery. However, this condition also
indicates a likelihood that one of the disks in the system should be
replaced.

NODAREC No physical disk was found for one of the subdisks in the plex. This
implies either that the physical disk failed, making it unrecognizable,
or that the physical disk is no longer attached through a known access
path. The plex cannot be used until this condition is fixed, or the
affected subdisk is dissociated.

NODEVICE A physical device could not be found corresponding to the disk ID in

the disk media record for one of the subdisks associated with the plex.
The plex cannot be used until this condition is fixed, or the affected
subdisk is dissociated.
306 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Attaching and associating plexes

Table 7-2 Plex condition flags (continued)

Condition flag Description

RECOVER A disk corresponding to one of the disk media records was replaced,
or was reattached too late to prevent the plex from becoming
out-of-date with respect to the volume. The plex required complete
recovery from another plex in the volume to synchronize its contents.

REMOVED Set in the disk media record when one of the subdisks associated with
the plex is removed. The plex cannot be used until this condition is
fixed, or the affected subdisk is dissociated.

Plex kernel states

The plex kernel state indicates the accessibility of the plex to the volume driver
which monitors it.
No user intervention is required to set these states; they are maintained internally.
On a system that is operating properly, all plexes are enabled.
Table 7-3 shows the possible plex kernel states.

Table 7-3 Plex kernel states

Kernel state Description

DETACHED Maintenance is being performed on the plex. Any write request to the
volume is not reflected in the plex. A read request from the volume is
not satisfied from the plex. Plex operations and ioctl function calls
are accepted.

DISABLED The plex is offline and cannot be accessed.

ENABLED The plex is online. A write request to the volume is reflected in the
plex. A read request from the volume is satisfied from the plex. If a
plex is sparse, this is indicated by the SPARSE modifier being displayed
in the output from the vxprint -t command.

Attaching and associating plexes

A plex becomes a participating plex for a volume by attaching it to a volume.
(Attaching a plex associates it with the volume and enables the plex for use.) To
attach a plex to an existing volume, use the following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] att volume plex

 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 307
Taking plexes offline

For example, to attach a plex named vol01-02 to a volume named vol01 in the
disk group, mydg, use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg att vol01 vol01-02

If the volume does not already exist, associate one or more plexes to the volume
when you create the volume, using the following command:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] -U usetype vol volume plex=plex1[,plex2...]

For example, to create a mirrored, fsgen-type volume named home, and to

associate two existing plexes named home-1 and home-2 with home, use the
following command:

# vxmake -g mydg -U fsgen vol home plex=home-1,home-2

You can also use the command vxassist mirror volume to add a data plex as a
mirror to an existing volume.

Taking plexes offline

Once a volume has been created and placed online (ENABLED), VxVM can
temporarily disconnect plexes from the volume. This is useful, for example, when
the hardware on which the plex resides needs repair or when a volume has been
left unstartable and a source plex for the volume revive must be chosen manually.
Resolving a disk or system failure includes taking a volume offline and attaching
and detaching its plexes. The two commands used to accomplish disk failure
resolution are vxmend and vxplex.
To take a plex OFFLINE so that repair or maintenance can be performed on the
physical disk containing subdisks of that plex, use the following command:

# vxmend [-g diskgroup] off plex

If a disk fails (for example, it has a head crash), use the vxmend command to take
offline all plexes that have associated subdisks on the affected disk. For example,
if plexes vol01-02 and vol02-02 in the disk group, mydg, had subdisks on a drive
to be repaired, use the following command to take these plexes offline:

# vxmend -g mydg off vol01-02 vol02-02

This command places vol01-02 and vol02-02 in the OFFLINE state, and they
remain in that state until it is changed. The plexes are not automatically recovered
on rebooting the system.
308 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Detaching plexes

Detaching plexes
To temporarily detach one data plex in a mirrored volume, use the following
command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] det plex

For example, to temporarily detach a plex named vol01-02 in the disk group,
mydg, and place it in maintenance mode, use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg det vol01-02

This command temporarily detaches the plex, but maintains the association
between the plex and its volume. However, the plex is not used for I/O. A plex
detached with the preceding command is recovered at system reboot. The plex
state is set to STALE, so that if a vxvol start command is run on the appropriate
volume (for example, on system reboot), the contents of the plex is recovered and
made ACTIVE.
When the plex is ready to return as an active part of its volume, it can be reattached
to the volume.
See “Reattaching plexes” on page 308.

Reattaching plexes
This section describes how to reattach plexes manually if automatic reattachment
feature is disabled. This procedure may also be required for devices that are not
automatically reattached. For example, VxVM does not automatically reattach
plexes on site-consistent volumes.
When a disk has been repaired or replaced and is again ready for use, the plexes
must be put back online (plex state set to ACTIVE). To set the plexes to ACTIVE, use
one of the following procedures depending on the state of the volume.
■ If the volume is currently ENABLED, use the following command to reattach the
plex:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] att volume plex ...

For example, for a plex named vol01-02 on a volume named vol01 in the disk
group, mydg, use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg att vol01 vol01-02

 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 309
Reattaching plexes

As when returning an OFFLINE plex to ACTIVE, this command starts to recover

the contents of the plex and, after the recovery is complete, sets the plex utility
state to ACTIVE.
■ If the volume is not in use (not ENABLED), use the following command to
re-enable the plex for use:

# vxmend [-g diskgroup] on plex

For example, to re-enable a plex named vol01-02 in the disk group, mydg, enter:

# vxmend -g mydg on vol01-02

In this case, the state of vol01-02 is set to STALE. When the volume is next
started, the data on the plex is revived from another plex, and incorporated
into the volume with its state set to ACTIVE.
If the vxinfo command shows that the volume is unstartable, set one of the
plexes to CLEAN using the following command:

# vxmend [-g diskgroup] fix clean plex

Start the volume using the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] start volume

See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

Automatic plex reattachment

When a mirror plex encounters irrecoverable errors, Veritas Volume Manager
(VxVM) detaches the plex from the mirrored volume. By default, VxVM
automatically reattaches the affected mirror plexes when the underlying failed
disk or LUN becomes visible. When VxVM detects that the device is online, the
VxVM volume components on the involved LUN are automatically recovered, and
the mirrors become usable.
VxVM uses the DMP failed LUN probing to detect when the device has come online.
The timing for a reattach depends on the dmp_restore_interval, which is a
tunable parameter. The number of LUNs that have reconnected may also affect
the time required before the plex is reattached.
VxVM does not automatically reattach plexes on site-consistent volumes.
When VxVM is installed or the system reboots, VxVM starts the vxattachd
daemon. The vxattachd daemon handles automatic reattachment for both plexes
and sites. The vxattachd daemon also initiates the resynchronization process for
a plex. After a plex is successfully reattached, vxattachd notifies root.
310 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Moving plexes

To disable automatic plex attachment, remove vxattachd from the start up scripts.
Disabling vxattachd disables the automatic reattachment feature for both plexes
and sites.
In a Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) the following considerations apply:
■ If the global detach policy is set, a storage failure from any node causes all
plexes on that storage to be detached globally. When the storage is connected
back to any node, the vxattachd daemon triggers reattaching the plexes on
the master node only.
■ The automatic reattachment functionality is local to a node. When enabled on
a node, all the disk groups imported on the node are monitored. If the automatic
reattachment functionality is disabled on a master node, the feature is disabled
on all shared disk groups and private disk groups imported on the master node.
■ The vxattachd daemon listens for "dmpnode online" events using vxnotify to
trigger its operation. Therefore, an automatic reattachment is not triggered
if the dmpnode online event is not generated when vxattachd is running. The
following are typical examples:
■ Storage is reconnected before vxattachd is started; for example, during
reboot.
■ In CVM, with active/passive arrays, if all nodes cannot agree on a common
path to an array controller, a plex can get detached due to I/O failure. In
these cases, the dmpnode will not get disabled. Therefore, after the
connections are restored, a dmpnode online event is not generated and
automatic plex reattachment is not triggered.

These CVM considerations also apply to automatic site reattachment.

See “Automatic site reattachment” on page 507.

Moving plexes
Moving a plex copies the data content from the original plex onto a new plex. To
move a plex, use the following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] mv original_plex new_plex

For a move task to be successful, the following criteria must be met:

■ The old plex must be an active part of an active (ENABLED) volume.
■ The new plex must be at least the same size or larger than the old plex.
■ The new plex must not be associated with another volume.
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 311
Copying volumes to plexes

The size of the plex has several implications:

■ If the new plex is smaller or more sparse than the original plex, an incomplete
copy is made of the data on the original plex. If an incomplete copy is desired,
use the -o force option to vxplex.
■ If the new plex is longer or less sparse than the original plex, the data that
exists on the original plex is copied onto the new plex. Any area that is not on
the original plex, but is represented on the new plex, is filled from other
complete plexes associated with the same volume.
■ If the new plex is longer than the volume itself, then the remaining area of the
new plex above the size of the volume is not initialized and remains unused.

Copying volumes to plexes

This task copies the contents of a volume onto a specified plex. The volume to be
copied must not be enabled. The plex cannot be associated with any other volume.
To copy a plex, use the following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] cp volume new_plex

After the copy task is complete, new_plex is not associated with the specified
volume volume. The plex contains a complete copy of the volume data. The plex
that is being copied should be the same size or larger than the volume. If the plex
being copied is larger than the volume, an incomplete copy of the data results.
For the same reason, new_plex should not be sparse.

Dissociating and removing plexes

When a plex is no longer needed, you can dissociate it from its volume and remove
it as an object from VxVM. You might want to remove a plex for the following
reasons:
■ to provide free disk space
■ to reduce the number of mirrors in a volume so you can increase the length
of another mirror and its associated volume. When the plexes and subdisks
are removed, the resulting space can be added to other volumes
■ to remove a temporary mirror that was created to back up a volume and is no
longer needed
■ to change the layout of a plex
To save the data on a plex to be removed, the configuration of that plex must be
known. Parameters from that configuration (stripe unit size and subdisk ordering)
312 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Changing plex attributes

are critical to the creation of a new plex to contain the same data. Before a plex
is removed, you must record its configuration.
See “Displaying plex information” on page 301.”
To dissociate a plex from the associated volume and remove it as an object from
VxVM, use the following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] -o rm dis plex

For example, to dissociate and remove a plex named vol01-02 in the disk group,
mydg, use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg -o rm dis vol01-02

This command removes the plex vol01-02 and all associated subdisks.
Alternatively, you can first dissociate the plex and subdisks, and then remove
them with the following commands:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] dis plex

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] -r rm plex

When used together, these commands produce the same result as the vxplex -o
rm dis command. The -r option to vxedit rm recursively removes all objects
from the specified object downward. In this way, a plex and its associated subdisks
can be removed by a single vxedit command.

Changing plex attributes

Warning: To avoid possible data loss, change plex attributes with extreme care.

The vxedit command changes the attributes of plexes and other Volume Manager
objects. To change plex attributes, use the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set attribute=value ... plex

Plex fields that can be changed using the vxedit command include:
■ name

■ putiln

■ tutiln

■ comment
 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes 313
Changing plex attributes

The following example command sets the comment field, and also sets tutil2 to
indicate that the subdisk is in use:

# vxedit -g mydg set comment="plex comment" tutil2="u" vol01-02

To prevent a particular plex from being associated with a volume, set the putil0
field to a non-null string, as shown in the following command:

# vxedit -g mydg set putil0="DO-NOT-USE" vol01-02

See the vxedit(1M) manual page.

314 Creating and administering subdisks and plexes
Changing plex attributes
 Chapter 8
Creating volumes
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About volume creation

■ Types of volume layouts

■ Creating a volume

■ Using vxassist

■ Discovering the maximum size of a volume

■ Disk group alignment constraints on volumes

■ Creating a volume on any disk

■ Creating a volume on specific disks

■ Creating a mirrored volume

■ Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume

■ Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume

■ Creating a volume with dirty region logging enabled

■ Creating a striped volume

■ Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures

■ Mirroring across media types (SSD and HDD)

■ Creating a RAID-5 volume

■ Creating tagged volumes

■ Creating a volume using vxmake

316 Creating volumes
About volume creation

■ Initializing and starting a volume

■ Accessing a volume

■ Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

About volume creation

Volumes are logical devices that appear as physical disk partition devices to data
management systems. Volumes enhance recovery from hardware failure, data
availability, performance, and storage configuration.
Volumes are created to take advantage of the VxVM concept of virtual disks. A
file system can be placed on the volume to organize the disk space with files and
directories. In addition, you can configure applications such as databases to
organize data on volumes.
Disks and disk groups must be initialized and defined to VxVM before volumes
can be created from them.
See “About disk management” on page 80.
See “About disk groups” on page 228.

Types of volume layouts

VxVM allows you to create volumes with the following layout types:

Concatenated A volume whose subdisks are arranged both sequentially and

contiguously within a plex. Concatenation allows a volume to be
created from multiple regions of one or more disks if there is not
enough space for an entire volume on a single region of a disk. If
a single LUN or disk is split into multiple subdisks, and each
subdisk belongs to a unique volume, this is called carving.

See “Concatenation, spanning, and carving” on page 37.

Striped A volume with data spread evenly across multiple disks. Stripes
are equal-sized fragments that are allocated alternately and evenly
to the subdisks of a single plex. There must be at least two subdisks
in a striped plex, each of which must exist on a different disk.
Throughput increases with the number of disks across which a
plex is striped. Striping helps to balance I/O load in cases where
high traffic areas exist on certain subdisks.

See “Striping (RAID-0)” on page 39.

 Creating volumes 317
Types of volume layouts

Mirrored A volume with multiple data plexes that duplicate the information
contained in a volume. Although a volume can have a single data
plex, at least two are required for true mirroring to provide
redundancy of data. For the redundancy to be useful, each of these
data plexes should contain disk space from different disks.

See “Mirroring (RAID-1)” on page 42.

RAID-5 A volume that uses striping to spread data and parity evenly across
multiple disks in an array. Each stripe contains a parity stripe
unit and data stripe units. Parity can be used to reconstruct data
if one of the disks fails. In comparison to the performance of
striped volumes, write throughput of RAID-5 volumes decreases
since parity information needs to be updated each time data is
modified. However, in comparison to mirroring, the use of parity
to implement data redundancy reduces the amount of space
required.

See “RAID-5 (striping with parity)” on page 45.

Mirrored-stripe A volume that is configured as a striped plex and another plex

that mirrors the striped one. This requires at least two disks for
striping and one or more other disks for mirroring (depending on
whether the plex is simple or striped). The advantages of this
layout are increased performance by spreading data across
multiple disks and redundancy of data.

See “Striping plus mirroring (mirrored-stripe or RAID-0+1)”

on page 43.

Layered Volume A volume constructed from other volumes. Non-layered volumes

are constructed by mapping their subdisks to VM disks. Layered
volumes are constructed by mapping their subdisks to underlying
volumes (known as storage volumes), and allow the creation of
more complex forms of logical layout. Examples of layered volumes
are striped-mirror and concatenated-mirror volumes.

See “Layered volumes” on page 50.

A striped-mirror volume is created by configuring several mirrored

volumes as the columns of a striped volume. This layout offers
the same benefits as a non-layered mirrored-stripe volume. In
addition it provides faster recovery as the failure of single disk
does not force an entire striped plex offline.

See “Mirroring plus striping (striped-mirror, RAID-1+0 or

RAID-10)” on page 44.

A concatenated-mirror volume is created by concatenating several

mirrored volumes. This provides faster recovery as the failure of
a single disk does not force the entire mirror offline.
318 Creating volumes
Types of volume layouts

Supported volume logs and maps

Veritas Volume Manager supports the use of the following types of logs and maps
with volumes:
■ FastResync Maps are used to perform quick and efficient resynchronization
of mirrors.
See “FastResync” on page 63.
These maps are supported either in memory (Non-Persistent FastResync), or
on disk as part of a DCO volume (Persistent FastResync). Two types of DCO
volume are supported:
■ Version 0 DCO volumes only support Persistent FastResync for the
traditional third-mirror break-off type of volume snapshot.
See “Version 0 DCO volume layout” on page 66.
See “Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume” on page 333.
■ Version 20 DCO volumes, introduced in VxVM 4.0, support DRL logging
(see below) and Persistent FastResync for full-sized and space-optimized
instant volume snapshots.
See “Version 20 DCO volume layout” on page 66.
See “Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume” on page 336.
See “Enabling FastResync on a volume” on page 394.

■ Dirty region logs allow the fast recovery of mirrored volumes after a system
crash.
See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.
These logs are supported either as DRL log plexes, or as part of a version 20
DCO volume. Refer to the following sections for information on creating a
volume on which DRL is enabled:
See “Creating a volume with dirty region logging enabled” on page 336.
See “Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume” on page 336.
■ RAID-5 logs are used to prevent corruption of data during recovery of RAID-5
volumes.
See “RAID-5 logging” on page 50.
These logs are configured as plexes on disks other than those that are used
for the columns of the RAID-5 volume.
See “Creating a RAID-5 volume” on page 341.
 Creating volumes 319
Creating a volume

Creating a volume
You can create volumes using an advanced approach or an assisted approach.
Each method uses different tools. You may switch between the advanced and the
assisted approaches at will.

Note: Most VxVM commands require superuser or equivalent privileges.

Advanced approach
The advanced approach consists of a number of commands that typically require
you to specify detailed input. These commands use a “building block” approach
that requires you to have a detailed knowledge of the underlying structure and
components to manually perform the commands necessary to accomplish a certain
task. Advanced operations are performed using several different VxVM commands.
To create a volume using the advanced approach, perform the following steps in
the order specified:
■ Create subdisks using vxmake sd.
See “Creating subdisks” on page 292.
■ Create plexes using vxmake plex, and associate subdisks with them.
See “Creating plexes” on page 301.
See “Associating subdisks with plexes” on page 295.
■ Associate plexes with the volume using vxmake vol.
■ Initialize the volume using vxvol start or vxvol init zero.
See “Initializing and starting a volume created using vxmake” on page 347.
The steps to create the subdisks and plexes, and to associate the plexes with the
volumes can be combined by using a volume description file with the vxmake
command.
See “Creating a volume using a vxmake description file” on page 345.
See “Creating a volume using vxmake” on page 344.

Assisted approach
The assisted approach takes information about what you want to accomplish and
then performs the necessary underlying tasks. This approach requires only
minimal input from you, but also permits more detailed specifications.
Assisted operations are performed primarily through the vxassist command.
vxassist creates the required plexes and subdisks using only the basic attributes
320 Creating volumes
Using vxassist

of the desired volume as input. Additionally, the vxassist command can modify
existing volumes while automatically modifying any underlying or associated
objects.
The vxassist command uses default values for many volume attributes, unless
you provide specific values. It does not require you to have a thorough
understanding of low-level VxVM concepts, vxassist does not conflict with other
VxVM commands or preclude their use. Objects created by vxassist are compatible
and inter-operable with objects created by other VxVM commands and interfaces.

Using vxassist
You can use the vxassist utility to create and modify volumes. Specify the basic
requirements for volume creation or modification, and vxassist performs the
necessary tasks.
The advantages of using vxassist rather than the advanced approach include:
■ Most actions require that you enter only one command rather than several.
■ You are required to specify only minimal information to vxassist. If necessary,
you can specify additional parameters to modify or control its actions.
■ Operations result in a set of configuration changes that either succeed or fail
as a group, rather than individually. System crashes or other interruptions do
not leave intermediate states that you have to clean up. If vxassist finds an
error or an exceptional condition, it exits after leaving the system in the same
state as it was prior to the attempted operation.
The vxassist utility helps you perform the following tasks:
■ Creating volumes.
■ Creating mirrors for existing volumes.
■ Growing or shrinking existing volumes.
■ Backing up volumes online.
■ Reconfiguring a volume’s layout online.
vxassist obtains most of the information it needs from sources other than your
input. vxassist obtains information about the existing objects and their layouts
from the objects themselves.
For tasks requiring new disk space, vxassist seeks out available disk space and
allocates it in the configuration that conforms to the layout specifications and
that offers the best use of free space.
 Creating volumes 321
Using vxassist

The vxassist command takes this form:

# vxassist [options] keyword volume [attributes...]

where keyword selects the task to perform. The first argument after a vxassist
keyword, volume, is a volume name, which is followed by a set of desired volume
attributes. For example, the keyword make allows you to create a new volume:

# vxassist [options] make volume length [attributes]

The length of the volume can be specified in sectors, kilobytes, megabytes, or

gigabytes by using a suffix character of s, k, m, or g. If no suffix is specified, the
size is assumed to be in sectors.
See the vxintro(1M) manual page.
Additional attributes can be specified as appropriate, depending on the
characteristics that you wish the volume to have. Examples are stripe unit width,
number of columns in a RAID-5 or stripe volume, number of mirrors, number of
logs, and log type.
By default, the vxassist command creates volumes in a default disk group
according to a set of rules.
See “Rules for determining the default disk group” on page 230.
To use a different disk group, specify the -g diskgroup option to vxassist.
A large number of vxassist keywords and attributes are available for use.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
The simplest way to create a volume is to use default attributes.
See “Creating a volume on any disk” on page 324.
More complex volumes can be created with specific attributes by controlling how
vxassist uses the available storage space.

See “Creating a volume on specific disks” on page 325.

Setting default values for vxassist

The default values that the vxassist command uses may be specified in the file
/etc/default/vxassist. The defaults listed in this file take effect if you do not
override them on the command line, or in an alternate defaults file that you specify
using the -d option. A default value specified on the command line always takes
precedence. vxassist also has a set of built-in defaults that it uses if it cannot
find a value defined elsewhere.
322 Creating volumes
Using vxassist

You must create the /etc/default directory and the vxassist default file if these
do not already exist on your system.
The format of entries in a defaults file is a list of attribute-value pairs separated
by new lines. These attribute-value pairs are the same as those specified as options
on the vxassist command line.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
To display the default attributes held in the file /etc/default/vxassist, use the
following form of the vxassist command:

# vxassist help showattrs

The following is a sample vxassist defaults file:

# By default:
# create unmirrored, unstriped volumes
# allow allocations to span drives
# with RAID-5 create a log, with mirroring don’t create a log
# align allocations on cylinder boundaries
layout=nomirror,nostripe,span,nocontig,raid5log,noregionlog,
diskalign

# use the fsgen usage type, except when creating RAID-5 volumes
usetype=fsgen
# allow only root access to a volume
mode=u=rw,g=,o=
user=root
group=root

# when mirroring, create two mirrors

nmirror=2
# for regular striping, by default create between 2 and 8 stripe
# columns
max_nstripe=8
min_nstripe=2

# for RAID-5, by default create between 3 and 8 stripe columns

max_nraid5stripe=8
min_nraid5stripe=3

# by default, create 1 log copy for both mirroring and RAID-5 volumes
nregionlog=1
nraid5log=1
 Creating volumes 323
Discovering the maximum size of a volume

# by default, limit mirroring log lengths to 32Kbytes

max_regionloglen=32k

# use 64K as the default stripe unit size for regular volumes
stripe_stwid=64k

# use 16K as the default stripe unit size for RAID-5 volumes
raid5_stwid=16k

Using the SmartMove™ feature while attaching a plex

The SmartMove™ feature reduces the time and I/O required to attach or reattach
a plex to an existing VxVM volume, in the specific case where a VxVM volume
has a VxFS file system mounted on it. The SmartMove feature uses the VxFS
information to detect free extents and avoid copying them.
The SmartMove feature is enabled by default.
The SmartMove feature takes effect when a plex is attached or reattached using
the vxplex, vxsd, or vxassist commands.

Note: The file system must be mounted to get the benefits of the SmartMove™
feature.

When the SmartMove feature is on, less I/O is sent through the host, through the
storage network and to the disks or LUNs. The SmartMove feature can be used
for faster plex creation and faster array migrations.
The SmartMove feature enables migration from a traditional LUN to a thinly
provisioned LUN, removing unused space in the process.
For more information, see the section on migrating to thin provisioning in the
Veritas Storage Foundation™ Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.

Discovering the maximum size of a volume

To find out how large a volume you can create within a disk group, use the
following form of the vxassist command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] maxsize layout=layout [attributes]

For example, to discover the maximum size RAID-5 volume with 5 columns and
2 logs that you can create within the disk group, dgrp, enter the following
command:
324 Creating volumes
Disk group alignment constraints on volumes

# vxassist -g dgrp maxsize layout=raid5 nlog=2

You can use storage attributes if you want to restrict the disks that vxassist uses
when creating volumes.
See “Creating a volume on specific disks” on page 325.
The maximum size of a VxVM volume that you can create is 256TB.

Disk group alignment constraints on volumes

Certain constraints apply to the length of volumes and to the numeric values of
size attributes that apply to volumes. If a volume is created in a disk group that
is compatible with the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature, the volume’s
length and the values of volume attributes that define the sizes of objects such
as logs or stripe units, must be an integer multiple of the alignment value of 16
blocks (8 kilobytes) . If the disk group is not compatible with the CDS feature, the
volume’s length and attribute size values must be multiples of 1 block (512 bytes).
To discover the value in blocks of the alignment that is set on a disk group, use
this command:

# vxprint -g diskgroup -G -F %align

By default, vxassist automatically rounds up the volume size and attribute size
values to a multiple of the alignment value. (This is equivalent to specifying the
attribute dgalign_checking=round as an additional argument to the vxassist
command.)
If you specify the attribute dgalign_checking=strict to vxassist, the command
fails with an error if you specify a volume length or attribute size value that is
not a multiple of the alignment value for the disk group.

Creating a volume on any disk

By default, the vxassist make command creates a concatenated volume that uses
one or more sections of disk space. On a fragmented disk, this allows you to put
together a volume larger than any individual section of free disk space available.
To change the default layout, edit the definition of the layout attribute defined
in the /etc/default/vxassist file.
If there is not enough space on a single disk, vxassist creates a spanned volume.
A spanned volume is a concatenated volume with sections of disk space spread
across more than one disk. A spanned volume can be larger than any disk on a
system, since it takes space from more than one disk.
 Creating volumes 325
Creating a volume on specific disks

To create a concatenated, default volume, use the following form of the vxassist
command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
For example, to create the concatenated volume voldefault with a length of 10
gigabytes in the default disk group:

# vxassist -b make voldefault 10g

Creating a volume on specific disks

VxVM automatically selects the disks on which each volume resides, unless you
specify otherwise. If you want a volume to be created on specific disks, you must
designate those disks to VxVM. More than one disk can be specified.
To create a volume on a specific disk or disks, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

[layout=layout] diskname ...

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
For example, to create the volume volspec with length 5 gigabytes on disks mydg03
and mydg04, use the following command:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volspec 5g mydg03 mydg04

The vxassist command allows you to specify storage attributes. These give you
control over the devices, including disks, controllers and targets, which vxassist
uses to configure a volume. For example, you can specifically exclude disk mydg05.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following examples
show how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volspec 5g \!mydg05

The following example excludes all disks that are on controller c2:
326 Creating volumes
Creating a volume on specific disks

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volspec 5g \!ctlr:c2

This example includes only disks on controller c1 except for target t5:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volspec 5g ctlr:c1 \!target:c1t5

If you want a volume to be created using only disks from a specific disk group,
use the -g option to vxassist, for example:

# vxassist -g bigone -b make volmega 20g bigone10 bigone11

or alternatively, use the diskgroup attribute:

# vxassist -b make volmega 20g diskgroup=bigone bigone10 \

bigone11

Any storage attributes that you specify for use must belong to the disk group.
Otherwise, vxassist will not use them to create a volume.
You can also use storage attributes to control how vxassist uses available storage,
for example, when calculating the maximum size of a volume, when growing a
volume or when removing mirrors or logs from a volume. The following example
excludes disks dgrp07 and dgrp08 when calculating the maximum size of RAID-5
volume that vxassist can create using the disks in the disk group dg:

# vxassist -b -g dgrp maxsize layout=raid5 nlog=2 \!dgrp07 \!dgrp08

It is also possible to control how volumes are laid out on the specified storage.
See “Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes” on page 328.
If you are using VxVM in conjunction with Veritas SANPoint Control 2.0, you can
specify how vxassist should use the available storage groups when creating
volumes.
See “Configuration of volumes on SAN storage” on page 72.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
vxassist also lets you select disks based on disk tags. The following command
only includes disks that have a tier1 disktag.

# vxassist -g dg3 make vol3 1g disktag:tier1

Creating a volume on SSD devices

This section explains how to create a volume on Solid State Disk (SSD) device.
You must upgrade the disk group to version 150 or higher for SSD support. To
upgrade the disk group, use the following command:
 Creating volumes 327
Creating a volume on specific disks

# vxdg upgrade diskgroup

where diskgroup is the name of the disk group to which the disk belongs.
The allocation behavior of the vxassist command changes with the presence of
SSD devices in a disk group.

Note: If the disk group version is less than 150, the vxassist command does not
honor media type of the device for making allocations.

The vxassist command allows you to specify Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or SSD
devices for allocation using the mediatype attribute. For example, to create a
volume myvol of size 1g on SSD disks in mydg, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1g mediatype:ssd

For example, to create a volume myvol of size 1g on HDD disks in mydg, use the
following command:

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1g mediatype:hdd

If neither mediatype:hdd nor mediatype:ssd is specified, then mediatype:hdd

is considered as default selection type which means only the HDD devices present
in the disk group are considered for allocation.
If a mix of SSD devices and HDD devices are specified, the allocation is done only
on HDD devices unless mediatype:ssd is explicitly specified. For example:

enclr1 : enclosure having all SSD devices

enclr2 : enclosure having all HDD devices
enclr3 : enclosure having mix of SSD and HDD devices

In the following command, volume myvol of size 1G is allocated on devices from

enclr2 array (only HDD devices):

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr1 enclr:enclr2

In order to create a volume on SSD devices from enclr1 enclosure, following

command should be used:

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr1 mediatype:ssd

If enclr3 is only specified, only hdd devices present in enclr3 are considered for
allocation.
In the following two commands, volume myvol of size 1G is allocated on HDD
devices from enclr3 array:
328 Creating volumes
Creating a volume on specific disks

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr3 mediatype:hdd

# vxasisst -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr3

In order to allocate a volume on SSD devices from enclr3 enclosure, following

command should be used:

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr3 mediatype:ssd

The allocation fails, if the command is specified in one of the following two ways:

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr1 mediatype:hdd

In the above case, volume myvol cannot be created as there are no HDD devices
in enclr1 enclosure.

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G enclr:enclr2 mediatype:ssd

In the above case, volume myvol cannot be created as there are no SSD devices
in enclr2 enclosure.

Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes

Ordered allocation gives you complete control of space allocation. It requires that
the number of disks that you specify to the vxassist command must match the
number of disks that are required to create a volume. The order in which you
specify the disks to vxassist is also significant.
If you specify the -o ordered option to vxassist when creating a volume, any
storage that you also specify is allocated in the following order:
■ Concatenate disks.
■ Form columns.
■ Form mirrors.
For example, the following command creates a mirrored-stripe volume with 3
columns and 2 mirrors on 6 disks in the disk group, mydg:

# vxassist -b -g mydg -o ordered make mirstrvol 10g \

layout=mirror-stripe ncol=3 mydg01 mydg02 mydg03 mydg04 mydg05 mydg06

This command places columns 1, 2 and 3 of the first mirror on disks mydg01,
mydg02 and mydg03 respectively, and columns 1, 2 and 3 of the second mirror on
disks mydg04, mydg05 and mydg06 respectively.
Figure 8-1 shows an example of using ordered allocation to create a mirrored-stripe
volume.
 Creating volumes 329
Creating a volume on specific disks

Figure 8-1 Example of using ordered allocation to create a mirrored-stripe

volume

Mirrored-stripe
volume
Striped
column 1 column 2 column 3
plex
mydg01-01 mydg02-01 mydg03-01

Mirror
column 1 column 2 column 3
mydg04-01 mydg05-01 mydg06-01 Striped
plex

For layered volumes, vxassist applies the same rules to allocate storage as for
non-layered volumes. For example, the following command creates a striped-mirror
volume with 2 columns:

# vxassist -b -g mydg -o ordered make strmirvol 10g \

layout=stripe-mirror ncol=2 mydg01 mydg02 mydg03 mydg04

This command mirrors column 1 across disks mydg01 and mydg03, and column 2
across disks mydg02 and mydg04.
Figure 8-2 shows an example of using ordered allocation to create a striped-mirror
volume.

Figure 8-2 Example of using ordered allocation to create a striped-mirror

volume
Underlying mirrored volumes
Mirrored-stripe
volume
column 1 column 2
mydg01-01 mydg02-01

Mirror
column 1 column 2
mydg03-01 mydg04-01

Striped plex

Additionally, you can use the col_switch attribute to specify how to concatenate
space on the disks into columns. For example, the following command creates a
mirrored-stripe volume with 2 columns:
330 Creating volumes
Creating a volume on specific disks

# vxassist -b -g mydg -o ordered make strmir2vol 10g \

layout=mirror-stripe ncol=2 col_switch=3g,2g \
mydg01 mydg02 mydg03 mydg04 mydg05 mydg06 mydg07 mydg08

This command allocates 3 gigabytes from mydg01 and 2 gigabytes from mydg02 to
column 1, and 3 gigabytes from mydg03 and 2 gigabytes from mydg04 to column
2. The mirrors of these columns are then similarly formed from disks mydg05
through mydg08.
Figure 8-3 shows an example of using concatenated disk space to create a
mirrored-stripe volume.

Figure 8-3 Example of using concatenated disk space to create a mirrored-stripe

volume

Mirrored-stripe
column 1 column 2 Striped volume
mydg01-01 mydg03-01 plex
mydg02-01 mydg04-01
Mirror
column 1 column 1
mydg05-01 mydg07-01
Striped
mydg06-01 mydg08-01
plex

Other storage specification classes for controllers, enclosures, targets and trays
can be used with ordered allocation. For example, the following command creates
a 3-column mirrored-stripe volume between specified controllers:

# vxassist -b -g mydg -o ordered make mirstr2vol 80g \

layout=mirror-stripe ncol=3 \
ctlr:c1 ctlr:c2 ctlr:c3 ctlr:c4 ctlr:c5 ctlr:c6

This command allocates space for column 1 from disks on controllers c1, for
column 2 from disks on controller c2, and so on.
Figure 8-4 shows an example of using storage allocation to create a mirrored-stripe
volume across controllers.
 Creating volumes 331
Creating a mirrored volume

Figure 8-4 Example of storage allocation used to create a mirrored-stripe

volume across controllers

c1 c2 c3 Controllers

Mirrored-stripe volume
column 1 column 2 column 3 Striped plex

Mirror
column 1 column 2 column 3

Striped plex

c4 c5 c6 Controllers

There are other ways in which you can control how vxassist lays out mirrored
volumes across controllers.
See “Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures” on page 339.

Creating a mirrored volume

A mirrored volume provides data redundancy by containing more than one copy
of its data. Each copy (or mirror) is stored on different disks from the original
copy of the volume and from other mirrors. Mirroring a volume ensures that its
data is not lost if a disk in one of its component mirrors fails.
A mirrored volume requires space to be available on at least as many disks in the
disk group as the number of mirrors in the volume.
If you specify layout=mirror, vxassist determines the best layout for the
mirrored volume. Because the advantages of the layouts are related to the size of
the volume, vxassist selects the layout based on the size of the volume. For
smaller volumes, vxassist uses the simpler mirrored concatenated (mirror-concat)
layout. For larger volumes, vxassist uses the more complex concatenated mirror
(concat-mirror) layout. The attribute stripe-mirror-col-split-trigger-pt controls
the selection. Volumes that are smaller than stripe-mirror-col-split-trigger-pt are
created as mirror-concat, and volumes that are larger are created as concat-mirror.
By default, the attribute stripe-mirror-col-split-trigger-pt is set to one gigabyte.
The value can be set in /etc/default/vxassist. If there is a reason to implement
332 Creating volumes
Creating a mirrored volume

a particular layout, you can specify layout=mirror-concat or layout=concat-mirror

to implement the desired layout.
To create a new mirrored volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=mirror [nmirror=number] [init=active]

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
For example, to create the mirrored volume, volmir, in the disk group, mydg, use
the following command:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volmir 5g layout=mirror

To create a volume with 3 instead of the default of 2 mirrors, modify the command
to read:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volmir 5g layout=mirror nmirror=3

Creating a mirrored-concatenated volume

A mirrored-concatenated volume mirrors several concatenated plexes. To create
a concatenated-mirror volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=mirror-concat [nmirror=number]

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
Alternatively, first create a concatenated volume, and then mirror it.
See “Adding a mirror to a volume ” on page 375.

Creating a concatenated-mirror volume

A concatenated-mirror volume is an example of a layered volume which
concatenates several underlying mirror volumes. To create a concatenated-mirror
volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=concat-mirror [nmirror=number]
 Creating volumes 333
Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.

Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume

If a data change object (DCO) and DCO volume are associated with a volume, this
allows Persistent FastResync to be used with the volume.
See “How persistent FastResync works with snapshots” on page 67.
The version 0 data change object (DCO) and DCO volume layout was introduced
in VxVM 3.2. The version 0 layout supports traditional (third-mirror) snapshots,
but not full-sized instant snapshots, space-optimized instant snapshots nor DRL
configured within the DCO volume.
See “Determining the DCO version number” on page 383.
See “Version 0 DCO volume layout” on page 66.
See “Version 20 DCO volume layout” on page 66.
See “Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume” on page 336.
To perform fast resynchronization of mirrors after a system crash or reboot, you
must also enable dirty region logging (DRL) on a mirrored volume.
For more information about snapshots and DCO volumes, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.

Note: You need a license to use the Persistent FastResync feature. If you do not
have a license, you can configure a DCO object and DCO volume so that snap
objects are associated with the original and snapshot volumes. However, without
a license, only full resynchronization can be performed.

See “How persistent FastResync works with snapshots” on page 67.

334 Creating volumes
Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume

To create a volume with an attached version 0 DCO object and volume

1 Ensure that the disk group has been upgraded to at least version 90. Use the
following command to check the version of a disk group:

# vxdg list diskgroup

To upgrade a disk group to the latest version, use the following command:

# vxdg upgrade diskgroup

See “Upgrading the disk group version” on page 284.

2 Use the following command to create the volume (you may need to specify
additional attributes to create a volume with the desired characteristics):

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=layout \

logtype=dco [ndcomirror=number] [dcolen=size] \
[fastresync=on] [other attributes]

For non-layered volumes, the default number of plexes in the mirrored DCO
volume is equal to the lesser of the number of plexes in the data volume or
2. For layered volumes, the default number of DCO plexes is always 2. If
required, use the ndcomirror attribute to specify a different number. It is
recommended that you configure as many DCO plexes as there are data plexes
in the volume. For example, specify ndcomirror=3 when creating a 3-way
mirrored volume.
The default size of each plex is 132 blocks unless you use the dcolen attribute
to specify a different size. If specified, the size of the plex must be a multiple
of 33 blocks from 33 up to a maximum of 2112 blocks.
By default, FastResync is not enabled on newly created volumes. Specify the
fastresync=on attribute if you want to enable FastResync on the volume. If
a DCO object and DCO volume are associated with the volume, Persistent
FastResync is enabled; otherwise, Non-Persistent FastResync is enabled.
 Creating volumes 335
Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume

3 To enable DRL or sequential DRL logging on the newly created volume, use
the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set logtype=drl|drlseq volume

If you use ordered allocation when creating a mirrored volume on specified

storage, you can use the optional logdisk attribute to specify on which disks
dedicated log plexes should be created. Use the following form of the vxassist
command to specify the disks from which space for the logs is to be allocated:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] -o ordered make volume length \

layout=mirror logtype=log_type logdisk=disk[,disk,...] \
storage_attributes

If you do not specify the logdisk attribute, vxassist locates the logs in the
data plexes of the volume.
See “Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes” on page 328.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
See the vxvol(1M) manual page.
336 Creating volumes
Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume

Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume

To create a volume with an attached version 20 DCO object and volume
1 Ensure that the disk group has been upgraded to the latest version. Use the
following command to check the version of a disk group:

# vxdg list diskgroup

To upgrade a disk group to the most recent version, use the following
command:

# vxdg upgrade diskgroup

See “Upgrading the disk group version” on page 284.

2 Use the following command to create the volume (you may need to specify
additional attributes to create a volume with the desired characteristics):

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=layout \

logtype=dco dcoversion=20 [drl=on|sequential|off] \
[ndcomirror=number] [fastresync=on] [other attributes]

Set the value of the drl attribute to on if dirty region logging (DRL) is to be
used with the volume (this is the default setting). For a volume that will be
written to sequentially, such as a database log volume, set the value to
sequential to enable sequential DRL. The DRL logs are created in the DCO
volume. The redundancy of the logs is determined by the number of mirrors
that you specify using the ndcomirror attribute.
By default, Persistent FastResync is not enabled on newly created volumes.
Specify the fastresync=on attribute if you want to enable Persistent
FastResync on the volume.
See “Determining the DCO version number” on page 383.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.

Creating a volume with dirty region logging enabled

Dirty region logging (DRL), if enabled, speeds recovery of mirrored volumes after
a system crash. To enable DRL on a volume that is created within a disk group
with a version number between 20 and 100, specify the logtype=drl attribute to
the vxassist make command as shown in this example usage:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=layout \

logtype=drl [nlog=n] [loglen=size] [other attributes]
 Creating volumes 337
Creating a striped volume

The nlog attribute can be used to specify the number of log plexes to add. By
default, one log plex is added. The loglen attribute specifies the size of the log,
where each bit represents one region in the volume. For example, the size of the
log would need to be 20K for a 10GB volume with a region size of 64 kilobytes.
For example, to create a mirrored 10GB volume, vol02, with two log plexes in the
disk group, mydg, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg make vol02 10g layout=mirror logtype=drl \

nlog=2 nmirror=2

Sequential DRL limits the number of dirty regions for volumes that are written
to sequentially, such as database replay logs. To enable sequential DRL on a volume
that is created within a disk group with a version number between 70 and 100,
specify the logtype=drlseq attribute to the vxassist make command.

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=layout \

logtype=drlseq [nlog=n] [other attributes]

It is also possible to enable the use of Persistent FastResync with this volume.
See “Creating a volume with a version 0 DCO volume” on page 333.

Note: Operations on traditional DRL log plexes are usually applicable to volumes
that are created in disk groups with a version number of less than 110. If you
enable DRL or sequential DRL on a volume that is created within a disk group
with a version number of 110 or greater, the DRL logs are usually created within
the plexes of a version 20 DCO volume.

See “Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume” on page 336.

Creating a striped volume

A striped volume contains at least one plex that consists of two or more subdisks
located on two or more physical disks. A striped volume requires space to be
available on at least as many disks in the disk group as the number of columns in
the volume.
See “Striping (RAID-0)” on page 39.
To create a striped volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=stripe

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
338 Creating volumes
Creating a striped volume

See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.

For example, to create the 10-gigabyte striped volume volzebra, in the disk group,
mydg, use the following command:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volzebra 10g layout=stripe

This creates a striped volume with the default stripe unit size (64 kilobytes) and
the default number of stripes (2).
You can specify the disks on which the volumes are to be created by including the
disk names on the command line. For example, to create a 30-gigabyte striped
volume on three specific disks, mydg03, mydg04, and mydg05, use the following
command:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make stripevol 30g layout=stripe \

mydg03 mydg04 mydg05

To change the number of columns or the stripe width, use the ncolumn and
stripeunit modifiers with vxassist. For example, the following command creates
a striped volume with 5 columns and a 32-kilobyte stripe size:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make stripevol 30g layout=stripe \

stripeunit=32k ncol=5

Creating a mirrored-stripe volume

A mirrored-stripe volume mirrors several striped data plexes. A mirrored-stripe
volume requires space to be available on at least as many disks in the disk group
as the number of mirrors multiplied by the number of columns in the volume.
To create a striped-mirror volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=mirror-stripe [nmirror=number_of_mirrors] \
[ncol=number_of_columns] [stripewidth=size]

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
Alternatively, first create a striped volume, and then mirror it. In this case, the
additional data plexes may be either striped or concatenated.
See “Adding a mirror to a volume ” on page 375.
 Creating volumes 339
Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures

Creating a striped-mirror volume

A striped-mirror volume is an example of a layered volume which stripes several
underlying mirror volumes. A striped-mirror volume requires space to be available
on at least as many disks in the disk group as the number of columns multiplied
by the number of stripes in the volume.
To create a striped-mirror volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=stripe-mirror [nmirror=number_of_mirrors] \
[ncol=number_of_columns] [stripewidth=size]

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
By default, VxVM attempts to create the underlying volumes by mirroring subdisks
rather than columns if the size of each column is greater than the value for the
attribute stripe-mirror-col-split-trigger-pt that is defined in the vxassist
defaults file.
If there are multiple subdisks per column, you can choose to mirror each subdisk
individually instead of each column. To mirror at the subdisk level, specify the
layout as stripe-mirror-sd rather than stripe-mirror. To mirror at the column
level, specify the layout as stripe-mirror-col rather than stripe-mirror.

Mirroring across targets, controllers or enclosures

To create a volume whose mirrored data plexes lie on different controllers (also
known as disk duplexing) or in different enclosures, use the vxassist command
as described in this section.
In the following command, the attribute mirror=target specifies that volumes
should be mirrored between targets on different controllers.

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=layout mirror=target [attributes]

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
The attribute mirror=ctlr specifies that disks in one mirror should not be on the
same controller as disks in other mirrors within the same volume:
340 Creating volumes
Mirroring across media types (SSD and HDD)

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length \

layout=layout mirror=ctlr [attributes]

Note: Both paths of an active/passive array are not considered to be on different

controllers when mirroring across controllers.

The following command creates a mirrored volume with two data plexes in the
disk group, mydg:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volspec 10g layout=mirror nmirror=2 \

mirror=ctlr ctlr:c2 ctlr:c3

The disks in one data plex are all attached to controller c2, and the disks in the
other data plex are all attached to controller c3. This arrangement ensures
continued availability of the volume should either controller fail.
The attribute mirror=enclr specifies that disks in one mirror should not be in
the same enclosure as disks in other mirrors within the same volume.
The following command creates a mirrored volume with two data plexes:

# vxassist -b make -g mydg volspec 10g layout=mirror nmirror=2 \

mirror=enclr enclr:enc1 enclr:enc2

The disks in one data plex are all taken from enclosure enc1, and the disks in the
other data plex are all taken from enclosure enc2. This arrangement ensures
continued availability of the volume should either enclosure become unavailable.
There are other ways in which you can control how volumes are laid out on the
specified storage.
See “Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes” on page 328.

Mirroring across media types (SSD and HDD)

This section describes how to mirror across media types (SSD and HDD).
To create a volume with a HDD plex and a SSD plex
1 Create a volume with media type HDD:

# vxassist -g mydg make myvol 1G mediatype:hdd

2 Add a mirror to the volume with media type SSD:

# vxassist -g mydg mirror myvol mediatype:ssd

 Creating volumes 341
Creating a RAID-5 volume

Note: mirror=mediatype is not supported.

Creating a RAID-5 volume

A RAID-5 volume requires space to be available on at least as many disks in the
disk group as the number of columns in the volume. Additional disks may be
required for any RAID-5 logs that are created.

Note: VxVM supports the creation of RAID-5 volumes in private disk groups, but
not in shareable disk groups in a cluster environment.

You can create RAID-5 volumes by using either the vxassist command
(recommended) or the vxmake command. Both approaches are described below.
A RAID-5 volume contains a RAID-5 data plex that consists of three or more
subdisks located on three or more physical disks. Only one RAID-5 data plex can
exist per volume. A RAID-5 volume can also contain one or more RAID-5 log plexes,
which are used to log information about data and parity being written to the
volume.
See “RAID-5 (striping with parity)” on page 45.

Warning: Do not create a RAID-5 volume with more than 8 columns because the
volume will be unrecoverable in the event of the failure of more than one disk.

To create a RAID-5 volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=raid5 \

[ncol=number_of_columns] [stripewidth=size] [nlog=number] \
[loglen=log_length]

Specify the -b option if you want to make the volume immediately available for
use.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.
For example, to create the RAID-5 volume volraid together with 2 RAID-5 logs
in the disk group, mydg, use the following command:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volraid 10g layout=raid5 nlog=2

This creates a RAID-5 volume with the default stripe unit size on the default
number of disks. It also creates two RAID-5 logs rather than the default of one
log.
342 Creating volumes
Creating tagged volumes

If you require RAID-5 logs, you must use the logdisk attribute to specify the disks
to be used for the log plexes.
RAID-5 logs can be concatenated or striped plexes, and each RAID-5 log associated
with a RAID-5 volume has a complete copy of the logging information for the
volume. To support concurrent access to the RAID-5 array, the log should be
several times the stripe size of the RAID-5 plex.
It is suggested that you configure a minimum of two RAID-5 log plexes for each
RAID-5 volume. These log plexes should be located on different disks. Having two
RAID-5 log plexes for each RAID-5 volume protects against the loss of logging
information due to the failure of a single disk.
If you use ordered allocation when creating a RAID-5 volume on specified storage,
you must use the logdisk attribute to specify on which disks the RAID-5 log plexes
should be created. Use the following form of the vxassist command to specify
the disks from which space for the logs is to be allocated:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] -o ordered make volumelength \

layout=raid5 [ncol=number_columns] [nlog=number] \
[loglen=log_length] logdisk=disk[,disk,...] \
storage_attributes

For example, the following command creates a 3-column RAID-5 volume with the
default stripe unit size on disks mydg04, mydg05 and mydg06. It also creates two
RAID-5 logs on disks mydg07 and mydg08.

# vxassist -b -g mydg -o ordered make volraid 10g layout=raid5 \

ncol=3 nlog=2 logdisk=mydg07,mydg08 mydg04 mydg05 mydg06

The number of logs must equal the number of disks that is specified to logdisk.
See “Specifying ordered allocation of storage to volumes” on page 328.
See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
It is possible to add more logs to a RAID-5 volume at a later time.
See “Adding a RAID-5 log” on page 403.

Creating tagged volumes

Volume tags are used to implement the SmartTier feature of the Storage
Foundation software.
See the Veritas Storage Foundation Advanced Features Administrator’s Guide.
 Creating volumes 343
Creating tagged volumes

You can use the tag attribute with the vxassist make command to set a named
tag and optional tag value on a volume, for example:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make volmir 5g layout=mirror tag=mirvol=5g

To list the tags that are associated with a volume, use this command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] listtag volume

If you do not specify a volume name, the tags of all volumes and vsets in the disk
group are listed.
The following is an example of listtag output:

# vxassist -g dgl listtag vol

TY NAME DISKGROUP TAG
=================================================
v vol dg1 Symantec

To list the volumes that have a specified tag name, use this command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] list tag=tagname

Tag names and tag values are case-sensitive character strings of up to 256
characters. Tag names can consist of letters (A through Z and a through z),
numbers (0 through 9), dashes (-), underscores (_) or periods (.) from the ASCII
character set. A tag name must start with either a letter or an underscore. Tag
values can consist of any character from the ASCII character set with a decimal
value from 32 through 127. If a tag value includes any spaces, use the vxassist
settag command to set the tag on the newly created volume.

Dotted tag hierarchies are understood by the list operation. For example, the
listing for tag=a.b includes all volumes that have tag names that start with a.b.
The tag names site, udid and vdid are reserved and should not be used. To avoid
possible clashes with future product features, it is recommended that tag names
do not start with any of the following strings: asl, be, isp, nbu, sf, symc, vx, or
vxvm.attr.

See “Setting tags on volumes” on page 389.

You can use the tier attribute with the vxassist make command to set the
vxfs.placement_class. tag on the volume being created. This attribute lets you
set the volume tier that SmartTier will use. The following command adds tier1
to the vxfs.placement_class tag.

# vxassist -g dg3 make vol4 5g tier=tier2

344 Creating volumes
Creating a volume using vxmake

The following command confirms that the vxfs.placement_class tag has been
updated.

# vxassist -g dg3 listtag

TY NAME DISKGROUP TAG

=========================================================
v vol4 dg3 vxfs.placement_class.tier2

Creating a volume using vxmake

As an alternative to using vxassist, you can create a volume using the vxmake
command to arrange existing subdisks into plexes, and then to form these plexes
into a volume.
See “Creating subdisks” on page 292.
The example given in this section is to create a RAID-5 volume using vxmake.
Creating a RAID-5 plex for a RAID-5 volume is similar to creating striped plexes,
except that the layout attribute is set to raid5. Subdisks can be implicitly
associated in the same way as with striped plexes. For example, to create a
four-column RAID-5 plex with a stripe unit size of 32 sectors, use the following
command:

# vxmake -g mydg plex raidplex layout=raid5 stwidth=32 \

sd=mydg00-01,mydg01-00,mydg02-00,mydg03-00

Note that because four subdisks are specified, but the number of columns is not
specified, the vxmake command assumes a four-column RAID-5 plex and places
one subdisk in each column. Striped plexes are created using the same method
except that the layout is specified as stripe. If the subdisks are to be created and
added later, use the following command to create the plex:

# vxmake -g mydg plex raidplex layout=raid5 ncolumn=4 stwidth=32

If no subdisks are specified, the ncolumn attribute must be specified. Subdisks can
be added to the plex later using the vxsd assoc command.
See “Associating subdisks with plexes” on page 295.
If each column in a RAID-5 plex is to be created from multiple subdisks which
may span several physical disks, you can specify to which column each subdisk
should be added. For example, to create a three-column RAID-5 plex using six
subdisks, use the following form of the vxmake command:
 Creating volumes 345
Creating a volume using vxmake

# vxmake -g mydg plex raidplex layout=raid5 stwidth=32 \

sd=mydg00-00:0,mydg01-00:1,mydg02-00:2,mydg03-00:0, \
mydg04-00:1,mydg05-00:2

This command stacks subdisks mydg00-00 and mydg03-00 consecutively in column

0, subdisks mydg01-00 and mydg04-00 consecutively in column 1, and subdisks
mydg02-00 and mydg05-00 in column 2. Offsets can also be specified to create
sparse RAID-5 plexes, as for striped plexes.
Log plexes may be created as default concatenated plexes by not specifying a
layout, for example:

# vxmake -g mydg plex raidlog1 sd=mydg06-00

# vxmake -g mydg plex raidlog2 sd=mydg07-00

The following command creates a RAID-5 volume, and associates the prepared
RAID-5 plex and RAID-5 log plexes with it:

# vxmake -g mydg -Uraid5 vol raidvol \

plex=raidplex,raidlog1,raidlog2

Each RAID-5 volume has one RAID-5 plex where the data and parity are stored.
Any other plexes associated with the volume are used as RAID-5 log plexes to log
information about data and parity being written to the volume.
After creating a volume using vxmake, you must initialize it before it can be used.
See “Initializing and starting a volume” on page 346.

Creating a volume using a vxmake description file

You can use the vxmake command to add a new volume, plex or subdisk to the set
of objects managed by VxVM. vxmake adds a record for each new object to the
VxVM configuration database. You can create records either by specifying
parameters to vxmake on the command line, or by using a file which contains
plain-text descriptions of the objects. The file can also contain commands for
performing a list of tasks. Use the following form of the command to have vxmake
read the file from the standard input:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] < description_file

Alternatively, you can specify the file to vxmake using the -d option:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] -d description_file

The following sample description file defines a volume, db, with two plexes, db-01
and db-02:
346 Creating volumes
Initializing and starting a volume

#rty #name #options

sd mydg03-01 disk=mydg03 offset=0 len=10000
sd mydg03-02 disk=mydg03 offset=25000 len=10480
sd mydg04-01 disk=mydg04 offset=0 len=8000
sd mydg04-02 disk=mydg04 offset=15000 len=8000
sd mydg04-03 disk=mydg04 offset=30000 len=4480
plex db-01 layout=STRIPE ncolumn=2 stwidth=16k
sd=mydg03-01:0/0,mydg03-02:0/10000,mydg04-01:1/0,
mydg04-02:1/8000,mydg04-03:1/16000
sd ramd1-01 disk=ramd1 len=640
comment="Hot spot for dbvol"
plex db-02 sd=ramd1-01:40320
vol db usetype=gen plex=db-01,db-02
readpol=prefer prefname=db-02
comment="Uses mem1 for hot spot in last 5m"

The subdisk definition for plex, db-01, must be specified on a single line. It is
shown here split across two lines because of space constraints.
The first plex, db-01, is striped and has five subdisks on two physical disks, mydg03
and mydg04. The second plex, db-02, is the preferred plex in the mirror, and has
one subdisk, ramd1-01, on a volatile memory disk.
For detailed information about how to use vxmake, refer to the vxmake(1M) manual
page.
After creating a volume using vxmake, you must initialize it before it can be used.
See “Initializing and starting a volume created using vxmake” on page 347.

Initializing and starting a volume

If you create a volume using the vxassist command, vxassist initializes and
starts the volume automatically unless you specify the attribute init=none.
When creating a volume, you can make it immediately available for use by
specifying the -b option to the vxassist command, as shown here:

# vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=mirror

The -b option makes VxVM carry out any required initialization as a background
task. It also greatly speeds up the creation of striped volumes by initializing the
columns in parallel.
As an alternative to the -b option, you can specify the init=active attribute to
make a new volume immediately available for use. In this example, init=active
 Creating volumes 347
Initializing and starting a volume

is specified to prevent VxVM from synchronizing the empty data plexes of a new
mirrored volume:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=mirror \

init=active

Warning: There is a very small risk of errors occurring when the init=active
attribute is used. Although written blocks are guaranteed to be consistent, read
errors can arise in the unlikely event that fsck attempts to verify uninitialized
space in the file system, or if a file remains uninitialized following a system crash.
If in doubt, use the -b option to vxassist instead.

This command writes zeroes to the entire length of the volume and to any log
plexes. It then makes the volume active. You can also zero out a volume by
specifying the attribute init=zero to vxassist, as shown in this example:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=raid5 \

init=zero

You cannot use the -b option to make this operation a background task.

Initializing and starting a volume created using vxmake

A volume may be initialized by running the vxvol command if the volume was
created by the vxmake command and has not yet been initialized, or if the volume
has been set to an uninitialized state.
To initialize and start a volume, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] start volume

The following command can be used to enable a volume without initializing it:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] init enable volume

This allows you to restore data on the volume from a backup before using the
following command to make the volume fully active:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] init active volume

If you want to zero out the contents of an entire volume, use this command to
initialize it:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] init zero volume

348 Creating volumes
Accessing a volume

Accessing a volume
As soon as a volume has been created and initialized, it is available for use as a
virtual disk partition by the operating system for the creation of a file system, or
by application programs such as relational databases and other data management
software.
Creating a volume in a disk group sets up block and character (raw) device files
that can be used to access the volume:

/dev/vx/dsk/dg/vol block device file for volume vol in disk group dg

/dev/vx/rdsk/dg/vol character device file for volume vol in disk group dg

The pathnames include a directory named for the disk group. Use the appropriate
device node to create, mount and repair file systems, and to lay out databases that
require raw partitions.
As the rootdg disk group no longer has special significance, VxVM only creates
volume device nodes for this disk group in the /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg and
/dev/vx/rdsk/rootdg directories. VxVM does not create device nodes in the
/dev/vx/dsk or /dev/vx/rdsk directories for the rootdg disk group.

Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume

allocation more efficient
The vxassist command lets you create a set of volume allocation rules and define
it with a single name. When you specify this name in your volume allocation
request, all the attributes that are defined in this rule are honored when vxassist
creates the volume.
When you create rules, you do not define them in the /etc/default/vxassist
file. You create the rules in another file and add the path information to
/etc/default/vxassist. By default, a rule file is loaded from
/etc/default/vxsf_rules. You can override this location in
/etc/default/vxassist with the attribute rulefile=/path/rule_file_name.
You can also specify additional rule files on the command line.
Creating volume allocation rules has the following benefits:
■ Rules streamline your typing and reduce errors. You can define relatively
complex allocation rules once in a single location and reuse them.
■ Rules let you standardize behaviors in your environment, including across a
set of servers.
 Creating volumes 349
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

For example, you can create allocation rules so that a set of servers can standardize
their storage tiering. Suppose you had the following requirements:

Tier 1 Enclosure mirroring between a specific set of array types

Tier 2 Non-mirrored striping between a specific set of array types

Tier 0 Select solid-state drive (SSD) storage

You can create rules for each volume allocation requirement and name the rules
tier1, tier2, and tier0.
You can also define rules so that each time you create a volume for a particular
purpose, it's created with the same attributes. For example, to create the volume
for a production database, you can create a rule called productiondb. To create
standardized volumes for home directories, you can create a rule called homedir.
To standardize your high performance index volumes, you can create a rule called
dbindex.

Understanding persistent attributes

The vxassist command also lets you record certain volume allocation attributes
for a volume. These attributes are called persistent attributes. You can record the
attributes which would be useful in later allocation operations on the volume.
Useful attributes include volume grow and enclosure mirroring. You can also
restrict allocation to storage that has a particular property (such as the enclosure
type, disk tag, or media type). On the other hand, volume length is not useful, and
generally neither is a specific list of disks.
The persistent attributes can be retrieved and applied to the allocation requests
(with possible modifications) for the following operations:
■ volume grow or shrink
■ move
■ relayout
■ mirror
■ addlog

Persistent attributes let you record carefully described allocation attributes at

the time of volume creation and retain them for future allocation operations on
the volume. Also, you can modify, enhance, or even discard the persistent
attributes. For example, you can add and retain a separation rule for a volume
that is originally not mirrored. Alternatively, you can temporarily suspend a
350 Creating volumes
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

volume allocation which has proven too restrictive or discard it to allow a needed
allocation to succeed.

Rule file format

When you create rules, you do not define them in the /etc/default/vxassist
file. You create the rules in another file and add the path information to
/etc/default/vxassist. By default, a rule file is loaded from
/etc/default/vxsf_rules. You can override this location in
/etc/default/vxassist with the attribute rulefile=/path/rule_file_name.
You can also specify additional rule files on the command line.
A rule file uses the following conventions:
■ Blank lines are ignored.
■ Use the pound sign, #, to begin a comment.
■ Use C language style quoting for the strings that may include embedded spaces,
new lines, or tabs. For example, use quotes around the text for the description
attribute.
■ Separate tokens with a space.
■ Use braces for a rule that is longer than one line.
Within the rule file, a volume allocation rule has the following format:
volume rule rulename vxassist_attributes

This syntax defines a rule named rulename which is a short-hand for the listed
vxassist attributes. Rules can reference other rules using an attribute of
rule=rulename[,rulename,...], which adds all the attributes from that rule
into the rule currently being defined. The attributes you specify in a rule definition
override any conflicting attributes that are in a rule that you specify by reference.
You can add a description to a rule with the attribute
description=description_text.

The following is a basic rule file. The first rule in the file, base, defines the logtype
and persist attributes. The remaining rules in the file – tier0, tier1, and tier2 –
reference this rule and also define their own tier-specific attributes. Referencing
a rule lets you define attributes in one place and reuse them in other rules.

# Create tier 1 volumes mirrored between disk arrays, tier 0 on SSD,

# and tier 2 as unmirrored. Always use FMR DCO objects.
volume rule base { logtype=dco persist=yes }
volume rule tier0 { rule=base mediatype:ssd tier=tier0 }
 Creating volumes 351
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

volume rule tier1 { rule=base mirror=enclosure tier=tier1 }

volume rule tier2 { rule=base tier=tier2 }

The following rule file contains a more complex definition which runs across
several lines.

volume rule appXdb_storage {

description="Create storage for the database of Application X"
rule=base
siteconsistent=yes
mirror=enclosure
}

By default, a rule file is loaded from /etc/default/vxsf_rules. You can override

this location in /etc/default/vxassist. You can also specify additional rule files
on the command line.

Using rules to create a volume

When you use the vxassist command to create a volume, you can include the
rule name on the command line. For example, the content of the vxsf_rules file
is as follows:

volume rule basic { logtype=dco }

volume rule tier1 {
rule=basic
layout=mirror
tier=tier1
}

In the following example, when you create the volume vol1 in disk group dg3,
you can specify the tier1 rule on the command line. In addition to the attributes
you enter on the command line, vol1 is given the attributes that you defined in
tier1.

vxassist -g dg3 make vol1 200m rule=tier1

The following vxprint command displays the attributes of disk group dg3. The
output includes the new volume, vol1.

vxprint -g dg3
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg dg3 dg3 - - - - - -

dm ibm_ds8x000_0266 ibm_ds8x000_0266 - 2027264 - - - -

352 Creating volumes
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

dm ibm_ds8x000_0267 ibm_ds8x000_0267 - 2027264 - - - -

dm ibm_ds8x000_0268 ibm_ds8x000_0268 - 2027264 - - - -

v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 409600 - ACTIVE - -

pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 409600 - ACTIVE - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0266-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 409600 0 - - -
pl vol1-02 vol1 ENABLED 409600 - ACTIVE - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0267-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 409600 0 - - -
dc vol1_dco vol1 - - - - - -
v vol1_dcl gen ENABLED 144 - ACTIVE - -
pl vol1_dcl-01 vol1_dcl ENABLED 144 - ACTIVE - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0266-02 vol1_dcl-01 ENABLED 144 0 - - -
pl vol1_dcl-02 vol1_dcl ENABLED 144 - ACTIVE - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0267-02 vol1_dcl-02 ENABLED 144 0 - - -

The following vxassist command confirms that vol1 is in tier1. The application
of rule tier1 was successful.

vxassist -g dg3 listtag

TY NAME DISKGROUP TAG
=========================================================
v vol1 dg3 vxfs.placement_class.tier1

Using persistent attributes

You can define volume allocation attributes so they can be reused in subsequent
operations. These attributes are called persistent attributes, and they are stored
in a set of hidden volume tags. The persist attribute determines whether an
attribute persists, and how the current command might use or modify preexisting
persisted attributes. You can specify persistence rules in defaults files, in rules,
or on the command line. For more information, see the vxassist manual page.
To illustrate how persistent attributes work, we'll use the following vxsf_rules
files. It contains a rule, rule1, which defines the mediatype attribute. This rule
also uses the persist attribute to make the mediatype attribute persistent.

# cat /etc/default/vxsf_rules
volume rule rule1 { mediatype:ssd persist=extended }

The following command confirms that LUNs ibm_ds8x000_0266 and

ibm_ds8x000_0268 are solid-state disk (SSD) devices.

# vxdisk listtag
DEVICE NAME VALUE
 Creating volumes 353
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

ibm_ds8x000_0266 vxmediatype ssd

ibm_ds8x000_0268 vxmediatype ssd

The following command creates a volume, vol1, in the disk group dg3. rule1 is
specified on the command line, so those attributes are also applied to vol1.

# vxassist -g dg3 make vol1 100m rule=rule1

The following command shows that the volume vol1 is created off the SSD device
ibm_ds8x000_0266 as specified in rule1.

# vxprint -g dg3
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg dg3 dg3 - - - - - -

dm ibm_ds8x000_0266 ibm_ds8x000_0266 - 2027264 - - - -

dm ibm_ds8x000_0267 ibm_ds8x000_0267 - 2027264 - - - -
dm ibm_ds8x000_0268 ibm_ds8x000_0268 - 2027264 - - - -

v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 204800 - ACTIVE - -

pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 204800 - ACTIVE - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0266-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 204800 0 - - -

The following command displays the attributes that are defined in rule1.

# vxassist -g dg3 help showattrs rule=rule1

alloc=mediatype:ssd
persist=extended

If no persistent attributes are defined, the following command grows vol1 on

hard disk drive (HDD) devices. However, at the beginning of this section,
mediatype:ssd was defined as a persistent attribute. Therefore, the following
command honors this original intent and grows the volume on SSD devices.

# vxassist -g dg3 growby vol1 1g

The following vxprint command confirms that the volume was grown on SSD
devices.

# vxprint -g dg3
TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE TUTIL0 PUTIL0
dg dg3 dg3 - - - - - -

dm ibm_ds8x000_0266 ibm_ds8x000_0266 - 2027264 - - - -

dm ibm_ds8x000_0267 ibm_ds8x000_0267 - 2027264 - - - -
dm ibm_ds8x000_0268 ibm_ds8x000_0268 - 2027264 - - - -
354 Creating volumes
Using rules and persistent attributes to make volume allocation more efficient

v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 2301952 - ACTIVE - -

pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 2301952 - ACTIVE - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0266-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 2027264 0 - - -
sd ibm_ds8x000_0268-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 274688 2027264 - - -
 Chapter 9
Administering volumes
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About volume administration

■ Displaying volume information

■ Monitoring and controlling tasks

■ About SF Thin Reclamation feature

■ Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays

■ Monitoring Thin Reclamation using the vxtask command

■ Using SmartMove with Thin Provisioning

■ Admin operations on an unmounted VxFS thin volume

■ Stopping a volume

■ Starting a volume

■ Resizing a volume

■ Adding a mirror to a volume

■ Removing a mirror

■ Adding logs and maps to volumes

■ Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

■ Adding traditional DRL logging to a mirrored volume

■ Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs

■ Setting tags on volumes

356 Administering volumes
About volume administration

■ Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes

■ Removing a volume

■ Moving volumes from a VM disk

■ Enabling FastResync on a volume

■ Performing online relayout

■ Converting between layered and non-layered volumes

■ Adding a RAID-5 log

About volume administration

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) lets you perform common maintenance tasks
on volumes. These include the following:
■ Displaying volume information
■ Monitoring tasks
■ Resizing volumes
■ Adding and removing logs
■ Adding and removing mirrors
■ Removing volumes
■ Changing the layout of volumes without taking them offline

Note: To use most VxVM commands, you need superuser or equivalent privileges.

Displaying volume information

You can use the vxprint command to display information about how a volume is
configured.
To display the volume, plex, and subdisk record information for all volumes in
the system, use the following command:

# vxprint -hvt

You can also apply the vxprint command to a single disk group:

# vxprint -g mydg -hvt

 Administering volumes 357
Displaying volume information

This example produces the following output:

V NAME RVG/VSET/CO KSTATE STATE LENGTH READPOL PREFPLEX UTYPE

PL NAME VOLUME KSTATE STATE LENGTH LAYOUT NCOL/WID MODE
SD NAME PLEX DISK DISKOFFS LENGTH [COL/]OFF DEVICE MODE
SV NAME PLEX VOLNAME NVOLLAYR LENGTH [COL/]OFF AM/NM MODE
SC NAME PLEX CACHE DISKOFFS LENGTH [COL/]OFF DEVICE MODE
DC NAME PARENTVOL LOGVOL
SP NAME SNAPVOL DCO

v pubs - ENABLED ACTIVE 22880 SELECT - fsgen

pl pubs-01 pubs ENABLED ACTIVE 22880 CONCAT - RW
sd mydg11-01 pubs-01 mydg11 0 22880 0 c1t0d0 ENA

v voldef - ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 SELECT - fsgen

pl voldef-01 voldef ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 CONCAT - RW
sd mydg12-02 voldef-0 mydg12 0 20480 0 c1t1d0 ENA

Here v is a volume, pl is a plex, and sd is a subdisk. The first few lines indicate
the headers that match each type of output line that follows. Each volume is listed
along with its associated plexes and subdisks.
You can ignore the headings for sub-volumes (SV), storage caches (SC), data change
objects (DCO) and snappoints (SP) in the sample output. No such objects are
associated with the volumes that are shown.
To display volume-related information for a specific volume, use the following
command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -t volume

For example, to display information about the volume, voldef, in the disk group,
mydg, use the following command:

# vxprint -g mydg -t voldef

This example produces the following output:

V NAME RVG/VSET/CO KSTATE STATE LENGTH READPOL PREFPLEX UTYPE

v voldef - ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 SELECT - fsgen

If you enable enclosure-based naming, vxprint shows enclosure-based names for

the disk devices rather than OS-based names.
The output from the vxprint command includes information about the volume
state.
358 Administering volumes
Displaying volume information

See “Volume states” on page 358.

Volume states
Table 9-1 shows the volume states that may be displayed by VxVM commands
such as vxprint.

Table 9-1 Volume states

Volume state Description

ACTIVE The volume has been started (the kernel state is currently ENABLED)
or was in use (the kernel state was ENABLED) when the machine was
rebooted.

If the volume is ENABLED, the state of its plexes at any moment is

not certain (because the volume is in use). If the volume is DISABLED,
the plexes cannot be guaranteed to be consistent, but are made
consistent when the volume is started.

For a RAID-5 volume, if the volume is DISABLED, parity cannot be

guaranteed to be synchronized.

CLEAN The volume is not started (the kernel state is DISABLED) and its plexes
are synchronized. For a RAID-5 volume, its plex stripes are consistent
and its parity is good.

EMPTY The volume contents are not initialized. When the volume is EMPTY,
the kernel state is always DISABLED.

INVALID The contents of an instant snapshot volume no longer represent a

true point-in-time image of the original volume.

NEEDSYNC You must resynchronize the volume the next time it is started. A
RAID-5 volume requires a parity resynchronization.

REPLAY The volume is in a transient state as part of a log replay. A log replay
occurs when it becomes necessary to use logged parity and data. This
state is only applied to RAID-5 volumes.
 Administering volumes 359
Displaying volume information

Table 9-1 Volume states (continued)

Volume state Description

SYNC The volume is either in read-writeback recovery mode (the kernel

state is ENABLED) or was in read-writeback mode when the machine
was rebooted (the kernel state is DISABLED). With read-writeback
recovery, plex consistency is recovered by reading data from blocks
of one plex and writing the data to all other writable plexes. If the
volume is ENABLED, the plexes are being resynchronized through the
read-writeback recovery. If the volume is DISABLED, the plexes were
being resynchronized through read-writeback when the machine
rebooted and still need to be synchronized.

For a RAID-5 volume, the volume is either undergoing a parity

resynchronization (the kernel state is ENABLED) or was having its
parity resynchronized when the machine was rebooted (the kernel
state is DISABLED).

The interpretation of these states during volume startup is modified by the

persistent state log for the volume (for example, the DIRTY/CLEAN flag). If the
clean flag is set, an ACTIVE volume was not written to by any processes or was
not even open at the time of the reboot; therefore, it can be considered CLEAN.
In any case, the clean flag is always set when the volume is marked CLEAN.

Volume kernel states

The volume kernel state indicates the accessibility of the volume. The volume
kernel state lets a volume have an offline (DISABLED), maintenance (DETACHED),
or online (ENABLED) mode of operation.
You do not set these states; they are maintained internally. On a system that is
operating properly, all volumes are ENABLED.
Table 9-2 shows the volume kernel states that can be defined.

Table 9-2 Volume kernel state

Volume kernel state Description

DETACHED Maintenance is being performed on the volume. The volume

cannot be read from or written to, but certain plex
operations and ioctl function calls are accepted.

DISABLED The volume is offline and cannot be accessed.

ENABLED The volume is online and can be read from or written to.
360 Administering volumes
Monitoring and controlling tasks

Monitoring and controlling tasks

The VxVM task monitor tracks the progress of system recovery by monitoring
task creation, maintenance, and completion. The task monitor lets you monitor
task progress and modify characteristics of tasks, such as pausing and recovery
rate (for example, to reduce the impact on system performance).

Note: VxVM supports this feature only for private disk groups, not for shared disk
groups in a CVM environment.

Specifying task tags

Every task is given a unique task identifier. This is a numeric identifier for the
task that can be specified to the vxtask utility to specifically identify a single task.
Several VxVM utilities also provide a -t option to specify an alphanumeric tag of
up to 16 characters in length. This allows you to group several tasks by associating
them with the same tag.
The following utilities accept the -t option:
■ vxassist

■ vxevac

■ vxmirror

■ vxplex

■ vxrecover

■ vxrelayout

■ vxresize

■ vxsd

■ vxvol

For example, to execute a vxrecover command and track the resulting tasks as a
group with the task tag myrecovery, use the following command:

# vxrecover -g mydg -t myrecovery -b mydg05

To track the resulting tasks, use the following command:

# vxtask monitor myrecovery

Any tasks started by the utilities invoked by vxrecover also inherit its task ID
and task tag, establishing a parent-child task relationship.
 Administering volumes 361
Monitoring and controlling tasks

For more information about the utilities that support task tagging, see their
respective manual pages.

Managing tasks with vxtask

You can use the vxtask command to administer operations on VxVM tasks.
Operations include listing tasks, modifying the task state (pausing, resuming,
aborting) and modifying the task's progress rate.
VxVM tasks represent long-term operations in progress on the system. Every task
gives information on the time the operation started, the size and progress of the
operation, and the state and rate of progress of the operation. You can change the
state of a task, giving coarse-grained control over the progress of the operation.
For those operations that support it, you can change the rate of progress of the
task, giving more fine-grained control over the task.
New tasks take time to be set up, and so may not be immediately available for use
after a command is invoked. Any script that operates on tasks may need to poll
for the existence of a new task.
See the vxtask(1M) manual page.

vxtask operations
The vxtask command supports the following operations:

abort Stops the specified task. In most cases, the operations “back out” as
if an I/O error occurred, reversing what has been done so far to the
largest extent possible.
362 Administering volumes
Monitoring and controlling tasks

list Displays a one-line summary for each task running on the system.
The -l option prints tasks in long format. The -h option prints tasks
hierarchically, with child tasks following the parent tasks. By default,
all tasks running on the system are printed. If you include a taskid
argument, the output is limited to those tasks whose taskid or task
tag match taskid. The remaining arguments filter tasks and limit
which ones are listed.

In this release, the vxtask list command supports SmartMove and

thin reclamation operation.

■ If you use SmartMove to resync or sync the volume, plex, or

subdisk, the vxtask list displays whether the operations is
using SmartMove or not.
■ In a LUN level reclamation, the vxtask list command provides
information on the amount of the reclaim performed on each LUN.
■ The init=zero on the thin volume may trigger the reclaim on
the thin volume and the progress is seen in the vxtask list
command.

monitor Prints information continuously about a task or group of tasks as task

information changes. This lets you track task progress. Specifying -l
prints a long listing. By default, one-line listings are printed. In
addition to printing task information when a task state changes, output
is also generated when the task completes. When this occurs, the state
of the task is printed as EXITED.

pause Pauses a running task, causing it to suspend operation.

resume Causes a paused task to continue operation.

set Changes a task's modifiable parameters. Currently, there is only one

modifiable parameter, slow[=iodelay] , which can be used to
reduce the impact that copy operations have on system performance.
If you specify slow, this introduces a delay between such operations
with a default value for iodelay of 250 milliseconds. The larger
iodelay value you specify, the slower the task progresses and the
fewer system resources that it consumes in a given time. (The vxplex,
vxvol and vxrecover commands also accept the slow attribute.)

Using the vxtask command

To list all tasks running on the system, use the following command:

# vxtask list
 Administering volumes 363
About SF Thin Reclamation feature

To print tasks hierarchically, with child tasks following the parent tasks, specify
the -h option, as follows:

# vxtask -h list

To trace all paused tasks in the disk group mydg, as well as any tasks with the tag
sysstart, use the following command:

# vxtask -g mydg -p -i sysstart list

To list all paused tasks, use the vxtask -p list command. To continue execution
(the task may be specified by its ID or by its tag), use vxtask resume :

# vxtask -p list
# vxtask resume 167

To monitor all tasks with the tag myoperation, use the following command:

# vxtask monitor myoperation

To cause all tasks tagged with recovall to exit, use the following command:

# vxtask abort recovall

This command causes VxVM to try to reverse the progress of the operation so far.
For example, aborting an Online Relayout results in VxVM returning the volume
to its original layout.
See “Controlling the progress of a relayout” on page 401.

About SF Thin Reclamation feature

You can use the Thin Reclamation feature in the following ways:
■ Space is reclaimed automatically when a volume is deleted. Because it is
asynchronous, you may not see the reclaimed space immediately.
■ You can trigger reclamation for a disk, disk group, or enclosure.
■ You can trigger reclamation for a VxFS file system.

Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays

Storage Foundation enables reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays.
See “How reclamation on a deleted volume works” on page 364.
364 Administering volumes
Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays

The thin reclamation feature is supported only for LUNs that have the thinrclm
attribute. VxVM automatically discovers LUNs that support Thin Reclamation
from thin capable storage arrays. You can list devices that are known to have the
thinonly or thinrclm attributes on the host.

See “Identifying thin and thin reclamation LUNs ” on page 364.

See “Identifying thin and thin reclamation LUNs ” on page 364.
See “How reclamation on a deleted volume works” on page 364.
See “Thin Reclamation of a disk, a disk group, or an enclosure” on page 365.
See “Thin Reclamation of a file system” on page 366.
See “Triggering space reclamation” on page 367.

Identifying thin and thin reclamation LUNs

You can only perform Thin Reclamation on LUNS which have the thinrclm
attribute. VxVM automatically discovers LUNs that support Thin Reclamation
from capable storage arrays. To identify devices that are known to have the
thinonly or thinrclm attributes on a host, use the vxdisk -o thin list
command.
To identify LUNs
◆ To identify LUNs that are thin or thinrclm type the following command:

# vxdisk -o thin list

DEVICE SIZE(mb) PHYS_ALLOC(mb) GROUP TYPE
hitachi_usp0_065a 10000 84 - thinrclm
hitachi_usp0_065b 10000 110 - thinrclm
hitachi_usp0_065c 10000 74 - thinrclm
hitachi_usp0_065d 10000 50 - thinrclm
.
.
.
hitachi_usp0_0660 10000 672 thindg thinrclm

In the above output, the SIZE column shows the size of the disk. The
PHYS_ALLOC column shows the physical allocation on the array side. The
TYPE indicates that the array supports thin reclamation.

How reclamation on a deleted volume works

Storage that is no longer in use, needs to be reclaimed by the array. The process
of reclaiming storage on an array can be intense on the array. To avoid any effect
 Administering volumes 365
Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays

on regular I/O's to the array, the reclaim operation is made asynchronous. When
a volume is deleted the space previously used by the volume is tracked for later
asynchronous reclamation. This asynchronous reclamation is handled by vxrelocd
(or recovery) daemon.
By default, the vxrelocd daemon runs everyday at 22:10 hours and reclaims
storage on the deleted volume that are one day old.
To perform the reclaim operation during less critical time of the system, control
the time of the reclaim operation by using the following tunables:

reclaim_on_delete_wait_period The storage space that is used by the deleted

volume is reclaimed after
reclaim_on_delete_wait_period days.
The value of the tunable can be anything
between -1 to 367.

The default is set to 1, which means the

volume is deleted the next day. The storage
is reclaimed immediately if the value is -1.
The storage space is not reclaimed
automatically, if the value is greater than
366. It can only be reclaimed manually using
vxdisk reclaim command.

reclaim_on_delete_start_time This tunable specifies the time of the day

that the reclaim on the deleted volume is
performed.

The default time is set to 22:10. This value

can be changed to any time of the day.

You can change the tunables using the vxdefault command.

Thin Reclamation of a disk, a disk group, or an enclosure

Use the vxdisk reclaim command to trigger online Thin Reclamation on one or
more disks, disk groups, or enclosures. By default, the vxdisk reclaim command
performs Thin Reclamation on the disks where the VxVM volume is on a “mounted”
VxFS file system. The reclamation skips disks that do not have a VxFS file system
mounted.
Use the -o full option of the vxdisk reclaim command to also reclaim disk
space in unmarked space on the disks.
You can only perform Thin Reclamation on LUNS which have the thinrclm
attribute.
366 Administering volumes
Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays

See “Identifying thin and thin reclamation LUNs ” on page 364.

Example of reclamation for disks. The following example triggers reclamation on
LUNs disk1 and disk2:

# vxdisk reclaim disk1 disk2

In the above example, suppose the disk1 contains a VxVM volume vol1 with a
VxFS file system. If the VxFS file system is not mounted, the command skips
reclamation for disk1.
To reclaim space on disk1, use the following command:

# vxdisk -o full reclaim disk1

The above command reclaims unused space on disk1 that is outside of the vol1.
The reclamation skips the vol1 volume, since the VxFS file system is not mounted,
but it scans the rest of the disk for unused space.
Example of reclamation for disk groups. The following example triggers
reclamation on the disk group oradg:

# vxdisk reclaim oradg

Example of reclamation for an enclosure. The following example triggers

reclamation on the enclosure=EMC_CLARiiON0:

# vxdisk reclaim EMC_CLARiiON0

You can also trigger Thin Reclamation on a VxFS file system.

Thin Reclamation takes considerable amount of time when you reclaim thin
storage on a large number of LUNs or an enclosure or disk group.
See “Monitoring Thin Reclamation using the vxtask command” on page 368.

Thin Reclamation of a file system

Veritas File System (VxFS) supports reclamation of free storage on a Thin Storage
LUN. Free storage is reclaimed using the fsadm command or the vxfs_ts_reclaim
API. You can perform the default reclamation or aggressive reclamation. If you
used a file system for a long time and must perform reclamation on the file system,
Symantec recommends that you run aggressive reclamation. Aggressive
reclamation compacts the allocated blocks, which creates larger free blocks that
can potentially be reclaimed.
See the fsadm_vxfs(1M) and vxfs_ts_reclaim(3) manual pages.
Thin Reclamation is only supported on file systems mounted on a VxVM volume.
 Administering volumes 367
Reclamation of storage on thin reclamation arrays

The following example performs aggressive reclamation of free storage to the

Thin Storage LUN on a VxFS file system mounted at /mnt1:

# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm -R /mnt1

Veritas File System also supports reclamation of a portion of the file system using
the vxfs_ts_reclaim() API.

Note: Thin Reclamation is a slow process and may take several hours to complete,
depending on the file system size. Thin Reclamation is not guaranteed to reclaim
100% of the free space.
You can track the progress of the Thin Reclamation process by using the vxtask
list command when using the Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) command vxdisk
reclaim.

See the vxtask(1M) and vxdisk(1M) manual pages.

You can administer Thin Reclamation using VxVM commands.

Triggering space reclamation

This section describes how to trigger space reclamation.
To trigger space reclamation
1 Ensure you mounted the VxFS file system.
See the mount(1M) manual page.
If you need to mount the VxFS file system, see the mount_vxfs(1M) manual
page.
2 Use the fsadm command to trigger space reclamation:

# /opt/VRTS/bin/fsadm -F vxfs -R /<VxFS_mount_point>

where <VxFS_mount_point> is the name of the VxFS file system mount point.

Note: If the VxFS file system is not mounted you will receive an error message.
For example: Disk 3pardata0_110 : Skipped. No VxFS file system found.
368 Administering volumes
Monitoring Thin Reclamation using the vxtask command

Monitoring Thin Reclamation using the vxtask

command
This section describes how to monitor thin reclamation using the vxtask command.
To monitor thin reclamation
1 To initiate thin reclamation, use the following command:

# vxdisk reclaim diskgroup

For example:

# vxdisk reclaim dg100

2 To monitor the reclamation status, run the following command in another

session:

# vxtask list

TASKID PTID TYPE/STATE PCT PROGRESS

171 RECLAIM/R 00.00% 0/41875931136/0 RECLAIM vol100 dg100

The vxdisk reclaim diskgroup command runs in another session while

you run the vxtask list command.

Using SmartMove with Thin Provisioning

This section describes how to use SmartMove with Thin Provisioning that improves
the synchronization performance and uses thin storage efficiently.
To use SmartMove with Thin Provisioning
1 Mount the volume as the VxFS file system type. For example:

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/oradg/oravol1 /oravol1

2 Run the following command:

# sync

3 Mirror the volume. For example:

# vxassist -g oradg mirror oravol1

 Administering volumes 369
Admin operations on an unmounted VxFS thin volume

See the Veritas Storage Foundation Advanced Features Administrator's Guide for
more information on Thin Provisioning and SmartMove.

Admin operations on an unmounted VxFS thin volume

A thin volume is a volume composed of one or more thin LUNs. If a thin volume
is not mounted on a VxFS file system, any resynchronization, synchronization,
or refresh operation on the volume, plex, or subdisk performs a full
synchronization and allocates storage on the unused space of the volume. Only
a mounted VxFS file system can use SmartMove to assist with optimized
administrative operations on thin volumes.
By default, commands that mirror, take snapshots, or attach a plex may fail with
an error message.
Some commands use the -f option and others use the -o force option to force
the command. The command manual page contains details of the force option to
be used.

Note: The full new plex or volume allocates physical storage on thin LUNs and
will not be a thin/optimized operation.

Stopping a volume
Stopping a volume renders it unavailable to the user, and changes the volume
kernel state from ENABLED or DETACHED to DISABLED. If the volume cannot
be disabled, it remains in its current state. To stop a volume, use the following
command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] [-f] stop volume ...

To stop all volumes in a specified disk group, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] [-f] stopall

Warning: If you use the -f option to forcibly disable a volume that is currently
open to an application, the volume remains open, but its contents are inaccessible.
I/O operations on the volume fail, and this may cause data loss. You cannot deport
a disk group until all its volumes are closed.

If you need to prevent a closed volume from being opened, use the vxvol maint
command, as described in the following section.
370 Administering volumes
Starting a volume

Putting a volume in maintenance mode

If all mirrors of a volume become STALE, you can place the volume in maintenance
mode. Before you put the volume in maintenance mode, make sure the volume is
stopped or it is in the DISABLED state. Then you can view the plexes while the
volume is DETACHED and determine which plex to use for reviving the others. To
place a volume in maintenance mode, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] maint volume

To assist in choosing the revival source plex, use vxprint to list the stopped
volume and its plexes.
To take a plex offline, (in this example, vol01-02 in the disk group, mydg), use the
following command:

# vxmend -g mydg off vol01-02

Make sure that all the plexes are offline except for the one that you will use for
revival. The plex from which you will revive the volume should be placed in the
STALE state. The vxmend on command can change the state of an OFFLINE plex of
a DISABLED volume to STALE. For example, to put the plex vol101-02 in the STALE
state, use the following command:

# vxmend -g mydg on vol101-02

Running the vxvol start command on the volume then revives the volume with
the specified plex. Because you are starting the volume from a stale plex, you must
specify the force option ( -f).
By using the procedure above, you can enable the volume with each plex, and you
can decide which plex to use to revive the volume.
After you specify a plex for revival, and you use the procedure above to enable
the volume with the specified plex, put the volume back into the DISABLED state
and put all the other plexes into the STALE state using the vxmend on command.
Now, you can recover the volume.
See “Starting a volume” on page 370.

Starting a volume
Starting a volume makes it available for use, and changes the volume state from
DISABLED or DETACHED to ENABLED. To start a DISABLED or DETACHED
volume, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] start volume ...

 Administering volumes 371
Resizing a volume

If a volume cannot be enabled, it remains in its current state.

To start all DISABLED or DETACHED volumes in a disk group, enter the following:

# vxvol -g diskgroup startall

To start a DISABLED volume, enter the following:

# vxrecover -g diskgroup -s volume ...

To start all DISABLED volumes, enter the following:

# vxrecover -s

To prevent any recovery operations from being performed on the volumes,

additionally specify the -n option to vxrecover.

Resizing a volume
Resizing a volume changes its size. For example, if a volume is too small for the
amount of data it needs to store, you can increase its length . To resize a volume,
use one of the following commands: vxresize (preferred), vxassist, or vxvol.

Note: You cannot use VxVM commands, Storage Foundation Manager (SFM), or
VEA to resize a volume or any underlying file system on an encapsulated root
disk. This is because the underlying disk partitions also need to be reconfigured.
If you need to resize the volumes on the root disk, you must first unencapsulate
the root disk.

If you increase a volume's size, the vxassist command automatically locates

available disk space. The vxresize command lets you optionally specify the LUNs
or disks to use to increase the size of a volume. The vxvol command requires that
you have previously ensured that there is sufficient space available in the plexes
of the volume to increase its size. The vxassist and vxresize commands free
unused space for use by the disk group. For the vxvol command, you must do this
yourself. To determine how much you can increase a volume, use the following
command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] maxgrow volume

When you resize a volume, you can specify the length of a new volume in sectors,
kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. The unit of measure is added as a suffix to the
length (s, m, k, or g). If you do not specify a unit, sectors are assumed. The vxassist
372 Administering volumes
Resizing a volume

command also lets you specify an increment by which to change the volume’s
size.

Warning: If you use vxassist or vxvol to resize a volume, do not shrink it below
the size of the file system on it. If you do not shrink the file system first, you risk
unrecoverable data loss. If you have a VxFS file system, shrink the file system
first, and then shrink the volume. For other file systems, you may need to back
up your data so that you can later recreate the file system and restore its data.

Resizing volumes with vxresize

Use the vxresize command to resize a volume containing a file system. Although
you can use other commands to resize volumes containing file systems, vxresize
offers the advantage of automatically resizing certain types of file system as well
as the volume.
Table 9-3 shows which operations are permitted, and whether you must unmount
the file system before you resize the it.

Table 9-3 Permitted resizing operations on file systems

VxFS UFS

Mounted file system Grow and shrink Grow only

Unmounted file system Not allowed Grow only

For example, the following command resizes a volume from 1 GB to 10 GB. The
volume is homevol in the disk group mydg, and contains a VxFS file system. The
command uses spare disks mydg10 and mydg11.

# vxresize -g mydg -b -F vxfs -t homevolresize homevol 10g mydg10 mydg11

The -b option specifies that this operation runs in the background. To monitor
its progress, specify the task tag homevolresize with the vxtask command.
When you use vxresize, note the following restrictions:
■ vxresize works with VxFS and UFS file systems only.

■ In some situations, when you resize large volumes, vxresize may take a long
time to complete.
■ If you resize a volume with a usage type other than FSGEN or RAID5, you can
lose data. If such an operation is required, use the -f option to forcibly resize
the volume.
 Administering volumes 373
Resizing a volume

■ You cannot resize a volume that contains plexes with different layout types.
Attempting to do so results in the following error message:

VxVM vxresize ERROR V-5-1-2536 Volume volume has different

organization in each mirror

To resize such a volume successfully, you must first reconfigure it so that each
data plex has the same layout.

Note: If you enter an incorrect volume size, do not try to stop the vxresize
operation by entering Crtl-C. Let the operation complete and then rerun vxresize
with the correct value.

For more information about the vxresize command, see the vxresize(1M) manual
page.

Resizing volumes with vxassist

The following modifiers are used with the vxassist command to resize a volume:

growto Increases the volume size to a specified length.

growby Increases the volume size by a specified amount.

shrinkto Reduces the volume size to a specified length.

shrinkby Reduces the volume size by a specified amount.

Warning: You cannot grow or shrink any volume associated with an encapsulated
root disk (rootvol, usr, var, opt, swapvol, and so on) because these map to a
physical underlying partition on the disk and must be contiguous. If you try to
grow rootvol, usrvol, varvol, or swapvol, the system could become unbootable
if you need to revert back to booting from slices. It can also prevent a successful
Solaris upgrade, and you might have to do a fresh install. Theupgrade_start
script might also fail.

Extending to a given length

To extend a volume to a specific length, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] growto volume length

If you specify the -b option, growing the volume is a background task.

374 Administering volumes
Resizing a volume

For example, to extend volcat to 2000 sectors, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg growto volcat 2000

If you want the subdisks to be grown using contiguous disk space, and you
previously performed a relayout on the volume, also specify the attribute
layout=nodiskalign to the growto command.

Extending by a given length

To extend a volume by a specific length, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] growby volume length

If you specify -b option, growing the volume is a background task.

For example, to extend volcat by 100 sectors, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg growby volcat 100

If you want the subdisks to be grown using contiguous disk space, and you
previously performed a relayout on the volume, also specify the attribute
layout=nodiskalign to the growby command .

Shrinking to a given length

To shrink a volume to a specific length, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] shrinkto volume length

For example, to shrink volcat to 1300 sectors, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg shrinkto volcat 1300

Warning: Do not shrink the volume below the current size of the file system or
database using the volume. You can safely use the vxassist shrinkto command
on empty volumes.

Shrinking by a given length

To shrink a volume by a specific length, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] shrinkby volume length

For example, to shrink volcat by 300 sectors, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg shrinkby volcat 300

 Administering volumes 375
Adding a mirror to a volume

Warning: Do not shrink the volume below the current size of the file system or
database using the volume. You can safely use the vxassist shrinkby command
on empty volumes.

Resizing volumes with vxvol

To change the length of a volume , use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set len=length volume

For example, to change the length of the volume vol01, in the disk group mydg,
to 100000 sectors, use the following command:

# vxvol -g mydg set len=100000 vol01

Note: You cannot use the vxvol set len command to increase the size of a volume
unless the needed space is available in the volume's plexes. When you reduce the
volume's size using the vxvol set len command, the freed space is not released
into the disk group’s free space pool.

If a volume is active and you reduce its length, you must force the operation using
the -o force option to vxvol. This precaution ensures that space is not removed
accidentally from applications using the volume.
You can change the length of logs using the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set loglen=length log_volume

Warning: Sparse log plexes are not valid. They must map the entire length of the
log. If increasing the log length makes any of the logs invalid, the operation is not
allowed. Also, if the volume is not active and is dirty (for example, if it has not
been shut down cleanly), you cannot change the log length. If you are decreasing
the log length, this feature avoids losing any of the log contents. If you are
increasing the log length, it avoids introducing random data into the logs.

Adding a mirror to a volume

You can add a mirror to a volume with the vxassist command, as follows:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] mirror volume

Specifying the -b option makes synchronizing the new mirror a background task.
376 Administering volumes
Adding a mirror to a volume

For example, to create a mirror of the volume voltest in the disk group, mydg,
use the following command:

# vxassist -b -g mydg mirror voltest

You can also mirror a volume by creating a plex and then attaching it to a volume
using the following commands:

# vxmake [-g diskgroup] plex plex sd=subdisk ...

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] att volume plex

Mirroring all volumes

To mirror all volumes in a disk group to available disk space, use the following
command:

# /etc/vx/bin/vxmirror -g diskgroup -a

To configure VxVM to create mirrored volumes by default, use the following

command:

# vxmirror -d yes

If you make this change, you can still make unmirrored volumes by specifying
nmirror=1 as an attribute to the vxassist command. For example, to create an
unmirrored 20-gigabyte volume named nomirror in the disk group mydg, use the
following command:

# vxassist -g mydg make nomirror 20g nmirror=1

Mirroring volumes on a VM disk

Mirroring volumes creates one or more copies of your volumes on another disk.
By creating mirror copies of your volumes, you protect your volumes against loss
of data if a disk fails.
You can use this task on your root disk to make a second copy of the boot
information available on an alternate disk. This lets you boot your system even
if your root disk fails.

Note: This task only mirrors concatenated volumes. Volumes that are already
mirrored or that contain subdisks that reside on multiple disks are ignored
 Administering volumes 377
Adding a mirror to a volume

To mirror volumes on a disk

1 Make sure that the target disk has an equal or greater amount of space as the
source disk.
2 From the vxdiskadm main menu, select Mirror volumes on a disk .
3 At the prompt, enter the disk name of the disk that you wish to mirror:

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg02

4 At the prompt, enter the target disk name (this disk must be the same size or
larger than the originating disk):

Enter destination disk [<disk>,list,q,?] (default: any) mydg01

5 At the prompt, press Return to make the mirror:

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

The vxdiskadm program displays the status of the mirroring operation, as

follows:

VxVM vxmirror INFO V-5-2-22 Mirror volume voltest-bk00

.
.
.
VxVM INFO V-5-2-674 Mirroring of disk mydg01 is complete.

6 At the prompt, indicate whether you want to mirror volumes on another disk
(y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Mirror volumes on another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Additional mirroring considerations

The larger private region size that was introduced in VxVM 3.2 (1MB) and VxVM
5.0 (32MB) may create one of the following mirroring scenarios under which
vxdiskadm fails:

■ Mirroring a full root disk to a target disk that is the same size as the source
disk. A full disk has no free cylinders.
■ Mirroring a disk created using an earlier version of Veritas Volume Manager
to a target disk that is the same size as the source disk. You only need to use
this step if mirroring using vxdiskadm fails.
378 Administering volumes
Adding a mirror to a volume

■ Mirroring a full Veritas Volume Manager disk (not a root disk) that was
encapsulated in VxVM 3.5 to a target disk that is the same size as the source
disk. You only need to use this step if mirroring using vxdiskadm fails.
See the vxdiskadm(1M) manual page.
To create a mirror under any of these scenarios
1 Determine the size of the source disk’s private region, using one of the
following methods:
■ If the source disk is a root disk, obtain its private region length by running
the following command:

# vxprint -l rootdisk

The disk media name of the root disk is typically rootdisk.

In the output, find the privlen value. In this example, the value is 3071:

devinfo: publen=39846240 privlen=3071

■ If the source disk is not a root disk, obtain its private region length by
running the following command:

# vxdisk list diskname

where diskname is the disk media name of the source disk.

In the displayed output, note the len value for the private field. In this
example, the value of this field is 3071:

private: slice=4 offset=1 len=3071

2 Use the vxdisksetup program to initialize the target disk, Enter the following:

# /usr/lib/vxvm/bin/vxdisksetup -i c#t#d# privoffset=0 \

privlen=XXXX publen=YYYY

where XXXX is the size of the source disk’s private region, and YYYY is the
size of its public region.
If your system is configured to use enclosure-based naming instead of
OS-based naming, replace the c#t#d# name with the enclosure-based name
for the disk.
 Administering volumes 379
Removing a mirror

3 Add the newly initialized target disk to the source disk group. Enter the
following:

# vxdg -g diskgroup adddisk medianame=c#t#d#

4 Use the vxdiskadm command and select Mirror volumes on a disk to create
the mirror. Specify the disk media names of the source disk (rootdisk) and
the target disk (medianame).

Removing a mirror
When you no longer need a mirror, you can remove it to free disk space.

Note: VxVM will not allow you to remove the last valid plex associated with a
volume.

To remove a mirror from a volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove mirror volume

You can also use storage attributes to specify the storage to be removed. For
example, to remove a mirror on disk mydg01 from volume vol01, enter the
following.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist -g mydg remove mirror vol01 \!mydg01

See “Creating a volume on specific disks” on page 325.

Alternatively, use the following command to dissociate and remove a mirror from
a volume:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] -o rm dis mirror

For example, to dissociate and remove a mirror named vol01-02 from the disk
group mydg, use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg -o rm dis vol01-02

This command removes the mirror vol01-02 and all associated subdisks. This is
equivalent to entering the following commands separately:
380 Administering volumes
Adding logs and maps to volumes

# vxplex -g mydg dis vol01-02

# vxedit -g mydg -r rm vol01-02

Adding logs and maps to volumes

Veritas Volume Manager supports the following types of volume logs and maps:
■ FastResync Maps improve performance and reduce I/O during mirror
resynchronization. These maps can be either in memory (Non-Persistent) or
on disk (Persistent) as part of a DCO volume.
See “FastResync” on page 63.
See “Enabling FastResync on a volume” on page 394.
Two types of DCO volumes are supported:
■ Version 0 DCO volumes only support Persistent FastResync for the
traditional third-mirror break-off type of volume snapshot.
See “Version 0 DCO volume layout” on page 66.
■ Version 20 DCO volumes, introduced in VxVM 4.0, combine DRL logging
(see below) and Persistent FastResync for full-sized and space-optimized
instant volume snapshots.
See “Version 20 DCO volume layout” on page 66.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.

■ Dirty Region Logs let you quickly recover mirrored volumes after a system
crash. These logs can be either DRL log plexes, or part of a version 20 DCO
volume.
See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.
See “Adding traditional DRL logging to a mirrored volume” on page 386.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.
■ RAID-5 logs prevent corruption of data during recovery of RAID-5 volumes.
These logs are configured as plexes on disks other than those that are used
for the columns of the RAID-5 volume.
See “RAID-5 logging” on page 50.
See “Adding a RAID-5 log” on page 403.

Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

You can add a version 20 data change object (DCO) and DCO volume to an existing
volume if the disk group version number is 110 or greater. You can also
simultaneously create a new volume, a DCO and DCO volume, and enable DRL as
long as the disk group version is 110 or greater.
 Administering volumes 381
Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

See “Determining the DCO version number” on page 383.

See “Creating a volume with a version 20 DCO volume” on page 336.
See “Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs” on page 387.

Note: You need a license key to use the DRL and FastResync feature. If you do not
have a license key, you can configure a DCO object and DCO volume so that snap
objects are associated with the original and snapshot volumes. However, without
a license key, only full resynchronization can be performed.

See “How persistent FastResync works with snapshots” on page 67.

To add a version 20 DCO and DCO volume to a volume, use the following command
:

# vxsnap [-g diskgroup] prepare volume [ndcomirs=number] \

[regionsize=size] [drl=on|sequential|off] \
[storage_attribute ...]

The ndcomirs attribute specifies the number of DCO plexes that are created in
the DCO volume. You should configure as many DCO plexes as there are data and
snapshot plexes in the volume. The DCO plexes are used to set up a DCO volume
for any snapshot volume that you subsequently create from the snapshot plexes.
For example, specify ndcomirs=5 for a volume with 3 data plexes and 2 snapshot
plexes.
The value of the regionsize attribute specifies the size of the tracked regions in
the volume. A write to a region is tracked by setting a bit in the change map. The
default value is 64k (64KB). A smaller value requires more disk space for the change
maps, but the finer granularity provides faster resynchronization.
To enable DRL logging on the volume, specify drl=on (this is the default). For
sequential DRL, specify drl=sequential. If you do not need DRL, specify drl=off.
You can also specify vxassist-style storage attributes to define the disks that
can or cannot be used for the plexes of the DCO volume.
See “Specifying storage for version 20 DCO plexes” on page 382.
The vxsnap prepare command automatically enables Persistent FastResync on
the volume. Persistent FastResync is also set automatically on any snapshots that
are generated from a volume on which this feature is enabled.
If the volume is a RAID-5 volume, it is converted to a layered volume that can be
used with instant snapshots and Persistent FastResync.
See “Using a DCO and DCO volume with a RAID-5 volume” on page 383.
382 Administering volumes
Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

By default, a version 20 DCO volume contains 32 per-volume maps. If you require

more maps, you can use the vxsnap addmap command to add them.
See the vxsnap(1M) manual page.

Specifying storage for version 20 DCO plexes

If you move the disks that contain volumes and their snapshots into different disk
groups, you must ensure that the disks that contain their DCO plexes can
accompany them. You can use storage attributes to specify which disks to use for
the DCO plexes. (If you do not want to use dirty region logging (DRL) with a volume,
you can specify the same disks as those on which the volume is configured,
assuming that space is available on the disks). For example, to add a DCO object
and mirrored DCO volume with plexes on disk05 and disk06 to the volume, myvol,
use the following command:

# vxsnap -g mydg prepare myvol ndcomirs=2 alloc=disk05,disk06

To view the details of the DCO object and DCO volume that are associated with a
volume, use the vxprint command. The following is example vxprint -vh output
for the volume named vol1 (the TUTIL0 and PUTIL0 columns are omitted for
clarity):

TY NAME ASSOC KSTATE LENGTH PLOFFS STATE ...

v vol1 fsgen ENABLED 1024 - ACTIVE
pl vol1-01 vol1 ENABLED 1024 - ACTIVE
sd disk01-01 vol1-01 ENABLED 1024 0 -
pl foo-02 vol1 ENABLED 1024 - ACTIVE
sd disk02-01 vol1-02 ENABLED 1024 0 -
dc vol1_dco vol1 - - - -
v vol1_dcl gen ENABLED 132 - ACTIVE
pl vol1_dcl-01 vol1_dcl ENABLED 132 - ACTIVE
sd disk03-01 vol1_dcl-01 ENABLED 132 0 -
pl vol1_dcl-02 vol1_dcl ENABLED 132 - ACTIVE
sd disk04-01 vol1_dcl-02 ENABLED 132 0 -

In this output, the DCO object is shown as vol1_dco, and the DCO volume as
vol1_dcl with 2 plexes, vol1_dcl-01 and vol1_dcl-02.

If you need to relocate DCO plexes to different disks, you can use the vxassist
move command. For example, the following command moves the plexes of the
DCO volume, vol1_dcl, for volume vol1 from disk03 and disk04 to disk07 and
disk08.
 Administering volumes 383
Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist -g mydg move vol1_dcl \!disk03 \!disk04 disk07 disk08

See “Moving DCO volumes between disk groups” on page 275.

See the vxassist(1M) manual page.
See the vxsnap(1M) manual page.

Using a DCO and DCO volume with a RAID-5 volume

You can add a DCO and DCO volume to a RAID-5 volume. This lets you use
Persistent FastResync on the volume for fast resynchronization of snapshots on
returning them to their original volume. However, this procedure has the side
effect of converting the RAID-5 volume into a special type of layered volume. You
can create space-optimized instant snapshots of such a volume, and you can add
mirrors that may be broken off as full-sized instant snapshots. You cannot relayout
or resize such a volume unless you convert it back to a pure RAID-5 volume.
To convert a volume back to a RAID-5 volume, remove any snapshot plexes from
the volume, and dissociate the DCO and DCO volume from the layered volume.
You can then perform relayout and resize operations on the resulting non-layered
RAID-5 volume.
See “Removing support for DRL and instant snapshots from a volume” on page 385.
To allow Persistent FastResync to be used with the RAID-5 volume again,
re-associate the DCO and DCO volume.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.

Warning: Dissociating a DCO and DCO volume disables FastResync on the volume.
A full resynchronization of any remaining snapshots is required when they are
snapped back.

Determining the DCO version number

To use the instant snapshot and DRL-enabled DCO features, you must use a version
20 DCO, rather than version 0 DCO.
384 Administering volumes
Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

To find out the version number of a DCO that is associated with a volume
1 Use the vxprint command on the volume to discover the name of its DCO.
Enter the following:

# DCONAME=`vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%dco_name volume`

2 Use the vxprint command on the DCO to determine its version number. Enter
the following:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%version $DCONAME

Determining if DRL is enabled on a volume

To determine if DRL (configured using a version 20 DCO) is enabled on a volume
1 Use the vxprint command on the volume to discover the name of its DCO.
Enter the following:

# DCONAME=`vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%dco_name volume`

2 To determine if DRL is enabled on the volume, enter the following command

with the volume’s DCO:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%drl $DCONAME

If this command displays on, DRL is enabled.

3 If DRL is enabled, enter the following command with the DCO to determine
if sequential DRL is enabled:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%sequentialdrl $DCONAME

If this command displays on, sequential DRL is enabled.

You can also use the following command with the volume:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%log_type volume

This displays the logging type as REGION for DRL, DRLSEQ for sequential DRL,
or NONE if DRL is not enabled.
If the number of active mirrors in the volume is less than 2, DRL logging is
not performed even if DRL is enabled on the volume.
See “Determining if DRL logging is active on a volume” on page 385.
 Administering volumes 385
Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots

Determining if DRL logging is active on a volume

To determine if DRL logging (configured using a version 20 DCO) is active on a
mirrored volume
1 Use the following vxprint commands to discover the name of the volume’s
DCO volume:

# DCONAME=`vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%dco_name volume`

# DCOVOL=`vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%parent_vol $DCONAME`

2 Use the vxprint command on the DCO volume to find out if DRL logging is
active:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%drllogging $DCOVOL

This command returns on if DRL logging is enabled.

Disabling and re-enabling DRL

To disable DRL (configured using a version 20 DCO) on a volume, enter the
following:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set drl=off volume

To re-enable DRL on a volume, enter the following:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set drl=on volume

To re-enable sequential DRL on a volume, enter the following:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set drl=sequential volume

You can use these commands to change the DRL policy on a volume by first
disabling and then re-enabling DRL as required. If a data change map (DCM, used
with Veritas Volume Replicator) is attached to a volume, DRL is automatically
disabled .

Removing support for DRL and instant snapshots from a volume

To remove support for DRL and instant snapshot operation from a volume, use
the following command to remove the DCO and DCO volume that are associated
with the volume:

# vxsnap [-g diskgroup] unprepare volume

This command also has the effect of disabling FastResync tracking on the volume.
386 Administering volumes
Adding traditional DRL logging to a mirrored volume

Note: If the volume is part of a snapshot hierarchy, this command fails .

Adding traditional DRL logging to a mirrored volume

A traditional DRL log is configured within a DRL plex. A version 20 DCO volume
cannot be used in conjunction with a DRL plex. The version 20 DCO volume layout
includes space for a DRL log.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.
To put dirty region logging (DRL) into effect for a mirrored volume, you must add
a log subdisk to that volume. Only one log subdisk can exist per plex.
To add DRL logs to an existing volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] addlog volume logtype=drl \

[nlog=n] [loglen=size]

If specified, the -b option makes adding the new logs a background task.
The nlog attribute specifies the number of log plexes to add. By default, one log
plex is added. The loglen attribute specifies the size of the log, where each bit
represents one region in the volume. For example, a 10 GB volume with a 64 KB
region size needs a 20K log.
For example, to add a single log plex for the volume vol03 in the disk group mydg,
use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg addlog vol03 logtype=drl

When you use the vxassist command to add a log subdisk to a volume, a log plex
is created by default to contain the log subdisk. If you do not want a log plex,
include the keyword nolog in the layout specification.
For a volume that will be written to sequentially, such as a database log volume,
use the following logtype=drlseq attribute to specify that sequential DRL will
be used:

# vxassist -g mydg addlog volume logtype=drlseq [nlog=n]

After you create the plex containing a log subdisk, you can treat it as a regular
plex. You can add subdisks to the log plex. If you need to, you can remove the log
plex and log subdisk.
See “Removing a traditional DRL log” on page 387.
 Administering volumes 387
Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs

Removing a traditional DRL log

You can use the vxassist remove log command to remove a traditional DRL log
that is configured within a DRL plex. The command will not remove a DRL log
that is configured within a version 20 DCO.
To remove a traditional DRL log
◆ Type the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove log volume logtype=drl [nlog=n]

By default, the vxassist command removes one log. Use the optional attribute
nlog=n to specify the number of logs that are to remain after the operation
completes.
You can use storage attributes to specify the storage from which a log will be
removed. For example, to remove a log on disk mydg10 from volume vol01,
enter the following command.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following

example shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist -g mydg remove log vol01 \!mydg10 logtype=drl

Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs

You can upgrade a volume created before VxVM 4.0 to take advantage of new
features such as instant snapshots and DRL logs that are configured within the
DCO volume. You must upgrade the version of the disk groups, remove snapshots
and version 0 DCOs that are associated with volumes in the disk groups, and
configure the volumes with version 20 DCOs.
The plexes of the DCO volume require persistent storage space on disk to be
available. To make room for the DCO plexes, you may need to add extra disks to
the disk group, or reconfigure volumes to free up space in the disk group. You can
also add disk space by using the disk group move feature to bring in spare disks
from a different disk group.
See “Reorganizing the contents of disk groups” on page 270.
The vxsnap prepare command automatically enables FastResync on the volume
and on any snapshots that are generated from it.
If the volume is a RAID-5 volume, it is converted to a layered volume that can be
used with snapshots and FastResync.
388 Administering volumes
Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs

To upgrade an existing disk group and the volumes that it contains

1 Upgrade the disk group that contains the volume to the latest version before
performing the remainder of the procedure described in this section. To check
the version of a disk group, use the following command :

# vxdg list diskgroup

To upgrade a disk group to the latest version, use the following command:

# vxdg upgrade diskgroup

See “Upgrading the disk group version” on page 284.

2 To discover which volumes in the disk group have version 0 DCOs associated
with them, use the following command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F "%name" -e "v_hasdcolog"

This command assumes that the volumes can only have version 0 DCOs as
the disk group has just been upgraded.
See “Determining the DCO version number” on page 383.
To upgrade each volume within the disk group, repeat the following steps as
required.
3 If the volume to be upgraded has a traditional DRL plex or subdisk (that is,
the DRL logs are not held in a version 20 DCO volume), use the following
command to remove this:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove log volume [nlog=n]

To specify the number, n, of logs to be removed, use the optional attribute

nlog=n . By default, the vxassist command removes one log.

4 For a volume that has one or more associated snapshot volumes, use the
following command to reattach and resynchronize each snapshot:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] snapback snapvol

If FastResync was enabled on the volume before the snapshot was taken, the
data in the snapshot plexes is quickly resynchronized from the original
volume. If FastResync was not enabled, a full resynchronization is performed.
5 To turn off FastResync for the volume, use the following command :

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set fastresync=off volume

 Administering volumes 389
Setting tags on volumes

6 To dissociate a version 0 DCO object, DCO volume and snap objects from the
volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove log volume logtype=dco

7 To upgrade the volume, use the following command:

# vxsnap [-g diskgroup] prepare volume [ndcomirs=number] \

[regionsize=size] [drl=on|sequential|off] \
[storage_attribute ...]

The ndcomirs attribute specifies the number of DCO plexes that are created
in the DCO volume. You should configure as many DCO plexes as there are
data and snapshot plexes in the volume. The DCO plexes are used to set up a
DCO volume for any snapshot volume that you subsequently create from the
snapshot plexes. For example, specify ndcomirs=5 for a volume with 3 data
plexes and 2 snapshot plexes.
The regionsize attribute specifies the size of the tracked regions in the
volume. A write to a region is tracked by setting a bit in the change map. The
default value is 64k (64KB). A smaller value requires more disk space for the
change maps, but the finer granularity provides faster resynchronization.
To enable DRL logging on the volume, specify drl=on (this is the default
setting). If you need sequential DRL, specify drl=sequential. If you do not
need DRL, specify drl=off.
To define the disks that can or cannot be used for the plexes of the DCO
volume, you can also specify vxassist-style storage attributes.

Setting tags on volumes

Volume tags implement Storage Foundation's SmartTier feature. You can also
apply tags to vsets using the same vxvm command syntax as shown below.
See the Veritas Storage Foundation Advanced Features Administrator’s Guide.
The following forms of the vxassist command let you do the following:
■ Set a named tag and optional tag value on a volume.
■ Replace a tag.
■ Remove a tag from a volume.
390 Administering volumes
Setting tags on volumes

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] settag volume|vset tagname[=tagvalue]

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] replacetag volume|vset oldtag newtag
# vxassist [-g diskgroup] removetag volume|vset tagname

To list the tags that are associated with a volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] listtag [volume|vset]

If you do not specify a volume name, all the volumes and vsets in the disk group
are displayed. The acronym vt in the TY field indicates a vset.
The following is a sample listtag command:

# vxassist -g dg1 listtag vol

To list the volumes that have a specified tag name, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] list tag=tagname volume

Tag names and tag values are case-sensitive character strings of up to 256
characters. Tag names can consist of the following ASCII characters:
■ Letters (A through Z and a through z)
■ Numbers (0 through 9)
■ Dashes (-)
■ Underscores (_)
■ Periods (.)
A tag name must start with either a letter or an underscore.
Tag values can consist of any ASCII character that has a decimal value from 32
through 127. If a tag value includes spaces, quote the specification to protect it
from the shell, as follows:

# vxassist -g mydg settag myvol "dbvol=table space 1"

The list operation understands dotted tag hierarchies. For example, the listing
for tag=a.b includes all volumes that have tag names starting with a.b.
The tag names site, udid, and vdid are reserved. Do not use them. To avoid
possible clashes with future product features, do not start tag names with any of
the following strings: asl, be, nbu, sf, symc, or vx.
 Administering volumes 391
Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes

Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes

VxVM offers the choice of the following read policies on the data plexes in a
mirrored volume:

round Reads each plex in turn in “round-robin” fashion for each

nonsequential I/O detected. Sequential access causes only
one plex to be accessed. This approach takes advantage of
the drive or controller read-ahead caching policies.

prefer Reads first from a plex that has been named as the preferred
plex.

select Chooses a default policy based on plex associations to the

volume. If the volume has an enabled striped plex, the
select option defaults to preferring that plex; otherwise,
it defaults to round-robin.

For disk group versions 150 or higher and if there is a SSD

based plex available, it will be preferred over other plexes.

siteread Reads preferentially from plexes at the locally defined site.

This method is the default policy for volumes in disk groups
where site consistency has been enabled.

For disk group versions 150 or higher and if the local site
has a SSD based plex, it will be preferred.

See “About site consistency” on page 493.

split Divides the read requests and distributes them across all
the available plexes.

Note: You cannot set the read policy on a RAID-5 volume.

To set the read policy to round, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] rdpol round volume

For example, to set the read policy for the volume vol01 in disk group mydg to
round-robin, use the following command:

# vxvol -g mydg rdpol round vol01

To set the read policy to prefer, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] rdpol prefer volume preferred_plex

392 Administering volumes
Removing a volume

For example, to set the policy for vol01 to read preferentially from the plex
vol01-02, use the following command:

# vxvol -g mydg rdpol prefer vol01 vol01-02

To set the read policy to select, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] rdpol select volume

See “Volume read policies” on page 511.

Removing a volume
If a volume is inactive or its contents have been archived, you may no longer need
it. In that case, you can remove the volume and free up the disk space for other
uses.
To remove a volume
1 Remove all references to the volume by application programs, including
shells, that are running on the system.
2 If the volume is mounted as a file system, unmount it with the following
command:

# umount /dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup/volume

3 If the volume is listed in the /etc/vfstab file, edit this file and remove its
entry. For more information about the format of this file and how you can
modify it, see your operating system documentation
4 Stop all activity by VxVM on the volume with the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] stop volume

5 Remove the volume using the vxassist command as follows:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove volume volume

You can also use the vxedit command to remove the volume as follows:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] [-r] [-f] rm volume

The -r option to vxedit indicates recursive removal. This command removes

all the plexes that are associated with the volume and all subdisks that are
associated with the plexes. The -f option to vxedit forces removal. If the
volume is still enabled, you must specify this option.
 Administering volumes 393
Moving volumes from a VM disk

Moving volumes from a VM disk

Before you disable or remove a disk, you can move the data from that disk to other
disks on the system that have sufficient space.
To move volumes from a disk
1 From the vxdiskadm main menu, select Move volumes from a disk .
2 At the following prompt, enter the disk name of the disk whose volumes you
want to move, as follows:

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg01

You can now optionally specify a list of disks to which the volume(s) should
be moved. At the prompt, do one of the following:
■ Press Enter to move the volumes onto available space in the disk group.
■ Specify the disks in the disk group that should be used, as follows:

Enter disks [<disk ...>,list]

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-283 Requested operation is to move all
volumes from disk mydg01 in group mydg.

NOTE: This operation can take a long time to complete.

Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

As the volumes are moved from the disk, the vxdiskadm program displays
the status of the operation:

VxVM vxevac INFO V-5-2-24 Move volume voltest ...

When the volumes have all been moved, the vxdiskadm program displays the
following success message:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-188 Evacuation of disk mydg02 is complete.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to move volumes from
another disk (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Move volumes from another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

394 Administering volumes
Enabling FastResync on a volume

Enabling FastResync on a volume

The recommended method for enabling FastResync on a volume with a version
20 DCO is to use the vxsnap prepare command.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.

Note: To use this feature, you need a FastResync license.

FastResync quickly and efficiently resynchronizes stale mirrors. When you use
FastResync with operations such as backup and decision support, it also increases
the efficiency of the VxVM snapshot mechanism.
See “FastResync” on page 63.
You can enable the following versions of FastResync on a volume:
■ Persistent FastResync holds copies of the FastResync maps on disk. If a system
is rebooted, you can use these copies to quickly recover mirrored volumes. To
use this form of FastResync, you must first associate a version 0 or a version
20 data change object (DCO) and DCO volume with the volume.
See “Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs” on page 387.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.
■ Non-Persistent FastResync holds the FastResync maps in memory. These maps
do not survive on a system that is rebooted.
By default, FastResync is not enabled on newly-created volumes. If you want to
enable FastResync on a volume that you create, specify the fastresync=on
attribute to the vxassist make command.

Note: You cannot configure Persistent and Non-Persistent FastResync on a volume.

If a DCO is associated with the volume, Persistent FastResync is used. Otherwise,
Non-Persistent FastResync is used.

To turn on FastResync for an existing volume, specify fastresync=on to the vxvol

command as follows:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set fastresync=on volume

To use FastResync with a snapshot, you must enable FastResync before the
snapshot is taken, and it must remain enabled until after the snapback is
completed.
 Administering volumes 395
Enabling FastResync on a volume

Checking whether FastResync is enabled on a volume

To check whether FastResync is enabled on a volume, use the following command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%fastresync volume

If FastResync is enabled, the command returns on; otherwise, it returns off.

If FastResync is enabled, to check whether it is Non-Persistent or Persistent
FastResync, use the following command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F%hasdcolog volume

If Persistent FastResync is enabled, the command returns on; otherwise, it returns

off.

To list all volumes on which Non-Persistent FastResync is enabled, use the

following command.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F "%name" \

-e "v_fastresync=on && \!v_hasdcolog"

To list all volumes on which Persistent FastResync is enabled, use the following
command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -F "%name" -e "v_fastresync=on \

&& v_hasdcolog"

Disabling FastResync
Use the vxvol command to turn off Persistent or Non-Persistent FastResync for
an existing volume, as follows:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set fastresync=off volume

Turning off FastResync releases all tracking maps for the specified volume. All
subsequent reattaches do not use the FastResync facility, but perform a full
resynchronization of the volume. The full resynchronization occurs even if you
turn on FastResync later.
396 Administering volumes
Performing online relayout

Performing online relayout

You can use the vxassist relayout command to reconfigure the layout of a
volume without taking it offline. The general form of this command is as follows:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] relayout volume [layout=layout] \

[relayout_options]

If you specify the -b option, relayout of the volume is a background task.

The following destination layout configurations are supported.

concat-mirror Concatenated-mirror

concat Concatenated

nomirror Concatenated

nostripe Concatenated

raid5 RAID-5 (not supported for shared disk groups)

span Concatenated

stripe Striped

See “Permitted relayout transformations” on page 396.

For example, the following command changes the concatenated volume vol02,
in disk group mydg, to a striped volume. By default, the striped volume has 2
columns and a 64 KB striped unit size.:

# vxassist -g mydg relayout vol02 layout=stripe

Sometimes, you may need to perform a relayout on a plex rather than on a volume.
See “Specifying a plex for relayout” on page 400.

Permitted relayout transformations

Table 9-4 shows the supported relayout transformations for concatenated volumes.

Table 9-4 Supported relayout transformations for concatenated volumes

Relayout to From concat

concat No.

concat-mirror No. Add a mirror, and then use vxassist convert instead.
 Administering volumes 397
Performing online relayout

Table 9-4 Supported relayout transformations for concatenated volumes

(continued)

Relayout to From concat

mirror-concat No. Add a mirror instead.

mirror-stripe No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the striped-mirror

volume instead.

raid5 Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be defined.

stripe Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be defined.

stripe-mirror Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be defined.

Table 9-5 shows the supported relayout transformations for concatenated-mirror

volumes.

Table 9-5 Supported relayout transformations for concatenated-mirror

volumes

Relayout to From concat-mirror

concat No. Use vxassist convert, and then remove the unwanted mirrors
from the resulting mirrored-concatenated volume instead.

concat-mirror No.

mirror-concat No. Use vxassist convert instead.

mirror-stripe No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the striped-mirror

volume instead.

raid5 Yes.

stripe Yes. This relayout removes a mirror and adds striping. The stripe
width and number of columns may be defined.

stripe-mirror Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be defined.

Table 9-6 shows the supported relayout transformations for RAID-5 volumes.

Table 9-6 Supported relayout transformations for mirrored-stripe volumes

Relayout to From mirror-stripe

concat Yes.

concat-mirror Yes.
398 Administering volumes
Performing online relayout

Table 9-6 Supported relayout transformations for mirrored-stripe volumes

(continued)

Relayout to From mirror-stripe

mirror-concat No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the concatenated-mirror

volume instead.

mirror-stripe No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the striped-mirror

volume instead.

raid5 Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be changed.

stripe Yes. The stripe width or number of columns must be changed.

stripe-mirror Yes. The stripe width or number of columns must be changed.

Otherwise, use vxassist convert.

Table 9-7 shows the supported relayout transformations for mirror-concatenated

volumes.

Table 9-7 Supported relayout transformations for mirrored-concatenated

volumes

Relayout to From mirror-concat

concat No. Remove the unwanted mirrors instead.

concat-mirror No. Use vxassist convert instead.

mirror-concat No.

mirror-stripe No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the striped-mirror

volume instead.

raid5 Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be defined. Choose
a plex in the existing mirrored volume on which to perform the
relayout. The other plexes are removed at the end of the relayout
operation.

stripe Yes.

stripe-mirror Yes.

Table 9-8 shows the supported relayout transformations for mirrored-stripe

volumes.
 Administering volumes 399
Performing online relayout

Table 9-8 Supported relayout transformations for mirrored-stripe volumes

Relayout to From mirror-stripe

concat Yes.

concat-mirror Yes.

mirror-concat No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the concatenated-mirror

volume instead.

mirror-stripe No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the striped-mirror

volume instead.

raid5 Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be changed.

stripe Yes. The stripe width or number of columns must be changed.

stripe-mirror Yes. The stripe width or number of columns must be changed.

Otherwise, use vxassist convert.

Table 9-9 shows the supported relayout transformations for unmirrored stripe
and layered striped-mirror volumes.

Table 9-9 Supported relayout transformations for unmirrored stripe and

layered striped-mirror volumes

Relayout to From stripe or stripe-mirror

concat Yes.

concat-mirror Yes.

mirror-concat No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the concatenated-mirror

volume instead.

mirror-stripe No. Use vxassist convert after relayout to the striped-mirror

volume instead.

raid5 Yes. The stripe width and number of columns may be changed.

stripe Yes. The stripe width or number of columns must be changed.

stripe-mirror Yes. The stripe width or number of columns must be changed.

Specifying a non-default layout

You can specify one or more of the following relayout options to change the default
layout configuration:
400 Administering volumes
Performing online relayout

ncol=number Specifies the number of columns.

ncol=+number Specifies the number of columns to add.

ncol=-number Specifies the number of columns to remove.

stripeunit=size Specifies the stripe width.

The following examples use vxassist to change the stripe width and number of
columns for a striped volume in the disk group dbasedg:

# vxassist -g dbasedg relayout vol03 stripeunit=64k ncol=6

# vxassist -g dbasedg relayout vol03 ncol=+2
# vxassist -g dbasedg relayout vol03 stripeunit=128k

The following example changes a concatenated volume to a RAID-5 volume with

four columns:

# vxassist -g dbasedg relayout vol04 layout=raid5 ncol=4

Specifying a plex for relayout

If you have enough disks and space in the disk group, you can change any layout
to RAID-5 . To convert a mirrored volume to RAID-5, you must specify which plex
is to be converted. When the conversion finishes, all other plexes are removed,
releasing their space for other purposes. If you convert a mirrored volume to a
layout other than RAID-5, the unconverted plexes are not removed. Specify the
plex to be converted by naming it in place of a volume as follows:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] relayout plex [layout=layout] \

[relayout_options]

Tagging a relayout operation

To control the progress of a relayout operation, for example to pause or reverse
it, use the -t option to vxassist to specify a task tag for the operation. For
example, the following relayout is performed as a background task and has the
tag myconv:

# vxassist -b -g dbasedg -t myconv relayout vol04 layout=raid5 \

ncol=4

See “Viewing the status of a relayout” on page 401.

See “Controlling the progress of a relayout” on page 401.
 Administering volumes 401
Performing online relayout

Viewing the status of a relayout

Online relayout operations take time to perform. You can use the vxrelayout
command to obtain information about the status of a relayout operation. For
example, the following command:

# vxrelayout -g mydg status vol04

might display output similar to the following:

STRIPED, columns=5, stwidth=128--> STRIPED, columns=6,

stwidth=128
Relayout running, 68.58% completed.

In this example, the reconfiguration is in progress for a striped volume from 5 to

6 columns, and is over two-thirds complete.
See the vxrelayout(1M) manual page.
If you specify a task tag to vxassist when you start the relayout, you can use this
tag with the vxtask command to monitor the progress of the relayout. For example,
to monitor the task that is tagged as myconv, enter the following:

# vxtask monitor myconv

Controlling the progress of a relayout

You can use the vxtask command to stop (pause) the relayout temporarily, or to
cancel it (abort). If you specify a task tag to vxassist when you start the relayout,
you can use this tag to specify the task to vxtask. For example, to pause the
relayout operation that is tagged as myconv, enter:

# vxtask pause myconv

To resume the operation, use the vxtask command as follows:

# vxtask resume myconv

For relayout operations that have not been stopped using the vxtask pause
command (for example, the vxtask abort command was used to stop the task,
the transformation process died, or there was an I/O failure), resume the relayout
by specifying the start keyword to vxrelayout, as follows:

# vxrelayout -g mydg -o bg start vol04

If you use the vxrelayout start command to restart a relayout that you previously
suspended using the vxtask pause command, a new untagged task is created to
402 Administering volumes
Converting between layered and non-layered volumes

complete the operation. You cannot then use the original task tag to control the
relayout.
The -o bg option restarts the relayout in the background. You can also specify
the slow and iosize option modifiers to control the speed of the relayout and the
size of each region that is copied. For example, the following command inserts a
delay of 1000 milliseconds (1 second) between copying each 10 MB region:

# vxrelayout -g mydg -o bg,slow=1000,iosize=10m start vol04

The default delay and region size values are 250 milliseconds and 1 MB
respectively.
To reverse the direction of relayout operation that is stopped, specify the reverse
keyword to vxrelayout as follows:

# vxrelayout -g mydg -o bg reverse vol04

This undoes changes made to the volume so far, and returns it to its original
layout.
If you cancel a relayout using vxtask abort, the direction of the conversion is
also reversed, and the volume is returned to its original configuration.
See “Managing tasks with vxtask” on page 361.
See the vxrelayout(1M) manual page.
See the vxtask(1M) manual page.

Converting between layered and non-layered volumes

The vxassist convert command transforms volume layouts between layered
and non-layered forms. The command has the following syntax

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] convert volume [layout=layout] \

[convert_options]

If you specify the -b option, the conversion of the volume is a background task.
The following conversion layouts are supported:

stripe-mirror Mirrored-stripe to striped-mirror

mirror-stripe Striped-mirror to mirrored-stripe

concat-mirror Mirrored-concatenated to concatenated-mirror

mirror-concat Concatenated-mirror to mirrored-concatenated

 Administering volumes 403
Adding a RAID-5 log

You can use volume conversion before or after you perform an online relayout to
achieve more transformations than would otherwise be possible. During relayout
process, a volume may also be converted into an intermediate layout. For example,
to convert a volume from a 4-column mirrored-stripe to a 5-column
mirrored-stripe, first use vxassist relayout to convert the volume to a 5-column
striped-mirror as follows:

# vxassist -g mydg relayout vol1 ncol=5

When the relayout finishes, use the vxassist convert command to change the
resulting layered striped-mirror volume to a non-layered mirrored-stripe:

# vxassist -g mydg convert vol1 layout=mirror-stripe

Note: If the system crashes during relayout or conversion, the process continues
when the system is rebooted. However, if the system crashes during the first stage
of a two-stage relayout and conversion, only the first stage finishes. To complete
the operation, you must run vxassist convert manually.

Adding a RAID-5 log

You can only have one RAID-5 plex per RAID-5 volume. Additional plexes become
RAID-5 log plexes, which log information about data and parity being written to
the volume. When you create a RAID-5 volume using the vxassist command, a
log plex is created for that volume by default.
To add a RAID-5 log to an existing volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-b] [-g diskgroup] addlog volume [loglen=length]

If you specify the -b option, adding the new log is a background task.
When you add the first log to a volume, you can specify the log length. Any logs
that you add subsequently are configured with the same length as the existing
log.
For example, to create a log for the RAID-5 volume volraid, in the disk group
mydg, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg addlog volraid

404 Administering volumes
Adding a RAID-5 log

Adding a RAID-5 log using vxplex

You can also add a RAID-5 log using the vxplex command. For example, to attach
the RAID-5 log plex r5log, to the RAID-5 volume r5vol, in the disk group mydg,
use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg att r5vol r5log

The attach operation can only proceed if the size of the new log is large enough
to hold all the data on the stripe. If the RAID-5 volume already contains logs, the
new log length is the minimum of each individual log length. The reason is that
the new log is a mirror of the old logs.
If the RAID-5 volume is not enabled, the new log is marked as BADLOG and is
enabled when the volume is started. However, the contents of the log are ignored.
If the RAID-5 volume is enabled and has other enabled RAID-5 logs, the new log’s
contents are synchronized with the other logs.
If the RAID-5 volume currently has no enabled logs, the new log is zeroed before
it is enabled.

Removing a RAID-5 log

To identify the plex of the RAID-5 log, use the following command:

# vxprint [-g diskgroup] -ht volume

where volume is the name of the RAID-5 volume. For a RAID-5 log, the output
lists a plex with a STATE field entry of LOG.
To dissociate and remove a RAID-5 log and any associated subdisks from an
existing volume, use the following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] -o rm dis plex

For example, to dissociate and remove the log plex volraid-02 from volraid in
the disk group mydg, use the following command:

# vxplex -g mydg -o rm dis volraid-02

You can also remove a RAID-5 log with the vxassist command, as follows:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove log volume [nlog=n]

By default, the vxassist command removes one log. To specify the number of
logs that remain after the operation, use the optional attribute nlog=n.
 Administering volumes 405
Adding a RAID-5 log

Note: When you remove a log and it leaves less than two valid logs on the volume,
a warning is printed and the operation is stopped. You can force the operation by
specifying the -f option with vxplex or vxassist.
406 Administering volumes
Adding a RAID-5 log
 Chapter 10
Creating and administering
volume sets
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About volume sets

■ Creating a volume set

■ Adding a volume to a volume set

■ Removing a volume from a volume set

■ Listing details of volume sets

■ Stopping and starting volume sets

■ Raw device node access to component volumes

About volume sets

Veritas File System (VxFS) uses volume sets to implement its Multi-Volume
Support and SmartTier features.
For more information on SmartTier, see the Veritas Storage Foundation Advanced
Features Administrator's Guide.
Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) provides the vxvset command to create and
administer volume sets.
See the vxvset(1M) manual page.
Volume sets have the following limitations:
■ A maximum of 2048 volumes can be configured in a volume set.
■ Only a Veritas File System is supported on a volume set.
408 Creating and administering volume sets
Creating a volume set

■ The first volume (index 0) in a volume set must be larger than the sum of the
total volume size divided by 4000, the size of the VxFS intent log, and 1MB.
Volumes 258 MB or larger should always suffice.
■ Raw I/O from and to a volume set is not supported.
■ Raw I/O from and to the component volumes of a volume set is supported
under certain conditions.
See “Raw device node access to component volumes” on page 411.
■ Volume sets can be used in place of volumes with the following vxsnap
operations on instant snapshots: addmir, dis, make, prepare, reattach,
refresh, restore, rmmir, split, syncpause, syncresume, syncstart, syncstop,
syncwait, and unprepare. The third-mirror break-off usage model for full-sized
instant snapshots is supported for volume sets provided that sufficient plexes
exist for each volume in the volume set.
For more information about snapshots, see the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
■ A full-sized snapshot of a volume set must itself be a volume set with the same
number of volumes and the same volume index numbers as the parent. The
corresponding volumes in the parent and snapshot volume sets are also subject
to the same restrictions as apply between standalone volumes and their
snapshots.

Creating a volume set

To create a volume set for use by Veritas File System (VxFS), use the following
command:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] -t vxfs make volset

volume

Here volset is the name of the volume set, and volume is the name of the first
volume in the volume set. The -t vxfs option creates the volume set configured
for use by VxFS. You must create the volume before running the command. vxvset
will not automatically create the volume.
For example, to create a volume set named myvset that contains the volume vol1,
in the disk group mydg, you would use the following command:

# vxvset -g mydg -t vxfs make myvset vol1

 Creating and administering volume sets 409
Adding a volume to a volume set

Adding a volume to a volume set

Having created a volume set containing a single volume, you can use the following
command to add further volumes to the volume set:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] [-f] addvol volset

volume

For example, to add the volume vol2, to the volume set myvset, use the following
command:

# vxvset -g mydg addvol myvset vol2

Warning: The -f (force) option must be specified if the volume being added, or
any volume in the volume set, is either a snapshot or the parent of a snapshot.
Using this option can potentially cause inconsistencies in a snapshot hierarchy
if any of the volumes involved in the operation is already in a snapshot chain.

Removing a volume from a volume set

To remove a component volume from a volume set, use the following command:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] [-f] rmvol volset

volume

For example, the following commands remove the volumes, vol1 and vol2, from
the volume set myvset:

# vxvset -g mydg rmvol myvset vol1

# vxvset -g mydg rmvol myvset vol2

Removing the final volume deletes the volume set.

Warning: The -f (force) option must be specified if the volume being removed, or
any volume in the volume set, is either a snapshot or the parent of a snapshot.
Using this option can potentially cause inconsistencies in a snapshot hierarchy
if any of the volumes involved in the operation is already in a snapshot chain.

Listing details of volume sets

To list the details of the component volumes of a volume set, use the following
command:
410 Creating and administering volume sets
Stopping and starting volume sets

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] list [volset]

If the name of a volume set is not specified, the command lists the details of all
volume sets in a disk group, as shown in the following example:

# vxvset -g mydg list

NAME GROUP NVOLS CONTEXT

set1 mydg 3 -
set2 mydg 2 -

To list the details of each volume in a volume set, specify the name of the volume
set as an argument to the command:

# vxvset -g mydg list set1

VOLUME INDEX LENGTH KSTATE CONTEXT

vol1 0 12582912 ENABLED -
vol2 1 12582912 ENABLED -
vol3 2 12582912 ENABLED -

The context field contains details of any string that the application has set up for
the volume or volume set to tag its purpose.

Stopping and starting volume sets

Under some circumstances, you may need to stop and restart a volume set. For
example, a volume within the set may have become detached, as shown here:

# vxvset -g mydg list set1

VOLUME INDEX LENGTH KSTATE CONTEXT

vol1 0 12582912 DETACHED -
vol2 1 12582912 ENABLED -
vol3 2 12582912 ENABLED -

To stop and restart one or more volume sets, use the following commands:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] stop volset ...

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] start volset ...

For the example given previously, the effect of running these commands on the
component volumes is shown below:
 Creating and administering volume sets 411
Raw device node access to component volumes

# vxvset -g mydg stop set1

# vxvset -g mydg list set1

VOLUME INDEX LENGTH KSTATE CONTEXT

vol1 0 12582912 DISABLED -
vol2 1 12582912 DISABLED -
vol3 2 12582912 DISABLED -

# vxvset -g mydg start set1

# vxvset -g mydg list set1

VOLUME INDEX LENGTH KSTATE CONTEXT

vol1 0 12582912 ENABLED -
vol2 1 12582912 ENABLED -
vol3 2 12582912 ENABLED -

Raw device node access to component volumes

To guard against accidental file system and data corruption, the device nodes of
the component volumes are configured by default not to have raw and block
entries in the /dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup and /dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup directories.
As a result, applications are prevented from directly reading from or writing to
the component volumes of a volume set.
If some applications, such as the raw volume backup and restore feature of the
Symantec NetBackup™ software, need to read from or write to the component
volumes by accessing raw device nodes in the /dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup directory,
this is supported by specifying additional command-line options to the vxvset
command. Access to the block device nodes of the component volumes of a volume
set is unsupported.

Warning: Writing directly to or reading from the raw device node of a component
volume of a volume set should only be performed if it is known that the volume's
data will not otherwise change during the period of access.

All of the raw device nodes for the component volumes of a volume set can be
created or removed in a single operation. Raw device nodes for any volumes added
to a volume set are created automatically as required, and inherit the access mode
of the existing device nodes.
412 Creating and administering volume sets
Raw device node access to component volumes

Access to the raw device nodes for the component volumes can be configured to
be read-only or read-write. This mode is shared by all the raw device nodes for
the component volumes of a volume set. The read-only access mode implies that
any writes to the raw device will fail, however writes using the ioctl interface or
by VxFS to update metadata are not prevented. The read-write access mode allows
direct writes via the raw device. The access mode to the raw device nodes of a
volume set can be changed as required.
The presence of raw device nodes and their access mode is persistent across system
reboots.
Note the following limitations of this feature:
■ The disk group version must be 140 or greater.
■ Access to the raw device nodes of the component volumes of a volume set is
only supported for private disk groups; it is not supported for shared disk
groups in a cluster.
See “Enabling raw device access when creating a volume set” on page 412.
See “Displaying the raw device access settings for a volume set” on page 413.
See “Controlling raw device access for an existing volume set” on page 413.

Enabling raw device access when creating a volume set

To enable raw device access when creating a volume set, use the following form
of the vxvset make command:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] -o makedev=on \

[-o compvol_access={read-only|read-write}] \
[-o index] [-c "ch_addopt"] make vset
vol [index]

The -o makedev=on option enables the creation of raw device nodes for the
component volumes at the same time that the volume set is created. The default
setting is off.
If the -o compvol_access=read-write option is specified, direct writes are allowed
to the raw device of each component volume. If the value is set to read-only, only
reads are allowed from the raw device of each component volume.
If the -o makedev=on option is specified, but -o compvol_access is not specified,
the default access mode is read-only.
If the vxvset addvol command is subsequently used to add a volume to a volume
set, a new raw device node is created in /dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup if the value of
 Creating and administering volume sets 413
Raw device node access to component volumes

the makedev attribute is currently set to on. The access mode is determined by the
current setting of the compvol_access attribute.
The following example creates a volume set, myvset1, containing the volume,
myvol1, in the disk group, mydg, with raw device access enabled in read-write
mode:

# vxvset -g mydg -o makedev=on -o compvol_access=read-write \

make myvset1 myvol1

Displaying the raw device access settings for a volume set

You can use the vxprint -m command to display the current settings for a volume
set. If the makedev attribute is set to on, one of the following strings is displayed
in the output:

vset_devinfo=on:read-only Raw device nodes in read-only mode.

vset_devinfo=on:read-write Raw device nodes in read-write mode.

A string is not displayed if makedev is set to off.

If the output from the vxprint -m command is fed to the vxmake command to
recreate a volume set, the vset_devinfo attribute must set to off. Use the vxvset
set command to re-enable raw device access with the desired access mode.
See “Controlling raw device access for an existing volume set” on page 413.

Controlling raw device access for an existing volume set

To enable or disable raw device node access for an existing volume set, use the
following command:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] [-f] set makedev={on|off} vset

The makedev attribute can be specified to the vxvset set command to create
(makedev=on) or remove (makedev=off) the raw device nodes for the component
volumes of a volume set. If any of the component volumes are open, the -f (force)
option must be specified to set the attribute to off.
Specifying makedev=off removes the existing raw device nodes from the
/dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup directory.

If the makedev attribute is set to off, and you use the mknod command to create
the raw device nodes, you cannot read from or write to those nodes unless you
set the value of makedev to on.
414 Creating and administering volume sets
Raw device node access to component volumes

The syntax for setting the compvol_access attribute on a volume set is:

# vxvset [-g diskgroup] [-f] set \

compvol_access={read-only|read-write} vset

The compvol_access attribute can be specified to the vxvset set command to

change the access mode to the component volumes of a volume set. If any of the
component volumes are open, the -f (force) option must be specified to set the
attribute to read-only.
The following example sets the makedev=on and compvol_access=read-only
attributes on a volume set, myvset2, in the disk group, mydg:

# vxvset -g mydg set makedev=on myvset2

The next example sets the compvol_access=read-write attribute on the volume

set, myvset2:

# vxvset -g mydg set compvol_access=read-write myvset2

The final example removes raw device node access for the volume set, myvset2:

# vxvset -g mydg set makedev=off myvset2

 Chapter 11
Configuring off-host
processing
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About off-host processing solutions

■ Implemention of off-host processing solutions

About off-host processing solutions

Off-host processing lets you implement the following activities:

Data backup As the requirement for 24 x 7 availability becomes essential for many
businesses, organizations cannot afford the downtime involved in
backing up critical data offline. By taking a snapshot of the data, and
backing up from this snapshot, business-critical applications can
continue to run without extended down time or impacted performance.

Decision support Because snapshots hold a point-in-time copy of a production database,

analysis and you can set up a replica of the database using the snapshots.
reporting Operations such as decision support analysis and business reporting
do not require access to up-to-the-minute information. They can use
a database copy that is running on a host other than the primary.
When required, the database copy can quickly be synchronized with
the data in the primary database.

Testing and Development or service groups can use snapshots as test data for new
training applications. Snapshot data gives developers, system testers and QA
groups a realistic basis for testing the robustness, integrity, and
performance of new applications.
416 Configuring off-host processing
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

Database error Logic errors caused by an administrator or an application program

recovery can compromise the integrity of a database. By restoring the database
table files from a snapshot copy, the database can be recovered more
quickly than by full restoration from tape or other backup media.

Using linked break-off snapshots makes off-host processing simpler.

For more information about snapshots, see the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.

Implemention of off-host processing solutions

Figure 11-1 shows an example implementation of off-host processing.

Figure 11-1 Example implementation of off-host processing

Primary host OHP host

SCSI or Fibre
Channel
connectivity

Disks containing Disks containing

primary volumes snapshot volumes
used to hold used to implement
production off-host processing
databases or systems solutions

By accessing snapshot volumes from a lightly-loaded host (shown here as the

off-host processing (OHP) host), CPU- and I/O-intensive operations for online
backup and decision support do not degrade the performance of the primary host
that is performing the main production activity (such as running a database). If
you also place the snapshot volumes on disks that are attached to different host
controllers than the disks in the primary volumes, it is possible to avoid contending
with the primary host for I/O resources.
The following sections describe how you can apply off-host processing to
implement regular online backup of a volume in a private disk group, and to set
up a replica of a production database for decision support. The following
applications are outlined:
See “Implementing off-host online backup” on page 417.
 Configuring off-host processing 417
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

See “Implementing decision support” on page 421.

These applications use the Persistent FastResync feature of VxVM in conjunction
with linked break-off snapshots.
A volume snapshot represents the data that exists in a volume at a given time. As
such, VxVM does not have any knowledge of data that is cached by the overlying
file system, or by applications such as databases that have files open in the file
system. If you set the fsgen volume usage type on a volume that contains a Veritas
File System (VxFS), intent logging of the file system metadata ensures the internal
consistency of the file system that is backed up. For other file system types,
depending on the intent logging capabilities of the file system, there may be
potential inconsistencies between in-memory data and the data in the snapshot
image.
For databases, you must also use a suitable mechanism to ensure the integrity of
tablespace data when the volume snapshot is taken. Most modern database
software provides the facility to temporarily suspend file system I/O. For ordinary
files in a file system, which may be open to a wide variety of different applications,
there may be no way to ensure the complete integrity of the file data other than
by shutting down the applications and temporarily unmounting the file system.
In many cases, it may only be important to ensure the integrity of file data that
is not in active use when you take the snapshot.

Implementing off-host online backup

This section describes a procedure for implementing off-host online backup for
a volume in a private disk group. It outlines how to set up a regular backup cycle.
It is beyond the scope of this guide to describe how to configure a database to use
this procedure, or how to perform the backup itself.
418 Configuring off-host processing
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

To back up a volume in a private disk group

1 On the primary host, use the following command to see if the volume is
associated with a version 20 data change object (DCO) and DCO volume that
allow instant snapshots and Persistent FastResync to be used with the volume:

# vxprint -g volumedg -F%instant volume

If the volume can be used for instant snapshot operations, this command
returns on; otherwise, it returns off.
If the volume was created under VxVM 4.0 or a later release, and it is not
associated with a new-style DCO object and DCO volume, add a version 20
DCO and DCO volume.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.
If the volume was created before release 4.0 of VxVM, and has any attached
snapshot plexes, or is associated with any snapshot volumes, upgrade the
volume to use a version 20 DCO.
See “Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs” on page 387.
2 On the primary host, use the following command to check whether FastResync
is enabled on the volume:

# vxprint -g volumedg -F%fastresync volume

If FastResync is enabled, this command returns on; otherwise, it returns off.

If FastResync is disabled, enable it using the following command on the
primary host:

# vxvol -g volumedg set fastresync=on volume

3 On the primary host, create a new volume in a separate disk group for use as
the snapshot volume.
For more information about snapshots, see the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
It is recommended that a snapshot disk group is dedicated to maintaining
only those disks that are used for off-host processing.
 Configuring off-host processing 419
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

4 On the primary host, link the snapshot volume in the snapshot disk group to
the data volume. Enter the following:

# vxsnap -g volumedg -b addmir volume mirvol=snapvol \

mirdg=snapvoldg

You can use the vxsnap snapwait command to wait for synchronization of
the linked snapshot volume to complete. Enter the following:

# vxsnap -g volumedg snapwait volume mirvol=snapvol \

mirdg=snapvoldg

This step sets up the snapshot volumes, and starts tracking changes to the
original volumes.
When you are ready to create a backup, go to step 5.
5 On the primary host, suspend updates to the volume that contains the
database tables. A database may have a hot backup mode that lets you do this
by temporarily suspending writes to its tables.
6 On the primary host, create the snapshot volume, snapvol, by running the
following command:

# vxsnap -g volumedg make \

source=volume/snapvol=snapvol/snapdg=snapvoldg

If a database spans more than one volume, you can specify all the volumes
and their snapshot volumes using one command, as follows:

# vxsnap -g dbasedg make \

source=vol1/snapvol=snapvol1/snapdg=sdg \
source=vol2/snapvol=snapvol2/snapdg=sdg \
source=vol3/snapvol=snapvol3/snapdg=sdg

7 On the primary host, if you temporarily suspended updates to a volume in

step 5, release all the database tables from hot backup mode.
8 On the primary host, deport the snapshot volume’s disk group using the
following command:

# vxdg deport snapvoldg

9 On the OHP host where the backup is to be performed, use the following
command to import the snapshot volume’s disk group:

# vxdg import snapvoldg

420 Configuring off-host processing
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

10 The snapshot volume is initially disabled following the import. On the OHP
host, use the following commands to recover and restart the snapshot volume:

# vxrecover -g snapvoldg -m snapvol

# vxvol -g snapvoldg start snapvol

11 On the OHP host, back up the snapshot volume. If you need to remount the
file system in the volume to back it up, first run fsck on the volume. The
following are sample commands for checking and mounting a file system:

# fsck -F vxfs /dev/vx/rdsk/snapvoldg/snapvol

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/snapvoldg/snapvol mount_point

At this point, back up the file system and use the following command to
unmount it:

# umount mount_point

12 On the OHP host, use the following command to deport the snapshot volume’s
disk group:

# vxdg deport snapvoldg

13 On the primary host, re-import the snapshot volume’s disk group using the
following command:

# vxdg import snapvoldg

 Configuring off-host processing 421
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

14 The snapshot volume is initially disabled following the import. Use the
following commands on the primary host to recover and restart the snapshot
volume:

# vxrecover -g snapvoldg -m snapvol

# vxvol -g snapvoldg start snapvol

15 On the primary host, reattach the snapshot volume to its original volume
using the following command:

# vxsnap -g snapvoldg reattach snapvol source=vol \

sourcedg=volumedg

For example, to reattach the snapshot volumes svol1, svol2 and svol3:

# vxsnap -g sdg reattach svol1 \

source=vol1 sourcedg=dbasedg \
svol2 source=vol2 sourcedg=dbasedg \
svol3 source=vol3 sourcedg=dbasedg

You can use the vxsnap snapwait command to wait for synchronization of
the linked snapshot volume to complete:

# vxsnap -g volumedg snapwait volume mirvol=snapvol

Repeat step 5 through step 15 each time that you need to back up the volume.

Implementing decision support

This section describes a procedure for implementing off-host decision support
for a volume in a private disk group. The intention is to present an outline of how
to set up a replica database. It is beyond the scope of this guide to describe how
to configure a database to use this procedure.
422 Configuring off-host processing
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

To set up a replica database using the table files that are configured within a volume
in a private disk group
1 Use the following command on the primary host to see if the volume is
associated with a version 20 data change object (DCO) and DCO volume that
allow instant snapshots and Persistent FastResync to be used with the volume:

# vxprint -g volumedg -F%instant volume

This command returns on if the volume can be used for instant snapshot
operations; otherwise, it returns off.
If the volume was created under VxVM 4.0 or a later release, and it is not
associated with a new-style DCO object and DCO volume, it must be prepared.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.
If the volume was created before release 4.0 of VxVM, and has any attached
snapshot plexes, or is associated with any snapshot volumes, it must be
upgraded.
See “Upgrading existing volumes to use version 20 DCOs” on page 387.
2 Use the following command on the primary host to check whether FastResync
is enabled on a volume:

# vxprint -g volumedg -F%fastresync volume

This command returns on if FastResync is enabled; otherwise, it returns off.

If FastResync is disabled, enable it using the following command on the
primary host:

# vxvol -g volumedg set fastresync=on volume

3 Prepare the OHP host to receive the snapshot volume that contains the copy
of the database tables. This may involve setting up private volumes to contain
any redo logs, and configuring any files that are used to initialize the database.
4 On the primary host, create a new volume in a separate disk group for use as
the snapshot volume.
For more information about snapshots, see the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's Guide.
It is recommended that a snapshot disk group is dedicated to maintaining
only those disks that are used for off-host processing.
 Configuring off-host processing 423
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

5 On the primary host, link the snapshot volume in the snapshot disk group to
the data volume:

# vxsnap -g volumedg -b addmir volume mirvol=snapvol \

mirdg=snapvoldg

You can use the vxsnap snapwait command to wait for synchronization of
the linked snapshot volume to complete:

# vxsnap -g volumedg snapwait volume mirvol=snapvol \

mirdg=snapvoldg

This step sets up the snapshot volumes, and starts tracking changes to the
original volumes.
When you are ready to create a replica database, proceed to step 6.
6 On the primary host, suspend updates to the volume that contains the
database tables. A database may have a hot backup mode that allows you to
do this by temporarily suspending writes to its tables.
7 Create the snapshot volume, snapvol, by running the following command on
the primary host:

# vxsnap -g volumedg make \

source=volume/snapvol=snapvol/snapdg=snapvoldg

If a database spans more than one volume, you can specify all the volumes
and their snapshot volumes using one command, as shown in this example:

# vxsnap -g dbasedg make \

source=vol1/snapvol=snapvol1/snapdg=sdg \
source=vol2/snapvol=snapvol2/snapdg=sdg \
source=vol3/snapvol=snapvol3/snapdg=sdg

This step sets up the snapshot volumes ready for the backup cycle, and starts
tracking changes to the original volumes.
8 On the primary host, if you temporarily suspended updates to a volume in
step 6, release all the database tables from hot backup mode.
9 On the primary host, deport the snapshot volume’s disk group using the
following command:

# vxdg deport snapvoldg

424 Configuring off-host processing
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

10 On the OHP host where the replica database is to be set up, use the following
command to import the snapshot volume’s disk group:

# vxdg import snapvoldg

11 The snapshot volume is initially disabled following the import. Use the
following commands on the OHP host to recover and restart the snapshot
volume:

# vxrecover -g snapvoldg -m snapvol

# vxvol -g snapvoldg start snapvol

12 On the OHP host, check and mount the snapshot volume. The following are
sample commands for checking and mounting a file system:

# fsck -F vxfs /dev/vx/rdsk/snapvoldg/snapvol

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/snapvoldg/snapvol mount_point

13 On the OHP host, use the appropriate database commands to recover and
start the replica database for its decision support role.
At a later time, you can resynchronize the snapshot volume’ s data with the
primary database.
To refresh the snapshot plexes from the original volume
1 On the OHP host, shut down the replica database, and use the following
command to unmount the snapshot volume:

# umount mount_point

2 On the OHP host, use the following command to deport the snapshot volume’s
disk group:

# vxdg deport snapvoldg

3 On the primary host, re-import the snapshot volume’s disk group using the
following command:

# vxdg import snapvoldg

 Configuring off-host processing 425
Implemention of off-host processing solutions

4 The snapshot volume is initially disabled following the import. Use the
following commands on the primary host to recover and restart the snapshot
volume:

# vxrecover -g snapvoldg -m snapvol

# vxvol -g snapvoldg start snapvol

5 On the primary host, reattach the snapshot volume to its original volume
using the following command:

# vxsnap -g snapvoldg reattach snapvol source=vol \

sourcedg=volumedg

For example, to reattach the snapshot volumes svol1, svol2 and svol3:

# vxsnap -g sdg reattach svol1 \

source=vol1 sourcedg=dbasedg \
svol2 source=vol2 sourcedg=dbasedg \
svol3 source=vol3 sourcedg=dbasedg

You can use the vxsnap snapwait command to wait for synchronization of
the linked snapshot volume to complete:

# vxsnap -g volumedg snapwait volume mirvol=snapvol

You can then proceed to create the replica database, from step 6 in the
previous procedure.
See “To set up a replica database using the table files that are configured
within a volume in a private disk group” on page 422.
426 Configuring off-host processing
Implemention of off-host processing solutions
 Chapter 12
Administering
hot-relocation
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About hot-relocation

■ How hot-relocation works

■ Configuring a system for hot-relocation

■ Displaying spare disk information

■ Marking a disk as a hot-relocation spare

■ Removing a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare

■ Excluding a disk from hot-relocation use

■ Making a disk available for hot-relocation use

■ Configuring hot-relocation to use only spare disks

■ Moving relocated subdisks

■ Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation

About hot-relocation
If a volume has a disk I/O failure (for example, the disk has an uncorrectable error),
Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) can detach the plex involved in the failure. I/O
stops on that plex but continues on the remaining plexes of the volume.
428 Administering hot-relocation
How hot-relocation works

If a disk fails completely, VxVM can detach the disk from its disk group. All plexes
on the disk are disabled. If there are any unmirrored volumes on a disk when it
is detached, those volumes are also disabled.
Apparent disk failure may not be due to a fault in the physical disk media or the
disk controller, but may instead be caused by a fault in an intermediate or ancillary
component such as a cable, host bus adapter, or power supply.
The hot-relocation feature in VxVM automatically detects disk failures, and notifies
the system administrator and other nominated users of the failures by electronic
mail. Hot-relocation also attempts to use spare disks and free disk space to restore
redundancy and to preserve access to mirrored and RAID-5 volumes.
See “How hot-relocation works” on page 428.
If hot-relocation is disabled or you miss the electronic mail, you can use the
vxprint command or the graphical user interface to examine the status of the
disks. You may also see driver error messages on the console or in the system
messages file.
Failed disks must be removed and replaced manually.
See “Removing and replacing disks” on page 146.
For more information about recovering volumes and their data after hardware
failure, see the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

How hot-relocation works

Hot-relocation allows a system to react automatically to I/O failures on redundant
(mirrored or RAID-5) VxVM objects, and to restore redundancy and access to those
objects. VxVM detects I/O failures on objects and relocates the affected subdisks
to disks designated as spare disks or to free space within the disk group. VxVM
then reconstructs the objects that existed before the failure and makes them
redundant and accessible again.
When a partial disk failure occurs (that is, a failure affecting only some subdisks
on a disk), redundant data on the failed portion of the disk is relocated. Existing
volumes on the unaffected portions of the disk remain accessible.
Hot-relocation is only performed for redundant (mirrored or RAID-5) subdisks
on a failed disk. Non-redundant subdisks on a failed disk are not relocated, but
the system administrator is notified of their failure.
Hot-relocation is enabled by default and takes effect without the intervention of
the system administrator when a failure occurs.
The hot-relocation daemon, vxrelocd, detects and reacts to VxVM events that
signify the following types of failures:
 Administering hot-relocation 429
How hot-relocation works

Disk failure This is normally detected as a result of an I/O failure from a VxVM
object. VxVM attempts to correct the error. If the error cannot be
corrected, VxVM tries to access configuration information in the
private region of the disk. If it cannot access the private region, it
considers the disk failed.

Plex failure This is normally detected as a result of an uncorrectable I/O error in

the plex (which affects subdisks within the plex). For mirrored volumes,
the plex is detached.

RAID-5 subdisk This is normally detected as a result of an uncorrectable I/O error.

failure The subdisk is detached.

When vxrelocd detects such a failure, it performs the following steps:

■ vxrelocd informs the system administrator (and other nominated users) by
electronic mail of the failure and which VxVM objects are affected.
See “Partial disk failure mail messages” on page 431.
See “Complete disk failure mail messages” on page 432.
See “Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation” on page 444.
■ vxrelocd next determines if any subdisks can be relocated. vxrelocd looks
for suitable space on disks that have been reserved as hot-relocation spares
(marked spare) in the disk group where the failure occurred. It then relocates
the subdisks to use this space.
■ If no spare disks are available or additional space is needed, vxrelocd uses
free space on disks in the same disk group, except those disks that have been
excluded for hot-relocation use (marked nohotuse). When vxrelocd has
relocated the subdisks, it reattaches each relocated subdisk to its plex.
■ Finally, vxrelocd initiates appropriate recovery procedures. For example,
recovery includes mirror resynchronization for mirrored volumes or data
recovery for RAID-5 volumes. It also notifies the system administrator of the
hot-relocation and recovery actions that have been taken.
If relocation is not possible, vxrelocd notifies the system administrator and takes
no further action.

Warning: Hot-relocation does not guarantee the same layout of data or the same
performance after relocation. An administrator should check whether any
configuration changes are required after hot-relocation occurs.

Relocation of failing subdisks is not possible in the following cases:

430 Administering hot-relocation
How hot-relocation works

■ The failing subdisks are on non-redundant volumes (that is, volumes of types
other than mirrored or RAID-5).
■ There are insufficient spare disks or free disk space in the disk group.
■ The only available space is on a disk that already contains a mirror of the
failing plex.
■ The only available space is on a disk that already contains the RAID-5 log plex
or one of its healthy subdisks. Failing subdisks in the RAID-5 plex cannot be
relocated.
■ If a mirrored volume has a dirty region logging (DRL) log subdisk as part of its
data plex, failing subdisks belonging to that plex cannot be relocated.
■ If a RAID-5 volume log plex or a mirrored volume DRL log plex fails, a new log
plex is created elsewhere. There is no need to relocate the failed subdisks of
the log plex.
See the vxrelocd(1M) manual page.
Figure 12-1 shows the hot-relocation process in the case of the failure of a single
subdisk of a RAID-5 volume.
 Administering hot-relocation 431
How hot-relocation works

Figure 12-1 Example of hot-relocation for a subdisk in a RAID-5 volume

a Disk group contains five disks. Two RAID-5 volumes are configured
across four of the disks. One spare disk is availavle for hot-relocation.
mydg01 mydg02 mydg03 mydg04 mydg05

mydg01-01 mydg02-01 mydg03-01 mydg04-01

Spare disk
mydg02-02 mydg03-02

b Subdisk mydg02-01 in one RAID-5 volume fails. Hot-relocation replaces it with

subdisk mydg05-01 that it has created on the spare disk, and then initiates
recovery on the RAID-5 volume.
mydg01 mydg02 mydg03 mydg04 mydg05

mydg01-01 mydg02-01 mydg03-01 mydg04-01 mydg05-01

mydg02-02 mydg03-02

c RAID-5 recovery recreates subdisk mydg02-01's data and parity on subdisk

mygd05-01 from the data and parity information remaining on subdisks
mydg01-01 and mydg03-01.

mydg01 mydg02 mydg03 mydg04 mydg05

mydg01-01 mydg02-01 mydg03-01 mydg04-01 mydg05-01

mydg02-02 mydg03-02

Partial disk failure mail messages

If hot-relocation is enabled when a plex or disk is detached by a failure, mail
indicating the failed objects is sent to root. If a partial disk failure occurs, the
mail identifies the failed plexes. For example, if a disk containing mirrored volumes
fails, you can receive mail information as shown in the following example:

To: root
Subject: Volume Manager failures on host teal
Failures have been detected by the Veritas Volume Manager:

failed plexes:
home-02
src-02
432 Administering hot-relocation
How hot-relocation works

Mail can be sent to users other than root.

See “Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation” on page 444.
You can determine which disk is causing the failures in the above example message
by using the following command:

# vxstat -g mydg -s -ff home-02 src-02

The -s option asks for information about individual subdisks, and the -ff option
displays the number of failed read and write operations. The following output
display is typical:

FAILED
TYP NAME READS WRITES
sd mydg01-04 0 0
sd mydg01-06 0 0
sd mydg02-03 1 0
sd mydg02-04 1 0

This example shows failures on reading from subdisks mydg02-03 and mydg02-04
of disk mydg02.
Hot-relocation automatically relocates the affected subdisks and initiates any
necessary recovery procedures. However, if relocation is not possible or the
hot-relocation feature is disabled, you must investigate the problem and attempt
to recover the plexes. Errors can be caused by cabling failures, so check the cables
connecting your disks to your system. If there are obvious problems, correct them
and recover the plexes using the following command:

# vxrecover -b -g mydg home src

This starts recovery of the failed plexes in the background (the command prompt
reappears before the operation completes). If an error message appears later, or
if the plexes become detached again and there are no obvious cabling failures,
replace the disk.
See “Removing and replacing disks” on page 146.

Complete disk failure mail messages

If a disk fails completely and hot-relocation is enabled, the mail message lists the
disk that failed and all plexes that use the disk. For example, you can receive mail
as shown in this example display:

To: root
Subject: Volume Manager failures on host teal
 Administering hot-relocation 433
How hot-relocation works

Failures have been detected by the Veritas Volume Manager:

failed disks:
mydg02

failed plexes:
home-02
src-02
mkting-01

failing disks:
mydg02

This message shows that mydg02 was detached by a failure. When a disk is
detached, I/O cannot get to that disk. The plexes home-02, src-02, and mkting-01
were also detached (probably because of the failure of the disk).
One possible cause of the problem could be a cabling error.
See “Partial disk failure mail messages” on page 431.
If the problem is not a cabling error, replace the disk.
See “Removing and replacing disks” on page 146.

How space is chosen for relocation

A spare disk must be initialized and placed in a disk group as a spare before it can
be used for replacement purposes. If no disks have been designated as spares
when a failure occurs, VxVM automatically uses any available free space in the
disk group in which the failure occurs. If there is not enough spare disk space, a
combination of spare space and free space is used.
When selecting space for relocation, hot-relocation preserves the redundancy
characteristics of the VxVM object to which the relocated subdisk belongs. For
example, hot-relocation ensures that subdisks from a failed plex are not relocated
to a disk containing a mirror of the failed plex. If redundancy cannot be preserved
using any available spare disks and/or free space, hot-relocation does not take
place. If relocation is not possible, the system administrator is notified and no
further action is taken.
From the eligible disks, hot-relocation attempts to use the disk that is “closest”
to the failed disk. The value of “closeness” depends on the controller, target, and
disk number of the failed disk. A disk on the same controller as the failed disk is
closer than a disk on a different controller. A disk under the same target as the
failed disk is closer than one on a different target.
434 Administering hot-relocation
Configuring a system for hot-relocation

Hot-relocation tries to move all subdisks from a failing drive to the same
destination disk, if possible.
If the failing disk is a root disk, hot-relocation only works if it can relocate all of
the file systems to the same disk. If none are found, the system administrator is
notified through email.
When hot-relocation takes place, the failed subdisk is removed from the
configuration database, and VxVM ensures that the disk space used by the failed
subdisk is not recycled as free space.

Configuring a system for hot-relocation

By designating spare disks and making free space on disks available for use by
hot relocation, you can control how disk space is used for relocating subdisks in
the event of a disk failure. If the combined free space and space on spare disks is
not sufficient or does not meet the redundancy constraints, the subdisks are not
relocated.
Find out which disks are spares or are excluded from hot-relocation.
See “Displaying spare disk information” on page 435.
You can prepare for hot-relocation by designating one or more disks per disk
group as hot-relocation spares.
See “Marking a disk as a hot-relocation spare” on page 435.
If required, you can remove a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare
See “Removing a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare” on page 436.
If no spares are available at the time of a failure or if there is not enough space
on the spares, free space on disks in the same disk group as where the failure
occurred is automatically used, unless it has been excluded from hot-relocation
use.
See “Excluding a disk from hot-relocation use” on page 437.
See “Making a disk available for hot-relocation use” on page 438.
Depending on the locations of the relocated subdisks, you can choose to move
them elsewhere after hot-relocation occurs.
See “Configuring hot-relocation to use only spare disks” on page 438.
After a successful relocation, remove and replace the failed disk.
See “Removing and replacing disks” on page 146.
 Administering hot-relocation 435
Displaying spare disk information

Displaying spare disk information

Use the following command to display information about spare disks that are
available for relocation:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] spare

The following is example output:

GROUP DISK DEVICE TAG OFFSET LENGTH FLAGS

mydg mydg02 c0t2d0s2 c0t2d0s2 0 658007 s

Here mydg02 is the only disk designated as a spare in the mydg disk group. The
LENGTH field indicates how much spare space is currently available on mydg02 for
relocation.
The following commands can also be used to display information about disks that
are currently designated as spares:
■ vxdisk list lists disk information and displays spare disks with a spare flag.

■ vxprint lists disk and other information and displays spare disks with a SPARE
flag.
■ The list menu item on the vxdiskadm main menu lists all disks including
spare disks.

Marking a disk as a hot-relocation spare

Hot-relocation allows the system to react automatically to I/O failure by relocating
redundant subdisks to other disks. Hot-relocation then restores the affected VxVM
objects and data. If a disk has already been designated as a spare in the disk group,
the subdisks from the failed disk are relocated to the spare disk. Otherwise, any
suitable free space in the disk group is used except for the free space on the disks
that were previously excluded from hot-relocation use.
To designate a disk as a hot-relocation spare, enter the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set spare=on diskname

where diskname is the disk media name.

For example, to designate mydg01 as a spare in the disk group, mydg, enter the
following command:

# vxedit -g mydg set spare=on mydg01

436 Administering hot-relocation
Removing a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare

You can use the vxdisk list command to confirm that this disk is now a spare;
mydg01 should be listed with a spare flag.

Any VM disk in this disk group can now use this disk as a spare in the event of a
failure. If a disk fails, hot-relocation automatically occurs (if possible). You are
notified of the failure and relocation through electronic mail. After successful
relocation, you may want to replace the failed disk.
To use vxdiskadm to designate a disk as a hot-relocation spare
1 Select Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group from the vxdiskadm
main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter a disk media name (such as mydg01):

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg01

The following notice is displayed when the disk has been marked as spare:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-219 Marking of mydg01 in mydg as a spare disk

is complete.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to add more disks as
spares (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Mark another disk as a spare? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Any VM disk in this disk group can now use this disk as a spare in the event
of a failure. If a disk fails, hot-relocation should automatically occur (if
possible). You should be notified of the failure and relocation through
electronic mail. After successful relocation, you may want to replace the failed
disk.

Removing a disk from use as a hot-relocation spare

While a disk is designated as a spare, the space on that disk is not used for the
creation of VxVM objects within its disk group. If necessary, you can free a spare
disk for general use by removing it from the pool of hot-relocation disks.
To remove a spare from the hot-relocation pool, use the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set spare=off diskname

where diskname is the disk media name.

For example, to make mydg01 available for normal use in the disk group, mydg, use
the following command:
 Administering hot-relocation 437
Excluding a disk from hot-relocation use

# vxedit -g mydg set spare=off mydg01

To use vxdiskadm to remove a disk from the hot-relocation pool

1 Select Turn off the spare flag on a disk from the vxdiskadm main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the disk media name of a spare disk (such as
mydg01):

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg01

The following confirmation is displayed:

VxVM NOTICE V-5-2-143 Disk mydg01 in mydg no longer marked as

a spare disk.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to disable more spare
disks (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Turn off spare flag on another disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

Excluding a disk from hot-relocation use

To exclude a disk from hot-relocation use, use the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set nohotuse=on diskname

where diskname is the disk media name.

To use vxdiskadm to exclude a disk from hot-relocation use
1 Select Exclude a disk from hot-relocation use from the vxdiskadm
main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the disk media name (such as mydg01):

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg01

The following confirmation is displayed:

VxVM INFO V-5-2-925 Excluding mydg01 in mydg from hot-

relocation use is complete.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to add more disks to be
excluded from hot-relocation (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Exclude another disk from hot-relocation use? [y,n,q,?]

(default: n)
438 Administering hot-relocation
Making a disk available for hot-relocation use

Making a disk available for hot-relocation use

Free space is used automatically by hot-relocation in case spare space is not
sufficient to relocate failed subdisks. You can limit this free space usage by
hot-relocation by specifying which free disks should not be touched by
hot-relocation. If a disk was previously excluded from hot-relocation use, you can
undo the exclusion and add the disk back to the hot-relocation pool.
To make a disk available for hot-relocation use, use the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] set nohotuse=off diskname

To use vxdiskadm to make a disk available for hot-relocation use

1 Select Make a disk available for hot-relocation use from the vxdiskadm
main menu.
2 At the following prompt, enter the disk media name (such as mydg01):

Enter disk name [<disk>,list,q,?] mydg01

The following confirmation is displayed:

V-5-2-932 Making mydg01 in mydg available for hot-relocation

use is complete.

3 At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to add more disks to be
excluded from hot-relocation (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):

Make another disk available for hot-relocation use? [y,n,q,?]

(default: n)

Configuring hot-relocation to use only spare disks

If you want VxVM to use only spare disks for hot-relocation, add the following
line to the file /etc/default/vxassist:

spare=only

If not enough storage can be located on disks marked as spare, the relocation fails.
Any free space on non-spare disks is not used.
 Administering hot-relocation 439
Moving relocated subdisks

Moving relocated subdisks

When hot-relocation occurs, subdisks are relocated to spare disks and/or available
free space within the disk group. The new subdisk locations may not provide the
same performance or data layout that existed before hot-relocation took place.
You can move the relocated subdisks (after hot-relocation is complete) to improve
performance.
You can also move the relocated subdisks of the spare disks to keep the spare disk
space free for future hot-relocation needs. Another reason for moving subdisks
is to recreate the configuration that existed before hot-relocation occurred.
During hot-relocation, one of the electronic mail messages sent to root is shown
in the following example:

To: root
Subject: Volume Manager failures on host teal

Attempting to relocate subdisk mydg02-03 from plex home-02.

Dev_offset 0 length 1164 dm_name mydg02 da_name c0t5d0s2.
The available plex home-01 will be used to recover the data.

This message has information about the subdisk before relocation and can be
used to decide where to move the subdisk after relocation.
Here is an example message that shows the new location for the relocated subdisk:

To: root
Subject: Attempting VxVM relocation on host teal

Volume home Subdisk mydg02-03 relocated to mydg05-01,

but not yet recovered.

Before you move any relocated subdisks, fix or replace the disk that failed.
See “Removing and replacing disks” on page 146.
Once this is done, you can move a relocated subdisk back to the original disk as
described in the following sections.

Warning: During subdisk move operations, RAID-5 volumes are not redundant.

Moving relocated subdisks using vxdiskadm

When a disk has replaced following a failure, you can use the vxdiskadm command
move the hot-relocated subdisks back to the disk where they originally resided.
440 Administering hot-relocation
Moving relocated subdisks

To move the relocated subdisks using vxdiskadm

1 Select Unrelocate subdisks back to a disk from the vxdiskadm main
menu.
2 This option prompts for the original disk media name first.
Enter the disk media name where the hot-relocated subdisks originally resided
at the following prompt:

Enter the original disk name [<disk>,list,q,?]

If there are no hot-relocated subdisks in the system, vxdiskadm displays

Currently there are no hot-relocated disks, and asks you to press
Return to continue.
3 You are next asked if you want to move the subdisks to a destination disk
other than the original disk.

Unrelocate to a new disk [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

4 If moving subdisks to their original offsets is not possible, you can choose to
unrelocate the subdisks forcibly to the specified disk, but not necessarily to
the same offsets.

Use -f option to unrelocate the subdisks if moving to the exact

offset fails? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

5 If you entered y at step 4 to unrelocate the subdisks forcibly, enter y or press

Return at the following prompt to confirm the operation:

Requested operation is to move all the subdisks which were

hot-relocated from mydg10 back to mydg10 of disk group mydg.
Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)

A status message is displayed at the end of the operation.

VxVM INFO V-5-2-954 Unrelocate to disk mydg10 is complete.

As an alternative to this procedure, use either the vxassist command or the

vxunreloc command directly.

See “Moving relocated subdisks using vxassist” on page 441.

See “Moving relocated subdisks using vxunreloc” on page 441.
 Administering hot-relocation 441
Moving relocated subdisks

Moving relocated subdisks using vxassist

You can use the vxassist command to move and unrelocate subdisks. For example,
to move the relocated subdisks on mydg05 belonging to the volume home back to
mydg02, enter the following command.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. The following example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist -g mydg move home \!mydg05 mydg02

Here, \!mydg05 specifies the current location of the subdisks, and mydg02 specifies
where the subdisks should be relocated.
If the volume is enabled, subdisks within detached or disabled plexes, and detached
log or RAID-5 subdisks, are moved without recovery of data.
If the volume is not enabled, subdisks within STALE or OFFLINE plexes, and stale
log or RAID-5 subdisks, are moved without recovery. If there are other subdisks
within a non-enabled volume that require moving, the relocation fails.
For enabled subdisks in enabled plexes within an enabled volume, data is moved
to the new location, without loss of either availability or redundancy of the volume.

Moving relocated subdisks using vxunreloc

VxVM hot-relocation allows the system to automatically react to I/O failures on
a redundant VxVM object at the subdisk level and then take necessary action to
make the object available again. This mechanism detects I/O failures in a subdisk,
relocates the subdisk, and recovers the plex associated with the subdisk. After
the disk has been replaced, vxunreloc allows you to restore the system back to
the configuration that existed before the disk failure. vxunreloc allows you to
move the hot-relocated subdisks back onto a disk that was replaced due to a failure.
When vxunreloc is invoked, you must specify the disk media name where the
hot-relocated subdisks originally resided. When vxunreloc moves the subdisks,
it moves them to the original offsets. If you try to unrelocate to a disk that is
smaller than the original disk that failed,vxunreloc does nothing except return
an error.
vxunreloc provides an option to move the subdisks to a different disk from where
they were originally relocated. It also provides an option to unrelocate subdisks
to a different offset as long as the destination disk is large enough to accommodate
all the subdisks.
442 Administering hot-relocation
Moving relocated subdisks

If vxunreloc cannot replace the subdisks back to the same original offsets, a force
option is available that allows you to move the subdisks to a specified disk without
using the original offsets.
See the vxunreloc(1M) manual page.
The examples in the following sections demonstrate the use of vxunreloc.

Moving hot-relocated subdisks back to their original disk

Assume that mydg01 failed and all the subdisks were relocated. After mydg01 is
replaced, vxunreloc can be used to move all the hot-relocated subdisks back to
mydg01.

# vxunreloc -g mydg mydg01

Moving hot-relocated subdisks back to a different disk

The vxunreloc utility provides the -n option to move the subdisks to a different
disk from where they were originally relocated.
Assume that mydg01 failed, and that all of the subdisks that resided on it were
hot-relocated to other disks. vxunreloc provides an option to move the subdisks
to a different disk from where they were originally relocated. After the disk is
repaired, it is added back to the disk group using a different name, for example,
mydg05. If you want to move all the hot-relocated subdisks back to the new disk,
the following command can be used:

# vxunreloc -g mydg -n mydg05 mydg01

The destination disk should have at least as much storage capacity as was in use
on the original disk. If there is not enough space, the unrelocate operation will
fail and none of the subdisks will be moved.

Forcing hot-relocated subdisks to accept different offsets

By default, vxunreloc attempts to move hot-relocated subdisks to their original
offsets. However, vxunreloc fails if any subdisks already occupy part or all of the
area on the destination disk. In such a case, you have two choices:
■ Move the existing subdisks somewhere else, and then re-run vxunreloc.
■ Use the -f option provided by vxunreloc to move the subdisks to the
destination disk, but leave it to vxunreloc to find the space on the disk. As
long as the destination disk is large enough so that the region of the disk for
storing subdisks can accommodate all subdisks, all the hot-relocated subdisks
will be unrelocated without using the original offsets.
 Administering hot-relocation 443
Moving relocated subdisks

Assume that mydg01 failed and the subdisks were relocated and that you want to
move the hot-relocated subdisks to mydg05 where some subdisks already reside.
You can use the force option to move the hot-relocated subdisks to mydg05, but
not to the exact offsets:

# vxunreloc -g mydg -f -n mydg05 mydg01

Examining which subdisks were hot-relocated from a disk

If a subdisk was hot relocated more than once due to multiple disk failures, it can
still be unrelocated back to its original location. For instance, if mydg01 failed and
a subdisk named mydg01-01 was moved to mydg02, and then mydg02 experienced
disk failure, all of the subdisks residing on it, including the one which was
hot-relocated to it, will be moved again. When mydg02 was replaced, a vxunreloc
operation for mydg02 will do nothing to the hot-relocated subdisk mydg01-01.
However, a replacement of mydg01 followed by a vxunreloc operation, moves
mydg01-01 back to mydg01 if vxunreloc is run immediately after the replacement.

After the disk that experienced the failure is fixed or replaced, vxunreloc can be
used to move all the hot-relocated subdisks back to the disk. When a subdisk is
hot-relocated, its original disk-media name and the offset into the disk are saved
in the configuration database. When a subdisk is moved back to the original disk
or to a new disk using vxunreloc, the information is erased. The original
disk-media name and the original offset are saved in the subdisk records. To print
all of the subdisks that were hot-relocated from mydg01 in the mydg disk group,
use the following command:

# vxprint -g mydg -se 'sd_orig_dmname="mydg01"'

Restarting vxunreloc after errors

vxunreloc moves subdisks in three phases:

■ vxunreloc creates as many subdisks on the specified destination disk as there

are subdisks to be unrelocated. The string UNRELOC is placed in the comment
field of each subdisk record.
Creating the subdisk is an all-or-nothing operation. If vxunreloc cannot create
all the subdisks successfully, none are created, and vxunreloc exits.
■ vxunreloc moves the data from each subdisk to the corresponding newly
created subdisk on the destination disk.
■ When all subdisk data moves have been completed successfully, vxunreloc
sets the comment field to the null string for each subdisk on the destination
disk whose comment field is currently set to UNRELOC.
444 Administering hot-relocation
Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation

The comment fields of all the subdisks on the destination disk remain marked as
UNRELOC until phase 3 completes. If its execution is interrupted, vxunreloc can
subsequently re-use subdisks that it created on the destination disk during a
previous execution, but it does not use any data that was moved to the destination
disk.
If a subdisk data move fails, vxunreloc displays an error message and exits.
Determine the problem that caused the move to fail, and fix it before re-executing
vxunreloc.

If the system goes down after the new subdisks are created on the destination
disk, but before all the data has been moved, re-execute vxunreloc when the
system has been rebooted.

Warning: Do not modify the string UNRELOC in the comment field of a subdisk
record.

Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation

Hot-relocation is turned on as long as the vxrelocd process is running. You should
normally leave hot-relocation turned on so that you can take advantage of this
feature if a failure occurs. However, if you choose to disable hot-relocation (perhaps
because you do not want the free space on your disks to be used for relocation),
you can prevent vxrelocd from starting at system startup time by editing the
startup file that invokes vxrelocd. This file is /lib/svc/method/vxvm-recover
in Solaris 10, or /etc/init.d/vxvm-recover in previous releases of the Solaris
OS.
If the hot-relocation daemon is disabled, then automatic storage reclamation on
deleted volumes is also disabled.
You can alter the behavior of vxrelocd as follows:
 Administering hot-relocation 445
Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation

1 To prevent vxrelocd starting, comment out the entry that invokes it in the
startup file:

# nohup vxrelocd root &

2 By default, vxrelocd sends electronic mail to root when failures are detected
and relocation actions are performed. You can instruct vxrelocd to notify
additional users by adding the appropriate user names as shown here:

nohup vxrelocd root user1 user2 &

3 To reduce the impact of recovery on system performance, you can instruct

vxrelocd to increase the delay between the recovery of each region of the
volume, as shown in the following example:

nohup vxrelocd -o slow[=IOdelay] root &

where the optional IOdelay value indicates the desired delay in milliseconds.
The default value for the delay is 250 milliseconds.
On a Solaris 10 system, after making changes to the way vxrelocd is invoked
in the startup file, run the following command to notify that the service
configuration has changed:

# svcadm refresh vxvm/vxvm-recover

See the vxrelocd(1M) manual page.

446 Administering hot-relocation
Modifying the behavior of hot-relocation
 Chapter 13
Administering cluster
functionality (CVM)
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ Overview of clustering

■ Multiple host failover configurations

■ About the cluster functionality of VxVM

■ CVM initialization and configuration

■ Dirty region logging in cluster environments

■ Administering VxVM in cluster environments

Overview of clustering
Tightly-coupled cluster systems are common in the realm of enterprise-scale
mission-critical data processing. The primary advantage of clusters is protection
against hardware failure. Should the primary node fail or otherwise become
unavailable, applications can continue to run by transferring their execution to
standby nodes in the cluster. This ability to provide continuous availability of
service by switching to redundant hardware is commonly termed failover.
Another major advantage of clustered systems is their ability to reduce contention
for system resources caused by activities such as backup, decision support and
report generation. Businesses can derive enhanced value from their investment
in cluster systems by performing such operations on lightly loaded nodes in the
cluster rather than on the heavily loaded nodes that answer requests for service.
This ability to perform some operations on the lightly loaded nodes is commonly
termed load balancing.
448 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Overview of clustering

Overview of cluster volume management

Over the past several years, parallel applications using shared data access have
become increasingly popular. Examples of commercially available applications
include Oracle Real Application Clusters™ (RAC), Sybase Adaptive Server®, and
Informatica Enterprise Cluster Edition. In addition, the semantics of Network File
System (NFS), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Network News Transfer Protocol
(NNTP) allow these workloads to be served by shared data access clusters. Finally,
numerous organizations have developed internal applications that take advantage
of shared data access clusters.
The cluster functionality of VxVM (CVM) works together with the cluster monitor
daemon that is provided by VCS or by the host operating system. The cluster
monitor informs VxVM of changes in cluster membership. Each node starts up
independently and has its own cluster monitor plus its own copies of the operating
system and VxVM/CVM. When a node joins a cluster, it gains access to shared
disk groups and volumes. When a node leaves a cluster, it loses access to these
shared objects. A node joins a cluster when you issue the appropriate command
on that node.

Warning: The CVM functionality of VxVM is supported only when used in

conjunction with a cluster monitor that has been configured correctly to work
with VxVM.

Figure 13-1 shows a simple cluster arrangement consisting of four nodes with
similar or identical hardware characteristics (CPUs, RAM and host adapters), and
configured with identical software (including the operating system).
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 449
Overview of clustering

Figure 13-1 Example of a 4-node CVM cluster

Redundant private network

Node 1 Node 2 Node 3

(slave) (slave) (slave)
Node 0
(master)

Redundant
SCSIor Fibre
Channel
connectivity

Cluster-shareable disks

Cluster-shareable
disk groups

To the cluster monitor, all nodes are the same. VxVM objects configured within
shared disk groups can potentially be accessed by all nodes that join the cluster.
However, the CVM functionality of VxVM requires that one node act as the master
node; all other nodes in the cluster are slave nodes. Any node is capable of being
the master node, and it is responsible for coordinating certain VxVM activities.
In this example, node 0 is configured as the CVM master node and nodes 1, 2 and
3 are configured as CVM slave nodes. The nodes are fully connected by a private
network and they are also separately connected to shared external storage (either
disk arrays or JBODs: just a bunch of disks) via SCSI or Fibre Channel in a Storage
Area Network (SAN).
In this example, each node has two independent paths to the disks, which are
configured in one or more cluster-shareable disk groups. Multiple paths provide
resilience against failure of one of the paths, but this is not a requirement for
cluster configuration. Disks may also be connected by single paths.
The private network allows the nodes to share information about system resources
and about each other’s state. Using the private network, any node can recognize
which other nodes are currently active, which are joining or leaving the cluster,
and which have failed. The private network requires at least two communication
channels to provide redundancy against one of the channels failing. If only one
channel were used, its failure would be indistinguishable from node failure—a
condition known as network partitioning.
450 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Overview of clustering

You can run commands that configure or reconfigure VxVM objects on any node
in the cluster. These tasks include setting up shared disk groups, creating and
reconfiguring volumes, and performing snapshot operations.
The first node to join a cluster performs the function of master node. If the master
node leaves a cluster, one of the slave nodes is chosen to be the new master.

Private and shared disk groups

The following types of disk groups are defined:

Private disk group Belongs to only one node. A private disk group can only be imported
by one system. LUNs in a private disk group may be physically
accessible from one or more systems, but access is restricted to only
one system at a time.

The boot disk group (usually aliased by the reserved disk group name
bootdg) is always a private disk group.

Shared disk group Can be shared by all nodes. A shared (or cluster-shareable) disk group
is imported by all cluster nodes. LUNs in a shared disk group must be
physically accessible from all systems that may join the cluster.

In a CVM cluster, most disk groups are shared. LUNs in a shared disk group are
accessible from all nodes in a cluster, allowing applications on multiple cluster
nodes to simultaneously access the same LUN. A volume in a shared disk group
can be simultaneously accessed by more than one node in the cluster, subject to
license key and disk group activation mode restrictions.
You can use the vxdg command to designate a disk group as cluster-shareable.
See “Importing disk groups as shared” on page 478.
When a disk group is imported as cluster-shareable for one node, each disk header
is marked with the cluster ID. As each node subsequently joins the cluster, it
recognizes the disk group as being cluster-shareable and imports it. In contrast,
a private disk group's disk headers are marked with the individual node's host
name. As system administrator, you can import or deport a shared disk group at
any time; the operation takes place in a distributed fashion on all nodes.
Each LUN is marked with a unique disk ID. When cluster functionality for VxVM
starts on the master, it imports all shared disk groups (except for any that do not
have the autoimport attribute set). When a slave tries to join a cluster, the master
sends it a list of the disk IDs that it has imported, and the slave checks to see if it
can access them all. If the slave cannot access one of the listed disks, it abandons
its attempt to join the cluster. If it can access all of the listed disks, it joins the
cluster and imports the same shared disk groups as the master. When a node
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 451
Overview of clustering

leaves the cluster gracefully, it deports all its imported shared disk groups, but
they remain imported on the surviving nodes.
Reconfiguring a shared disk group is performed with the cooperation of all nodes.
Configuration changes to the disk group are initiated by the master, and happen
simultaneously on all nodes and the changes are identical. Such changes are
atomic in nature, which means that they either occur simultaneously on all nodes
or not at all.
Whether all members of the cluster have simultaneous read and write access to
a cluster-shareable disk group depends on its activation mode setting.
See “Activation modes of shared disk groups” on page 451.
The data contained in a cluster-shareable disk group is available as long as at least
one node is active in the cluster. The failure of a cluster node does not affect access
by the remaining active nodes. Regardless of which node accesses a
cluster-shareable disk group, the configuration of the disk group looks the same.

Warning: Applications running on each node can access the data on the VM disks
simultaneously. VxVM does not protect against simultaneous writes to shared
volumes by more than one node. It is assumed that applications control consistency
(by using Veritas Cluster File System or a distributed lock manager, for example).

Activation modes of shared disk groups

A shared disk group must be activated on a node in order for the volumes in the
disk group to become accessible for application I/O from that node. The ability of
applications to read from or to write to volumes is dictated by the activation mode
of a shared disk group. Valid activation modes for a shared disk group are
exclusivewrite, readonly, sharedread, sharedwrite, and off (inactive).

The default activation mode for shared disk groups is sharedwrite.

Special uses of clusters, such as high availability (HA) applications and off-host
backup, can use disk group activation to explicitly control volume access from
different nodes in the cluster
Table 13-1 describes the activation modes.

Table 13-1 Activation modes for shared disk groups

Activation mode Description

exclusivewrite The node has exclusive write access to the disk group. No other node
(ew) can activate the disk group for write access.
452 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Overview of clustering

Table 13-1 Activation modes for shared disk groups (continued)

Activation mode Description

readonly (ro) The node has read access to the disk group and denies write access
for all other nodes in the cluster. The node has no write access to the
disk group. Attempts to activate a disk group for either of the write
modes on other nodes fail.

sharedread The node has read access to the disk group. The node has no write
(sr) access to the disk group, however other nodes can obtain write access.

sharedwrite The node has write access to the disk group. Attempts to activate the
(sw) disk group for shared read and shared write access succeed. Attempts
to activate the disk group for exclusive write and read-only access
fail.

off The node has neither read nor write access to the disk group. Query
operations on the disk group are permitted.

Table 13-2 summarizes the allowed and conflicting activation modes for shared
disk groups.

Table 13-2 Allowed and conflicting activation modes

Disk group Attempt to

activated in activate disk
cluster as... group on
another node
as...

exclusive- readonly sharedread sharedwrite

write

exclusivewrite Fails Fails Succeeds Fails

readonly Fails Succeeds Succeeds Fails

sharedread Succeeds Succeeds Succeeds Succeeds

sharedwrite Fails Fails Succeeds Succeeds

Shared disk groups can be automatically activated in a specified mode when the
disk group is created or imported. To control automatic activation of shared disk
groups, create a defaults file /etc/default/vxdg containing the following lines:

enable_activation=true
default_activation_mode=activation-mode
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 453
Overview of clustering

The activation-mode is one of exclusivewrite, readonly, sharedread,

sharedwrite, or off.

When a shared disk group is created or imported, it is activated in the specified

mode. When a node joins the cluster, all shared disk groups accessible from the
node are activated in the specified mode.
The activation mode of a disk group controls volume I/O from different nodes in
the cluster. It is not possible to activate a disk group on a given node if it is
activated in a conflicting mode on another node in the cluster. When enabling
activation using the defaults file, it is recommended that the file be consistent on
all nodes in the cluster as in Table 13-2. Otherwise, the results of activation are
unpredictable.
If the defaults file is edited while the vxconfigd daemon is already running, run
the /sbin/vxconfigd -k -x syslog command on all nodes to restart the process.
If the default activation mode is anything other than off, an activation following
a cluster join, or a disk group creation or import can fail if another node in the
cluster has activated the disk group in a conflicting mode.
To display the activation mode for a shared disk group, use the vxdg list
diskgroup command.

See “Listing shared disk groups” on page 477.

You can also use the vxdg command to change the activation mode on a shared
disk group.
See “Changing the activation mode on a shared disk group” on page 481.
It is also possible to configure a volume so that it can only be opened by a single
node in a cluster.
See “Creating volumes with exclusive open access by a node” on page 482.
See “Setting exclusive open access to a volume by a node” on page 483.

Connectivity policy of shared disk groups

A shared disk group provides concurrent read and write access to the volumes
that it contains for all nodes in a cluster. A shared disk group can be created on
any node of the cluster. This has the following advantages and implications:
■ All nodes in the cluster see exactly the same configuration.
■ Commands to change the configuration are sent to the master node.
■ Any changes on the master node are automatically coordinated and propagated
to the slave nodes in the cluster.
454 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Overview of clustering

■ Any failures that require a configuration change must be sent to the master
node so that they can be resolved correctly.
■ As the master node resolves failures, all the slave nodes are correctly updated.
This ensures that all nodes have the same view of the configuration.
The practical implication of this design is that I/O failure on any node results in
the configuration of all nodes being changed. This is known as the global detach
policy. However, in some cases, it is not desirable to have all nodes react in this
way to I/O failure. To address this, an alternate way of responding to I/O failures,
known as the local detach policy, was introduced.
The local detach policy is intended for use with shared mirrored volumes in a
cluster. This policy prevents I/O failure on any of the nodes in the cluster from
causing a plex to be detached. This would require the plex to be resynchronized
when it is subsequently reattached.
The local detach policy is supported for disk groups that have a version number
of 120 or greater.
For small mirrored volumes, non-mirrored volumes, volumes that use hardware
mirrors, and volumes in private disk groups, there is no benefit in configuring
the local detach policy. In most cases, it is recommended that you use the default
global detach policy.
The choice between local and global detach polices is one of node availability
versus plex availability when an individual node loses access to disks. Select the
local detach policy for a diskgroup if you are using mirrored volumes within it,
and would prefer a single node to lose write access to a volume rather than a plex
of the volume being detached clusterwide. i.e. you consider the availability of your
data (retaining mirrors) more important than any one node in the cluster. This
will typically only apply in larger clusters, and where a parallel application is
being used that can seamlessly provide the same service from the other nodes.
For example, this option is not appropriate for fast failover configurations. Select
the global detach policy in all other cases.
In the event of the master node losing access to all the disks containing log/config
copies, the disk group failure policy is triggered. At this point no plexes can be
detached, as this requires access to the log/config copies, no configuration changes
to the disk group can be made, and any action requiring the kernel to write to the
klog (first open, last close, mark dirty etc) will fail. If this happened in releases
prior to 4.1, the master node always disabled the disk group. Release 4.1 introduces
the disk group failure policy, which allows you to change this behavior for critical
disk groups. This policy is only supported for disk groups that have a version
number of 120 or greater.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 455
Overview of clustering

Global detach policy

The global detach policy is the traditional and default policy for all nodes on the
configuration. If there is a read or write I/O failure on a slave node, the master
node performs the usual I/O recovery operations to repair the failure, and, if
required, the plex is detached cluster-wide. All nodes remain in the cluster and
continue to perform I/O, but the redundancy of the mirrors is reduced. When the
problem that caused the I/O failure has been corrected, the disks should be
re-attached and the mirrors that were detached must be recovered before the
redundancy of the data can be restored.

Local detach policy

The local detach policy is designed to support failover applications in large clusters
where the redundancy of the volume is more important than the number of nodes
that can access the volume. If there is a write failure on any node, the usual I/O
recovery operations are performed to repair the failure, and additionally all the
nodes are contacted to see if the disk is still accessible to them. If the write failure
is local, and only seen by a single node, I/O is stopped for the node that first saw
the failure, and an error is returned to the application using the volume. The write
failure is global if more than one node sees the failure. The volume is not disabled.
If required, configure the cluster management software to move the application
to a different node, and/or remove the node that saw the failure from the cluster.
The volume continues to return write errors, as long as one mirror of the volume
has an error. The volume continues to satisfy read requests as long as one good
plex is available.
If the reason for the I/O error is corrected and the node is still a member of the
cluster, it can resume performing I/O from/to the volume without affecting the
redundancy of the data.
The vxdg command can be used to set the disk detach policy on a shared disk
group.
See “Setting the disk detach policy on a shared disk group” on page 482.
Table 13-3 summarizes the effect on a cluster of I/O failure to the disks in a
mirrored volume.
456 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Overview of clustering

Table 13-3 Cluster behavior under I/O failure to a mirrored volume for different
disk detach policies

Type of I/O Local (diskdetpolicy=local) Global (diskdetpolicy=global)

failure

Failure of path to Reads fail only if no plexes remain The plex is detached, and I/O
one disk in a available to the affected node. from/to the volume continues. An
volume for a single Writes to the volume fail. I/O error is generated if no plexes
node remain.

Failure of paths to I/O fails for the affected node. The plex is detached, and I/O
all disks in a from/to the volume continues. An
volume for a single I/O error is generated if no plexes
node remain.

Failure of one or The plex is detached, and I/O The plex is detached, and I/O
more disks in a from/to the volume continues. An from/to the volume continues. An
volume for all I/O error is generated if no plexes I/O error is generated if no plexes
nodes. remain. remain.

Guidelines for choosing detach policies

In most cases it is recommended that you use the global detach policy, and
particularly if any of the following conditions apply:
■ When cluster-wide access to the shared data volumes is more critical than
retaining data redundancy.
■ If only non-mirrored, small mirrored, or hardware mirrored volumes are
configured. In these cases, the global detach policy avoids the system overhead
of the extra messaging that the local detach policy requires.
The local detach policy may be suitable in the following cases:
■ When large mirrored volumes are configured–Resynchronizing a reattached
plex can degrade system performance. The local detach policy can avoid the
need to detach the plex at all. (Alternatively, the dirty region logging (DRL)
feature can be used to reduce the amount of resynchronization that is required.)
■ For clusters with more than four nodes–Keeping an application running on a
particular node is less critical when there are many nodes in a cluster. It may
be possible to configure the cluster management software to move an
application to a node that has access to the volumes. In addition, load balancing
may be able to move applications to a different volume from the one that
experienced the I/O problem. This preserves data redundancy, and other nodes
may still be able to perform I/O from/to the volumes on the disk.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 457
Overview of clustering

Disk group failure policy

The local detach policy by itself is insufficient to determine the desired behavior
if the master node loses access to all disks that contain copies of the configuration
database and logs. In this case, the disk group is disabled. As a result, any action
that would result in an update to log/config copy will also fail from the other
nodes in the cluster. In release 4.1, the disk group failure policy is introduced to
determine the behavior of the master node in such cases.
Table 13-4 shows how the behavior of the master node changes according to the
setting of the failure policy.

Table 13-4 Behavior of master node for different failure policies

Type of I/O Leave Disable Request Leave

failure
(dgfailpolicy= (dgfailpolicy= (dgfailpolicy=
leave) dgdisable) requestleave)

Master node loses The master node The master node The master node
access to all copies panics with the disables the disk leaves the cluster,
of the logs. message “klog update group. after VCS handles all
failed” for a failed the applications
kernel-initiated dependent upon
transaction, or “cvm shared storage by
config update failed” either gracefully
for a failed stopping them or
user-initiated failing them over to
transaction. other nodes of the
cluster.

The behavior of the master node under the disk group failure policy is independent
of the setting of the disk detach policy. If the disk group failure policy is set to
leave, all nodes panic in the unlikely case that none of them can access the log
copies.
If the disk group failure policy is set to requestleave, the master node gracefully
leaves the cluster if the master node loses access to all log/config copies of the
disk group. If the master node loses access to the log/config copies of a shared
disk group, Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) signals the CVM Cluster Veritas Cluster
Server agent. Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) attempts to take offline the CVM group
on the master node. When the CVM group is taken offline, the dependent services
groups are also taken offline. If the dependent applications managed by VCS
cannot be taken offline for some reason, the master node may not be able to leave
the cluster gracefully.
The vxdg command can be used to set the failure policy on a shared disk group.
458 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Overview of clustering

See “Setting the disk group failure policy on a shared disk group” on page 482.

Guidelines for failure policies

If you have a critical disk group that you do not want to become disabled in the
case that the master node loses access to the copies of the logs, set the disk group
failure policy to leave or requestleave. This prevents I/O failure on the master
node disabling the disk group. However, critical applications running on the
master node fail if they lose access to the other shared disk groups. In such a case,
it may be preferable to set the policy to dgdisable, and to allow the disk group to
be disabled.

Note: The requestleave disk group failure policy is supported only for disk groups
containing volumes that have a single plex and that do not have a DCO log attached.

The default settings for the detach and failure policies are global and dgdisable
respectively. You can use the vxdg command to change both the detach and failure
policies on a shared disk group, as shown in this example:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set diskdetpolicy=local dgfailpolicy=leave

Effect of disk connectivity on cluster reconfiguration

The detach policy, previous I/O errors, or access to disks are not considered when
a new master node is chosen. When the master node leaves a cluster, the node
that takes over as master of the cluster may already have seen I/O failures for
one or more disks. Under the local detach policy, if a node was affected before
reconfiguration, and this node then becomes the master, the failure is treated
differently from the global detach policy case.
Some failure scenarios do not result in a disk group failure policy being invoked,
but can potentially impact the cluster. For example, if the local disk detach policy
is in effect, and the new master node has a failed plex, this results in all nodes
detaching the plex because the new master is unaffected by the policy.
The detach policy does not change the requirement that a node joining a cluster
must have access to all the disks in all shared disk groups. Similarly, a node that
is removed from the cluster because of an I/O failure cannot rejoin the cluster
until this requirement is met.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 459
Multiple host failover configurations

Limitations of shared disk groups

Only raw device access may be performed via CVM. It does not support shared
access to file systems in shared volumes unless the appropriate software, such as
Veritas Cluster File System, is installed and configured.

Note: The boot disk group (usually aliased as bootdg) cannot be made
cluster-shareable. It must be private.

The cluster functionality of VxVM does not support RAID-5 volumes, or task
monitoring for cluster-shareable disk groups. These features can, however, be
used in private disk groups that are attached to specific nodes of a cluster.
If you have RAID-5 volumes in a private disk group that you wish to make
shareable, you must first relayout the volumes as a supported volume type such
as stripe-mirror or mirror-stripe. Online relayout of shared volumes is
supported provided that it does not involve RAID-5 volumes.
If a shared disk group contains RAID-5 volumes, deport it and then reimport the
disk group as private on one of the cluster nodes. Reorganize the volumes into
layouts that are supported for shared disk groups, and then deport and reimport
the disk group as shared.

Multiple host failover configurations

Outside the context of CVM, VxVM disk groups can be imported (made available)
on only one host at any given time. When a host imports a (private) disk group,
the volumes and configuration of that disk group become accessible to the host.
If the administrator or system software wants to privately use the same disk group
from another host, the host that already has the disk group imported (importing
host) must deport (give up access to) the disk group. Once deported, the disk group
can be imported by another host.
If two hosts are allowed to access a disk group concurrently without proper
synchronization, such as that provided by Oracle RAC, the configuration of the
disk group, and possibly the contents of volumes, can be corrupted. Similar
corruption can also occur if a file system or database on a raw disk partition is
accessed concurrently by two hosts, so this problem in not limited to Veritas
Volume Manager.

Import lock
When a host in a non-CVM environment imports a disk group, an import lock is
written on all disks in that disk group. The import lock is cleared when the host
460 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Multiple host failover configurations

deports the disk group. The presence of the import lock prevents other hosts from
importing the disk group until the importing host has deported the disk group.
Specifically, when a host imports a disk group, the import normally fails if any
disks within the disk group appear to be locked by another host. This allows
automatic re-importing of disk groups after a reboot (autoimporting) and prevents
imports by another host, even while the first host is shut down. If the importing
host is shut down without deporting the disk group, the disk group can only be
imported by another host by clearing the host ID lock first (discussed later).
The import lock contains a host ID (the host name) reference to identify the
importing host and enforce the lock. Problems can therefore arise if two hosts
have the same host ID.
Since Veritas Volume Manager uses the host name as the host ID (by default), it
is advisable to change the host name of one machine if another machine shares
its host name. To change the host name, use the vxdctl hostid new_hostname
command.

Failover
The import locking scheme works well in an environment where disk groups are
not normally shifted from one system to another. However, consider a setup where
two hosts, Node A and Node B, can access the drives of a disk group. The disk
group is initially imported by Node A, but the administrator wants to access the
disk group from Node B if Node A crashes. Such a failover scenario can be used
to provide manual high availability to data, where the failure of one node does
not prevent access to data. Failover can be combined with a “high availability”
monitor to provide automatic high availability to data: when Node B detects that
Node A has crashed or shut down, Node B imports (fails over) the disk group to
provide access to the volumes.
Veritas Volume Manager can support failover, but it relies on the administrator
or on an external high-availability monitor, such as VCS, to ensure that the first
system is shut down or unavailable before the disk group is imported to another
system.
See “Moving disk groups between systems” on page 246.
See the vxdg(1M) manual page.

Corruption of disk group configuration

If vxdg import is used with -C (clears locks) and/or -f (forces import) to import
a disk group that is still in use from another host, disk group configuration
corruption is likely to occur. Volume content corruption is also likely if a file
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 461
About the cluster functionality of VxVM

system or database is started on the imported volumes before the other host
crashes or shuts down.
If this kind of corruption occurs, your configuration must typically be rebuilt from
scratch and all data be restored from a backup. There are typically numerous
configuration copies for each disk group, but corruption nearly always affects all
configuration copies, so redundancy does not help in this case.
As long as the configuration backup daemon, vxconfigbackupd, is running, VxVM
will backup configurations whenever the configuration is changed. By default,
backups are stored in /etc/vx/cbr/bk. You may also manually backup the
configuration using the vxconfigbackup utility. The configuration can be rebuilt
using the vxrestore utility.
See the vxconfigbackup, vxconfigbackupd, vxconfigrestore man pages.
Disk group configuration corruption usually shows up as missing or duplicate
records in the configuration databases. This can result in a variety of vxconfigd
error messages

VxVM vxconfigd ERROR

V-5-1-569 Disk group group,Disk disk:
Cannot auto-import group: reason

where the reason can describe errors such as:

Association not resolved

Association count is incorrect
Duplicate record in configuration
Configuration records are inconsistent

These errors are typically reported in association with specific disk group
configuration copies, but usually apply to all copies. The following is usually
displayed along with the error:

Disk group has no valid configuration copies

See the Veritas Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

About the cluster functionality of VxVM

A cluster consists of a number of hosts or nodes that share a set of disks. The
following are the main benefits of cluster configurations:
462 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
CVM initialization and configuration

Availability If one node fails, the other nodes can still access the shared disks.
When configured with suitable software, mission-critical applications
can continue running by transferring their execution to a standby
node in the cluster. This ability to provide continuous uninterrupted
service by switching to redundant hardware is commonly termed
failover.

Failover is transparent to users and high-level applications for

database and file-sharing. You must configure cluster management
software, such as Veritas Cluster Server (VCS), to monitor systems
and services, and to restart applications on another node in the event
of either hardware or software failure. VCS also allows you to perform
general administration tasks such as making nodes join or leave a
cluster.

Note that a standby node need not remain idle. It could be used to
serve other applications in parallel.

Off-host Clusters can reduce contention for system resources by performing

processing activities such as backup, decision support and report generation on
the more lightly loaded nodes of the cluster. This allows businesses
to derive enhanced value from their investment in cluster systems.

The Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) is capable of supporting clusters with up to

64 nodes.
The nodes can simultaneously access and manage a set of disks or LUNs under
VxVM control. The same logical view of disk configuration and any changes to
this view are available on all the nodes. When the CVM functionality is enabled,
all cluster nodes can share VxVM objects such as shared disk groups. Private disk
groups are supported in the same way as in a non-clustered environment. This
chapter discusses the cluster functionality that is provided with VxVM.
Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) can be used in a clustered environment.
See “DMP in a clustered environment” on page 164.
Campus cluster configurations (also known as stretch cluster or remote mirror
configurations) can also be configured and administered.
See “About sites and remote mirrors” on page 489.

CVM initialization and configuration

Before any nodes can join a new cluster for the first time, you must supply certain
configuration information during cluster monitor setup. This information is
normally stored in some form of cluster monitor configuration database. The
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 463
CVM initialization and configuration

precise content and format of this information depends on the characteristics of

the cluster monitor. The information required by VxVM is as follows:
■ Cluster ID
■ Node IDs
■ Network addresses of nodes
■ Port addresses
When a node joins the cluster, this information is automatically loaded into VxVM
on that node at node startup time.

Note: The CVM functionality of VxVM is supported only when used with a cluster
monitor that has been configured correctly to work with VxVM.
Use a cluster monitor such as Sun Java™ System Cluster software or GAB (Group
Membership and Atomic Broadcast) in Veritas Cluster Service (VCS). For VCS, the
Veritas product installer collects the required information to configure the cluster
monitor.

The cluster monitor startup procedure effects node initialization, and brings up
the various cluster components (such as VxVM with cluster support, the cluster
monitor, and a distributed lock manager) on the node. Once this is complete,
applications may be started. The cluster monitor startup procedure must be
invoked on each node to be joined to the cluster.
For VxVM in a cluster environment, initialization consists of loading the cluster
configuration information and joining the nodes in the cluster. The first node to
join becomes the master node, and later nodes (slaves) join to the master. If two
nodes join simultaneously, VxVM chooses the master. After a given node joins,
that node has access to the shared disk groups and volumes.

Cluster reconfiguration
Cluster reconfiguration occurs if a node leaves or joins a cluster. Each node’s
cluster monitor continuously watches the other cluster nodes. When the
membership of the cluster changes, the cluster monitor informs VxVM for it to
take appropriate action.
During cluster reconfiguration, VxVM suspends I/O to shared disks. I/O resumes
when the reconfiguration completes. Applications may appear to freeze for a
short time during reconfiguration.
If other operations, such as VxVM operations or recoveries, are in progress, cluster
reconfiguration can be delayed until those operations complete. Volume
464 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
CVM initialization and configuration

reconfigurations do not take place at the same time as cluster reconfigurations.

Depending on the circumstances, an operation may be held up and restarted later.
In most cases, cluster reconfiguration takes precedence. However, if the volume
reconfiguration is in the commit stage, it completes first.
See “Volume reconfiguration” on page 466.
See “vxclustadm utility” on page 464.
See “vxclust utility” on page 464.

vxclust utility
vxclust is used when Sun Java System Cluster software acts as the cluster monitor.

Every time there is a cluster reconfiguration, every node currently in the cluster
runs the vxclust utility at each of several well-orchestrated steps. The cluster
monitor facilities ensure that the same step is executed on all nodes at the same
time. A given step only starts when the previous one has completed on all nodes.
At each step in the reconfiguration, the vxclust utility determines what the CVM
functionality of VxVM should do next. After informing VxVM of its next action,
the vxclust utility waits for the outcome (success, failure, or retry) and
communicates that to the cluster monitor.
If a node does not respond to the vxclust utility request within a specific timeout
period, that node aborts. The vxclust utility then decides whether to restart the
reconfiguration or give up, depending on the circumstances. If the cause of the
reconfiguration is a local, uncorrectable error, vxclust gives up. If a node cannot
complete an operation because another node has left, the surviving node times
out. In this case, the vxclust utility requests a reconfiguration with the expectation
that another node will leave. If no other node leaves, the vxclust utility causes
the local node to leave.
If a reconfiguration step fails, the vxclust utility returns an error to the cluster
monitor. The cluster monitor may decide to abort the node, causing its immediate
departure from the cluster. Any I/O in progress to the shared disk fails and access
to the shared disks is stopped.
vxclust decides what actions to take when it is informed of changes in the cluster.
If a new master node is required (due to failure of the previous master), vxclust
determines which node becomes the new master.

vxclustadm utility
The vxclustadm command provides an interface to the CVM functionality of VxVM
when VCS is used as the cluster monitor. It is also called during cluster startup
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 465
CVM initialization and configuration

and shutdown. In the absence of a cluster monitor, vxclustadm can also be used
to activate or deactivate the CVM functionality of VxVM on any node in a cluster.
The startnode keyword to vxclustadm starts CVM functionality on a cluster node
by passing cluster configuration information to the VxVM kernel. In response to
this command, the kernel and the VxVM configuration daemon, vxconfigd,
perform initialization.
The stopnode keyword stops CVM functionality on a node. It waits for all
outstanding I/O to complete and for all applications to close shared volumes.
The setmaster keyword migrates the CVM master to the specified node. The
migration is an online operation. Symantec recommends that you switch the
master when the cluster is not handling VxVM configuration changes or cluster
reconfiguration operations.
The reinit keyword allows nodes to be added to or removed from a cluster without
stopping the cluster. Before running this command, the cluster configuration file
must have been updated with information about the supported nodes in the cluster.
The nidmap keyword prints a table showing the mapping between CVM node IDs
in VxVM’s cluster-support subsystem and node IDs in the cluster monitor. It also
prints the state of the nodes in the cluster.
The nodestate keyword reports the state of a cluster node and also the reason
for the last abort of the node as shown in this example:

# vxclustadm nodestate

state: out of cluster

reason: user initiated stop

Table 13-5 lists the various reasons that may be given for a node abort.

Table 13-5 Node abort messages

Reason Description

cannot find disk on slave node Missing disk or bad disk on the slave node.

cannot obtain configuration The node cannot read the configuration data due
data to an error such as disk failure.

cluster device open failed Open of a cluster device failed.

clustering license mismatch Clustering license does not match that on the
with master node master node.
466 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
CVM initialization and configuration

Table 13-5 Node abort messages (continued)

Reason Description

clustering license not Clustering license cannot be found.

available

connection refused by master The join operation of a node refused by the master
node.

disk in use by another cluster A disk belongs to a cluster other than the one that
a node is joining.

join timed out during The join operation of a node has timed out due to
reconfiguration reconfiguration taking place in the cluster.

klog update failed Cannot update kernel log copies during the join
operation of a node.

master aborted during join Master node aborted while another node was
joining the cluster.

protocol version out of range Cluster protocol version mismatch or unsupported

version.

recovery in progress Volumes that were opened by the node are still
recovering.

transition to role failed Changing the role of a node to be the master

failed.

user initiated abort Node is out of cluster due to an abort initiated by

the user or by the cluster monitor.

user initiated stop Node is out of cluster due to a stop initiated by

the user or by the cluster monitor.

vxconfigd is not enabled The VxVM configuration daemon is not enabled.

See the vxclustadm(1M) manual page.

Volume reconfiguration
Volume reconfiguration is the process of creating, changing, and removing VxVM
objects such as disk groups, volumes and plexes. In a cluster, all nodes cooperate
to perform such operations. The vxconfigd daemons play an active role in volume
reconfiguration. For reconfiguration to succeed, a vxconfigd daemon must be
running on each of the nodes.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 467
CVM initialization and configuration

See “vxconfigd daemon” on page 467.

A volume reconfiguration transaction is initiated by running a VxVM utility on
the master node. The utility contacts the local vxconfigd daemon on the master
node, which validates the requested change. For example, vxconfigd rejects an
attempt to create a new disk group with the same name as an existing disk group.
The vxconfigd daemon on the master node then sends details of the changes to
the vxconfigd daemons on the slave nodes. The vxconfigd daemons on the slave
nodes then perform their own checking. For example, each slave node checks that
it does not have a private disk group with the same name as the one being created.
If the operation involves a new disk, each node checks that it can access that disk.
When the vxconfigd daemons on all the nodes agree that the proposed change
is reasonable, each notifies its kernel. The kernels then cooperate to either commit
or to abandon the transaction. Before the transaction can be committed, all of the
kernels ensure that no I/O is underway, and block any I/O issued by applications
until the reconfiguration is complete. The master node is responsible both for
initiating the reconfiguration, and for coordinating the commitment of the
transaction. The resulting configuration changes appear to occur simultaneously
on all nodes.
If a vxconfigd daemon on any node goes away during reconfiguration, all nodes
are notified and the operation fails. If any node leaves the cluster, the operation
fails unless the master has already committed it. If the master node leaves the
cluster, the new master node, which was previously a slave node, completes or
fails the operation depending on whether or not it received notification of
successful completion from the previous master node. This notification is
performed in such a way that if the new master does not receive it, neither does
any other slave.
If a node attempts to join a cluster while a volume reconfiguration is being
performed, the result of the reconfiguration depends on how far it has progressed.
If the kernel has not yet been invoked, the volume reconfiguration is suspended
until the node has joined the cluster. If the kernel has been invoked, the node
waits until the reconfiguration is complete before joining the cluster.
When an error occurs, such as when a check on a slave fails or a node leaves the
cluster, the error is returned to the utility and a message is sent to the console on
the master node to identify on which node the error occurred.

vxconfigd daemon
The VxVM configuration daemon, vxconfigd, maintains the configuration of
VxVM objects. It receives cluster-related instructions from the vxclust utility
under Sun Java System Cluster software, or from the kernel when running VCS.
A separate copy of vxconfigd runs on each node, and these copies communicate
468 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
CVM initialization and configuration

with each other over a network. When invoked, a VxVM utility communicates
with the vxconfigd daemon running on the same node; it does not attempt to
connect with vxconfigd daemons on other nodes. During cluster startup,
SunCluster or VCS prompts vxconfigd to begin cluster operation and indicates
whether it is a master node or a slave node.
When a node is initialized for cluster operation, the vxconfigd daemon is notified
that the node is about to join the cluster and is provided with the following
information from the cluster monitor configuration database:
■ cluster ID
■ node IDs
■ master node ID
■ role of the node
■ network address of the node
On the master node, the vxconfigd daemon sets up the shared configuration by
importing shared disk groups, and informs the vxclust utility (for SunCluster)
or the kernel (for VCS) when it is ready for the slave nodes to join the cluster.
On slave nodes, the vxconfigd daemon is notified when the slave node can join
the cluster. When the slave node joins the cluster, the vxconfigd daemon and the
VxVM kernel communicate with their counterparts on the master node to set up
the shared configuration.
When a node leaves the cluster, the kernel notifies the vxconfigd daemon on all
the other nodes. The master node then performs any necessary cleanup. If the
master node leaves the cluster, the kernels select a new master node and the
vxconfigd daemons on all nodes are notified of the choice.

The vxconfigd daemon also participates in volume reconfiguration.

See “Volume reconfiguration” on page 466.

vxconfigd daemon recovery

In a cluster, the vxconfigd daemons on the slave nodes are always connected to
the vxconfigd daemon on the master node. If the vxconfigd daemon is stopped,
volume reconfiguration cannot take place. However, a new node can join the
cluster, as long as the vxconfigd daemon is running on the master node.
If the vxconfigd daemon stops, different actions are taken depending on which
node this occurred:
■ If the vxconfigd daemon is stopped on the master node, the vxconfigd
daemons on the slave nodes periodically attempt to rejoin to the master node.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 469
CVM initialization and configuration

Such attempts do not succeed until the vxconfigd daemon is restarted on the
master. In this case, the vxconfigd daemons on the slave nodes have not lost
information about the shared configuration, so that any displayed configuration
information is correct.
■ If the vxconfigd daemon is stopped on a slave node, the master node takes no
action. When the vxconfigd daemon is restarted on the slave, the slave
vxconfigd daemon attempts to reconnect to the master daemon and to
re-acquire the information about the shared configuration. (Neither the kernel
view of the shared configuration nor access to shared disks is affected.) Until
the vxconfigd daemon on the slave node has successfully reconnected to the
vxconfigd daemon on the master node, it has very little information about
the shared configuration and any attempts to display or modify the shared
configuration can fail. For example, shared disk groups listed using the vxdg
list command are marked as disabled; when the rejoin completes successfully,
they are marked as enabled.
■ If the vxconfigd daemon is stopped on both the master and slave nodes, the
slave nodes do not display accurate configuration information until vxconfigd
is restarted on the master and slave nodes, and the daemons have reconnected.
If the vxclust utility (for SunCluster) or the CVM agent (for VCS) determines that
the vxconfigd daemon has stopped on a node, vxconfigd is restarted
automatically.

Warning: The -r reset option to vxconfigd restarts the vxconfigd daemon and
recreates all states from scratch. This option cannot be used to restart vxconfigd
while a node is joined to a cluster because it causes cluster information to be
discarded.
470 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
CVM initialization and configuration

To restart vxconfigd manually

1 Use the following command to disable failover on any service groups that
contain VxVM objects:

# hagrp -freeze groupname

2 Enter the following command to stop and restart the VxVM configuration
daemon on the affected node:

# vxconfigd -k

3 Use the following command to re-enable failover for the service groups that
you froze in step 1:

# hagrp -unfreeze groupname

Node shutdown
Although it is possible to shut down the cluster on a node by invoking the shutdown
procedure of the node’s cluster monitor, this procedure is intended for terminating
cluster components after stopping any applications on the node that have access
to shared storage. VxVM supports clean node shutdown, which allows a node to
leave the cluster gracefully when all access to shared volumes has ceased. The
host is still operational, but cluster applications cannot be run on it.
The CVM functionality of VxVM maintains global state information for each
volume. This enables VxVM to determine which volumes need to be recovered
when a node crashes. When a node leaves the cluster due to a crash or by some
other means that is not clean, VxVM determines which volumes may have writes
that have not completed and the master node resynchronizes these volumes. It
can use dirty region logging (DRL) or FastResync if these are active for any of the
volumes.
Clean node shutdown must be used after, or in conjunction with, a procedure to
halt all cluster applications. Depending on the characteristics of the clustered
application and its shutdown procedure, a successful shutdown can require a lot
of time (minutes to hours). For instance, many applications have the concept of
draining, where they accept no new work, but complete any work in progress
before exiting. This process can take a long time if, for example, a long-running
transaction is active.
When the VxVM shutdown procedure is invoked, it checks all volumes in all shared
disk groups on the node that is being shut down. The procedure then either
continues with the shutdown, or fails for one of the following reasons:
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 471
Dirty region logging in cluster environments

■ If all volumes in shared disk groups are closed, VxVM makes them unavailable
to applications. Because all nodes are informed that these volumes are closed
on the leaving node, no resynchronization is performed.
■ If any volume in a shared disk group is open, the shutdown procedure fails.
The shutdown procedure can be repeatedly retried until it succeeds. There is
no timeout checking in this operation—it is intended as a service that verifies
that the clustered applications are no longer active.
Once shutdown succeeds, the node has left the cluster. It is not possible to access
the shared volumes until the node joins the cluster again.
Since shutdown can be a lengthy process, other reconfiguration can take place
while shutdown is in progress. Normally, the shutdown attempt is suspended
until the other reconfiguration completes. However, if it is already too far
advanced, the shutdown may complete first.

Cluster shutdown
If all nodes leave a cluster, shared volumes must be recovered when the cluster
is next started if the last node did not leave cleanly, or if resynchronization from
previous nodes leaving uncleanly is incomplete. CVM automatically handles the
recovery and resynchronization tasks when a node joins the cluster.

Dirty region logging in cluster environments

Dirty region logging (DRL) is an optional property of a volume that provides speedy
recovery of mirrored volumes after a system failure. DRL is supported in
cluster-shareable disk groups. This section provides a brief overview of how DRL
behaves in a cluster environment.
In a cluster environment, the VxVM implementation of DRL differs slightly from
the normal implementation.
A dirty region log on a system without cluster support has a recovery map and a
single active map. A CVM DRL, however, has a single recovery map per cluster
and one active map per cluster node.
The dirty region log size in clusters is typically larger than in non-clustered
systems, as it must accommodate a recovery map plus active maps for each node
in the cluster. The size of each map within the dirty region log is one or more
whole blocks. The vxassist command automatically allocates a sufficiently large
dirty region log for the size of the volume and the number of nodes.
472 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

It is possible to reimport a non-shared disk group (and its volumes) as a shared

disk group in a cluster environment. However, the dirty region logs of the imported
disk group may be considered invalid and a full recovery may result.
If a shared disk group is imported as a private disk group on a system without
cluster support, VxVM considers the logs of the shared volumes to be invalid and
conducts a full volume recovery. After the recovery completes, VxVM uses DRL.
The cluster functionality of VxVM can perform a DRL recovery on a non-shared
volume. However, if such a volume is moved to a VxVM system with cluster support
and imported as shared, the dirty region log is probably too small to accommodate
maps for all the cluster nodes. VxVM then marks the log invalid and performs a
full recovery anyway. Similarly, moving a DRL volume from a two-node cluster
to a four-node cluster can result in too small a log size, which the cluster
functionality of VxVM handles with a full volume recovery. In both cases, you
must allocate a new log of sufficient size.
See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.

How DRL works in a cluster environment

When one or more nodes in a cluster crash, DRL must handle the recovery of all
volumes that were in use by those nodes when the crashes occurred. On initial
cluster startup, all active maps are incorporated into the recovery map during
the volume start operation.
Nodes that crash (that is, leave the cluster as dirty) are not allowed to rejoin the
cluster until their DRL active maps have been incorporated into the recovery maps
on all affected volumes. The recovery utilities compare a crashed node's active
maps with the recovery map and make any necessary updates. Only then can the
node rejoin the cluster and resume I/O to the volume (which overwrites the active
map). During this time, other nodes can continue to perform I/O.
VxVM tracks which nodes have crashed. If multiple node recoveries are underway
in a cluster at a given time. VxVM tracks changes in the state of DRL recovery
and prevents I/O collisions.
The master node performs volatile tracking of DRL recovery map updates for each
volume, and prevents multiple utilities from changing the recovery map
simultaneously.

Administering VxVM in cluster environments

The following sections describe the administration of VxVM’s cluster functionality.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 473
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

Requesting node status and discovering the master node

The vxdctl utility controls the operation of the vxconfigd volume configuration
daemon. The -c option can be used to request cluster information and to find out
which node is the master. To determine whether the vxconfigd daemon is enabled
and/or running, use the following command:

vxdctl -c mode

Table 13-6 shows the various messages that may be output according to the current
status of the cluster node.

Table 13-6 Cluster status messages

Status message Description

mode: enabled: The node is the master.

cluster active - MASTER
master: mozart

mode: enabled: The node is a slave.

cluster active - SLAVE
master: mozart

mode: enabled: The node has not yet been assigned a role,
cluster active - role not set and is in the process of joining the cluster.
master: mozart
state: joining
reconfig: master update

mode: enabled: The node is configured as a slave, and is in

cluster active - SLAVE the process of joining the cluster.
master: mozart
state: joining

mode: enabled: The cluster is not active on this node.

cluster inactive

mode: booted: Enable root disk encapsulation but not

master: ts4200-04 transactions.

mode: disabled: Disable transactions.

474 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

If the vxconfigd daemon is disabled, no cluster information is displayed.

See the vxdctl(1M) manual page.

Changing the CVM master manually

You can change the CVM master manually from one node in the cluster to another
node, while the cluster is online. CVM migrates the master node, and reconfigures
the cluster.
Symantec recommends that you switch the master when the cluster is not handling
VxVM configuration changes or cluster reconfiguration operations. In most cases,
CVM aborts the operation to change the master, if CVM detects that any
configuration changes are occurring in the VxVM or the cluster. After the master
change operation starts reconfiguring the cluster, other commands that require
configuration changes will fail.
See “Errors during CVM master switching” on page 475.
To change the master online, a cluster protocol version 100 or later is required.
To change the CVM master manually
1 To view the current master, use one of the following commands:

# vxclustadm nidmap
Name CVM Nid CM Nid State
system01 0 0 Joined: Slave
system02 1 1 Joined: Master

# vxdctl -c mode
mode: enabled: cluster active - MASTER
master: system02

In this example, the CVM master is system02.

2 From any node on the cluster, run the following command to change the CVM
master:

# vxclustadm setmaster nodename

where nodename specifies the name of the new CVM master.

The following example shows changing the master on a cluster from system02
to system01:

# vxclustadm setmaster system01

 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 475
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

3 To monitor the master switching, use the following command:

# vxclustadm -v nodestate
state: cluster member
nodeId=0
masterId=0
neighborId=1
members[0]=0xf
joiners[0]=0x0
leavers[0]=0x0
members[1]=0x0
joiners[1]=0x0
leavers[1]=0x0
reconfig_seqnum=0x9f9767
vxfen=off
state: master switching in progress
reconfig: vxconfigd in join

In this example, the state indicates that master is being changed.

4 To verify whether the master has successfully changed, use one of the
following commands:

# vxclustadm nidmap
Name CVM Nid CM Nid State
system01 0 0 Joined: Master
system02 1 1 Joined: Slave

# vxdctl -c mode
mode: enabled: cluster active - MASTER
master: system01

Errors during CVM master switching

Symantec recommends that you switch the master when the cluster is not handling
VxVM or cluster configuration changes.
In most cases, CVM aborts the operation to change the master, if CVM detects
any configuration changes in progress. CVM logs the reason for the failure into
the system logs. In some cases, the failure is displayed in the vxclustadm
setmaster output as follows:

# vxclustadm setmaster system01

VxVM vxclustadm ERROR V-5-1-0 Master switching, a reconfiguration or
476 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

a transaction is in progress.
Try again

In some cases, if the master switching operation is interrupted by another

reconfiguration operation, the master change fails. In this case, the existing master
remains the master of the cluster. After the reconfiguration is complete, reissue
the vxclustadm setmaster command to change the master.
If the master switching operation has started the reconfiguration, any command
that initiates a configuration change fails with the following error:

Node processing a master-switch request. Retry operation.

If you see this message, retry the command after the master switching has
completed.

Determining if a LUN is in a shareable disk group

The vxdisk utility manages VxVM disks. To use the vxdisk utility to determine
whether a LUN is part of a cluster-shareable disk group, use the following
command:

# vxdisk list accessname

where accessname is the disk access name (or device name).

For example, a portion of the output from this command (for the device c4t1d0)
is shown here:

Device: c4t1d0
devicetag: c4t1d0
type: auto
clusterid: cvm2
disk: name=shdg01 id=963616090.1034.cvm2
timeout: 30
group: name=shdg id=963616065.1032.cvm2
flags: online ready autoconfig shared imported
...

Note that the clusterid field is set to cvm2 (the name of the cluster), and the
flags field includes an entry for shared. The imported flag is only set if a node
is a part of the cluster and the disk group is imported.
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Listing shared disk groups

vxdg can be used to list information about shared disk groups. To display
information for all disk groups, use the following command:

# vxdg list

Example output from this command is displayed here:

NAME STATE ID
group2 enabled,shared 774575420.1170.teal
group1 enabled,shared 774222028.1090.teal

Shared disk groups are designated with the flag shared.

To display information for shared disk groups only, use the following command:

# vxdg -s list

Example output from this command is as follows:

NAME STATE ID
group2 enabled,shared 774575420.1170.teal
group1 enabled,shared 774222028.1090.teal

To display information about one specific disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg list diskgroup

The following is example output for the command vxdg list tempdg on the
master:

Group: tempdg
dgid: 1245902808.74.ts4200-04
import-id: 33792.73
flags: shared cds
version: 150
alignment: 8192 (bytes)
local-activation: shared-write
cluster-actv-modes: ts4200-04=sw ts4200-06=sw ts4200-05=sw
ssb: on
autotagging: on
detach-policy: global
dg-fail-policy: dgdisable
copies: nconfig=default nlog=default
config: seqno=0.1027 permlen=0 free=0 templen=0 loglen=0
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Note that the flags field is set to shared. The output for the same command when
run on a slave is slightly different. The local-activation and
cluster-actv-modes fields display the activation mode for this node and for each
node in the cluster respectively. The detach-policy and dg-fail-policy fields
indicate how the cluster behaves in the event of loss of connectivity to the disks,
and to the configuration and log copies on the disks.

Creating a shared disk group

You can run the command to create a shared disk group on a master node or a
slave node. If you create the disk group on a slave node, the command is shipped
to the master and executed on the master.

Note: For Sun Clusters, the command to create shared disk groups can only be
run from the master node.

If the cluster software has been run to set up the cluster, a shared disk group can
be created using the following command:

# vxdg -s init diskgroup [diskname=]devicenames

where diskgroup is the disk group name, diskname is the administrative name
chosen for a VM disk, and devicename is the device name (or disk access name).

Warning: The operating system cannot tell if a disk is shared. To protect data
integrity when dealing with disks that can be accessed by multiple systems, use
the correct designation when adding a disk to a disk group. VxVM allows you to
add a disk that is not physically shared to a shared disk group if the node where
the disk is accessible is the only node in the cluster. However, this means that
other nodes cannot join the cluster. Furthermore, if you attempt to add the same
disk to different disk groups (private or shared) on two nodes at the same time,
the results are undefined. Perform all configuration on one node only, and
preferably on the master node.

Importing disk groups as shared

You can import shared disk groups on a master node or a slave node. If you run
the command to import the shared disk group on a slave node, the command is
shipped to the master and executed on the master.
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Note: For Sun Clusters, the command to import shared disk groups can only be
run from the master node.

Disk groups can be imported as shared using the vxdg -s import command. If
the disk groups are set up before the cluster software is run, the disk groups can
be imported into the cluster arrangement using the following command:

# vxdg -s import diskgroup

where diskgroup is the disk group name or ID. On subsequent cluster restarts, the
disk group is automatically imported as shared. Note that it can be necessary to
deport the disk group (using the vxdg deport diskgroup command) before
invoking the vxdg utility.

Forcibly importing a disk group

You can use the -f option to the vxdg command to import a disk group forcibly.

Warning: The force option(-f) must be used with caution and only if you are fully
aware of the consequences such as possible data corruption.

When a cluster is restarted, VxVM can refuse to auto-import a disk group for one
of the following reasons:
■ A disk in the disk group is no longer accessible because of hardware errors on
the disk. In this case, use the following command to forcibly reimport the disk
group:

# vxdg -s -f import diskgroup

Note: After a forced import, the data on the volumes may not be available and
some of the volumes may be in the disabled state.
■ Some of the disks in the shared disk group are not accessible, so the disk group
cannot access all of its disks. In this case, a forced import is unsafe and must
not be attempted because it can result in inconsistent mirrors.

Handling cloned disks in a shared disk group

If a disk is cloned or copied in such a way to created a duplicate disk ID, you must
perform special actions to import the disk into VxVM. The procedures are the
same for shared disk groups as for private disk groups. When you are ready to
import the disk, specify the -s option to the vxdg import command:

# vxdg import -s diskgroup

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See “Handling cloned disks with duplicated identifiers” on page 252.

Converting a disk group from shared to private

You can convert shared disk groups on a master node or a slave node. If you run
the command to convert the shared disk group on a slave node, the command is
shipped to the master and executed on the master.

Note: For Sun Clusters, the command to convert shared disk groups can only be
run from the master node.

To convert a shared disk group to a private disk group, first deport it on the master
node using this command:

# vxdg deport diskgroup

Then reimport the disk group on any cluster node using this command:

# vxdg import diskgroup

Moving objects between shared disk groups

You can move objects between shared disk groups on a master node or a slave
node. If you run the command to move objects between shared disk groups on a
slave node, the command is shipped to the master and executed on the master.

Note: For Sun Clusters, the command to move objects between shared disk groups
can only be run from the master node.

You can use the vxdg move command to move a self-contained set of VxVM objects
such as disks and top-level volumes between disk groups. In a cluster, you can
move such objects between private disk groups on any cluster node where those
disk groups are imported.
See “Moving objects between disk groups” on page 277.

Splitting shared disk groups

You can use the vxdg split command to remove a self-contained set of VxVM
objects from an imported disk group, and move them to a newly created disk
group.
See “Splitting disk groups” on page 280.
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Splitting a private disk group creates a private disk group, and splitting a shared
disk group creates a shared disk group. You can split a private disk group on any
cluster node where that disk group is imported.
You can split a shared disk group or create a shared target disk group on a master
node or a slave node. If you run the command to split a shared disk group or to
create a shared target disk group on a slave node, the command is shipped to the
master and executed on the master.

Note: For Sun Clusters, the command to split a shared disk group or create a shared
target disk group can only be run from the master node.

Joining shared disk groups

You cannot join a private disk group and a shared disk group.
You can use the vxdg join command to merge the contents of two imported disk
groups. In a cluster, you can join two private disk groups on any cluster node
where those disk groups are imported.
If the source disk group and the target disk group are both shared, you can perform
the join from a master node or a slave node. If you run the command to perform
the join on a slave node, the command is shipped to the master and executed on
the master.

Note: For Sun Clusters, the command to perform the join can only be run from
the master node.

See “Joining disk groups” on page 282.

Changing the activation mode on a shared disk group

The activation mode for access by a cluster node to a shared disk group is set
directly on that node.
The activation mode of a shared disk group can be changed using the following
command:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set activation=mode

The activation mode is one of exclusivewrite or ew, readonly or ro, sharedread

or sr, sharedwrite or sw, or off.
482 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

If you use this command to change the activation mode of a shared disk group,
you must first change the activation mode to off before setting it to any other
value, as shown here:

# vxdg -g myshdg set activation=off

# vxdg -g myshdg set activation=readonly

See “Activation modes of shared disk groups” on page 451.

Setting the disk detach policy on a shared disk group

The vxdg command may be used to set either the global or local disk detach
policy for a shared disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set diskdetpolicy=global|local

The default disk detach policy is global.

Setting the disk group failure policy on a shared disk group

The vxdg command may be used to set either the dgdisable or leave failure policy
for a shared disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set dgfailpolicy=dgdisable|leave|requestleave

The default failure policy is dgdisable.

Creating volumes with exclusive open access by a node

When using the vxassist command to create a volume, you can use the
exclusive=on attribute to specify that the volume may only be opened by one
node in the cluster at a time. For example, to create the mirrored volume volmir
in the disk group dskgrp, and configure it for exclusive open, use the following
command:

# vxassist -g dskgrp make volmir 5g layout=mirror exclusive=on

Multiple opens by the same node are also supported. Any attempts by other nodes
to open the volume fail until the final close of the volume by the node that opened
it.
Specifying exclusive=off instead means that more than one node in a cluster
can open a volume simultaneously. This is the default behavior.
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 483
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

Setting exclusive open access to a volume by a node

Exclusive open access on a volume can be set from the any node in the cluster.
Ensure that none of the nodes in the cluster have the volume open when setting
this attribute.
You can set the exclusive=on attribute with the vxvol command to specify that
an existing volume may only be opened by one node in the cluster at a time.
For example, to set exclusive open on the volume volmir in the disk group dskgrp,
use the following command:

# vxvol -g dskgrp set exclusive=on volmir

Multiple opens by the same node are also supported. Any attempts by other nodes
to open the volume fail until the final close of the volume by the node that opened
it.
Specifying exclusive=off instead means that more than one node in a cluster
can open a volume simultaneously. This is the default behavior.

Displaying the cluster protocol version

The following command displays the cluster protocol version running on a node:

# vxdctl list

This command produces output similar to the following:

Volboot file
version: 3/1
seqno: 0.19
cluster protocol version: 100
hostid: giga
entries:

You can also check the existing cluster protocol version using the following
command:

# vxdctl protocolversion

This produces output similar to the following:

Cluster running at protocol 100

484 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

Displaying the supported cluster protocol version range

The following command displays the maximum and minimum protocol version
supported by the node and the current protocol version:

# vxdctl support

This command produces output similar to the following:

Support information:
vxconfigd_vrsn: 31
dg_minimum: 20
dg_maximum: 160
kernel: 31
protocol_minimum: 90
protocol_maximum: 100
protocol_current: 100

You can also use the following command to display the maximum and minimum
cluster protocol version supported by the current Veritas Volume Manager release:

# vxdctl protocolrange

This produces output similar to the following:

minprotoversion: 90, maxprotoversion: 100

Recovering volumes in shared disk groups

The vxrecover utility is used to recover plexes and volumes after disk replacement.
When a node leaves a cluster, it can leave some mirrors in an inconsistent state.
The vxrecover utility can be used to recover such volumes. The -c option to
vxrecover causes it to recover all volumes in shared disk groups. The vxconfigd
daemon automatically calls the vxrecover utility with the -c option when
necessary.

Warning: While the vxrecover utility is active, there can be some degradation in
system performance.

Obtaining cluster performance statistics

The vxstat utility returns statistics for specified objects. In a cluster environment,
vxstat gathers statistics from all of the nodes in the cluster. The statistics give
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 485
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

the total usage, by all nodes, for the requested objects. If a local object is specified,
its local usage is returned.
You can optionally specify a subset of nodes using the following form of the
command:

# vxstat -g diskgroup -n node[,node...]

where node is the CVM node ID number. You can find out the CVM node ID by
using the following command:

# vxclustadm nidmap

If a comma-separated list of nodes is supplied, the vxstat utility displays the sum
of the statistics for the nodes in the list.
For example, to obtain statistics for node 2, volume vol1,use the following
command:

# vxstat -g diskgroup -n 2 vol1

This command produces output similar to the following:

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

TYP NAME READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE
vol vol1 2421 0 600000 0 99.0 0.0

To obtain and display statistics for the entire cluster, use the following command:

# vxstat -b

The statistics for all nodes are summed. For example, if node 1 performed 100 I/O
operations and node 2 performed 200 I/O operations, vxstat -b displays a total
of 300 I/O operations.

Administering CVM from the slave node

CVM requires that the master node of the cluster executes configuration
commands, which change the object configuration of a CVM shared disk group.
Examples of configuration changes include creating shared disk groups, importing
shared disk groups, deporting shared disk groups, and creating volumes or
snapshots in a shared disk group.
Starting in this release, you can issue most configuration commands that operate
on the shared disk group from any node in the cluster. If you issue the command
on the slave node, CVM ships the commands from the slave node to the master
node. CVM then executes the command on the master node. In normal conditions,
we recommend that you issue configuration-changing commands for a shared
486 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

disk group on the master node. If the circumstances require, you can issue these
commands from the slave node.
Commands that operate on private disk groups are not shipped to the master
node. Similarly, CVM does not ship commands that operate locally on the slave
node, such as vxprint and vxdisk list.

Note: In Sun Clusters, VxVM supports shared disk group configuration commands
only on the master node.

When you issue a command on the slave that is executed on the master, the
command output (on the slave node) displays the object names corresponding to
the master node. For example, the command displays the disk access name (daname)
from the master node.
When run from a slave node, a query command such as vxtask or vxstat displays
the status of the commands on the slave node. The command does not show the
status of commands that originated from the slave node and that are executing
on the master node.
Note the following error handling for commands that you originate from the slave
node, which CVM executes on the master:
■ If the vxconfigd daemon on either the slave node or on the master node fails,
the command exits. The instance of the command on the master also exits. To
determine if the command executed successfully, use the vxprint command
to check the status of the VxVM objects.
■ If the slave node that shipped the command or the master node leaves the
cluster while the master is executing the command, the command exits on the
master node as well as on the slave node. To determine if the command
executed successfully, use thevxprint command to check the status of the
VxVM objects.
Note the following limitations for issuing CVM commands from the slave node:
■ This functionality is only available in VCS clusters. It is not supported for Sun
Clusters.
■ The CVM protocol version 100 or later is required on all nodes in the cluster.
See “Displaying the cluster protocol version” on page 483.
■ CVM uses the values in the defaults file on the master node when CVM executes
the command. To avoid any ambiguity, we recommend that you use the same
values in the defaults file for each of the nodes in the cluster.
■ CVM does not support executing all commands on the slave node. You must
issue the following commands only on the master node:
 Administering cluster functionality (CVM) 487
Administering VxVM in cluster environments

■ Commands that specify a controller name. For example:

# vxassist -g shareddg make sharedvol 20M ctlr:fscsi0

■ Commands that specify both a shared disk group and a private disk group.
For example:

# vxdg destroy privatedg shareddg

■ Commands that include the defaults file as an argument. For example:

# vxassist -d defaults_file

■ Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) commands including vxibc, vxrlink,

vxrsync, vxrvg, vrport, vrstat, and vradmin.

■ The vxdisk command options that act on shared disk groups.

See “CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node” on page 562.
488 Administering cluster functionality (CVM)
Administering VxVM in cluster environments
 Chapter 14
Administering sites and
remote mirrors
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ About sites and remote mirrors

■ Making an existing disk group site consistent

■ Configuring a new disk group as a Remote Mirror configuration

■ Fire drill — testing the configuration

■ Changing the site name

■ Administering the Remote Mirror configuration

■ Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites

■ Displaying site information

■ Failure and recovery scenarios

About sites and remote mirrors

In a Remote Mirror configuration (also known as a campus cluster or stretch
cluster) the hosts and storage of a cluster that would usually be located in one
place, are instead divided between two or more sites. These sites are typically
connected via a redundant high-capacity network that provides access to storage
and private link communication between the cluster nodes.
Figure 14-1 shows a typical two-site remote mirror configuration.
490 Administering sites and remote mirrors
About sites and remote mirrors

Figure 14-1 Example of a two-site remote mirror configuration

Site A Site B
Private network

Cluster Metropolitan or Cluster

nodes wide area nodes
network link
(Fibre Channel
or DWDM)

Fibre Channel
switch
Fibre Channel
switch

Disk enclosures Disk enclosures

If a disk group is configured across the storage at the sites, and inter-site
communication is disrupted, there is a possibility of a serial split brain condition
arising if each site continues to update the local disk group configuration copies.
See “Handling conflicting configuration copies” on page 263.
VxVM provides mechanisms for dealing with the serial split brain condition,
monitoring the health of a remote mirror, and testing the robustness of the cluster
against various types of failure (also known as fire drill).
For applications and services to function correctly at a site when other sites have
become inaccessible, at least one complete plex of each volume must be configured
at each site (site-based allocation), and the consistency of the data in the plexes
at each site must be ensured (site consistency).
By tagging disks with site names, storage can be allocated from the correct location
when creating, resizing or relocating a volume, and when changing a volume’s
layout.
As shown in the examples, the network connectivity can be Fibre Channel (FC) or
Dense Wavelength Division Multiplex (DWDM). The storage network and the
heartbeat network can be the same network.
 Administering sites and remote mirrors 491
About sites and remote mirrors

Figure 14-2 shows an example of a site-consistent volume with two plexes

configured at each of two sites.

Figure 14-2 Site-consistent volume with two plexes at each of two sites

Site A Site B

Disk group

Volume V

Plex Plex
Plex P2 Plex P3
P1 P4

The storage for plexes P1 and P2 is allocated storage that is tagged as belonging
to site A, and the storage for plexes P3 and P4 is allocated storage that is tagged
as belonging to site B.
Although not shown in this figure, DCO log volumes are also mirrored across the
sites, and disk group configuration copies are distributed across the sites.
Site consistency means that the data in the plexes for a volume must be consistent
at each site. The site consistency of a volume is ensured by detaching a site when
its last complete plex fails at that site. If a site fails, all its plexes are detached and
the site is said to be detached. If site consistency is not on, only the plex that fails
is detached. The remaining volumes and their plexes on that site are not detached.
To enhance read performance, VxVM will service reads from the plexes at the
local site where an application is running if the siteread read policy is set on a
volume. Writes are written to plexes at all sites.
Figure 14-3 shows a configuration with remote storage only that is also supported.
492 Administering sites and remote mirrors
About sites and remote mirrors

Figure 14-3 Example of a two-site configuration with remote storage only

Site A Site B

Cluster or
standalone
system Metropolitan
or wide area
network link
(Fibre Channel
Fibre or DWDM)
Channel
switch Fibre Channel
switch

Disk enclosures Disk enclosures

About site-based allocation

Site-based allocation policies are enforced by default in a site-configured disk
group. Site-based allocation requires that each volume has at least one plex at
each site that is configured in the disk group. When a new volume is created in a
site-configured disk group, the allsites attribute set to on, by default. The
allsites attribute indicates that the volume must have at least one plex on each
configured site in the disk group. For new volumes, the read policy is set to
siteread by default.

If mirroring across sites is not required, or is not possible (as is the case for RAID-5
volumes), specify the allsites=off attribute to the vxassist command. If sites
are configured in the disk group, a plex will always be confined to a site and will
not span across sites. This enforcement cannot be overridden.
Before adding a new site to a disk group, be sure to meet the following
requirements:
■ Disks from the site being added (site tagged) are present or added to the disk
group.
■ Each existing volume with allsites set in the disk group must have at least
one plex at the site being added. If this condition is not met, the command to
 Administering sites and remote mirrors 493
About sites and remote mirrors

add the site to the disk group fails. If the -f option is specified, the command
does not fail, but instead it sets the allsites attribute for the volume to off.

Note: By default, volumes created will be mirrored when sites are configured in
a disk group. Initial synchronization occurs between mirrors. Depending on the
size of the volume, synchronization may take a long time. If you do not need to
perform an initial synchronization across mirrors, use init=active with the
vxassist command.

About site consistency

Site consistency means that at any point in time, the data at each site is consistent
with the application for a given set of volumes. A site-consistent volume must
have at least one plex, or mirror, on each configured site in the disk group. The
site consistency is ensured by detaching a site when a site-consistent volume loses
its last complete plex on that site. The site detach detaches all the plexes on that
site and also disallows further configuration updates to the configuration copies
on that site. Turn on this behavior by setting the siteconsistent attribute to on
on the desired volumes.
If you set the siteconsistent attribute to off, only the plex that fails is detached.
The plexes for the remaining volumes on that site are not detached.
The siteconsistent attribute is also present at the disk group level and can be
used to turn on or off the site consistency functionality in the disk group boundary.
In addition, if you turn on the siteconsistent attribute for a disk group, each
new volume created in the disk group inherits the site consistency of the disk
group, by default. Setting the siteconsistent attribute on a disk group does not
affect siteconsistent attributes for existing volumes. You can also control the
site consistency on individual volumes.
By default, a volume inherits the value that is set on its disk group.
By default, creating a site-consistent volume also creates an associated version
20 DCO volume, and enables Persistent FastResync on the volume. This allows
faster recovery of the volume during the reattachment of a site.
See “Configuring site consistency on a volume” on page 501.
Before setting site consistency on a disk group, be sure to meet the following
requirements:
■ A license enabling the Site Awareness feature must be purchased for each host
in the Remote Mirror configuration.
494 Administering sites and remote mirrors
About sites and remote mirrors

■ At least two sites must be configured in the disk group before site consistency
is turned on.
See “Making an existing disk group site consistent” on page 495.
■ All the disks in a disk group must be registered to one of the sites before you
can set the siteconsistent attribute on the disk group.

About site tags

In a Remote Mirror configuration, each storage device in the disk group must be
tagged with site information. The site tag indicates the site to which the device
is associated. VxVM provides a facility to tag VxVM-initialized disks with an
arbitrary name-value pair. The tag name site is reserved by VxVM and is used
to identify the site information of tagged disks. The command vxdisk settag
can be used to tag multiple disks or all disks from an enclosure or disks from
multiple enclosures. The tagging can be restricted to disks in a disk group by
specifying the disk group with the command.
You can use automatic site tagging to assign site tags to disks when adding them
to a disk group. When automatic site tagging is on, newly added disks or LUNs
inherit the site tag from the site-enclosure mapping stored in the disk group. To
use automatic site tagging, turn on automatic site tagging for a disk group, and
then assign the site names to the enclosures in the disk group. Any disks or LUNs
in that disk group inherit the tag from the enclosure to which they belong.
See “Configuring automatic site tagging for a disk group” on page 500.

About the site read policy

To enhance read performance, VxVM will service reads from the plexes at the
local site where an application is running, if the siteread read policy is set on a
volume. Writes are written to plexes at all sites. By tagging hosts with site
information, VxVM identifies which hosts belong to which site. Reads initiated
by a host from one site are then satisfied by disks which are tagged with the same
site. Tagging hosts and disks with correct site information gives you maximum
read performance when siteread read policy is used.
If a license enabling the Site Awareness feature is available on all the hosts in the
Remote Mirror configuration, the disk group is configured for site consistency
with several sites enabled, and the allsites=on attribute is specified for a volume,
the default read policy is siteread.
If the siteread policy is not set, use the following command to set the read policy
to siteread policy on a volume:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] rdpol siteread volume

 Administering sites and remote mirrors 495
Making an existing disk group site consistent

This command has no effect if a site name has not been set for the host.
See “Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes” on page 391.

Making an existing disk group site consistent

The site consistency feature requires that a license enabling the site awareness
feature has been purchased for all hosts at all sites that participate in the
configuration.
To make an existing disk group site consistent
1 Ensure that the disk group is updated to at least version 140 by running the
vxdg upgrade command on it:

# vxdg upgrade diskgroup

2 On each host that can access the disk group, define the site name:

# vxdctl set site=sitename

3 Tag all the disks in the disk group with the appropriate site name:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] settag site=sitename disk1 disk2

Or, to tag all the disks in a specified enclosure, use the following command:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] settag site=sitename

encl:encl_name

4 Use the vxdg move command to move any unsupported RAID-5 volumes to
another disk group. Alternatively, use the vxassist convert commands to
convert the volumes to a supported layout such as mirror or mirror-stripe.
You can use the site and mirror=site storage allocation attribute to ensure
that the plexes are created on the correct storage.
5 Use the vxevac command to ensure that the volumes have at least one plex
at each site. You can use the site and mirror=site storage allocation attribute
to ensure that the plexes are created on the correct storage.
See the vxevac(1m) manual page.
6 Register a site record for each site with the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup addsite sitename

496 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Configuring a new disk group as a Remote Mirror configuration

7 Turn on site consistency for the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set siteconsistent=on

8 Turn on the allsites flag for the volume which requires data replication to
each site:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set allsites=on volume

9 Turn on site consistency for each existing volume in the disk group for which
site consistency is needed. You also need to attach DCOv20 if it is not attached
already. DCOv20 is required to ensure that site detach and reattach are
instantaneous.
See “Preparing a volume for DRL and instant snapshots” on page 380.

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set siteconsistent=on volume ...

Configuring a new disk group as a Remote Mirror

configuration
Note: The Remote Mirror feature requires that a license enabling the Site
Awareness feature has been purchased for all hosts at all sites that participate in
the configuration.

This section describes setting up a new disk group. To configure an existing disk
group as a Remote Mirror configuration, additional steps may be required.
See “Making an existing disk group site consistent” on page 495.
Setting up a new disk group for a Remote Mirror configuration
1 Define the site name for each host that can access the disk group.

# vxdctl set site=sitename

To verify the site name assigned to the host, use the following command:

# vxdctl list

2 Create the disk group with storage from each site.

 Administering sites and remote mirrors 497
Configuring a new disk group as a Remote Mirror configuration

3 Register a site record to the disk group, for each site.

# vxdg -g diskgroup [-f] addsite sitename

4 Do one of the following:

■ To tag all disks regardless of the disk group, do the following:
Assign a site name to the disks or enclosures. You can set site tags at the
disk level, or at the enclosure level. If you specify one or more enclosures,
the site tag applies to the disks in that enclosure that are within the disk
group. Enter the following command:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] settag site=sitename \

disk disk1... |encl:encl_name encl:encl_name1...

where the disks can be specified either by the disk access name or the disk
media name.
■ To autotag new disks added to the disk group based on the enclosure to
which they belong, perform the following steps in the order presented.
These steps are limited to disks in a single group.
■ Set the autotagging policy to on for the disk group, if required.
Automatic tagging is the default setting, so this step is only required
if the autotagging policy was previously disabled. To turn on
autotagging, enter the following command:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] set autotagging=on

■ Add site-enclosure mapping information to the diskgroup for each

site-enclosure combination. Enter the following command:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] settag encl:encl_name1 site=sitename1

As a result of this command, all disks of enclosure encl_name1 in the

specified disk group are tagged with site information.

5 Turn on the site consistency requirement for a disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup set siteconsistent=on

498 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Fire drill — testing the configuration

Fire drill — testing the configuration

Warning: To avoid potential loss of service or data, it is recommended that you do
not use these procedures in a production environment.

After validating the consistency of the volumes and disk groups at your sites, you
should validate the procedures that you will use in the event of the various possible
types of failure. A fire drill lets you test that a site can be brought up cleanly during
recovery from a disaster scenario such as site failure.

Simulating site failure

To simulate the failure of a site, use the following command to detach all the
devices at a specified site:

# vxdg -g diskgroup [-f] detachsite sitename

The -f option must be specified if any plexes configured on storage at the site are
currently online.
After the site is detached, the application should run correctly on the available
site. This step verifies that the primary site is fine. Continue the fire drill by
verifying the secondary site.

Verifying the secondary site

After detaching the primary site, verify whether the application starts correctly
on a secondary site. The fire drill ensures that the application can run on the
secondary if disaster strikes the primary site. These procedures assume that the
application is running correctly before the fire drill operation begins.
To verify the secondary site, import the detached site on a different host using
the following command:

# vxdg -o site=sitename import dgname

Then start the application. If the application runs correctly on the secondary site,
this step verifies the integrity of the secondary site.

Recovery from simulated site failure

After verifying the data on the secondary for a simulated site failure, deport the
disk group from the secondary site. Then reattach the site back to the primary
host.
 Administering sites and remote mirrors 499
Changing the site name

Use the following commands to reattach a site and recover the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup [-o overridessb] reattachsite sitename

# vxrecover -g diskgroup

It may be necessary to specify the -o overridessb option if a serial split-brain

condition is indicated.

Changing the site name

You can change the site name, or tag, that is used to identify each site in a Remote
Mirror configuration. Renaming the site changes the site record in the disk group.
The site name is also changed for all of the disks and enclosures that are tagged
with the existing site name.
After you rename a site, you need to explicitly change the site name for each host
that belongs to that site.
See “Resetting the site name for a host” on page 499.
To rename the site
◆ Specify the new site name as follows:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] renamesite old_sitename new_sitename

Resetting the site name for a host

If you rename a site, you need to explicitly set each host to refer to the new site
name.
To reset a site name for a host
1 Remove the site name from a host:

# vxdctl [-F] unset site

The -F option is required if any imported disk groups are registered to the
site.
2 Set the new site name for the host.

# vxdctl set site=sitename

3 Verify the new site name:

# vxdctl list
500 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Administering the Remote Mirror configuration

Administering the Remote Mirror configuration

After the Remote Mirror site is configured, refer to the following sections for
additional tasks to maintain the configuration.

Configuring site tagging for disks or enclosures

To set up a Remote Mirror configuration, specify to which site each storage device
in the disk group belongs. Assign a site tag to one or more disks or enclosures. If
the disk or enclosure does not belong to a disk group, you must use this method
to assign a site tag.
To tag disks or enclosures with a site name
◆ Assign a site name to one or more disks or enclosures, using the following
command:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] settag site=sitename \

disk disk1...|encl:encl_name encl:encl_name1...

where the disks can be specified either by the disk access name or the disk
media name.
To display the disks or enclosures registered to a site
◆ To check which disks or enclosures are registered to a site, use the following
command:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] listtag

To remove the site tag from a disk or enclosure

◆ To remove the site tag from a disk or enclosure, use the following command:

# vxdisk rmtag site=sitename \

disk disk1...|encl:encl_name encl:encl_name1...

Configuring automatic site tagging for a disk group

Configure automatic site tagging if you want disks or LUNs to inherit the tag from
the enclosure. After you turn on automatic site tagging for a disk group, assign
the site names to the enclosures in the disk group. Any disks or LUNs added to
that disk group inherit the tag from the enclosure to which they belong.
 Administering sites and remote mirrors 501
Administering the Remote Mirror configuration

To configure automatic site tagging for a disk group

1 Set the autotagging policy to on for the disk group. Automatic tagging is the
default setting, so this step is only required if the autotagging policy was
previously disabled.
To turn on autotagging, use the following command:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] set autotagging=on

2 Assign the site name to an enclosure within the disk group, using the following
command:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] settag encl:encl_name site=sitename

To list the site tags for a disk group

◆ To list the site tags for a disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg -o tag=site listtag diskgroup

To remove a site tag from an enclosure or a disk group

◆ To remove a site tag from a disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg [-g diskgroup] rmtag [encl:encl_name] site=sitename

Configuring site consistency on a volume

To set the site consistency requirement when creating a volume, specify the
siteconsistent attribute to the vxassist make command, for example:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume size \

nmirror=4 siteconsistent={on|off}

By default, a volume inherits the value that is set on its disk group.
By default, creating a site-consistent volume also creates an associated version
20 DCO volume, and enables Persistent FastResync on the volume. This allows
faster recovery of the volume during the reattachment of a site.
To turn on the site consistency requirement for an existing volume, use the
following form of the vxvol command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set siteconsistent=on volume

To turn off the site consistency requirement for a volume, use the following
command:
502 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] set siteconsistent=off volume

The siteconsistent attribute and the allsites attribute must be set to off for
RAID-5 volumes in a site-consistent disk group.

Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites

Table 14-1 shows examples of how to use sites with the vxassist command to
allocate storage. These examples assume that the disk group, ccdg, has been
enabled for site consistency with disks configured at two sites, site1 and site2.
Also, ccdg01, ccdg02, and ccdg03 are dm names of disks tagged with site site1.
ccdg09, ccdg10, and ccdg11 are dm names of disks tagged with site site2.

Table 14-1 Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites

Command Description

# vxassist -g ccdg make vol 2g \ Create a volume with one mirror at

nmirror=2 each site. The nmirror keyword is
optional. If the nmirror keyword is
specified, it must be equal to or more
than the number of sites.

# vxassist -g ccdg -o ordered \ Create a mirrored-stripe volume

make vol 2g \ specifying allocation order to validate
layout=mirror-stripe ncol=3 \ redundancy across the sites. The
ccdg01 ccdg02 ccdg03 ccdg09 \ named disks must be tagged with the
ccdg10 ccdg11 appropriate site name, and there
must be sufficient disks at each site
to create the volume.

# vxassist -g ccdg make vol 2g \ Create a volume with one mirror on

nmirror=2 ccdg01 ccdg09 each of the named disks. The named
disks must be tagged with the
appropriate site name, and there
must be sufficient disks at each site
to create the volume.

# vxassist -g ccdg make vol 2g \ Create a mirrored volume that is not

nmirror=2 siteconsistent=off \ site consistent. Both mirrors can be
allsites=off allocated from any available storage
in the disk group, but the storage for
each mirror is confined to a single
site.
 Administering sites and remote mirrors 503
Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites

Table 14-1 Examples of storage allocation by specifying sites (continued)

Command Description

# vxassist -g ccdg make vol 2g \ Create a mirrored volume that is not

nmirror=2 site:site2 \ site consistent. Both mirrors are
siteconsistent=off \ allocated from any available storage
allsites=off in the disk group that is tagged as
belonging to site2.

# vxassist -g ccdg make vol 2g \ Create a mirrored volume that is not

nmirror=2 \!site:site1 \ site consistent. Both mirrors are
siteconsistent=off \ allocated from any available storage
allsites=off in the disk group that is tagged as not
belonging to site1.
Note: The ! character is a special
character in some shells. This
example shows how to escape it in a
bash shell.

# vxassist -g ccdg mirror vol \ Add a mirror at a specified site. The

site:site1 command fails if there is insufficient
storage available at the site. This
command does not affect the
allsites or siteconsistent of a
volume.

# vxassist -g ccdg remove \ Remove a mirror from a volume at a

mirror vol site:site1 specified site. If the volume has the
allsites attribute set to on, the
command fails if this would remove
the last remaining plex at a site.

# vxassist -g ccdg growto vol \ Grow a volume. Each mirror of a

4g volume is grown using the same site
storage to which it belongs. If there
is not enough storage to grow a
mirror on each site, the command
fails.
504 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Displaying site information

Displaying site information

To display the site name for a host
◆ To determine to which site a host belongs, use the following command on the
host:

# vxdctl list | grep siteid

siteid: building1

To display the disks or enclosures registered to a site

◆ To check which disks or enclosures are registered to a site, use the following
command:

# vxdisk [-g diskgroup] listtag

To display the setting for automatic site tagging for a disk group
◆ To determine whether automatic site tagging is on for a disk group, use the
following command:

# vxprint -g diskgroup -F"%autotagging" diskgroup

To verify whether site consistency has been enabled for a disk group
◆ To verify whether site consistency has been enabled for a disk group, use the
following command:

# vxdg list diskgroup | grep siteconsistent

flags: siteconsistent

To verify whether site consistency has been enabled for a volume

◆ To verify whether site consistency has been enabled for a volume, use the
following command:

# vxprint -g diskgroup -F"%siteconsistent" vol

To identify which site a plex or mirror is allocated from

◆ To identify which site a plex or mirror is allocated from, use the following
command:

# vxprint -g diskgroup -F"%site" plex

 Administering sites and remote mirrors 505
Failure and recovery scenarios

To list the site tags for a disk group

◆ To list the site tags for a disk group, use the following command:

# vxdg -o tag=site listtag diskgroup

Failure and recovery scenarios

Table 14-2 lists the possible failure scenarios and recovery procedures for the
Remote Mirror feature.

Table 14-2 Failure scenarios and recovery procedures

Failure scenario Recovery procedure

Disruption of network link See “Recovering from a loss of site connectivity” on page 505.
between sites.

Failure of hosts at a site. See “Recovering from host failure” on page 506.

Failure of storage at a site. See “Recovering from storage failure” on page 506.

Failure of both hosts and See “Recovering from site failure” on page 507.
storage at a site.

Recovering from a loss of site connectivity

Warning: To avoid a potential loss of data, it is recommended that you configure

Veritas Cluster Server to handle network split-brain.

If the network links between the sites are disrupted, the application environments
may continue to run in parallel, and this may lead to inconsistencies between the
disk group configuration copies at the sites. If the parallel instances of an
application issue writes to volumes, an unrecoverable data loss may occur and
manual intervention is needed. To avoid data loss, it is recommended that you
configure the VCS fencing mechanism to handle network split-brain situations.
When connectivity between the sites is restored, a serial split-brain condition will
be detected between the sites. One site must be chosen as having the preferred
version of the data and the disk group configuration copies. The data from the
chosen site is resynchronized to the other site. If new writes are issued to volumes
after the network split, they are overwritten with the data from the chosen site.
The configuration copies at the other sites are updated from the copies at the
chosen site.
506 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Failure and recovery scenarios

At the chosen site, use the following commands to reattach a site and recover the
disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup -o overridessb reattachsite sitename

# vxrecover -g diskgroup

In the case that the host systems are configured at a single site with only storage
at the remote sites, the usual resynchronization mechanism of VxVM is used to
recover the remote plexes when the storage comes back on line.
See “Handling conflicting configuration copies” on page 263.

Recovering from host failure

If one or more cluster nodes fail at a site, but the storage remains online, this is
handled either by VCS failover in the case of the Storage Foundation HA product,
or by node takeover in the case that the node was the master for a shared disk
group as supported by the Storage Foundation Cluster File System software.

Recovering from storage failure

If storage fails at a site, the plexes that are configured on that storage are detached
locally if a site-consistent volume still has other mirrors available at the site. The
hot-relocation feature of VxVM will attempt to recreate the failed plexes on other
available storage in the disk group. If no plexes of a site-consistent volume remain
in operation at a site, and hot-relocation cannot recreate the plexes at that site,
the site is detached. Because site connectivity has not been lost, applications
running on hosts at the site can still access data at the other sites.
When the storage comes back online, the vxattachd reattaches the site
automatically.
See “Automatic site reattachment” on page 507.
If the vxattachd is not running, use the following commands to reattach a site
and recover the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup reattachsite sitename

# vxrecover -g diskgroup

For more information about recovering a disk group, refer to the Veritas Volume
Manager Troubleshooting Guide.
 Administering sites and remote mirrors 507
Failure and recovery scenarios

Recovering from site failure

If all the hosts and storage fail at a site, use the following commands to reattach
the site after it comes back online, and to recover the disk group:

# vxdg -g diskgroup [-o overridessb] reattachsite sitename

# vxrecover -g diskgroup

The -o overridessb option is only required if a serial split-brain condition is

indicated. A serial split-brain condition may happen if the site was brought back
up while the private network link was inoperative. This option updates the
configuration database on the reattached site with the consistent copies at the
other sites.
See “Handling conflicting configuration copies” on page 263.
For more information about recovering a disk group, refer to the Veritas Volume
Manager Troubleshooting Guide.

Automatic site reattachment

The automatic site reattachment daemon, vxattachd, provides automatic
reattachment of sites. The vxattachd daemon uses the vxnotify mechanism to
monitor storage coming back online on a site after a previous failure, and to restore
redundancy of mirrors across sites.
If the hot-relocation daemon, vxrelocd, is running, vxattachd attempts to reattach
the site, and allows vxrelocd to try to use the available disks in the disk group to
relocate the failed subdisks. If vxrelocd succeeds in relocating the failed subdisks,
it starts the recovery of the plexes at the site. When all the plexes have been
recovered, the plexes are put into the ACTIVE state, and the state of the site is set
to ACTIVE.
If vxrelocd is not running, vxattachd reattaches a site only when all the disks at
that site become accessible. After reattachment succeeds, vxattachd sets the site
state to ACTIVE, and initiates recovery of the plexes. When all the plexes have
been recovered, the plexes are put into the ACTIVE state.

Note: vxattachd does not try to reattach a site that you have explicitly detached
by using the vxdg detachsite command.

The automatic site reattachment feature is enabled by default. The vxattachd

daemon uses email to notify root of any attempts to reattach sites and to initiate
recovery of plexes at those sites.
508 Administering sites and remote mirrors
Failure and recovery scenarios

To send mail to other users, add the user name to the line that starts vxattachd
in the /lib/svc/method/vxvm-recover startup script and run the svcadm refresh
vxvm/vxvm-recover command (for Solaris 10 onward), or
/etc/init.d/vxvm-recover and reboot the system (for OS releases before Solaris
10).
If you do not want a site to be recovered automatically, kill the vxattachd daemon,
and prevent it from restarting. If you stop vxattachd, the automatic plex
reattachment also stops. To kill the daemon, run the following command from
the command line:

# ps -afe

Locate the process table entry for vxattachd, and kill it by specifying its process
ID:

# kill -9 PID

If there is no entry in the process table for vxattachd, the automatic site
reattachment feature is disabled.
To prevent the automatic site reattachment feature from being restarted, comment
out the line that starts vxattachd in the /lib/svc/method/vxvm-recover startup
script and run the svcadm refresh vxvm/vxvm-recover command (for Solaris
10 onward), or /etc/init.d/vxvm-recover (for OS releases before Solaris 10).
 Chapter 15
Performance monitoring
and tuning
This chapter includes the following topics:

■ Performance guidelines

■ RAID-5

■ Performance monitoring

■ Tuning VxVM

Performance guidelines
Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) can improve system performance by optimizing
the layout of data storage on the available hardware. VxVM lets you optimize data
storage performance using the following strategies:
■ Balance the I/O load among the available disk drives.
■ Use striping and mirroring to increase I/O bandwidth to the most frequently
accessed data.
VxVM also provides data redundancy through mirroring and RAID-5, which allows
continuous access to data in the event of disk failure.

Data assignment
When you decide where to locate file systems, you typically try to balance I/O
load among the available disk drives. The effectiveness of this approach is limited.
It is difficult to predict future usage patterns, and you cannot split file systems
across the drives. For example, if a single file system receives the most disk
accesses, moving the file system to another drive also moves the bottleneck.
510 Performance monitoring and tuning
Performance guidelines

VxVM can split volumes across multiple drives. This approach gives you a finer
level of granularity when you locate data. After you measure access patterns, you
can adjust your decisions on where to place file systems. You can reconfigure
volumes online without adversely impacting their availability.

Striping
Striping improves access performance by cutting data into slices and storing it
on multiple devices that can be accessed in parallel. Striped plexes improve access
performance for both read and write operations.
After you identify the most heavily-accessed volumes (containing file systems or
databases), you can increase access bandwidth to this data by striping it across
portions of multiple disks.
Figure 15-1 shows an example of a single volume (HotVol) that has been identified
as a data-access bottleneck.

Figure 15-1 Use of striping for optimal data access

HotVol HotVol HotVol HotVol

PL1 SD1 PL1 SD2 PL1 SD3 PL1 SD4
Coolvolume
Lightly Home Less
Another used directory important
volume volume volume volume

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

This volume is striped across four disks. The remaining space on these disks is
free for use by less-heavily used volumes.

Mirroring
Mirroring stores multiple copies of data on a system. When you apply mirroring
properly, data is continuously available. Mirroring also protects against data loss
due to physical media failure. If the system crashes or a disk or other hardware
fails, mirroring improves the chance of data recovery.
In some cases, you can also use mirroring to improve I/O performance. Unlike
striping, the performance gain depends on the ratio of reads to writes in the disk
accesses. If the system workload is primarily write-intensive (for example, greater
than 30 percent writes), mirroring can reduce performance.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 511
RAID-5

Combining mirroring and striping

When you have multiple I/O streams, you can use mirroring and striping together
to significantly improve performance.
Because parallel I/O streams can operate concurrently on separate devices, striping
provides better throughput. When I/O fits exactly across all stripe units in one
stripe, serial access is optimized.
Because mirroring is generally used to protect against loss of data due to disk
failures, it is often applied to write-intensive workloads. This approach degrades
throughput. In those cases, you can combine mirroring with striping to deliver
high availability and increased throughput.
You can create a mirrored-stripe volume. Stripe half of the available disks to form
one striped data plex, and stripe the remaining disks to form the other striped
data plex in the mirror. This approach is often the best way to configure a set of
disks for optimal performance with reasonable reliability. However, if a disk in
one of the plexes fails, the entire plex is unavailable.
You can also arrange equal numbers of disks into separate mirror volumes.
Afterwards, create a striped plex across these mirror volumes to form a
striped-mirror volume.
See “Mirroring plus striping (striped-mirror, RAID-1+0 or RAID-10)” on page 44.
If a disk in a mirror fails, it does not take the disks in the other mirrors out of use.
For large volumes or large numbers of disks, a striped-mirror layout is preferred
over a mirrored-stripe layout.

RAID-5
RAID-5 offers many of the advantages of combined mirroring and striping, but
it requires more disk space. RAID-5 read performance is similar to that of striping,
and RAID-5 parity offers redundancy similar to mirroring. The disadvantages of
RAID-5 include relatively slow write performance.
RAID-5 is not usually seen as a way to improve throughput performance. The
exception is when the access patterns of applications show a high ratio of reads
to writes. .

Volume read policies

To help optimize performance for different types of volumes, VxVM lets you set
one of several read policies on data plexes.
See “Changing the read policy for mirrored volumes” on page 391.
512 Performance monitoring and tuning
Performance monitoring

Figure 15-2 shows an example in which the read policy of the mirrored-stripe
volume labeled HotVol is set to prefer for the striped plex PL1.

Figure 15-2 Use of mirroring and striping for improved performance

HotVol HotVol HotVol

PL1 SD1 PL1 SD2 PL1 SD3 HotVol
PL1 SD4
Lightly used Lightly used Lightly used
volume volume volume Lightly used
volume

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

The prefer policy distributes the load when reading across the otherwise
lightly-used disks in PL1, as opposed to the single disk in plex PL2. (HotVol is an
example of a mirrored-stripe volume in which one data plex is striped and the
other data plex is concatenated.)
To improve performance for read-intensive workloads, you can attach up to 32
data plexes to the same volume. However, this approach is usually an ineffective
use of disk space for the gain in read performance.

Performance monitoring
As a system administrator, you have two sets of priorities for setting priorities
for performance. One set is physical, concerned with hardware such as disks and
controllers. The other set is logical, concerned with managing software and its
operation.

Setting performance priorities

The important physical performance characteristics of disk hardware are the
relative amounts of I/O on each drive, and the concentration of the I/O within a
drive to minimize seek time. Based on monitored results, you can then move the
location of subdisks to balance I/O activity across the disks.
The logical priorities involve software operations and how they are managed.
Based on monitoring, you may choose to change the layout of certain volumes to
improve their performance. You might even choose to reduce overall throughput
to improve the performance of certain critical volumes. Only you can decide what
is important on your system and what trade-offs you need to make.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 513
Performance monitoring

Best performance is usually achieved by striping and mirroring all volumes across
a reasonable number of disks and mirroring between controllers, when possible.
This procedure tends to even out the load between all disks, but it can make VxVM
more difficult to administer. For large numbers of disks (hundreds or thousands),
set up disk groups containing 10 disks, where each group is used to create a
striped-mirror volume. This technique provides good performance while easing
the task of administration.

Obtaining performance data

VxVM provides two types of performance information: I/O statistics and I/O
traces. Each of these can help in performance monitoring. You can obtain I/O
statistics using the vxstat command, and I/O traces using the vxtrace command.
A brief discussion of each of these utilities may be found in the following sections.

Tracing volume operations

Use the vxtrace command to trace operations on specified volumes, kernel I/O
object types or devices. The vxtrace command either prints kernel I/O errors or
I/O trace records to the standard output or writes the records to a file in binary
format. For I/O related to reclaim operations, the I/O trace records indicate that
it is a reclaim I/O. Binary trace records written to a file can also be read back and
formatted by vxtrace.
If you do not specify any operands, vxtrace reports either all error trace data or
all I/O trace data on all virtual disk devices. With error trace data, you can select
all accumulated error trace data, wait for new error trace data, or both of these
(this is the default action). Selection can be limited to a specific disk group, to
specific VxVM kernel I/O object types, or to particular named objects or devices.
See the vxtrace(1M) manual page.

Printing volume statistics

Use the vxstat command to access information about activity on volumes, plexes,
subdisks, and disks under VxVM control, and to print summary statistics to the
standard output. These statistics represent VxVM activity from the time the
system initially booted or from the last time the counters were reset to zero. If no
VxVM object name is specified, statistics from all volumes in the configuration
database are reported.
VxVM records the following I/O statistics:
■ count of operations
■ number of blocks transferred (one operation can involve more than one block)
514 Performance monitoring and tuning
Performance monitoring

■ average operation time (which reflects the total time through the VxVM
interface and is not suitable for comparison against other statistics programs)
These statistics are recorded for logical I/O including reads, writes, atomic copies,
verified reads, verified writes, plex reads, and plex writes for each volume. As a
result, one write to a two-plex volume results in at least five operations: one for
each plex, one for each subdisk, and one for the volume. Also, one read that spans
two subdisks shows at least four reads—one read for each subdisk, one for the
plex, and one for the volume.
VxVM also maintains other statistical data. For each plex, it records read and
write failures. For volumes, it records corrected read and write failures in addition
to read and write failures.
To reset the statistics information to zero, use the -r option. This can be done for
all objects or for only those objects that are specified. Resetting just prior to an
operation makes it possible to measure the impact of that particular operation.
The following is an example of output produced using the vxstat command:

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

TYP NAME READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE
vol blop 0 0 0 0 0.0 0.0
vol foobarvol 0 0 0 0 0.0 0.0
vol rootvol 73017 181735 718528 1114227 26.8 27.9
vol swapvol 13197 20252 105569 162009 25.8 397.0
vol testvol 0 0 0 0 0.0 0.0

Additional volume statistics are available for RAID-5 configurations.

See the vxstat(1M) manual page.

Using performance data

When you have gathered performance data, you can use it to determine how to
configure your system to use resources most effectively. The following sections
provide an overview of how you can use this data.

Using I/O statistics

Examination of the I/O statistics can suggest how to reconfigure your system.
You should examine two primary statistics: volume I/O activity and disk I/O
activity.
Before obtaining statistics, reset the counters for all existing statistics using the
vxstat -r command. This eliminates any differences between volumes or disks
 Performance monitoring and tuning 515
Performance monitoring

due to volumes being created, and also removes statistics from boot time (which
are not usually of interest).
After resetting the counters, allow the system to run during typical system activity.
Run the application or workload of interest on the system to measure its effect.
When monitoring a system that is used for multiple purposes, try not to exercise
any one application more than usual. When monitoring a time-sharing system
with many users, let statistics accumulate for several hours during the normal
working day.
To display volume statistics, enter the vxstat command with no arguments. The
following is a typical display of volume statistics:

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

TYP NAME READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE
vol archive 865 807 5722 3809 0.32 0.24
vol home 2980 5287 6504 10550 0.37 2.21
vol local 49477 49230 507892 204975 0.28 0.33
vol rootvol 102906 342664 1085520 1962946 0.28 0.25
vol src 79174 23603 425472 139302 0.22 0.30
vol swapvol 22751 32364 182001 258905 0.25 3.23

Such output helps to identify volumes with an unusually large number of

operations or excessive read or write times.
To display disk statistics, use the vxstat -d command. The following is a typical
display of disk statistics:

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)

TYP NAME READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE
dm mydg01 40473 174045 455898 951379 0.29 0.35
dm mydg02 32668 16873 470337 351351 0.35 1.02
dm mydg03 55249 60043 780779 731979 0.35 0.61
dm mydg04 11909 13745 114508 128605 0.25 0.30

If you need to move the volume named archive onto another disk, use the following
command to identify on which disks it lies:

# vxprint -g mydg -tvh archive

The following is an extract from typical output:

V NAME RVG/VSET/CO KSTATE STATE LENGTH READPOL REFPLEX UTYPE

PL NAME VOLUME KSTATE STATE LENGTH LAYOUT NCOL/WDTH MODE
SD NAME PLEX DISK DISKOFFS LENGTH [COL/]OFF DEVICE MODE

v archive - ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 SELECT - fsgen

516 Performance monitoring and tuning
Performance monitoring

pl archive-01 archive ENABLED ACTIVE 20480 CONCAT - RW

sd mydg03-03 archive-01 mydg03 0 40960 0 c1t2d0 ENA

The subdisks line (beginning sd) indicates that the volume archive is on disk
mydg03. To move the volume off mydg03, use the following command.

Note: The ! character is a special character in some shells. This example shows
how to escape it in a bash shell.

# vxassist -g mydg move archive \!mydg03 dest_disk

Here dest_disk is the destination disk to which you want to move the volume. It
is not necessary to specify a destination disk. If you do not specify a destination
disk, the volume is moved to an available disk with enough space to contain the
volume.
For example, to move a volume from disk mydg03 to disk mydg04, in the disk group,
mydg, use the following command:

# vxassist -g mydg move archive \!mydg03 mydg04

This command indicates that the volume is to be reorganized so that no part of

it remains on mydg03.
If two volumes (other than the root volume) on the same disk are busy, move them
so that each is on a different disk.
If one volume is particularly busy (especially if it has unusually large average read
or write times), stripe the volume (or split the volume into multiple pieces, with
each piece on a different disk). If done online, converting a volume to use striping
requires sufficient free space to store an extra copy of the volume. If sufficient
free space is not available, a backup copy can be made instead. To convert a volume,
create a striped plex as a mirror of the volume and then remove the old plex. For
example, the following commands stripe the volume archive across disks mydg02,
mydg03, and mydg04 in the disk group, mydg, and then remove the original plex
archive-01:

# vxassist -g mydg mirror archive layout=stripe mydg02 mydg03 \

mydg04
# vxplex -g mydg -o rm dis archive-01

After reorganizing any particularly busy volumes, check the disk statistics. If
some volumes have been reorganized, clear statistics first and then accumulate
statistics for a reasonable period of time.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 517
Performance monitoring

If some disks appear to be excessively busy (or have particularly long read or write
times), you may want to reconfigure some volumes. If there are two relatively
busy volumes on a disk, move them closer together to reduce seek times on the
disk. If there are too many relatively busy volumes on one disk, move them to a
disk that is less busy.
Use I/O tracing (or subdisk statistics) to determine whether volumes have excessive
activity in particular regions of the volume. If the active regions can be identified,
split the subdisks in the volume and move those regions to a less busy disk.

Warning: Striping a volume, or splitting a volume across multiple disks, increases

the chance that a disk failure results in failure of that volume. For example, if five
volumes are striped across the same five disks, then failure of any one of the five
disks requires that all five volumes be restored from a backup. If each volume
were on a separate disk, only one volume would need to be restored. Use mirroring
or RAID-5 to reduce the chance that a single disk failure results in failure of a
large number of volumes.

Note that file systems and databases typically shift their use of allocated space
over time, so this position-specific information on a volume is often not useful.
Databases are reasonable candidates for moving to non-busy disks if the space
used by a particularly busy index or table can be identified.
Examining the ratio of reads to writes helps to identify volumes that can be
mirrored to improve their performance. If the read-to-write ratio is high, mirroring
can increase performance as well as reliability. The ratio of reads to writes where
mirroring can improve performance depends greatly on the disks, the disk
controller, whether multiple controllers can be used, and the speed of the system
bus. If a particularly busy volume has a high ratio of reads to writes, it is likely
that mirroring can significantly improve performance of that volume.

Using I/O tracing

I/O statistics provide the data for basic performance analysis; I/O traces serve for
more detailed analysis. With an I/O trace, focus is narrowed to obtain an event
trace for a specific workload. This helps to explicitly identify the location and size
of a hot spot, as well as which application is causing it.
Using data from I/O traces, real work loads on disks can be simulated and the
results traced. By using these statistics, you can anticipate system limitations and
plan for additional resources.
See “Gathering and displaying I/O statistics” on page 186.
See “Specifying the I/O policy” on page 195.
518 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Tuning VxVM
This section describes how to adjust the tunable parameters that control the
system resources that are used by VxVM. Depending on the system resources that
are available, adjustments may be required to the values of some tunable
parameters to optimize performance.

General tuning guidelines

VxVM is optimally tuned for most configurations ranging from small systems to
larger servers. When you can use tuning to increase performance on larger systems
at the expense of a valuable resource (such as memory), VxVM is generally tuned
to run on the smallest supported configuration. You must perform any tuning
changes with care. Changes may adversely affect overall system performance or
may even leave VxVM unusable.
Various mechanisms exist for tuning VxVM. You can tune many parameters by
editing the file /kernel/drv/vxio.conf to override the default values set by the
vxio driver. Other values can only be tuned using the command line interface to
VxVM.
See “Changing the values of VxVM tunables” on page 519.

Tuning guidelines for large systems

On smaller systems (with fewer than a hundred disk drives), tuning is unnecessary.
VxVM can adopt reasonable defaults for all configuration parameters. On larger
systems, configurations can require additional control over the tuning of these
parameters, both for capacity and performance reasons.
Generally, only a few significant decisions must be made when setting up VxVM
on a large system. One is to decide on the size of the disk groups and the number
of configuration copies to maintain for each disk group. Another is to choose the
size of the private region for all the disks in a disk group.
Larger disk groups have the advantage of providing a larger free-space pool for
the vxassist command to select from. They also allow for the creation of larger
volumes. Smaller disk groups do not require as large a configuration database
and so can exist with smaller private regions. Very large disk groups can eventually
exhaust the private region size in the disk group. The result is that no more
configuration objects can be added to that disk group. At that point, the
configuration either has to be split into multiple disk groups, or the private regions
have to be enlarged. Each disk in the disk group must be re-initialized. This can
involve reconfiguring everything and restoring from backup.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 519
Tuning VxVM

Number of configuration copies for a disk group

Selection of the number of configuration copies for a disk group is based on a
trade-off between redundancy and performance. As a general rule, reducing the
number of configuration copies in a disk group speeds up initial access of the disk
group, initial startup of the vxconfigd daemon, and transactions that are
performed within the disk group. However, reducing the number of configuration
copies also increases the risk of complete loss of the configuration database, which
results in the loss of all objects in the database and of all data in the disk group.
The default policy for configuration copies in the disk group is to allocate a
configuration copy for each controller identified in the disk group, or for each
target that contains multiple addressable disks. This provides a sufficient degree
of redundancy, but can lead to a large number of configuration copies under some
circumstances. If this is the case, we recommended that you limit the number of
configuration copies to a maximum of 4. Distribute the copies across separate
controllers or targets to enhance the effectiveness of this redundancy.
To set the number of configuration copies for a new disk group, use the nconfig
operand with the vxdg init command.
See the vxdg(1M) manual page for details.
You can also change the number of copies for an existing group by using the
vxedit set command. For example, to configure five configuration copies for
the disk group, bigdg, use the following command:

# vxedit set nconfig=5 bigdg

See the vxedit(1M) manual page.

Changing the values of VxVM tunables

Tunables can be modified by editing the file /kernel/drv/vxio.conf for most
VxVM kernel tunables. The system must be shut down and rebooted for the change
to take effect.

Warning: If you modify /kernel/drv/vxio.conf, make a backup copy of the file.

For example, a single entry has been added to the end of the following
/kernel/drv/vxio.conf file to change the value of vol_tunable to 5000:

name="vxio" parent="pseudo" instance=0 vol_tunable=5000;

520 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Warning: Do not edit the configuration file for the vxspec driver,
/kernel/drv/vxspec.conf.

You can use the prtconf -vP command to display the current values of the
tunables. All VxVM tunables that you specify in /kernel/drv/vxio.conf are
listed in the output under the “System properties.” heading for the vxio drivers.
All unchanged tunables are listed with their default values under the “Driver
properties” heading. The following sample output shows the new value for
vol_tunable in hexadecimal:

# prtconf -vP
.
.
.
vxio, instance #0
System properties:
name <vol_tunable> length <4>
value <0x00001388>
Driver properties:
name <voldrl_max_seq_dirty> length <4>
value <0x00000003>
.
.
.

For more information, see the prtconf(1M) and driver.conf(4) manual pages.
DMP tunables are set online (without requiring a reboot) by using the vxdmpadm
command as shown here:

# vxdmpadm settune dmp_tunable=value

The values of these tunables can be displayed by using this command:

# vxdmpadm gettune [dmp_tunable]

Tunable parameters for VxVM

Table 15-1 lists the kernel tunable parameters for VxVM.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 521
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM

Parameter Description

vol_checkpt_default The interval at which utilities performing recoveries

or resynchronization operations load the current offset
into the kernel as a checkpoint. A system failure during
such operations does not require a full recovery, but
can continue from the last reached checkpoint.

The default value is 20480 sectors (10MB).

Increasing this size reduces the overhead of

checkpoints on recovery operations at the expense of
additional recovery following a system failure during
a recovery.

vol_default_iodelay The count in clock ticks for which utilities pause if they
have been directed to reduce the frequency of issuing
I/O requests, but have not been given a specific delay
time. This tunable is used by utilities performing
operations such as resynchronizing mirrors or
rebuilding RAID-5 columns.

The default value is 50 ticks.

Increasing this value results in slower recovery

operations and consequently lower system impact
while recoveries are being performed.
522 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

vol_fmr_logsz The maximum size in kilobytes of the bitmap that

Non-Persistent FastResync uses to track changed
blocks in a volume. The number of blocks in a volume
that are mapped to each bit in the bitmap depends on
the size of the volume, and this value changes if the
size of the volume is changed.

For example, if the volume size is 1 gigabyte and the

system block size is 512 bytes, a value for this tunable
of 4 yields a map that contains 16,384 bits, each bit
representing one region of 128 blocks.

The larger the bitmap size, the fewer the number of

blocks that are mapped to each bit. This can reduce
the amount of reading and writing required on
resynchronization, at the expense of requiring more
non-pageable kernel memory for the bitmap.
Additionally, on clustered systems, a larger bitmap
size increases the latency in I/O performance, and it
also increases the load on the private network between
the cluster members. This is because every other
member of the cluster must be informed each time a
bit in the map is marked.

Since the region size must be the same on all nodes in

a cluster for a shared volume, the value of this tunable
on the master node overrides the tunable values on
the slave nodes, if these values are different. Because
the value of a shared volume can change, the value of
this tunable is retained for the life of the volume.

In configurations which have thousands of mirrors

with attached snapshot plexes, the total memory
overhead can represent a significantly higher overhead
in memory consumption than is usual for VxVM.

The default value is 4KB. The maximum and minimum

permitted values are 1KB and 8KB.
Note: The value of this tunable does not have any
effect on Persistent FastResync.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 523
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

vol_kmsg_resend_period This is an obsolete tunable parameter. Use

vol_kmsg_resend_period_usecs instead. If
specified in /kernel/drv/vxio.conf, the value is
internally converted to microseconds, and applied to
vol_kmsg_resend_period_usecs instead.

vol_kmsg_resend_period_usecs The value in microseconds of the kernel message

(KMSG) resend period that is used by the clustering
functionality of VxVM.

The default value is 3000000 microseconds (3 seconds).

This tunable should be used instead of

vol_kmsg_resend_period from release 5.0 onward
as it allows finer granularity to be applied to
performance tuning.

vol_kmsg_send_period This is an obsolete tunable parameter. Use

vol_kmsg_send_period_usecs instead. If specified
in /kernel/drv/vxio.conf, the value is internally
converted to microseconds, and applied to
vol_kmsg_send_period_usecs instead.

vol_kmsg_send_period_usecs The value in microseconds of the kernel message

(KMSG) send period that is used by the clustering
functionality of VxVM with SunCluster. The default
value is 1000000 microseconds (1 second). This tunable
should be used instead of vol_kmsg_send_period
from release 5.0 onward as it allows finer granularity
to be applied to performance tuning.

vol_max_vol The maximum number of volumes that can be created

on the system. The minimum and maximum permitted
values are 1 and the maximum number of minor
numbers representable on the system.

The default value is 131071.

524 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

vol_maxio The maximum size of logical I/O operations that can

be performed without breaking up the request. I/O
requests to VxVM that are larger than this value are
broken up and performed synchronously. Physical I/O
requests are broken up based on the capabilities of the
disk device and are unaffected by changes to this
maximum logical request limit.

The default value is 2048 sectors (1MB).

The value of voliomem_maxpool_sz must be at least

10 times greater than the value of vol_maxio.

If DRL sequential logging is configured, the value of

voldrl_min_regionsz must be set to at least half
the value of vol_maxio.

vol_maxioctl The maximum size of data that can be passed into

VxVM via an ioctl call. Increasing this limit allows
larger operations to be performed. Decreasing the limit
is not generally recommended, because some utilities
depend upon performing operations of a certain size
and can fail unexpectedly if they issue oversized ioctl
requests.

The default value is 32768 bytes (32KB).

vol_maxparallelio The number of I/O operations that the vxconfigd

daemon is permitted to request from the kernel in a
single VOL_VOLDIO_READ per VOL_VOLDIO_WRITE
ioctl call.

The default value is 256. This value should not be

changed.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 525
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Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

vol_maxspecialio The maximum size of an I/O request that can be issued

by an ioctl call. Although the ioctl request itself
can be small, it can request a large I/O request be
performed. This tunable limits the size of these I/O
requests. If necessary, a request that exceeds this value
can be failed, or the request can be broken up and
performed synchronously.

The default value is 4096 sectors (2MB).

Raising this limit can cause difficulties if the size of

an I/O request causes the process to take more memory
or kernel virtual mapping space than exists and thus
deadlock. The maximum limit for this tunable is 20%
of the smaller of physical memory or kernel virtual
memory. It is inadvisable to go over this limit, because
deadlock is likely to occur.

If stripes are larger than the value of this tunable, full

stripe I/O requests are broken up, which prevents
full-stripe read/writes. This throttles the volume I/O
throughput for sequential I/O or larger I/O requests.

This tunable limits the size of an I/O request at a higher

level in VxVM than the level of an individual disk. For
example, for an 8 by 64KB stripe, a value of 256KB only
allows I/O requests that use half the disks in the stripe;
thus, it cuts potential throughput in half. If you have
more columns or you have used a larger interleave
factor, then your relative performance is worse.

This tunable must be set, as a minimum, to the size of

your largest stripe (RAID-0 or RAID-5).

vol_subdisk_num The maximum number of subdisks that can be attached

to a single plex. There is no theoretical limit to this
number, but it has been limited to a default value of
4096. This default can be changed, if required.

volcvm_smartsync If set to 0, volcvm_smartsync disables SmartSync

on shared disk groups. If set to 1, this parameter
enables the use of SmartSync with shared disk groups.

See “SmartSync recovery accelerator” on page 59.

526 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

voldrl_max_drtregs The maximum number of dirty regions that can exist

on the system for non-sequential DRL on volumes. A
larger value may result in improved system
performance at the expense of recovery time. This
tunable can be used to regulate the worse-case recovery
time for the system following a failure.

The default value is 2048.

voldrl_max_seq_dirty The maximum number of dirty regions allowed for

sequential DRL. This is useful for volumes that are
usually written to sequentially, such as database logs.
Limiting the number of dirty regions allows for faster
recovery if a crash occurs.

The default value is 3.

voldrl_min_regionsz The minimum number of sectors for a dirty region

logging (DRL) volume region. With DRL, VxVM logically
divides a volume into a set of consecutive regions.
Larger region sizes tend to cause the cache hit-ratio
for regions to improve. This improves the write
performance, but it also prolongs the recovery time.

The default value is 1024 sectors.

If DRL sequential logging is configured, the value of

voldrl_min_regionsz must be set to at least half
the value of vol_maxio.

voliomem_chunk_size The granularity of memory chunks used by VxVM when

allocating or releasing system memory. A larger
granularity reduces CPU overhead due to memory
allocation by allowing VxVM to retain hold of a larger
amount of memory.

The default value is 64KB.

 Performance monitoring and tuning 527
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

voliomem_maxpool_sz The maximum memory requested from the system by

VxVM for internal purposes. This tunable has a direct
impact on the performance of VxVM as it prevents one
I/O operation from using all the memory in the system.

VxVM allocates two pools that can grow up to this size,

one for RAID-5 and one for mirrored volumes.
Additional pools are allocated if instant (Copy On
Write) snapshots are present.

A write request to a RAID-5 volume that is greater than

one fourth of the pool size is broken up and performed
in chunks of one tenth of the pool size.

A write request to a mirrored volume that is greater

than the pool size is broken up and performed in
chunks of the pool size.

The default value is 5% of memory up to a maximum

of 128MB.

The value of voliomem_maxpool_sz must be greater

than the value of volraid_minpool_size.

The value of voliomem_maxpool_sz must be at least

10 times greater than the value of vol_maxio.

voliot_errbuf_dflt The default size of the buffer maintained for error

tracing events. This buffer is allocated at driver load
time and is not adjustable for size while VxVM is
running.

The default value is 16384 bytes (16KB).

Increasing this buffer can provide storage for more

error events at the expense of system memory.
Decreasing the size of the buffer can result in an error
not being detected via the tracing device. Applications
that depend on error tracing to perform some
responsive action are dependent on this buffer.
528 Performance monitoring and tuning
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Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

voliot_iobuf_default The default size for the creation of a tracing buffer in

the absence of any other specification of desired kernel
buffer size as part of the trace ioctl.

The default value is 8192 bytes (8KB).

If trace data is often being lost due to this buffer size

being too small, then this value can be tuned to a more
generous amount.

voliot_iobuf_limit The upper limit to the size of memory that can be used
for storing tracing buffers in the kernel. Tracing
buffers are used by the VxVM kernel to store the
tracing event records. As trace buffers are requested
to be stored in the kernel, the memory for them is
drawn from this pool.

Increasing this size can allow additional tracing to be

performed at the expense of system memory usage.
Setting this value to a size greater than can readily be
accommodated on the system is inadvisable.

The default value is 4194304 bytes (4MB).

voliot_iobuf_max The maximum buffer size that can be used for a single
trace buffer. Requests of a buffer larger than this size
are silently truncated to this size. A request for a
maximal buffer size from the tracing interface results
(subject to limits of usage) in a buffer of this size.

The default size for this buffer is 1048576 bytes (1MB).

Increasing this buffer can provide for larger traces to

be taken without loss for very heavily used volumes.

Care should be taken not to increase this value above

the value for the voliot_iobuf_limit tunable value.

voliot_max_open The maximum number of tracing channels that can be

open simultaneously. Tracing channels are clone entry
points into the tracing device driver. Each vxtrace
process running on a system consumes a single trace
channel.

The default number of channels is 32.

The allocation of each channel takes up approximately

20 bytes even when the channel is not in use.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 529
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

volpagemod_max_memsz The amount of memory, measured in kilobytes, that is

allocated for caching FastResync and cache object
metadata.

The default value is 65536k (64MB).

The valid range for this tunable is from 0 to 50% of

physical memory.

The memory allocated for this cache is exclusively

dedicated to it. It is not available for other processes
or applications.

Setting the value below 512KB fails if cache objects or

volumes that have been prepared for instant snapshot
operations are present on the system.

If you do not use the FastResync or DRL features that

are implemented using a version 20 DCO volume, the
value can be set to 0. However, if you subsequently
decide to enable these features, you can use the vxtune
command to change the value to a more appropriate
one:

# vxtune volpagemod_max_memsz value

where the new value is specified in kilobytes. Using

the vxtune command to adjust the value of
volpagemod_max_memsz does not persist across
system reboots unless you also adjust the value that is
configured in the /kernel/drv/vxio.conf file.

volraid_minpool_size The initial amount of memory that is requested from

the system by VxVM for RAID-5 operations. The
maximum size of this memory pool is limited by the
value of voliomem_maxpool_sz.

The default value is 8192 sectors (4MB).

530 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-1 Kernel tunable parameters for VxVM (continued)

Parameter Description

volraid_rsrtransmax The maximum number of transient reconstruct

operations that can be performed in parallel for
RAID-5. A transient reconstruct operation is one that
occurs on a non-degraded RAID-5 volume that has not
been predicted. Limiting the number of these
operations that can occur simultaneously removes the
possibility of flooding the system with many
reconstruct operations, and so reduces the risk of
causing memory starvation.

The default value is 1.

Increasing this size improves the initial performance

on the system when a failure first occurs and before a
detach of a failing object is performed, but can lead to
memory starvation.

DMP tunable parameters

Table 15-2 shows the DMP parameters that can be tuned by using the vxdmpadm
settune command.

Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable

Parameter Description

dmp_cache_open If this parameter is set to on, the first open of a device

that is performed by an array support library (ASL)
is cached. This caching enhances the performance of
device discovery by minimizing the overhead that is
caused by subsequent opens by ASLs. If this parameter
is set to off, caching is not performed.

The default value is on.

dmp_daemon_count The number of kernel threads that are available for

servicing path error handling, path restoration, and
other DMP administrative tasks.

The default number of threads is 10.

 Performance monitoring and tuning 531
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_delayq_interval How long DMP should wait before retrying I/O after
an array fails over to a standby path. Some disk arrays
are not capable of accepting I/O requests immediately
after failover.

The default value is 15 seconds.

dmp_enable_restore If this parameter is set to on, it enables the path

restoration thread to be started.

See “Configuring DMP path restoration policies”

on page 208.

If this parameter is set to off, it disables the path

restoration thread. If the path restoration thread is
currently running, use the vxdmpadm stop restore
command to stop the thread.

The default is on.

See “Stopping the DMP path restoration thread”

on page 210.

dmp_fast_recovery Whether DMP should try to obtain SCSI error

information directly from the HBA interface. Setting
the value to on can potentially provide faster error
recovery, provided that the HBA interface supports
the error enquiry feature. If this parameter is set to
off, the HBA interface is not used.

The default setting is on.

dmp_health_time DMP detects intermittently failing paths, and prevents

I/O requests from being sent on them. The value of
dmp_health_time represents the time in seconds
for which a path must stay healthy. If a path’s state
changes back from enabled to disabled within this
time period, DMP marks the path as intermittently
failing, and does not re-enable the path for I/O until
dmp_path_age seconds elapse.

The default value is 60 seconds.

A value of 0 prevents DMP from detecting

intermittently failing paths.
532 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_log_level The level of detail that is displayed for DMP console

messages. The following level values are defined:

1 — Displays all DMP log messages that existed in

releases before 5.0.

2 — Displays level 1 messages plus messages that

relate to path or disk addition or removal, SCSI errors,
IO errors and DMP node migration.

3 — Displays level 1 and 2 messages plus messages

that relate to path throttling, suspect path, idle path
and insane path logic.

4 — Displays level 1, 2 and 3 messages plus messages

that relate to setting or changing attributes on a path
and tunable related changes.

The default value is 1.

dmp_low_impact_probe Determines if the path probing by restore daemon is

optimized or not. Set it to on to enable optimization
and off to disable. Path probing is optimized only
when restore policy is check_disabled or during
check_disabled phase of check_periodic policy.

The default value is on.

dmp_lun_retry_timeout Retry period for handling transient errors. The value

is specified in seconds.

When all paths to a disk fail, there may be certain

paths that have a temporary failure and are likely to
be restored soon. The I/Os may be failed to the
application layer even though the failures are
transient, unless the I/Os are retried. The
dmp_lun_retry_timeout tunable provides a
mechanism to retry such transient errors.

If the tunable is set to a non-zero value, I/Os to a disk

with all failed paths are retried until
dmp_lun_retry_timeout interval or until the I/O
succeeds on one of the path, whichever happens first.

The default value of tunable is 0, which means that

the paths are probed only once.
 Performance monitoring and tuning 533
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Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_monitor_fabric Determines whether the Event Source daemon

(vxesd) uses the Storage Networking Industry
Association (SNIA) HBA API. This API allows DDL to
improve the performance of failover by collecting
information about the SAN topology and by
monitoring fabric events.

If this parameter is set to on, DDL uses the SNIA HBA

API. (Note that the HBA vendor specific HBA-API
library should be available to use this feature.)

If this parameter is set to off, the SNIA HBA API is

not used.

The default setting is off for releases before 5.0 that

have been patched to support this DDL feature. The
default setting is on for 5.0 and later releases.

dmp_monitor_osevent Determines whether the Event Source daemon

(vxesd) monitors operating system events such as
reconfiguration operations.

If this parameter is set to on, vxesd monitors

operations such as attaching operating system
devices.

If this parameter is set to off, vxesd does not

monitor operating system operations. When DMP
co-exists with EMC PowerPath, Symantec recommends
setting this parameter to off to avoid any issues.

The default setting is on, unless EMC PowerPath is

installed. If you install DMP on a system that already
has PowerPath installed, DMP sets the
dmp_monitor_osevent to off.

dmp_native_multipathing Determines whether DMP will intercept the I/Os

directly on the raw OS paths or not.

Set the tunable to on to have DMP do multi-pathing

of IOs done directly on raw paths, otherwise set it to
off.

The default value is off.

534 Performance monitoring and tuning
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Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_native_support Determines whether DMP will do multi-pathing for

native devices.

Set the tunable to on to have DMP do multi-pathing

for native devices.

When a Storage Foundation product is installed, the

default value is off.

When Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing is installed, the

default value is on.

dmp_path_age The time for which an intermittently failing path

needs to be monitored as healthy before DMP again
tries to schedule I/O requests on it.

The default value is 300 seconds.

A value of 0 prevents DMP from detecting

intermittently failing paths.

dmp_pathswitch_blks_shift The default number of contiguous I/O blocks that are

sent along a DMP path to an array before switching
to the next available path. The value is expressed as
the integer exponent of a power of 2; for example 9
represents 512 blocks.

The default value of this parameter is set to 9. In this

case, 512 blocks (256k) of contiguous I/O are sent over
a DMP path before switching. For intelligent disk
arrays with internal data caches, better throughput
may be obtained by increasing the value of this
tunable. For example, for the HDS 9960 A/A array,
the optimal value is between 15 and 17 for an I/O
activity pattern that consists mostly of sequential
reads or writes.

This parameter only affects the behavior of the

balanced I/O policy. A value of 0 disables
multi-pathing for the policy unless the vxdmpadm
command is used to specify a different partition size
for an array.

See “Specifying the I/O policy” on page 195.

 Performance monitoring and tuning 535
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Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_probe_idle_lun If DMP statistics gathering is enabled, set this tunable

to on (default) to have the DMP path restoration
thread probe idle LUNs. Set this tunable to off to
turn off this feature. (Idle LUNs are VM disks on which
no I/O requests are scheduled.) The value of this
tunable is only interpreted when DMP statistics
gathering is enabled. Turning off statistics gathering
also disables idle LUN probing.

The default value is on.

dmp_probe_threshold If the dmp_low_impact_probe is turned on,

dmp_probe_threshold determines the number of paths
to probe before deciding on changing the state of other
paths in the same subpath failover group.

The default value is 5.

dmp_queue_depth The maximum number of queued I/O requests on a

path during I/O throttling.

The default value is 32.

A value can also be set for paths to individual arrays

by using the vxdmpadm command.

See “Configuring the I/O throttling mechanism”

on page 205.

dmp_restore_cycles If the DMP restore policy is check_periodic, the

number of cycles after which the check_all policy
is called.

The default value is 10.

The value of this tunable can also be set using the

vxdmpadm start restore command.

See “Configuring DMP path restoration policies”

on page 208.
536 Performance monitoring and tuning
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Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_restore_interval The interval attribute specifies how often the path

restoration thread examines the paths. Specify the
time in seconds.

The default value is 300.

The value of this tunable can also be set using the

vxdmpadm start restore command.

See “Configuring DMP path restoration policies”

on page 208.

dmp_restore_policy The DMP restore policy, which can be set to one of

the following values:

■ check_all
■ check_alternate
■ check_disabled
■ check_periodic

The default value is check_disabled.

The value of this tunable can also be set using the

vxdmpadm start restore command.

See “Configuring DMP path restoration policies”

on page 208.

dmp_retry_count If an inquiry succeeds on a path, but there is an I/O

error, the number of retries to attempt on the path.

The default value is 5.

A value can also be set for paths to individual arrays

by using the vxdmpadm command.

See “Configuring the response to I/O failures”

on page 203.

dmp_scsi_timeout Determines the timeout value to be set for any SCSI

command that is sent via DMP. If the HBA does not
receive a response for a SCSI command that it has
sent to the device within the timeout period, the SCSI
command is returned with a failure error code.

The default value is 30 seconds.

 Performance monitoring and tuning 537
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Table 15-2 DMP parameters that are tunable (continued)

Parameter Description

dmp_sfg_threshold Determines the minimum number of paths that should

be failed in a failover group before DMP starts
suspecting other paths in the same failover group.
The value of 0 disables the failover logic based on
subpath failover groups.

The default value is 1.

dmp_stat_interval The time interval between gathering DMP statistics.

The default and minimum value are 1 second.

Disabling I/O statistics collection

By default, Veritas Volume Manager collects I/O statistics on all objects in the
configuration. This helps you tune different parameters that depend upon the
environment and workload.
See “Tunable parameters for VxVM” on page 520.
See “DMP tunable parameters” on page 530.
After the tuning is done, you may choose to disable I/O statistics collection because
it improves I/O throughput.
To display whether I/O statistics are enabled
◆ Enter the following command:

# vxtune vol_stats_enable

If the system displays 1, I/O statistics collection is enabled. If it displays 0,

I/O statistics collection is disabled.
To disable I/O statistics collection until the next system reboot
◆ Enter the following command:

# vxtune vol_stats_enable 0

If you are concerned about high I/O throughput, you may also choose to disable
DMP I/O statistics collection.
To disable DMP I/O statistics collection
◆ Enter the following command:

# vxdmpadm iostat stop

538 Performance monitoring and tuning
Tuning VxVM

Enabling I/O statistics collection

By default, Veritas Volume Manager collects I/O statistics on all objects in the
configuration. You only need to perform the tasks in this section if you disabled
I/O statistics collection.
To display whether I/O statistics are enabled
◆ Enter the following command:

# vxtune vol_stats_enable

If the system displays 1, I/O statistics collection is enabled. If it displays 0,

I/O statistics collection is disabled.
To enable I/O statistics collection
◆ Enter the following command:

# vxtune vol_stats_enable 1

To enable DMP I/O statistics collection

◆ Enter the following command:

# vxdmpadm iostat start

See the vxdmpadm(1M) manual page.

 Appendix A
Using Veritas Volume
Manager commands
This appendix includes the following topics:

■ About Veritas Volume Manager commands

■ CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

■ Online manual pages

About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Most Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) commands (excepting daemons, library
commands and supporting scripts) are linked to the /usr/sbin directory from
the /opt/VRTS/bin directory. It is recommended that you add the following
directories to your PATH environment variable:
■ If you are using the Bourne or Korn shell (sh or ksh), use the commands:

$ PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/opt/VRTS/bin:/opt/VRTSvxfs/sbin:\
/opt/VRTSdbed/bin:/opt/VRTSob/bin
$ MANPATH=/usr/share/man:/opt/VRTS/man:$MANPATH
$ export PATH MANPATH

■ If you are using a C shell (csh or tcsh), use the commands:

% set path = ( $path /usr/sbin /opt/VRTSvxfs/sbin \

/opt/VRTSdbed/bin /opt/VRTSob/bin /opt/VRTS/bin )
% setenv MANPATH /usr/share/man:/opt/VRTS/man:$MANPATH
540 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

VxVM library commands and supporting scripts are located under the
/usr/lib/vxvm directory hierarchy. You can include these directories in your
path if you need to use them on a regular basis.
For detailed information about an individual command, refer to the appropriate
manual page in the 1M section.
See “Online manual pages” on page 569.
Commands and scripts that are provided to support other commands and scripts,
and which are not intended for general use, are not located in /opt/VRTS/bin and
do not have manual pages.
Commonly-used commands are summarized in the following tables:
■ Table A-1 lists commands for obtaining information about objects in VxVM.
■ Table A-2 lists commands for administering disks.
■ Table A-3 lists commands for creating and administering disk groups.
■ Table A-4 lists commands for creating and administering subdisks.
■ Table A-5 lists commands for creating and administering plexes.
■ Table A-6 lists commands for creating volumes.
■ Table A-7 lists commands for administering volumes.
■ Table A-8 lists commands for monitoring and controlling tasks in VxVM.

Table A-1 Obtaining information about objects in VxVM

Command Description

vxdctl license [init] List licensed features of VxVM.

The init parameter is required when a

license has been added or removed from
the host for the new license to take
effect.

vxdisk [-g diskgroup] list [diskname] Lists disks under control of VxVM.

See “Displaying disk information”

on page 141.

Example:

# vxdisk -g mydg list

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 541
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Table A-1 Obtaining information about objects in VxVM (continued)

Command Description

vxdg list [diskgroup] Lists information about disk groups.

See “Displaying disk group

information” on page 236.

Example:

# vxdg list mydg

vxdg -s list Lists information about shared disk

groups.

See “Listing shared disk groups”

on page 477.

Example:

# vxdg -s list

vxdisk -o alldgs list Lists all diskgroups on the disks. The

imported diskgroups are shown as
standard, and additionally all other
diskgroups are listed in single quotes.

vxinfo [-g diskgroup] [volume ...] Displays information about the

accessibility and usability of volumes.
See the Veritas Volume Manager
Troubleshooting Guide.

Example:

# vxinfo -g mydg myvol1 \

myvol2

vxprint -hrt [-g diskgroup] [object Prints single-line information about

...] objects in VxVM.

See “Displaying volume information”

on page 356.

Example:

# vxprint -g mydg myvol1 \

myvol2
542 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
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Table A-1 Obtaining information about objects in VxVM (continued)

Command Description

vxprint -st [-g diskgroup] [subdisk Displays information about subdisks.

...]
See “Displaying subdisk information”
on page 293.

Example:

# vxprint -st -g mydg

vxprint -pt [-g diskgroup] [plex ...] Displays information about plexes.

See “Displaying plex information”

on page 301.

Example:

# vxprint -pt -g mydg

Table A-2 Administering disks

Command Description

vxdiskadm Administers disks in VxVM using a

menu-based interface.

vxdiskadd [devicename ...] Adds a disk specified by device name.

See “Using vxdiskadd to put a disk

under VxVM control” on page 122.

Example:

# vxdiskadd c0t1d0

vxedit [-g diskgroup] rename \ Renames a disk under control of VxVM.

olddisk newdisk
See “Renaming a disk” on page 154.

Example:

# vxedit -g mydg rename \

mydg03 mydg02
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 543
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Table A-2 Administering disks (continued)

Command Description

vxedit [-g diskgroup] set \ Sets aside/does not set aside a disk from
reserve=on|off diskname use in a disk group.

See “Reserving disks” on page 155.

Examples:

# vxedit -g mydg set \

reserve=on mydg02
# vxedit -g mydg set \
reserve=off mydg02

vxedit [-g diskgroup] set \ Does not/does allow free space on a disk
nohotuse=on|off diskname to be used for hot-relocation.

See “Excluding a disk from

hot-relocation use” on page 437.

See “Making a disk available for

hot-relocation use” on page 438.

Examples:

# vxedit -g mydg set \

nohotuse=on mydg03
# vxedit -g mydg set \
nohotuse=off mydg03

vxedit [-g diskgroup] set \ Adds/removes a disk from the pool of

spare=on|off diskname hot-relocation spares.

See “Marking a disk as a hot-relocation

spare” on page 435.

See “Removing a disk from use as a

hot-relocation spare” on page 436.

Examples:

# vxedit -g mydg set \

spare=on mydg04
# vxedit -g mydg set \
spare=off mydg04
544 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
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Table A-2 Administering disks (continued)

Command Description

vxdisk offline devicename Takes a disk offline.

See “Taking a disk offline” on page 154.

Example:

# vxdisk offline c0t1d0

vxdisk -g diskgroup [-o full] reclaim Performs thin reclamation on a disk,

disk|enclosure|diskgroup enclosure, or disk group.

See “Thin Reclamation of a disk, a disk

group, or an enclosure” on page 365.

Example:

# vxdisk reclaim disk1

vxdg -g diskgroup rmdisk diskname Removes a disk from its disk group.

See “Removing a disk from a disk

group” on page 240.

Example:

# vxdg -g mydg rmdisk mydg02

vxdiskunsetup devicename Removes a disk from control of VxVM.

See “Removing a disk from a disk

group” on page 240.

Example:

# vxdiskunsetup c0t3d0

Table A-3 Creating and administering disk groups

Command Description

vxdg [-s] init diskgroup \ Creates a disk group using a

[diskname=]devicename pre-initialized disk.
See “Creating a disk group” on page 238.

See “Creating a shared disk group”

on page 478.

Example:

# vxdg init mydg \

mydg01=c0t1d0
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 545
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Table A-3 Creating and administering disk groups (continued)

Command Description

vxdg -g diskgroup listssbinfo Reports conflicting configuration

information.

See “Handling conflicting configuration

copies” on page 263.

Example:

# vxdg -g mydg listssbinfo

vxdg [-n newname] deport diskgroup Deports a disk group and optionally
renames it.

See “Deporting a disk group”

on page 242.

Example:

# vxdg -n newdg deport mydg

vxdg [-n newname] import diskgroup Imports a disk group and optionally
renames it.

See “Importing a disk group”

on page 243.

Example:

# vxdg -n newdg import mydg

vxdg [-n newname] -s import diskgroup Imports a disk group as shared by a

cluster, and optionally renames it.

See “Importing disk groups as shared”

on page 478.

Example:

# vxdg -n newsdg -s import \

mysdg
546 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
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Table A-3 Creating and administering disk groups (continued)

Command Description

vxdg [-o expand] listmove sourcedg \ Lists the objects potentially affected by
targetdg object ... moving a disk group.

See “Listing objects potentially affected

by a move” on page 275.

Example:

# vxdg -o expand listmove \

mydg newdg myvol1

vxdg [-o expand] move sourcedg \ Moves objects between disk groups.
targetdg object ...
See “Moving objects between disk
groups” on page 277.

Example:

# vxdg -o expand move mydg \

newdg myvol1

vxdg [-o expand] split sourcedg \ Splits a disk group and moves the
targetdg object ... specified objects into the target disk
group.

See “Splitting disk groups” on page 280.

Example:

# vxdg -o expand split mydg \

newdg myvol2 myvol3

vxdg join sourcedg targetdg Joins two disk groups.

See “Joining disk groups” on page 282.

Example:

# vxdg join newdg mydg

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 547
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Table A-3 Creating and administering disk groups (continued)

Command Description

vxdg -g diskgroup set \ Sets the activation mode of a shared

activation=ew|ro|sr|sw|off disk group in a cluster.

See “Changing the activation mode on

a shared disk group” on page 481.

Example:

# vxdg -g mysdg set \

activation=sw

vxrecover -g diskgroup -sb Starts all volumes in an imported disk

group.

See “Moving disk groups between

systems” on page 246.

Example:

# vxrecover -g mydg -sb

vxdg destroy diskgroup Destroys a disk group and releases its

disks.

See “Destroying a disk group”

on page 284.

Example:

# vxdg destroy mydg

Table A-4 Creating and administering subdisks

Command Description

vxmake [-g diskgroup] sd subdisk \ Creates a subdisk.

diskname,offset,length
See “Creating subdisks” on page 292.

Example:

# vxmake -g mydg sd \
mydg02-01 mydg02,0,8000
548 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
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Table A-4 Creating and administering subdisks (continued)

Command Description

vxsd [-g diskgroup] assoc plex \ Associates subdisks with an existing

subdisk... plex.

See “Associating subdisks with plexes”

on page 295.

Example:

# vxsd -g mydg assoc home-1 \

mydg02-01 mydg02-00 \
mydg02-01

vxsd [-g diskgroup] assoc plex \ Adds subdisks to the ends of the
subdisk1:0 ... subdiskM:N-1 columns in a striped or RAID-5 volume.

See “Associating subdisks with plexes”

on page 295.

Example:

# vxsd -g mydg assoc \

vol01-01 mydg10-01:0 \
mydg11-01:1 mydg12-01:2

vxsd [-g diskgroup] mv oldsubdisk \ Replaces a subdisk.

newsubdisk ...
See “Moving subdisks” on page 294.
Example:

# vxsd -g mydg mv mydg01-01 \

mydg02-01

vxsd [-g diskgroup] -s size split \ Splits a subdisk in two.

subdisk sd1 sd2
See “Splitting subdisks” on page 294.

Example:

# vxsd -g mydg -s 1000m \

split mydg03-02 mydg03-02 \
mydg03-03
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 549
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Table A-4 Creating and administering subdisks (continued)

Command Description

vxsd [-g diskgroup] join \ Joins two or more subdisks.

sd1 sd2 ... subdisk
See “Joining subdisks” on page 295.

Example:

# vxsd -g mydg join \

mydg03-02 mydg03-03 \
mydg03-02

vxassist [-g diskgroup] move \ Relocates subdisks in a volume between

volume \!olddisk newdisk disks.

See “Moving relocated subdisks using

vxassist” on page 441.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg move \

myvol \!mydg02 mydg05

Note: The ! character is a special

character in some shells. This example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.

vxunreloc [-g diskgroup] original_disk Relocates subdisks to their original

disks.

See “Moving relocated subdisks using

vxunreloc” on page 441.

Example:

# vxunreloc -g mydg mydg01

vxsd [-g diskgroup] dis subdisk Dissociates a subdisk from a plex.

See “Dissociating subdisks from plexes”

on page 298.

Example:

# vxsd -g mydg dis mydg02-01

550 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
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Table A-4 Creating and administering subdisks (continued)

Command Description

vxedit [-g diskgroup] rm subdisk Removes a subdisk.

See “Removing subdisks” on page 299.

Example:

# vxedit -g mydg rm mydg02-01

vxsd [-g diskgroup] -o rm dis subdisk Dissociates and removes a subdisk from
a plex.

See “Dissociating subdisks from plexes”

on page 298.

Example:

# vxsd -g mydg -o rm dis \

mydg02-01

Table A-5 Creating and administering plexes

Command Description

vxmake [-g diskgroup] plex plex \ Creates a concatenated plex.

sd=subdisk1[,subdisk2,...]
See “Creating plexes” on page 301.
Example:

# vxmake -g mydg plex \

vol01-02 \
sd=mydg02-01,mydg02-02

vxmake [-g diskgroup] plex plex \ Creates a striped or RAID-5 plex.

layout=stripe|raid5 stwidth=W \
See “Creating a striped plex”
ncolumn=N \
on page 301.
sd=subdisk1[,subdisk2,...]
Example:

# vxmake -g mydg plex pl-01 \

layout=stripe stwidth=32 \
ncolumn=2 \
sd=mydg01-01,mydg02-01
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 551
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Table A-5 Creating and administering plexes (continued)

Command Description

vxplex [-g diskgroup] att volume plex Attaches a plex to an existing volume.

See “Attaching and associating plexes”

on page 306.

See “Reattaching plexes” on page 308.

Example:

# vxplex -g mydg att vol01 \

vol01-02

vxplex [-g diskgroup] det plex Detaches a plex.

See “Detaching plexes” on page 308.

Example:

# vxplex -g mydg det vol01-02

vxmend [-g diskgroup] off plex Takes a plex offline for maintenance.

See “Taking plexes offline” on page 307.

Example:

# vxmend -g mydg off vol02-02

vxmend [-g diskgroup] on plex Re-enables a plex for use.

See “Reattaching plexes” on page 308.

Example:

# vxmend -g mydg on vol02-02

vxplex [-g diskgroup] mv oldplex \ Replaces a plex.

newplex
See “Moving plexes” on page 310.

Example:

# vxplex -g mydg mv \
vol02-02 vol02-03
552 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
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Table A-5 Creating and administering plexes (continued)

Command Description

vxplex [-g diskgroup] cp volume \ Copies a volume onto a plex.

newplex
See “Copying volumes to plexes”
on page 311.

Example:

# vxplex -g mydg cp vol02 \

vol03-01

vxmend [-g diskgroup] fix clean plex Sets the state of a plex in an unstartable
volume to CLEAN.

See “Reattaching plexes” on page 308.

Example:

# vxmend -g mydg fix clean \

vol02-02

vxplex [-g diskgroup] -o rm dis plex Dissociates and removes a plex from a
volume.

See “Dissociating and removing plexes”

on page 311.

Example:

# vxplex -g mydg -o rm dis \

vol03-01

Table A-6 Creating volumes

Command Description

vxassist [-g diskgroup] maxsize \ Displays the maximum size of volume

layout=layout [attributes] that can be created.

See “Discovering the maximum size of

a volume” on page 323.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg maxsize \

layout=raid5 nlog=2
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 553
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Table A-6 Creating volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make \ Creates a volume.

volume length [layout=layout] \
See “Creating a volume on any disk”
[attributes]
on page 324.

See “Creating a volume on specific

disks” on page 325.

Example:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make \

myvol 20g layout=concat \
mydg01 mydg02

vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make \ Creates a mirrored volume.

volume length layout=mirror \
See “Creating a mirrored volume”
[nmirror=N][attributes]
on page 331.

Example:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make \

mymvol 20g layout=mirror \
nmirror=2

vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make \ Creates a volume that may be opened

volume length layout=layout \ exclusively by a single node in a cluster.
exclusive=on [attributes]
See “Creating volumes with exclusive
open access by a node” on page 482.

Example:

# vxassist -b -g mysdg make \

mysmvol 20g layout=mirror \
exclusive=on
554 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-6 Creating volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make \ Creates a striped or RAID-5 volume.

volume length layout={stripe|raid5} \
See “Creating a striped volume”
[stripeunit=W] [ncol=N] \
on page 337.
[attributes]
See “Creating a RAID-5 volume”
on page 341.

Example:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make \

mysvol 20g layout=stripe \
stripeunit=32 ncol=4

vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make \ Creates a volume with mirrored data

volume length layout=mirror \ plexes on separate controllers.
mirror=ctlr [attributes]
See “Mirroring across targets,
controllers or enclosures” on page 339.

Example:

# vxassist -b -g mydg make \

mymcvol 20g layout=mirror \
mirror=ctlr

vxmake -b [-g diskgroup] \ Creates a volume from existing plexes.

-Uusage_type vol volume \
See “Creating a volume using vxmake”
[len=length] plex=plex,...
on page 344.

Example:

# vxmake -g mydg -Uraid5 \

vol r5vol \
plex=raidplex,raidlog1,\
raidlog2

vxvol [-g diskgroup] start volume Initializes and starts a volume for use.

See “Initializing and starting a volume”

on page 346.

See “Starting a volume” on page 370.

Example:

# vxvol -g mydg start r5vol

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 555
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-6 Creating volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxvol [-g Initializes and zeros out a volume for

diskgroup] init zero \ use.
volume
See “Initializing and starting a volume”
on page 346.

Example:

# vxvol -g mydg init zero \

myvol

Table A-7 Administering volumes

Command Description

vxassist [-g diskgroup] mirror \ Adds a mirror to a volume.

volume [attributes]
See “Adding a mirror to a volume ”
on page 375.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg mirror \

myvol mydg10

vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove \ Removes a mirror from a volume.

mirror volume [attributes]
See “Removing a mirror ” on page 379.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg remove \

mirror myvol \!mydg11

Note: The ! character is a special

character in some shells. This example
shows how to escape it in a bash shell.
556 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-7 Administering volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxassist [-g diskgroup] \ Grows a volume to a specified size or

{growto|growby} volume length by a specified amount.

See “Resizing volumes with vxassist”

on page 373.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg growby \

myvol 10g

vxassist [-g diskgroup] \ Shrinks a volume to a specified size or

{shrinkto|shrinkby} volume length by a specified amount.

See “Resizing volumes with vxassist”

on page 373.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg shrinkto \

myvol 20g

vxresize -b -F vxfs [-g diskgroup] \ Resizes a volume and the underlying

volume length diskname ... Veritas File System.

See “Resizing volumes with vxresize”

on page 372.
Example:

# vxresize -b -F vxfs \
-g mydg myvol 20g mydg10 \
mydg11

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] prepare volume \Prepares a volume for instant

[drl=on|sequential|off] snapshots and for DRL logging.

See “Preparing a volume for DRL and

instant snapshots” on page 380.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg prepare \

myvol drl=on
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 557
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-7 Administering volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] make \ Takes a full-sized instant snapshot of

source=volume\ a volume by breaking off plexes of the
/newvol=snapvol\ original volume.
[/nmirror=number]
For information about creating
snapshots, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features
Administrator's Guide.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg make \

source=myvol/\
newvol=mysnpvol/\
nmirror=2

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] make \ Takes a full-sized instant snapshot of

source=volume/snapvol=snapvol a volume using a prepared empty
volume.

For information about snapshots, see

the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's
Guide.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg make \

source=myvol/snapvol=snpvol
558 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-7 Administering volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxmake [-g diskgroup] cache \ Creates a cache object for use by

cache_object cachevolname=volume \ space-optimized instant snapshots.
[regionsize=size]
For information about snapshots, see
the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's
Guide.

A cache volume must have already been

created. After creating the cache object,
enable the cache object with the
vxcache start command.

For example:

# vxassist -g mydg make \

cvol 1g layout=mirror \
init=active mydg16 mydg17
# vxmake -g mydg cache cobj \
cachevolname=cvol
# vxcache -g mydg start cobj

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] make \ Takes a space-optimized instant

source=volume/newvol=snapvol\ snapshot of a volume.
/cache=cache_object
For information about creating
snapshots, see the Veritas Storage
Foundation Advanced Features
Administrator's Guide.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg make \

source=myvol/\
newvol=mysosvol/\
cache=cobj
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 559
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-7 Administering volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] refresh snapshotRefreshes a snapshot from its original

volume.

For information about snapshots, see

the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's
Guide.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg refresh \

mysnpvol

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] dis snapshot Turns a snapshot into an independent

volume.

For information about snapshots, see

the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's
Guide.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg dis mysnpvol

vxsnap [-g diskgroup] unprepare \ Removes support for instant snapshots

volume and DRL logging from a volume.

For information about snapshots, see

the Veritas Storage Foundation
Advanced Features Administrator's
Guide.

See “Removing support for DRL and

instant snapshots from a volume”
on page 385.

Example:

# vxsnap -g mydg unprepare \

myvol
560 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-7 Administering volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxassist [-g diskgroup] relayout \ Performs online relayout of a volume.

volume [layout=layout] \
See “Performing online relayout”
[relayout_options]
on page 396.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg relayout \

vol2 layout=stripe

vxassist [-g diskgroup] relayout \ Relays out a volume as a RAID-5

volume layout=raid5 \ volume with stripe width W and N
stripeunit=W \ columns.
ncol=N
See “Performing online relayout”
on page 396.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg relayout \

vol3 layout=raid5 \
stripeunit=16 ncol=4

vxrelayout [-g diskgroup] -o bg \ Reverses the direction of a paused

reverse volume volume relayout.

See “Volume sets” on page 72.

Example:

# vxrelayout -g mydg -o bg \
reverse vol3

vxassist [-g diskgroup] convert \ Converts between a layered volume and

volume [layout=layout] \ a non-layered volume layout.
[convert_options]
See “Converting between layered and
non-layered volumes” on page 402.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg convert \

vol3 layout=stripe-mirror
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 561
About Veritas Volume Manager commands

Table A-7 Administering volumes (continued)

Command Description

vxassist [-g diskgroup] remove \ Removes a volume.

volume volume
See “Removing a volume” on page 392.

Example:

# vxassist -g mydg remove \

myvol

Table A-8 Monitoring and controlling tasks

Command Description

command [-g diskgroup] -t tasktag \ Specifies a task tag to a VxVM

[options] [arguments] command.

See “Specifying task tags” on page 360.

Example:

# vxrecover -g mydg \
-t mytask -b mydg05

vxtask [-h] [-g diskgroup] list Lists tasks running on a system.

See “Using the vxtask command”

on page 362.

Example:

# vxtask -h -g mydg list

vxtask monitor task Monitors the progress of a task.

See “Using the vxtask command”

on page 362.

Example:

# vxtask monitor mytask

562 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-8 Monitoring and controlling tasks (continued)

Command Description

vxtask pause task Suspends operation of a task.

See “Using the vxtask command”

on page 362.

Example:

# vxtask pause mytask

vxtask -p [-g diskgroup] list Lists all paused tasks.

See “Using the vxtask command”

on page 362.

Example:

# vxtask -p -g mydg list

vxtask resume task Resumes a paused task.

See “Using the vxtask command”

on page 362.

Example:

# vxtask resume mytask

vxtask abort task Cancels a task and attempts to reverse

its effects.

See “Using the vxtask command”

on page 362.

Example:

# vxtask abort mytask

CVM commands supported for executing on the slave

node
Table A-9 shows the complete list of commands that are supported for executing
on the slave node.
 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 563
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Command Supported operations

vxdg
564 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node
(continued)

Command Supported operations

vxdg -s init <shared_dg> [cds=on|off]

vxdg -T < different_versions> -s init <shared_dg> [minor=base-minor]

[cds=on|off]

vxdg [-n newname] [-h new-host-id] deport <shared_dg>

vxdg [-Cfst] [-n newname] [-o clearreserve] [-o useclonedev={on|off}] [-o

updateid] [-o noreonline] [-o selectcp=diskid] [-o dgtype=shared] import
<shared_dg>

vxdg destroy <shared_dg>

vxdg -g <shared_dg> [-o overridessb] [-f] adddisk [disk=]device

vxdg-g <shared_dg>addsite site

vxdg -g <shared_dg> reattachsite site

vxdg -g <shared_dg> detachsite site

vxdg -g <shared_dg> rmsite site

vxdg -g <shared_dg> renamesite oldname newname

vxdg flush <shared_dg>

vxdg [-qa] -g <shared_dg> free [ medianame...]

vxdg join sourcedg targetdg (both dgs should be shared )

vxdg split sourcedg targetdg

vxdg [-q] [-s] [-o listreserve] list [diskgroup...]

vxdg [-o expand] move sourcedg targetdg object (both dgs should be shared
)

vxdg -g shared_dg recover

vxdg -g <shared_dg> [-f] reminor <shared_dg> new-minor-number

vxdg -g <shared_dg> rmdisk medianame...

vxdg -g <shared_dg>[-q] spare [ medianame...]

vxdg -g <shared_dg> [-f] [-o retain|replace] settag [encl:<enclosure>]

name[=value name[=value]

vxdg [-q] listtag <shared_dg>

vxdg -g <shared_dg> rmtag [encl:<enclosure>] name=value

vxdg -g <shared_dg> set siteconsistent=on

vxdg upgrade <shared_dg>

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 565
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node
(continued)

Command Supported operations

vxdg -g <shared_dg>set attr=value ...

vxassist vxassist -g <shared_dg> [ -b ] convert volume layout=<type>

vxassist -g <shared_dg> [ -b ] addlog volume

vxassist -g <shared_dg> [-b] mirror volume

vxassist [-b]-g <shared_dg>make volume length [layout=layout] diskname

...

vxassist -g <shared_dg> [-b] growby volume lengthchange [attribute ...]

vxassist [-b] -g <shared_dg> growto volume newlength

vxassist -g <shared_dg> shrinkby volume lengthchange

vxassist -g <shared_dg> shrinkto volume newlength

vxassist -g <shared_dg> settag volume|vset tagname[=tagvalue]

vxassist -g <shared_dg>replacetag volume|vset oldtag newtag

vxassist -g <shared_dg> removetag volume|vset tagname

vxassist -g <shared_dg> move volume-name storage-spec

vxassist -g <shared_dg> relayout {volume-name} layout=<type>

vxassist -g <shared_dg> remove {volume|mirror|log} volume-name

vxassist -g <shared_dg> snapshot volume-name [snapshot-name]

[comment=<comment>]

vxassist -g <shared_dg> snapstart volume

vxassist -g <shared_dg> maxsize layout=<> nmirror=<> / nlog=<>

vxassist -g <shared_dg> maxgrow volume

vxassist -g <shared_dg> snapback snapvol

vxassist -g <shared_dg> snapclear snapvol1

566 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node
(continued)

Command Supported operations

vxcache vxcache -g <shared_dg> start cacheobject

vxcache -g <shared_dg> stop cacheobject

vxcache -g <shared_dg> att volume cacheobject

vxcache -g <shared_dg> dis cachevol

vxcache -g <shared_dg> shrinkcacheto cacheobject newlength

vxcache -g <shared_dg> shrinkcacheby cacheobject lengthchange

vxcache -g <shared_dg> growcacheto cacheobject newlength

vxcache -g <shared_dg> growcacheby cacheobject lengthchange

vxdco vxdco -g <shared_dg> dis dco

vxdco -g <shared_dg> att volume dco

vxdco -g <shared_dg>[-o force] enable dco

vxedit vxedit -g <shared_dg> set comment="plex comment" plex1

vxedit -g <shared_dg> -rf rm volume

vxedit -g <shared_dg>rename oldname newname

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set what=value

vxedit-g <shared_dg> set user=value mode=value medianame

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set failing=off <disk name>

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set fstype volumename

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set len subdisk

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set orig_dmname subdisk

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set orig_dmoffset subdisk

vxedit -g <shared_dg> set diskdetpolicy diskgroup

vxmake vxmake -g <shared_dg> sd name [attr...]

vxmake-g <shared_dg>plex plex sd=subdisk1[,subdisk2,...]

vxmake -g <shared_dg> -U fsgen vol homevol1 plex=plex-1

vxmake -g <shared_dg> -U fsgen vol volume1 plex=plex1,plex2

vxmake -g <shared_dg> cache name regionsize=<size>

vxmake -g <shared_dg> dco volume log=dco

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 567
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node
(continued)

Command Supported operations

vxmend vxmend -g <shared_dg> on plex

vxmend -g <shared_dg> off plex

vxmirror vxmirror -g <shared_dg>medianame

vxmirror -g <shared_dg> -d [yes|no]

vxplex vxplex -g <shared_dg> att volume plex

vxplex -g <shared_dg> cp volume new_plex

vxplex -g <shared_dg> dis plex1

vxplex -g <shared_dg>mv original_plex new_plex

vxplex -g <shared_dg> snapstart vol snapplex

vxplex -g <shared_dg> snaphot snapplex

vxplex -g <shared_dg> snapback vol snapplex

vxplex -g <shared_dg> plex

vxrelayout vxrelayout -g <shared_dg> status volume

vxrelayout -g <shared_dg> start volume

vxrelayout -g <shared_dg> reverse volname

vxsd vxsd -g <shared_dg> assoc plex subdisk1 [subdisk2 subdisk3 ...]

vxsd -g <shared_dg> [-o force] dis subdisk

vxsd -g <shared_dg> mv old_subdisk new_subdisk [new_subdisk ...]

vxsd -g <shared_dg> aslog plex2 sdisk3

vxsd -g <shared_dg> join subdisk1 subdisk2 ... new_subdisk

vxsd -g <shared_dg> [-o force] dis subdisk

vxsd -g <shared_dg> split subdisk newsd [newsd2]...

568 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node
(continued)

Command Supported operations

vxsnap vxsnap -g <shared_dg> addmir volume [nmirror=N]

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> prepare volume

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> rmmir volume

vxsnap -g <shared_dg>unprepare volume

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> make snapshot_tuple [snapshot_tuple]...

[alloc=storage_attributes]

vxsnap [-f] -g <shared_dg> dis volume

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> addmap volumename count

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> print volumename

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> list volumename

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> syncwait snapvol

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> snapwait

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> refresh snapvol source=volume

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> restore target source=volname

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> split volumename

vxsnap -g <shared_dg> reattach volname source=volname

vxsnptadm vxsnptadm -g <shared_dg> create vol [snptname=snpt]

[snapvolname=snapvol] [data={yes|no}]

vxsnptadm -g <shared_dg> info vol [snptname=snpt]

vxsnptadm -g <shared_dg> remove vol snptname=snpt

vxsnptadm -g <shared_dg> removeall vol [cookie=cookie]

vxsnptadm -g <shared_dg> rename vol snptname=snpt newname=snpt2

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 569
Online manual pages

Table A-9 List of CVM commands supported for executing on the slave node
(continued)

Command Supported operations

vxvol vxvol -g <shared_dg> set logtype=drl | drlseq volume

vxvol -g <shared_dg> start volume

vxvol -g <shared_dg> stop volume

vxvol -g <shared_dg> {startall|stopall} volume

vxvol -g <shared_dg> init enable volume

vxvol -g <shared_dg> init active volume

vxvol -g <shared_dg> maint volumename

vxvol -g <shared_dg> set len volumename

vxvol -g <shared_dg> set logtype volumename

vxvol -g <shared_dg> set loglen volumename

vxvset vxvset -g <shared_dg> make volume-set-name volume-name

vxvset -g <shared_dg> addvol volume-set-name volume-name

vxvset -g <shared_dg> list volume-set-name

vxvset -g <shared_dg> rmvol volume-set-name volume-name

vxvset -g <shared_dg> stop volume-set-name

vxvset -g <shared_dg> start volume-set-name

vxevac vxevac -g <shared_dg> medianame

vxresize vxresize [ -Vsb] [-F fstype] -g <shared_dg> volume length

vxrecover vxrecover -g <shared_dg>

vxrecover -g <shared_dg> volume

vxckdiskrm vxckdiskrm -g <shared_dg> medianame

Online manual pages

Manual pages are organized into the following sections:

1M Administrative commands.

4 File formats.
570 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
Online manual pages

7 Device driver interfaces.

Section 1M — administrative commands

Table A-10 lists the manual pages in section 1M for commands that are used to
administer Veritas Volume Manager.

Table A-10 Section 1M manual pages

Name Description

vxapslice Manage an area of disk for use by an

Alternate Pathing database.

vxassist Create, relayout, convert, mirror, backup,

grow, shrink, delete, and move volumes.

vxbootsetup Set up system boot information on a

Veritas Volume Manager disk.

vxcache Administer the cache object for

space-optimized snapshots.

vxcached Resize cache volumes when required.

vxcdsconvert Make disks and disk groups portable

between systems.

vxclustadm Start, stop, and reconfigure a cluster.

vxcmdlog Administer command logging.

vxconfigbackup Back up disk group configuration.

vxconfigbackupd Disk group configuration backup daemon.

vxconfigd Veritas Volume Manager configuration

daemon

vxconfigrestore Restore disk group configuration.

vxdarestore Restore simple or nopriv disk access

records.

vxdco Perform operations on version 0 DCO

objects and DCO volumes.

vxdctl Control the volume configuration daemon.

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 571
Online manual pages

Table A-10 Section 1M manual pages (continued)

Name Description

vxddladm Device Discovery Layer subsystem

administration.

vxdefault Manage the defaults set in

/etc/default/vxsf that configure
settings such as SmartMove, thin
reclamation, automatic starting of volumes,
and minor numbers for shared disk groups.

vxdg Manage Veritas Volume Manager disk

groups.

vxdisk Define and manage Veritas Volume

Manager disks.

vxdiskadd Add one or more disks for use with Veritas

Volume Manager.

vxdiskadm Menu-driven Veritas Volume Manager disk

administration.

vxdiskconfig Configure disk devices and bring them

under VxVM control.

vxdisksetup Configure a disk for use with Veritas

Volume Manager.

vxdiskunsetup Deconfigure a disk from use with Veritas

Volume Manager.

vxdmpadm DMP subsystem administration.

vxedit Create, remove, and modify Veritas Volume

Manager records.

vxencap Encapsulate partitions on a new disk.

vxevac Evacuate all volumes from a disk.

vxinfo Print accessibility and usability of volumes.

vxinstall Menu-driven Veritas Volume Manager

initial configuration.

vxintro Introduction to the Veritas Volume

Manager utilities.
572 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
Online manual pages

Table A-10 Section 1M manual pages (continued)

Name Description

vxiod Start, stop, and report on Veritas Volume

Manager kernel I/O threads.

vxlufinish Finish a live upgrade of Veritas Volume

Manager.

vxlustart Start a live upgrade of Veritas Volume

Manager.

vxmake Create Veritas Volume Manager

configuration records.

vxmemstat Display memory statistics for Veritas

Volume Manager.

vxmend Mend simple problems in configuration

records.

vxmirror Mirror volumes on a disk or control default

mirroring.

vxnotify Display Veritas Volume Manager

configuration events.

vxplex Perform Veritas Volume Manager

operations on plexes.

vxprint Display records from the Veritas Volume

Manager configuration.

vxr5check Verify RAID-5 volume parity.

vxreattach Reattach disk drives that have become

accessible again.

vxrecover Perform volume recovery operations.

vxrelayout Convert online storage from one layout to

another.

vxrelocd Monitor Veritas Volume Manager for

failure events and relocate failed subdisks.

vxresize Change the length of a volume containing

a file system.

vxrootadm Grow or take snapshots of the boot disk.

 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands 573
Online manual pages

Table A-10 Section 1M manual pages (continued)

Name Description

vxscsiinq Display SCSI inquiry data.

vxsd Perform Veritas Volume Manager

operations on subdisks.

vxsnap Enable DRL on a volume, and create and

administer instant snapshots.

vxsparecheck Monitor for disk failure, and replace failed

disks.

vxstat Veritas Volume Manager statistics

management utility.

vxtask List and administer Veritas Volume

Manager tasks.

vxtrace Trace operations on volumes.

vxtranslog Administer transaction logging.

vxtune Adjust Veritas Volume Replicator and

Veritas Volume Manager tunables.

vxunreloc Move a hot-relocated subdisk back to its

original disk.

vxunroot Remove Veritas Volume Manager hooks

from encapsulated root volumes.

vxvol Perform Veritas Volume Manager

operations on volumes.

vxvset Create and administer volume sets.

Section 4 — file formats

Table A-11 lists the manual pages in section 4 that describe the format of files
that are used by Veritas Volume Manager.

Table A-11 Section 4 manual pages

Name Description

vol_pattern Disk group search specifications.

574 Using Veritas Volume Manager commands
Online manual pages

Table A-11 Section 4 manual pages (continued)

Name Description

vxmake vxmake description file.

Section 7 — device driver interfaces

Table A-12 lists the manual pages in section 7 that describe the interfaces to
Veritas Volume Manager devices.

Table A-12 Section 7 manual pages

Name Description

vxconfig Configuration device.

vxdmp Dynamic Multi-Pathing device.

vxinfo General information device.

vxio Virtual disk device.

vxiod I/O daemon process control device.

vxtrace I/O tracing device.

 Appendix B
Configuring Veritas Volume
Manager
This appendix includes the following topics:

■ Setup tasks after installation

■ Unsupported disk arrays

■ Foreign devices

■ Initialization of disks and creation of disk groups

■ Guidelines for configuring storage

■ VxVM’s view of multipathed devices

■ Cluster support

Setup tasks after installation

A number of setup tasks can be performed after installing the Veritas Volume
Manager (VxVM) software.
The following tasks are to perform initial setup:
■ Create disk groups by placing disks under Veritas Volume Manager control.
■ Create volumes in the disk groups.
■ Configure file systems on the volumes.
The following setup tasks are optional:
■ Encapsulate the root disk, and mirror it to create an alternate boot disk.
■ Designate hot-relocation spare disks in each disk group.
576 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager
Unsupported disk arrays

■ Add mirrors to volumes.

■ Configure DRL and FastResync on volumes.
The following tasks are to perform ongoing maintenance:
■ Resize volumes and file systems.
■ Add more disks, create new disk groups, and create new volumes.
■ Create and maintain snapshots.

Unsupported disk arrays

After installation, add any disk arrays that are unsupported by Symantec to the
DISKS (JBOD) category.
See “How to administer the Device Discovery Layer” on page 90.

Foreign devices
The device discovery feature of VxVM can discover some devices that are controlled
by third-party drivers, such as for EMC PowerPath. For these devices it may be
preferable to use the multipathing capability that is provided by the third-party
drivers rather than using the Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) feature. Provided
that a suitable array support library is available, DMP can co-exist with such
drivers. Other foreign devices, for which a compatible ASL does not exist, can be
made available to Veritas Volume Manager as simple disks by using the vxddladm
addforeign command. This also has the effect of bypassing DMP.

See “How to administer the Device Discovery Layer” on page 90.

Initialization of disks and creation of disk groups

To place disks in disk groups, use the vxdiskadm program after completing the
installation.
See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 113.

Guidelines for configuring storage

A disk failure can cause loss of data on the failed disk and loss of access to your
system. Loss of access is due to the failure of a key disk used for system operations.
Veritas Volume Manager can protect your system from these problems.
 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager 577
Guidelines for configuring storage

To maintain system availability, data important to running and booting your

system must be mirrored. The data must be preserved so it can be used in case of
failure.
The following are suggestions for protecting your system and data:
■ Perform regular backups to protect your data. Backups are necessary if all
copies of a volume are lost or corrupted. Power surges can damage several (or
all) disks on your system. Also, typing a command in error can remove critical
files or damage a file system directly. Performing regular backups ensures
that lost or corrupted data is available to be retrieved.
■ Place the disk containing the root file system (the root or boot disk) under
Veritas Volume Manager control through encapsulation. Encapsulation
converts the root and swap devices to volumes (rootvol and swapvol). Mirror
the root disk so that an alternate root disk exists for booting purposes. By
mirroring disks critical to booting, you ensure that no single disk failure leaves
your system unbootable and unusable.
See “Rootability” on page 129.
■ Use mirroring to protect data against loss from a disk failure.
See “Mirroring guidelines” on page 577.
■ Use the DRL feature to speed up recovery of mirrored volumes after a system
crash.
See “Dirty region logging guidelines” on page 578.
■ Use striping to improve the I/O performance of volumes.
See “Striping guidelines” on page 579.
■ Make sure enough disks are available for a combined striped and mirrored
configuration. At least two disks are required for the striped plex, and one or
more additional disks are needed for the mirror.
■ When combining striping and mirroring, never place subdisks from one plex
on the same physical disk as subdisks from the other plex.
■ Use logging to prevent corruption of recovery data in RAID-5 volumes. Make
sure that each RAID-5 volume has at least one log plex.
See “RAID-5 guidelines” on page 580.
■ Leave the Veritas Volume Manager hot-relocation feature enabled.
See “Hot-relocation guidelines” on page 580.

Mirroring guidelines
Refer to the following guidelines when using mirroring.
578 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager
Guidelines for configuring storage

■ Do not place subdisks from different plexes of a mirrored volume on the same
physical disk. This action compromises the availability benefits of mirroring
and degrades performance. Using the vxassist or vxdiskadm commands
precludes this from happening.
■ To provide optimum performance improvements through the use of mirroring,
at least 70 percent of physical I/O operations should be read operations. A
higher percentage of read operations results in even better performance.
Mirroring may not provide a performance increase or may even result in a
performance decrease in a write-intensive workload environment.
■ The operating system implements a file system cache. Read requests can
frequently be satisfied from the cache. This can cause the read/write ratio for
physical I/O operations through the file system to be biased toward writing
(when compared to the read/write ratio at the application level).
■ Where possible, use disks attached to different controllers when mirroring or
striping. Most disk controllers support overlapped seeks. This allows seeks to
begin on two disks at once. Do not configure two plexes of the same volume
on disks that are attached to a controller that does not support overlapped
seeks. This is important for older controllers or SCSI disks that do not cache
on the drive. It is less important for modern SCSI disks and controllers.
Mirroring across controllers allows the system to survive a failure of one of
the controllers. Another controller can continue to provide data from a mirror.
■ A plex exhibits superior performance when striped or concatenated across
multiple disks, or when located on a much faster device. Set the read policy to
prefer the faster plex. By default, a volume with one striped plex is configured
to prefer reading from the striped plex.
See “Mirroring (RAID-1)” on page 42.

Dirty region logging guidelines

Dirty region logging (DRL) can speed up recovery of mirrored volumes following
a system crash. When DRL is enabled, Veritas Volume Manager keeps track of the
regions within a volume that have changed as a result of writes to a plex.

Warning: Using Dirty Region Logging can adversely impact system performance
in a write-intensive environment.

See “Dirty region logging” on page 58.

 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager 579
Guidelines for configuring storage

Striping guidelines
Refer to the following guidelines when using striping.
■ Do not place more than one column of a striped plex on the same physical disk.
■ Calculate stripe-unit sizes carefully. In general, a moderate stripe-unit size
(for example, 64 kilobytes, which is also the default used by vxassist) is
recommended.
■ If it is not feasible to set the stripe-unit size to the track size, and you do not
know the application I/O pattern, use the default stripe-unit size.
■ Many modern disk drives have variable geometry. This means that the track
size differs between cylinders, so that outer disk tracks have more sectors than
inner tracks. It is therefore not always appropriate to use the track size as the
stripe-unit size. For these drives, use a moderate stripe-unit size (such as 64
kilobytes), unless you know the I/O pattern of the application.
■ Volumes with small stripe-unit sizes can exhibit poor sequential I/O latency
if the disks do not have synchronized spindles. Generally, striping over disks
without synchronized spindles yields better performance when used with
larger stripe-unit sizes and multi-threaded, or largely asynchronous, random
I/O streams.
■ Typically, the greater the number of physical disks in the stripe, the greater
the improvement in I/O performance; however, this reduces the effective mean
time between failures of the volume. If this is an issue, combine striping with
mirroring to combine high-performance with improved reliability.
■ If only one plex of a mirrored volume is striped, set the policy of the volume
to prefer for the striped plex. (The default read policy, select, does this
automatically.)
■ If more than one plex of a mirrored volume is striped, configure the same
stripe-unit size for each striped plex.
■ Where possible, distribute the subdisks of a striped volume across drives
connected to different controllers and buses.
■ Avoid the use of controllers that do not support overlapped seeks. (Such
controllers are rare.)
The vxassist command automatically applies and enforces many of these rules
when it allocates space for striped plexes in a volume.
See “Striping (RAID-0)” on page 39.
580 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager
Guidelines for configuring storage

RAID-5 guidelines
Refer to the following guidelines when using RAID-5.
In general, the guidelines for mirroring and striping together also apply to RAID-5.
The following guidelines should also be observed with RAID-5:
■ Only one RAID-5 plex can exist per RAID-5 volume (but there can be multiple
log plexes).
■ The RAID-5 plex must be derived from at least three subdisks on three or more
physical disks. If any log plexes exist, they must belong to disks other than
those used for the RAID-5 plex.
■ RAID-5 logs can be mirrored and striped.
■ If the volume length is not explicitly specified, it is set to the length of any
RAID-5 plex associated with the volume; otherwise, it is set to zero. If you
specify the volume length, it must be a multiple of the stripe-unit size of the
associated RAID-5 plex, if any.
■ If the log length is not explicitly specified, it is set to the length of the smallest
RAID-5 log plex that is associated, if any. If no RAID-5 log plexes are associated,
it is set to zero.
■ Sparse RAID-5 log plexes are not valid.
■ RAID-5 volumes are not supported for sharing in a cluster.
See “RAID-5 (striping with parity)” on page 45.

Hot-relocation guidelines
Hot-relocation automatically restores redundancy and access to mirrored and
RAID-5 volumes when a disk fails. This is done by relocating the affected subdisks
to disks designated as spares and/or free space in the same disk group.
The hot-relocation feature is enabled by default. The associated daemon, vxrelocd,
is automatically started during system startup.
Refer to the following guidelines when using hot-relocation.
■ The hot-relocation feature is enabled by default. Although it is possible to
disable hot-relocation, it is advisable to leave it enabled. It will notify you of
the nature of the failure, attempt to relocate any affected subdisks that are
redundant, and initiate recovery procedures.
■ Although hot-relocation does not require you to designate disks as spares,
designate at least one disk as a spare within each disk group. This gives you
some control over which disks are used for relocation. If no spares exist, Veritas
Volume Manager uses any available free space within the disk group. When
 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager 581
Guidelines for configuring storage

free space is used for relocation purposes, it is possible to have performance

degradation after the relocation.
■ After hot-relocation occurs, designate one or more additional disks as spares
to augment the spare space. Some of the original spare space may be occupied
by relocated subdisks.
■ If a given disk group spans multiple controllers and has more than one spare
disk, set up the spare disks on different controllers (in case one of the
controllers fails).
■ For a mirrored volume, configure the disk group so that there is at least one
disk that does not already contain a mirror of the volume. This disk should
either be a spare disk with some available space or a regular disk with some
free space and the disk is not excluded from hot-relocation use.
■ For a mirrored and striped volume, configure the disk group so that at least
one disk does not already contain one of the mirrors of the volume or another
subdisk in the striped plex. This disk should either be a spare disk with some
available space or a regular disk with some free space and the disk is not
excluded from hot-relocation use.
■ For a RAID-5 volume, configure the disk group so that at least one disk does
not already contain the RAID-5 plex (or one of its log plexes) of the volume.
This disk should either be a spare disk with some available space or a regular
disk with some free space and the disk is not excluded from hot-relocation
use.
■ If a mirrored volume has a DRL log subdisk as part of its data plex, you cannot
relocate the data plex. Instead, place log subdisks in log plexes that contain
no data.
■ Hot-relocation does not guarantee to preserve the original performance
characteristics or data layout. Examine the locations of newly-relocated
subdisks to determine whether they should be relocated to more suitable disks
to regain the original performance benefits.
■ Although it is possible to build Veritas Volume Manager objects on spare disks,
it is recommended that you use spare disks for hot-relocation only.
See “How hot-relocation works” on page 428.

Accessing volume devices

As soon as a volume has been created and initialized, it is available for use as a
virtual disk partition by the operating system for the creation of a file system, or
by application programs such as relational databases and other data management
software.
582 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager
VxVM’s view of multipathed devices

Creating a volume in a disk group sets up block and character (raw) device files
that can be used to access the volume:

/dev/vx/dsk/dg/vol block device file for volume vol in disk group

dg

/dev/vx/rdsk/dg/vol character device file for volume vol in disk

group dg

The pathnames include a directory named for the disk group. Use the appropriate
device node to create, mount and repair file systems, and to lay out databases that
require raw partitions.

VxVM’s view of multipathed devices

You can use the vxdiskadm command to control how a device is treated by the
Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP).
See “Disabling multi-pathing and making devices invisible to VxVM” on page 165.

Cluster support
The Veritas Volume Manager software includes a licensable feature that enables
it to be used in a cluster environment. The cluster functionality in Veritas Volume
Manager allows multiple hosts to simultaneously access and manage a set of disks
under Veritas Volume Manager control. A cluster is a set of hosts sharing a set of
disks; each host is referred to as a node in the cluster.
See the Veritas Storage Foundation Getting Started Guide.

Configuring shared disk groups

If you are installing Veritas Volume Manager for the first time or adding disks to
an existing cluster, you need to configure new shared disks.

Note: RAID-5 volumes are not supported for sharing in a cluster.

If you are setting up Veritas Volume Manager for the first time, configure the
shared disks using the following steps in the specified order:
■ Start the cluster on one node only to prevent access by other nodes.
 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager 583
Cluster support

■ On one node, run the vxdiskadm program and choose option 1 to initialize new
disks. When asked to add these disks to a disk group, choose none to leave the
disks for future use.
■ On other nodes in the cluster, run vxdctl enable to see the newly initialized
disks.
■ Create disk groups on the shared disks.
■ Use the vxdg command or the Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) to create
disk groups. If you use the vxdg command, specify the -s option to create
shared disk groups.
■ Use vxassist or VOM to create volumes in the disk groups.
■ If the cluster is only running with one node, bring up the other cluster nodes.
Enter the vxdg list command on each node to display the shared disk groups.
584 Configuring Veritas Volume Manager
Cluster support

Converting existing VxVM disk groups to shared disk groups

To convert existing disk groups to shared disk groups
1 Start the cluster on one node only to prevent access by other nodes.
2 Configure the disk groups using the following procedure.
To list all disk groups, use the following command:

# vxdg list

To deport the disk groups that are to be shared, use the following command:

# vxdg deport diskgroup

To import disk groups to be shared, use the following command:

# vxdg -s import diskgroup

This procedure marks the disks in the shared disk groups as shared and
stamps them with the ID of the cluster, enabling other nodes to recognize
the shared disks.
If dirty region logs exist, ensure they are active. If not, replace them with
larger ones.
To display the shared flag for all the shared disk groups, use the following
command:

# vxdg list

The disk groups are now ready to be shared.

3 Bring up the other cluster nodes. Enter the vxdg list command on each node
to display the shared disk groups. This command displays the same list of
shared disk groups displayed earlier.
See the Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System Installation Guide.
 Glossary

Active/Active disk This type of multipathed disk array allows you to access a disk in the disk array
arrays through all the paths to the disk simultaneously, without any performance
degradation.
Active/Passive disk This type of multipathed disk array allows one path to a disk to be designated as
arrays primary and used to access the disk at any time. Using a path other than the
designated active path results in severe performance degradation in some disk
arrays.
associate The process of establishing a relationship between VxVM objects; for example, a
subdisk that has been created and defined as having a starting point within a plex
is referred to as being associated with that plex.
associated plex A plex associated with a volume.
associated subdisk A subdisk associated with a plex.
atomic operation An operation that either succeeds completely or fails and leaves everything as it
was before the operation was started. If the operation succeeds, all aspects of the
operation take effect at once and the intermediate states of change are invisible.
If any aspect of the operation fails, then the operation aborts without leaving
partial changes.
In a cluster, an atomic operation takes place either on all nodes or not at all.
attached A state in which a VxVM object is both associated with another object and enabled
for use.
block The minimum unit of data transfer to or from a disk or array.
boot disk A disk that is used for the purpose of booting a system.
boot disk group A private disk group that contains the disks from which the system may be booted.
bootdg A reserved disk group name that is an alias for the name of the boot disk group.
clean node shutdown The ability of a node to leave a cluster gracefully when all access to shared volumes
has ceased.
cluster A set of hosts (each termed a node) that share a set of disks.
cluster manager An externally-provided daemon that runs on each node in a cluster. The cluster
managers on each node communicate with each other and inform VxVM of changes
in cluster membership.
586 Glossary

cluster-shareable disk A disk group in which access to the disks is shared by multiple hosts (also referred
group to as a shared disk group).
column A set of one or more subdisks within a striped plex. Striping is achieved by
allocating data alternately and evenly across the columns within a plex.
concatenation A layout style characterized by subdisks that are arranged sequentially and
contiguously.
configuration copy A single copy of a configuration database.
configuration database A set of records containing detailed information on existing VxVM objects (such
as disk and volume attributes).
DCO (data change A VxVM object that is used to manage information about the FastResync maps in
object) the DCO volume. Both a DCO object and a DCO volume must be associated with a
volume to implement Persistent FastResync on that volume.
data stripe This represents the usable data portion of a stripe and is equal to the stripe minus
the parity region.
DCO volume A special volume that is used to hold Persistent FastResync change maps and
dirty region logs. See also see dirty region logging.
detached A state in which a VxVM object is associated with another object, but not enabled
for use.
device name The device name or address used to access a physical disk, such as c0t0d0s2. The
c#t#d#s# syntax identifies the controller, target address, disk, and slice (or
partition).
In a SAN environment, it is more convenient to use enclosure-based naming,
which forms the device name by concatenating the name of the enclosure (such
as enc0) with the disk’s number within the enclosure, separated by an underscore
(for example, enc0_2). The term disk access name can also be used to refer to a
device name.
dirty region logging The method by which the VxVM monitors and logs modifications to a plex as a
bitmap of changed regions. For a volumes with a new-style DCO volume, the dirty
region log (DRL) is maintained in the DCO volume. Otherwise, the DRL is allocated
to an associated subdisk called a log subdisk.
disabled path A path to a disk that is not available for I/O. A path can be disabled due to real
hardware failures or if the user has used the vxdmpadm disable command on that
controller.
disk A collection of read/write data blocks that are indexed and can be accessed fairly
quickly. Each disk has a universally unique identifier.
disk access name An alternative term for a device name.
 Glossary 587

disk access records Configuration records used to specify the access path to particular disks. Each
disk access record contains a name, a type, and possibly some type-specific
information, which is used by VxVM in deciding how to access and manipulate
the disk that is defined by the disk access record.
disk array A collection of disks logically arranged into an object. Arrays tend to provide
benefits such as redundancy or improved performance.
disk array serial number This is the serial number of the disk array. It is usually printed on the disk array
cabinet or can be obtained by issuing a vendor- specific SCSI command to the
disks on the disk array. This number is used by the DMP subsystem to uniquely
identify a disk array.
disk controller In the multipathing subsystem of VxVM, the controller (host bus adapter or HBA)
or disk array connected to the host, which the operating system represents as the
parent node of a disk.
For example, if a disk is represented by the device name
/dev/sbus@1f,0/QLGC,isp@2,10000/sd@8,0:c then the path component
QLGC,isp@2,10000 represents the disk controller that is connected to the host
for disk sd@8,0:c.
disk enclosure An intelligent disk array that usually has a backplane with a built-in Fibre Channel
loop, and which permits hot-swapping of disks.
disk group A collection of disks that share a common configuration. A disk group
configuration is a set of records containing detailed information on existing VxVM
objects (such as disk and volume attributes) and their relationships. Each disk
group has an administrator-assigned name and an internally defined unique ID.
The disk group names bootdg (an alias for the boot disk group), defaultdg (an
alias for the default disk group) and nodg (represents no disk group) are reserved.
disk group ID A unique identifier used to identify a disk group.
disk ID A universally unique identifier that is given to each disk and can be used to identify
the disk, even if it is moved.
disk media name An alternative term for a disk name.
disk media record A configuration record that identifies a particular disk, by disk ID, and gives that
disk a logical (or administrative) name.
disk name A logical or administrative name chosen for a disk that is under the control of
VxVM, such as disk03. The term disk media name is also used to refer to a disk
name.
dissociate The process by which any link that exists between two VxVM objects is removed.
For example, dissociating a subdisk from a plex removes the subdisk from the
plex and adds the subdisk to the free space pool.
588 Glossary

dissociated plex A plex dissociated from a volume.

dissociated subdisk A subdisk dissociated from a plex.
distributed lock A lock manager that runs on different systems in a cluster, and ensures consistent
manager access to distributed resources.
enabled path A path to a disk that is available for I/O.
encapsulation A process that converts existing partitions on a specified disk to volumes. If any
partitions contain file systems, /etc/vfstab entries are modified so that the file
systems are mounted on volumes instead.
enclosure See disk enclosure.
enclosure-based naming See device name.

fabric mode disk A disk device that is accessible on a Storage Area Network (SAN) via a Fibre
Channel switch.
FastResync A fast resynchronization feature that is used to perform quick and efficient
resynchronization of stale mirrors, and to increase the efficiency of the snapshot
mechanism.
Fibre Channel A collective name for the fiber optic technology that is commonly used to set up
a Storage Area Network (SAN).
file system A collection of files organized together into a structure. The UNIX file system is
a hierarchical structure consisting of directories and files.
free space An area of a disk under VxVM control that is not allocated to any subdisk or
reserved for use by any other VxVM object.
free subdisk A subdisk that is not associated with any plex and has an empty putil[0] field.
hostid A string that identifies a host to VxVM. The host ID for a host is stored in its
volboot file, and is used in defining ownership of disks and disk groups.

hot-relocation A technique of automatically restoring redundancy and access to mirrored and

RAID-5 volumes when a disk fails. This is done by relocating the affected subdisks
to disks designated as spares and/or free space in the same disk group.
hot-swap Refers to devices that can be removed from, or inserted into, a system without
first turning off the power supply to the system.
initiating node The node on which the system administrator is running a utility that requests a
change to VxVM objects. This node initiates a volume reconfiguration.
JBOD (just a bunch of The common name for an unintelligent disk array which may, or may not, support
disks) the hot-swapping of disks.
log plex A plex used to store a RAID-5 log. The term log plex may also be used to refer to
a Dirty Region Logging plex.
 Glossary 589

log subdisk A subdisk that is used to store a dirty region log.

master node A node that is designated by the software to coordinate certain VxVM operations
in a cluster. Any node is capable of being the master node.
mastering node The node to which a disk is attached. This is also known as a disk owner.
mirror A duplicate copy of a volume and the data therein (in the form of an ordered
collection of subdisks). Each mirror consists of one plex of the volume with which
the mirror is associated.
mirroring A layout technique that mirrors the contents of a volume onto multiple plexes.
Each plex duplicates the data stored on the volume, but the plexes themselves
may have different layouts.
multipathing Where there are multiple physical access paths to a disk connected to a system,
the disk is called multipathed. Any software residing on the host, (for example,
the DMP driver) that hides this fact from the user is said to provide multipathing
functionality.
node One of the hosts in a cluster.
node abort A situation where a node leaves a cluster (on an emergency basis) without
attempting to stop ongoing operations.
node join The process through which a node joins a cluster and gains access to shared disks.
Non-Persistent A form of FastResync that cannot preserve its maps across reboots of the system
FastResync because it stores its change map in memory.
object An entity that is defined to and recognized internally by VxVM. The VxVM objects
are: volume, plex, subdisk, disk, and disk group. There are actually two types of
disk objects—one for the physical aspect of the disk and the other for the logical
aspect.
parity A calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure. While data
is being written to a RAID-5 volume, parity is also calculated by performing an
exclusive OR (XOR) procedure on data. The resulting parity is then written to the
volume. If a portion of a RAID-5 volume fails, the data that was on that portion
of the failed volume can be recreated from the remaining data and the parity.
parity stripe unit A RAID-5 volume storage region that contains parity information. The data
contained in the parity stripe unit can be used to help reconstruct regions of a
RAID-5 volume that are missing because of I/O or disk failures.
partition The standard division of a physical disk device, as supported directly by the
operating system and disk drives.
path When a disk is connected to a host, the path to the disk consists of the HBA (Host
Bus Adapter) on the host, the SCSI or fibre cable connector and the controller on
the disk or disk array. These components constitute a path to a disk. A failure on
590 Glossary

any of these results in DMP trying to shift all I/O for that disk onto the remaining
(alternate) paths.
pathgroup In the case of disks which are not multipathed by vxdmp, VxVM will see each path
as a disk. In such cases, all paths to the disk can be grouped. This way only one of
the paths from the group is made visible to VxVM.
Persistent FastResync A form of FastResync that can preserve its maps across reboots of the system by
storing its change map in a DCO volume on disk).
persistent state logging A logging type that ensures that only active mirrors are used for recovery purposes
and prevents failed mirrors from being selected for recovery. This is also known
as kernel logging.
physical disk The underlying storage device, which may or may not be under VxVM control.
plex A plex is a logical grouping of subdisks that creates an area of disk space
independent of physical disk size or other restrictions. Mirroring is set up by
creating multiple data plexes for a single volume. Each data plex in a mirrored
volume contains an identical copy of the volume data. Plexes may also be created
to represent concatenated, striped and RAID-5 volume layouts, and to store volume
logs.
primary path In Active/Passive disk arrays, a disk can be bound to one particular controller on
the disk array or owned by a controller. The disk can then be accessed using the
path through this particular controller.
private disk group A disk group in which the disks are accessed by only one specific host in a cluster.
private region A region of a physical disk used to store private, structured VxVM information.
The private region contains a disk header, a table of contents, and a configuration
database. The table of contents maps the contents of the disk. The disk header
contains a disk ID. All data in the private region is duplicated for extra reliability.
public region A region of a physical disk managed by VxVM that contains available space and
is used for allocating subdisks.
RAID (redundant array A disk array set up with part of the combined storage capacity used for storing
of independent disks) duplicate information about the data stored in that array. This makes it possible
to regenerate the data if a disk failure occurs.
read-writeback mode A recovery mode in which each read operation recovers plex consistency for the
region covered by the read. Plex consistency is recovered by reading data from
blocks of one plex and writing the data to all other writable plexes.
root configuration The configuration database for the root disk group. This is special in that it always
contains records for other disk groups, which are used for backup purposes only.
It also contains disk records that define all disk devices on the system.
root disk The disk containing the root file system. This disk may be under VxVM control.
 Glossary 591

root file system The initial file system mounted as part of the UNIX kernel startup sequence.
root partition The disk region on which the root file system resides.
root volume The VxVM volume that contains the root file system, if such a volume is designated
by the system configuration.
rootability The ability to place the root file system and the swap device under VxVM control.
The resulting volumes can then be mirrored to provide redundancy and allow
recovery in the event of disk failure.
secondary path In Active/Passive disk arrays, the paths to a disk other than the primary path are
called secondary paths. A disk is supposed to be accessed only through the primary
path until it fails, after which ownership of the disk is transferred to one of the
secondary paths.
sector A unit of size, which can vary between systems. Sector size is set per device (hard
drive, CD-ROM, and so on). Although all devices within a system are usually
configured to the same sector size for interoperability, this is not always the case.
A sector is commonly 512 bytes.
shared disk group A disk group in which access to the disks is shared by multiple hosts (also referred
to as a cluster-shareable disk group).
shared volume A volume that belongs to a shared disk group and is open on more than one node
of a cluster at the same time.
shared VM disk A VM disk that belongs to a shared disk group in a cluster.
slave node A node that is not designated as the master node of a cluster.
slice The standard division of a logical disk device. The terms partition and slice are
sometimes used synonymously.
snapshot A point-in-time copy of a volume (volume snapshot) or a file system (file system
snapshot).
spanning A layout technique that permits a volume (and its file system or database) that is
too large to fit on a single disk to be configured across multiple physical disks.
sparse plex A plex that is not as long as the volume or that has holes (regions of the plex that
do not have a backing subdisk).
SAN (storage area A networking paradigm that provides easily reconfigurable connectivity between
network) any subset of computers, disk storage and interconnecting hardware such as
switches, hubs and bridges.
stripe A set of stripe units that occupy the same positions across a series of columns.
stripe size The sum of the stripe unit sizes comprising a single stripe across all columns
being striped.
592 Glossary

stripe unit Equally-sized areas that are allocated alternately on the subdisks (within columns)
of each striped plex. In an array, this is a set of logically contiguous blocks that
exist on each disk before allocations are made from the next disk in the array. A
stripe unit may also be referred to as a stripe element.
stripe unit size The size of each stripe unit. The default stripe unit size is 64KB. The stripe unit
size is sometimes also referred to as the stripe width.
striping A layout technique that spreads data across several physical disks using stripes.
The data is allocated alternately to the stripes within the subdisks of each plex.
subdisk A consecutive set of contiguous disk blocks that form a logical disk segment.
Subdisks can be associated with plexes to form volumes.
swap area A disk region used to hold copies of memory pages swapped out by the system
pager process.
swap volume A VxVM volume that is configured for use as a swap area.
transaction A set of configuration changes that succeed or fail as a group, rather than
individually. Transactions are used internally to maintain consistent
configurations.
VM disk A disk that is both under VxVM control and assigned to a disk group. VM disks
are sometimes referred to as VxVM disks.
volboot file A small file that is used to locate copies of the boot disk group configuration. The
file may list disks that contain configuration copies in standard locations, and
can also contain direct pointers to configuration copy locations. The volboot file
is stored in a system-dependent location.
volume A virtual disk, representing an addressable range of disk blocks used by
applications such as file systems or databases. A volume is a collection of from
one to 32 plexes.
volume configuration The volume configuration device (/dev/vx/config) is the interface through which
device all configuration changes to the volume device driver are performed.
volume device driver The driver that forms the virtual disk drive between the application and the
physical device driver level. The volume device driver is accessed through a virtual
disk device node whose character device nodes appear in /dev/vx/rdsk, and whose
block device nodes appear in /dev/vx/dsk.
volume event log The device interface (/dev/vx/event) through which volume driver events are
reported to utilities.
vxconfigd The VxVM configuration daemon, which is responsible for making changes to the
VxVM configuration. This daemon must be running before VxVM operations can
be performed.
 Index

Symbols allocation
/dev/vx/dmp directory 159 site-based 490
/dev/vx/rdmp directory 159 APM
/etc/default/vxassist file 321, 438 configuring 210
/etc/default/vxdg defaults file 452 array policy module (APM)
/etc/default/vxdg file 239 configuring 210
/etc/default/vxdisk file 85, 113 array ports
/etc/default/vxencap file 113 disabling for DMP 201
/etc/init.d/vxvm-recover file 444 displaying information about 181
/etc/vfstab file 392 enabling for DMP 202
/etc/volboot file 286 array support library (ASL) 88
/etc/vx/darecs file 286 Array Volume ID
/etc/vx/dmppolicy.info file 195 device naming 106
/etc/vx/volboot file 248 arrays
/kernel/drv/vxio.conf file 518–519 DMP support 87
/kernel/drv/vxspec.conf file 520 ASL
/lib/svc/method/vxvm-recover file 444 array support library 87–88
Asymmetric Active/Active disk arrays 158
attributes
A active 192
A/A disk arrays 158 comment 300, 312
A/A-A disk arrays 158 dcolen 66, 334
A/P disk arrays 158 default for disk initialization 113
A/P-C disk arrays 158–159 default for encapsulation 113
A/PF disk arrays 159 dgalign_checking 324
A/PG disk arrays 159 drl 336, 389
A5x00 arrays fastresync 334, 336, 395
removing and replacing disks 152 for specifying storage 325
access port 158 hasdcolog 395
activation modes for shared disk groups 451–452 init 346
ACTIVE len 300
plex state 303 loglen 337
volume state 358 logtype 336
active path attribute 192 maxdev 251
active paths name 299, 312
devices 193–194 ndcomirror 334, 336
Active/Active disk arrays 158 ndcomirs 381
Active/Passive disk arrays 158 nomanual 192
adaptive load-balancing 195 nopreferred 192
adding disks 122 plex 312
alignment constraints 324 preferred priority 192
primary 192
594 Index

attributes (continued) CDS (continued)

putil 299, 312 disk format 84
secondary 192 cds attribute 239
sequential DRL 336 cdsdisk format 84
setting for paths 191, 194 Changing the CVM master 474
standby 193 check_all policy 208
subdisk 299 check_alternate policy 208
tutil 300, 312 check_disabled policy 209
auto disk type 84 check_periodic policy 209
autotrespass mode 158 checkpoint interval 521
CLEAN
B plex state 303
volume state 358
backups
clone_disk flag 253
implementing online 417
cloned disks 252–253
of disk group configuration 286
cluster functionality
balanced path policy 196
enabling 582
base minor number 249
shared disks 582
blocks on disks 32
Cluster master node
boot command
changing 474
-a flag 135
cluster-shareable disk groups in clusters 450
syntax 135
clusters
boot disk
activating disk groups 452
encapsulating 132
activating shared disk groups 481
listing volumes on 136
activation modes for shared disk groups 451
mirroring 132
benefits 461
unencapsulating 140
checking cluster protocol version 483
boot disk group 230
cluster-shareable disk groups 450
boot disks
configuration 463
alternate 133
configuring exclusive open of volume by
boot-time restrictions 131
node 482–483
bootdg 230
connectivity policies 453
booting root volumes 130–131
converting shared disk groups to private 480
creating shared disk groups 478
C designating shareable disk groups 450
c# 24, 82 detach policies 453
c#t#d#s# 82 determining if disks are shared 476
c#t#d#s# based naming 81 forcibly adding disks to disk groups 479
c0d0t0 82 forcibly importing disk groups 479
Campus Cluster feature importing disk groups as shared 479
administering 489 initialization 463
campus clusters introduced 447
administering 489 limitations of shared disk groups 459
serial split brain condition in 263 listing shared disk groups 477
categories maximum number of nodes in 462
disks 88 moving objects between disk groups 480
CDS node shutdown 470
alignment constraints 324 nodes 448
compatible disk groups 239 operation of DRL in 471–472
 Index 595

clusters (continued) connectivity policies 453

operation of vxconfigd in 468 setting for disk groups 482
operation of VxVM in 448 Controller ID
private disk groups 450 displaying 180
private networks 449 controllers
protection against simultaneous writes 451 disabling for DMP 201
reconfiguration of 463 disabling in DMP 167
resolving disk status in 453 displaying information about 179
setting disk connectivity policies in 482 enabling for DMP 202
setting failure policies in 482 mirroring across 330, 339
shared disk groups 450 mirroring guidelines 578
shared objects 451 number 24
splitting disk groups in 480 specifying to vxassist 325
use of DMP in 164 copymaps 66
vol_fmr_logsz tunable 522 Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS)
volume reconfiguration 466 alignment constraints 324
vxclust 464 disk format 84
vxclustadm 465 customized naming
vxdctl 473 DMP nodes 171
vxrecover 484 CVM
vxstat 485 cluster functionality of VxVM 461
columns CVM master
changing number of 399 changing 474
in striping 39
mirroring in striped-mirror volumes 339 D
CommandCentral Storage 72
d# 24, 82
comment
data change object
plex attribute 312
DCO 66
subdisk attribute 300
data redundancy 42–43, 46
concatenated volumes 37, 316
data volume configuration 60
concatenated-mirror volumes
database replay logs and sequential DRL 59
converting to mirrored-concatenated 402
databases
creating 332
resilvering 59
defined 45
resynchronizing 59
recovery 317
DCO
concatenation 37
adding to RAID-5 volumes 383
condition flags for plexes 305
adding version 20 DCOs to volumes 381
configuration backup and restoration 286
calculating plex size for version 20 67
configuration changes
considerations for disk layout 276
monitoring using vxnotify 287
creating volumes with version 0 DCOs
configuration copies for disk group 519
attached 333
configuration database
creating volumes with version 20 DCOs
copy size 229
attached 336
in private region 83
data change object 66
listing disks with 255
determining version of 383
metadata 254
effect on disk group split and join 276
reducing size of 270
log plexes 68
configuring
log volume 66
shared disks 582
moving log plexes 382
596 Index

DCO (continued) devices (continued)

specifying storage for version 20 plexes 382 volatile 122
used with DRL 58 dgalign_checking attribute 324
version 0 66 dgfailpolicy attribute 458
version 20 66 dirty flags set on volumes 57
versioning 66 dirty region logging.. See DRL
dcolen attribute 66, 334 dirty regions 526
DCOSNP disable failure policy 457
plex state 303 DISABLED
DDI_NT_FABRIC property 86 plex kernel state 306
DDL 26 volume kernel state 359
Device Discovery Layer 90 disabled paths 170
decision support disk access records
implementing 421 stored in /etc/vx/darecs 286
default disk group 230 disk arrays
defaultdg 230–231 A/A 158
defaults A/A-A 158
for vxdisk 85, 113 A/P 158
for vxencap 113 A/PF 159
description file with vxmake 345 A/PG 159
detach policy Active/Active 158
global 455 Active/Passive 158
local 455 adding disks to DISKS category 98
DETACHED Asymmetric Active/Active 158
plex kernel state 306 defined 25
volume kernel state 359 excluding support for 96
device discovery JBOD devices 87
introduced 26 listing excluded 96
partial 86 listing supported 96
Device Discovery Layer 90 listing supported disks in DISKS category 97
Device Discovery Layer (DDL) 26, 90 multipathed 26
device files to access volumes 348, 581 re-including support for 96
device names 24, 80 removing disks from DISKS category 100
configuring persistent 107 supported with DMP 96
user-specified 171 disk drives
device nodes variable geometry 579
controlling access for volume sets 413 disk duplexing 339
displaying access for volume sets 413 disk groups
enabling access for volume sets 412 activating shared 481
for volume sets 411 activation in clusters 452
devices adding disks to 239
adding foreign 101 avoiding conflicting minor numbers on
fabric 86 import 249
JBOD 87 boot disk group 230
listing all 91 bootdg 230
metadevices 81 clearing locks on disks 247
nopriv 128 cluster-shareable 450
path redundancy 193–194 compatible with CDS 239
pathname 81 configuration backup and restoration 286
 Index 597

disk groups (continued) disk groups (continued)

configuring site consistency on 497 recovering destroyed 284
configuring site-based allocation on 497 recovery from failed reconfiguration 274
converting to private 480 removing disks from 240
creating 228 renaming 261
creating shared 478 reorganizing 270
creating with old version number 239 reserving minor numbers 249
default disk group 230 root 31
defaultdg 230 rootdg 31, 229
defaults file for shared 452 serial split brain condition 263
defined 31 setting connectivity policies in clusters 482
deporting 242 setting default disk group 231
designating as shareable 450 setting failure policies in clusters 482
destroying 284 setting number of configuration copies 519
determining the default disk group 230 shared in clusters 450
disabling 283 specifying to commands 230
displaying boot disk group 231 splitting 271, 280
displaying default disk group 231 splitting in clusters 480
displaying free space in 237 upgrading version of 285
displaying information about 236 version 232, 285
displaying version of 285 disk media names 31, 80
effect of size on private region 229 disk names 80
elimination of rootdg 229 configuring persistent 107
failure policy 457 disk## 32
features supported by version 232 disk##-## 32
forcing import of 248 diskdetpolicy attribute 458
free space in 433 diskgroup## 80
impact of number of configuration copies on disks 88
performance 519 adding 122
importing 243 adding to disk groups 239
importing as shared 479 adding to disk groups forcibly 479
importing forcibly 479 adding to DISKS category 98
importing with cloned disks 253 array support library 88
ISP 288 auto-configured 84
joining 272, 282 c0t0d0 82
layout of DCO plexes 276 categories 88
limitations of move CDS format 84
split. See and join changing default layout attributes 113
listing objects affected by a move 275 changing naming scheme 104
listing shared 477 clearing locks on 247
making site consistent 495 cloned 253
moving between systems 246 complete failure messages 432
moving disks between 241, 278 configuring persistent names 107
moving licensed EMC disks between 278 default encapsulation values 113
moving objects between 270, 277 default initialization values 113
moving objects in clusters 480 determining failed 432
names reserved by system 230 determining if shared 476
nodg 230 Device Discovery Layer 90
private in clusters 450 disabled path 170
598 Index

disks (continued) disks (continued)

discovery of by VxVM 85, 87 reinitializing 121
disk access records file 286 releasing from disk groups 284
disk arrays 25 removing 143, 146
displaying information 141–142 removing from A5x00 arrays 152
displaying information about 141, 237 removing from disk groups 240
displaying naming scheme 106 removing from DISKS category 100
displaying spare 435 removing from pool of hot-relocation spares 436
enabled path 170 removing from VxVM control 145, 240
enabling 153 removing tags from 255
enabling after hot swap 153 removing with subdisks 145
encapsulating 102 renaming 154
encapsulation 124, 129 replacing 146
enclosures 26 replacing in A5x00 arrays 152
excluding free space from hot-relocation use 437 replacing removed 150
failure handled by hot-relocation 429 reserving for special purposes 155
formatting 112 resolving status in clusters 453
handling clones 252 root disk 129
handling duplicated identifiers 252 scanning for 85
hot-relocation 427 secondary path 170
initializing 102, 113 setting connectivity policies in clusters 482
installing 112 setting failure policies in clusters 482
invoking discovery of 89 setting tags on 254
layout of DCO plexes 276 simple 84
listing tags on 254 simple format 84
listing those supported in JBODs 97 sliced 84
making available for hot-relocation 435 sliced format 84
making free space available for hot-relocation spare 433
use 438 specifying to vxassist 325
marking as spare 435 stripe unit size 579
media name 80 tagging with site name 500
metadevices 81 taking offline 154
mirroring boot disk 132 UDID flag 252
mirroring root disk 132 unique identifier 252
mirroring volumes on 376 unreserving 156
moving between disk groups 241, 278 VM 31
moving disk groups between systems 246 writing a new identifier to 253
moving volumes from 393 DISKS category 88
names 80 adding disks 98
naming schemes 81 listing supported disks 97
nopriv 84 removing disks 100
nopriv devices 128 displaying
number 24 DMP nodes 174
obtaining performance statistics 515 HBA information 180
OTHER_DISKS category 88 redundancy levels 193
partial failure messages 431 supported disk arrays 96
postponing replacement 146 displaying statistics
primary path 170 erroneous I/Os 188
putting under control of VxVM 102 queued I/Os 188
 Index 599

DMP DMP (continued)

booting from DMP devices 164 setting the DMP restore polling interval 208
check_all restore policy 208 stopping the DMP restore daemon 210
check_alternate restore policy 208 vxdmpadm 173
check_disabled restore policy 209 DMP nodes
check_periodic restore policy 209 displaying consolidated information 174
configuring DMP path restoration policies 208 setting names 171
configuring I/O throttling 205 DMP support
configuring response to I/O errors 203, 207 JBOD devices 87
disabling array ports 201 dmp_cache_open tunable 530
disabling controllers 201 dmp_daemon_count tunable 530
disabling multi-pathing 165 dmp_delayq_interval tunable 531
disabling paths 201 dmp_enable_restore tunable 531
displaying DMP database information 168 dmp_fast_recovery tunable 531
displaying DMP node for a path 173 dmp_health_time tunable 531
displaying DMP node for an enclosure 174–175 dmp_log_level tunable 532
displaying DMP nodes 175 dmp_low_impact_probe 532
displaying information about array ports 181 dmp_lun_retry_timeout tunable 532
displaying information about controllers 179 dmp_monitor_fabric tunable 533
displaying information about enclosures 180 dmp_monitor_osevent tunable 533
displaying information about paths 168 dmp_native_multipathing tunable 533
displaying LUN group for a node 176 dmp_native_support tunable 534
displaying paths controlled by DMP node 177 dmp_path_age tunable 534
displaying paths for a controller 177 dmp_pathswitch_blks_shift tunable 534
displaying paths for an array port 178 dmp_probe_idle_lun tunable 535
displaying recoveryoption values 207 dmp_probe_threshold tunable 535
displaying status of DMP error handling dmp_queue_depth tunable 535
thread 210 dmp_restore_cycles tunable 535
displaying status of DMP path restoration dmp_restore_interval tunable 536
thread 210 dmp_restore_policy tunable 536
displaying TPD information 182 dmp_retry_count tunable 536
dynamic multi-pathing 157 dmp_scsi_timeout tunable 536
enabling array ports 202 dmp_sfg_threshold tunable 537
enabling controllers 202 dmp_stat_interval tunable 537
enabling multi-pathing 167 DR
enabling paths 202 dynamic reconfiguration 164
enclosure-based naming 160 DRL
gathering I/O statistics 186 adding log subdisks 297
in a clustered environment 164 adding logs to mirrored volumes 386
load balancing 163 creating volumes with DRL enabled 336
logging levels 532 determining if active 385
metanodes 159 determining if enabled 384
nodes 159 dirty region logging 58
path aging 531 disabling 385
path failover mechanism 161 enabling on volumes 381
path-switch tunable 534 handling recovery in clusters 472
renaming an enclosure 203 hot-relocation limitations 429
restore policy 208 log subdisks 59
scheduling I/O on secondary paths 198 maximum number of dirty regions 526
600 Index

DRL (continued) error messages

minimum number of sectors 526 Association count is incorrect 461
operation in clusters 471 Association not resolved 461
re-enabling 385 Cannot auto-import group 461
recovery map in version 20 DCO 67 Configuration records are inconsistent 461
removing logs from mirrored volumes 387 Disk for disk group not found 248
removing support for 385 Disk group has no valid configuration
sequential 59 copies 248, 461
use of DCO with 58 Disk group version doesn't support feature 232
drl attribute 336, 389 Disk is in use by another host 247
DRL guidelines 578 Disk is used by one or more subdisks 240
duplexing 339 Disk not moving
dynamic reconfiguration 164 but subdisks on it are 275
Duplicate record in configuration 461
E import failed 247
It is not possible to encapsulate 127
EMC arrays
No valid disk found containing disk group 247
moving disks between disk groups 278
The encapsulation operation failed 127
EMC PowerPath
tmpsize too small to perform this relayout 53
coexistence with DMP 89
unsupported layout 127
EMC Symmetrix
Volume has different organization in each
autodiscovery 89
mirror 373
EMPTY
vxdg listmove failed 275
plex state 303
errord daemon 161
volume state 358
exclusive-write mode 452
ENABLED
exclusivewrite mode 451
plex kernel state 306
explicit failover mode 159
volume kernel state 359
enabled paths
displaying 170 F
encapsulating disks 124, 129 fabric devices 86
encapsulation FAILFAST flag 161
default attributes 113 failover 447, 462
failure of 127 failover mode 158
of disks 102 failure handled by hot-relocation 429
enclosure-based naming 26, 82, 104 failure in RAID-5 handled by hot-relocation 429
displayed by vxprint 111–112 failure policies 457
DMP 160 setting for disk groups 482
enclosures 26 FastResync
discovering disk access names in 111–112 checking if enabled on volumes 395
displaying information about 180 disabling on volumes 395
issues with nopriv disks 109 effect of growing volume on 70
issues with simple disks 109 enabling on new volumes 334
mirroring across 339 enabling on volumes 394
path redundancy 193–194 limitations 71
setting attributes of paths 191, 194 Non-Persistent 65
tagging with site name 501, 505 Persistent 65, 67
erroneous I/Os size of bitmap 522
displaying statistics 188 use with snapshots 64
fastresync attribute 334, 336, 395
 Index 601

file systems hot-relocation (continued)

growing using vxresize 372 preventing from running 445
mirroring on root disk 136 reducing performance impact of recovery 445
permitted resizing operations 372 removing disks from spare pool 436
shrinking using vxresize 372 subdisk relocation 434
unmounting 392 subdisk relocation messages 439
fire drill unrelocating subdisks 439
defined 490 unrelocating subdisks using vxassist 441
testing 498 unrelocating subdisks using vxdiskadm 440
FMR.. See FastResync unrelocating subdisks using vxunreloc 441
foreign devices use of free space in disk groups 433
adding 101 use of spare disks 433
formatting disks 112 use of spare disks and free space 433
free space in disk groups 433 using only spare disks for 438
vxrelocd 428
G
global detach policy 455 I
guidelines I/O
DRL 578 gathering statistics for DMP 186
mirroring 577 kernel threads 22
RAID-5 580 scheduling on secondary paths 198
throttling 161
H use of statistics in performance tuning 514
using traces for performance tuning 517
hasdcolog attribute 395
I/O operations
HBA information
maximum size of 524
displaying 180
I/O policy
HBAs
displaying 194
listing ports 92
example 199
listing supported 92
specifying 195
listing targets 92
I/O throttling 205
host failures 506
I/O throttling options
hot-relocation
configuring 208
complete failure messages 432
identifiers for tasks 360
configuration summary 434
idle LUNs 535
daemon 428
implicit failover mode 158
defined 72
Importing
detecting disk failure 429
ISP disk group 288
detecting plex failure 429
init attribute 346
detecting RAID-5 subdisk failure 429
initialization
excluding free space on disks from use by 437
default attributes 113
limitations 429
of disks 102, 113
making free space on disks available for use
initialization of disks 102
by 438
instant snapshots
marking disks as spare 435
removing support for 385
modifying behavior of 444
INVALID volume state 358
notifying users other than root 445
ioctl calls 524–525
operation of 427
IOFAIL plex condition 305
partial failure messages 431
IOFAIL plex state 303
602 Index

iSCSI parameters log subdisks 578

administering with DDL 94 associating with plexes 297
setting with vxddladm 94 DRL 59
ISP logdisk 335, 342
disk groups 288 logical units 158
ISP disk group loglen attribute 337
Importing 288 logs
Upgrading 288 adding DRL log 386
adding for RAID-5 403
J adding sequential DRL logs 386
adding to volumes 380
JBOD
RAID-5 50, 58
DMP support 87
removing DRL log 387
JBODs
removing for RAID-5 404
adding disks to DISKS category 98
removing sequential DRL logs 387
listing supported disks 97
resizing using vxvol 375
removing disks from DISKS category 100
specifying number for RAID-5 341
usage with volumes 318
K logtype attribute 336
kernel states LUN 158
for plexes 306 LUN group failover 159
volumes 359 LUN groups
displaying details of 176
L LUNs
layered volumes idle 535
converting to non-layered 402
defined 50, 317 M
striped-mirror 44 maps
layout attributes adding to volumes 380
changing for disks 113 usage with volumes 318
layouts Master node
changing default used by vxassist 324 changing 474
left-symmetric 48 master node
specifying default 324 defined 449
types of volume 316 discovering 473
leave failure policy 457 maxdev attribute 251
left-symmetric layout 48 memory
len subdisk attribute 300 granularity of allocation by VxVM 526
listing maximum size of pool for VxVM 527
alternate boot disks 133 minimum size of pool for VxVM 529
DMP nodes 174 persistence of FastResync in 65
supported disk arrays 96 messages
load balancing 158 complete disk failure 432
across nodes in a cluster 447 hot-relocation of subdisks 439
displaying policy for 194 partial disk failure 431
specifying policy for 195 metadata 254
local detach policy 455 metadevices 81
lock clearing on disks 247 metanodes
LOG plex state 303 DMP 159
 Index 603

minimum queue load balancing policy 197 multi-pathing

minimum redundancy levels disabling 165
displaying for a device 193 displaying information about 168
specifying for a device 194 enabling 167
minor numbers 249 Multi-Volume Support 407
mirrored volumes
adding DRL logs 386 N
adding sequential DRL logs 386
names
changing read policies for 391
changing for disk groups 261
configuring VxVM to create by default 376
device 24, 80
creating 331
disk 80
creating across controllers 330, 339
disk media 31, 80
creating across enclosures 339
plex 34
creating across targets 328
plex attribute 312
defined 317
renaming disks 154
dirty region logging 58
subdisk 32
DRL 58
subdisk attribute 299
FastResync 58
VM disk 32
FR 58
volume 34
logging 58
naming
performance 510
DMP nodes 171
removing DRL logs 387
naming scheme
removing sequential DRL logs 387
changing for disks 104
snapshots 64
changing for TPD enclosures 108
mirrored-concatenated volumes
displaying for disks 106
converting to concatenated-mirror 402
naming schemes
creating 332
for disks 81
defined 43
ndcomirror attribute 334, 336
mirrored-stripe volumes
ndcomirs attribute 381
benefits of 43
NEEDSYNC volume state 358
converting to striped-mirror 402
NODAREC plex condition 305
creating 338
nodes
defined 317
DMP 159
performance 511
in clusters 448
mirroring
maximum number in a cluster 462
boot disk 132
requesting status of 473
defined 42
shutdown in clusters 470
guidelines 577
use of vxclust 464
root disk 132
use of vxclustadm to control CVM
mirroring controllers 578
functionality 465
mirroring plus striping 44
NODEVICE plex condition 305
mirrors
nodg 230
adding to volumes 375
nomanual path attribute 192
defined 35
non-autotrespass mode 159
removing from volumes 379
non-layered volume conversion 402
specifying number of 332
Non-Persistent FastResync 65
mrl
nopreferred path attribute 192
keyword 193
nopriv devices 128
nopriv disk type 84
604 Index

nopriv disks partition size

issues with enclosures 109 displaying the value of 194
specifying 196
O partitions
number 24
objects
s2 82, 85
physical 23
s3 85
virtual 29
s4 85
off-host processing 415, 462
slices 24
OFFLINE plex state 304
path aging 531
online backups
path failover in DMP 161
implementing 417
pathgroups
online invalid status 141
creating 166
online relayout
paths
changing number of columns 399
disabling for DMP 201
changing region size 402
enabling for DMP 202
changing speed of 402
setting attributes of 191, 194
changing stripe unit size 399
performance
combining with conversion 403
analyzing data 514
controlling progress of 401
benefits of using VxVM 509
defined 52
changing values of tunables 519
destination layouts 396
combining mirroring and striping 511
failure recovery 56
displaying tunable values 520
how it works 52
effect of read policies 511
limitations 55
examining ratio of reads to writes 517
monitoring tasks for 401
hot spots identified by I/O traces 517
pausing 401
impact of number of disk group configuration
performing 396
copies 519
resuming 401
load balancing in DMP 163
reversing direction of 402
mirrored volumes 510
specifying non-default 399
monitoring 512
specifying plexes 400
moving volumes to improve 515
specifying task tags for 400
obtaining statistics for disks 515
temporary area 53
obtaining statistics for volumes 513
transformation characteristics 56
RAID-5 volumes 511
transformations and volume length 57
setting priorities 512
types of transformation 396
striped volumes 510
viewing status of 401
striping to improve 516
online status 141
tracing volume operations 513
OpenBoot PROMs (OPB) 135
tuning large systems 518
ordered allocation 328, 335, 342
tuning VxVM 518
OS-based naming 81
using I/O statistics 514
OTHER_DISKS category 88
persistence
overlapped seeks 578
device naming option 106
persistent device name database 107
P persistent device naming 107
parity in RAID-5 46 Persistent FastResync 65–67
partial device discovery 86 physical disks
adding to disk groups 239
 Index 605

physical disks (continued) plex states (continued)

clearing locks on 247 CLEAN 303
complete failure messages 432 DCOSNP 303
determining failed 432 EMPTY 303
displaying information 141 IOFAIL 303
displaying information about 141, 237 LOG 303
displaying spare 435 OFFLINE 304
enabling 153 SNAPATT 304
enabling after hot swap 153 SNAPDIS 304
excluding free space from hot-relocation use 437 SNAPDONE 304
failure handled by hot-relocation 429 SNAPTMP 304
initializing 102 STALE 304
installing 112 TEMP 304
making available for hot-relocation 435 TEMPRM 305
making free space available for hot-relocation TEMPRMSD 305
use 438 plexes
marking as spare 435 associating log subdisks with 297
moving between disk groups 241, 278 associating subdisks with 295
moving disk groups between systems 246 associating with volumes 306
moving volumes from 393 attaching to volumes 306
partial failure messages 431 changing attributes 312
postponing replacement 146 changing read policies for 391
releasing from disk groups 284 comment attribute 312
removing 143, 146 complete failure messages 432
removing from A5x00 arrays 152 condition flags 305
removing from disk groups 240 copying 311
removing from pool of hot-relocation spares 436 creating 301
removing with subdisks 145 creating striped 301
replacing 146 defined 33
replacing in A5x00 arrays 152 detaching from volumes temporarily 308
replacing removed 150 disconnecting from volumes 307
reserving for special purposes 155 displaying information about 301
spare 433 dissociating from volumes 311
taking offline 154 dissociating subdisks from 298
unreserving 156 failure in hot-relocation 429
physical objects 23 kernel states 306
ping-pong effect 164 limit on number per volume 512
plex conditions maximum number of subdisks 525
IOFAIL 305 maximum number per volume 34
NODAREC 305 mirrors 35
NODEVICE 305 moving 310, 382
RECOVER 306 name attribute 312
REMOVED 306 names 34
plex kernel states partial failure messages 431
DETACHED 306 putil attribute 312
DISABLED 306 putting online 308
ENABLED 306 reattaching 308
plex states recovering after correctable hardware
ACTIVE 303 failure 432
606 Index

plexes (continued) RAID-1 42

removing 311 RAID-1+0 44
removing from volumes 379 RAID-5
sparse 56, 296, 306, 311 adding logs 403
specifying for online relayout 400 adding subdisks to plexes 296
states 302 guidelines 580
striped 39 hot-relocation limitations 429
taking offline 307, 370 logs 50, 58
tutil attribute 312 parity 46
types 33 removing logs 404
polling interval for DMP restore 208 specifying number of logs 341
ports subdisk failure handled by hot-relocation 429
listing 92 volumes 46
PowerPath RAID-5 volumes
coexistence with DMP 89 adding DCOs to 383
prefer read policy 391 adding logs 403
preferred plex changing number of columns 399
read policy 391 changing stripe unit size 399
preferred priority path attribute 192 creating 341
primary boot disk failure 133 defined 317
primary path 158, 170 performance 511
primary path attribute 192 removing logs 404
priority load balancing 197 raw device nodes
private disk groups controlling access for volume sets 413
converting from shared 480 displaying access for volume sets 413
in clusters 450 enabling access for volume sets 412
private network for volume sets 411
in clusters 449 read policies
private region changing 391
configuration database 83 performance of 511
defined 83 prefer 391
effect of large disk groups on 229 round 391
PROMs select 391
boot 135 siteread 391, 491–492, 494
prtconf split 391
displaying tunables 520 read-only mode 452
public region 83 readonly mode 451
putil RECOVER plex condition 306
plex attribute 312 recovery
subdisk attribute 299 checkpoint interval 521
I/O delay 521
Q preventing on restarting volumes 371
recovery accelerator 59
queued I/Os
recovery option values
displaying statistics 188
configuring 207
redo log configuration 60
R redundancy
RAID-0 39 of data on mirrors 317
RAID-0+1 43 of data on RAID-5 317
 Index 607

redundancy levels restore policy (continued)

displaying for a device 193 check_disabled 209
specifying for a device 194 check_periodic 209
redundant-loop access 28 restored daemon 161
region 83 resynchronization
regionsize attribute 381 checkpoint interval 521
reinitialization of disks 121 I/O delay 521
relayout of volumes 57
changing number of columns 399 resynchronizing
changing region size 402 databases 59
changing speed of 402 retry option values
changing stripe unit size 399 configuring 207
combining with conversion 403 root disk
controlling progress of 401 defined 129
limitations 55 encapsulating 132
monitoring tasks for 401 listing volumes on 136
online 52 mirroring 132
pausing 401 mirroring other file systems on 136
performing online 396 unencapsulating 140
resuming 401 root disk group 31, 229
reversing direction of 402 root disks
specifying non-default 399 booting alternate 133
specifying plexes 400 root volume 130–131
specifying task tags for 400 rootability 129
storage 52 removing 140
transformation characteristics 56 rootdg 31
types of transformation 396 round read policy 391
viewing status of 401 round-robin
relocation load balancing 197
automatic 427 read policy 391
complete failure messages 432
limitations 429 S
partial failure messages 431
s# 24, 82
Remote Mirror feature
s2 partition 82, 85
administering 489
s3 partition 85
remote mirrors
s4 partition 85
administering 489
SAN storage
REMOVED plex condition 306
configuring volumes on 72
removing disks 146
scandisks
removing physical disks 143
vxdisk subcommand 85
replacing disks 146
secondary path 158
replay logs and sequential DRL 59
secondary path attribute 192
REPLAY volume state 358
secondary path display 170
resilvering
select read policy 391
databases 59
sequential DRL
restoration of disk group configuration 286
defined 59
restore policy
maximum number of dirty regions 526
check_all 208
sequential DRL attribute 336
check_alternate 208
608 Index

serial split brain condition 490 slave nodes

correcting 268 defined 449
in campus clusters 263 sliced disk format 84
in disk groups 263 sliced disk type 84
setting slices
path redundancy levels 194 number 24
shared disk groups partitions 24
activating 481 s2 82, 85
activation modes 451–452 s3 85
converting to private 480 s4 85
creating 478 SmartMove feature
importing 479 setting up 323
in clusters 450 SmartSync 59
limitations of 459 disabling on shared disk groups 525
listing 477 enabling on shared disk groups 525
shared disks SmartTier 407
configuring 582 snap objects 70
shared-read mode 452 SNAPATT plex state 304
shared-write mode 452 SNAPDIS plex state 304
sharedread mode 451 SNAPDONE plex state 304
sharedwrite mode 451 snapshots
simple disk format 84 and FastResync 64
simple disk type 84 comparison of features 62
simple disks full-sized instant 63
issues with enclosures 109 of volumes 61
single active path policy 198 third-mirror 62
Site Awareness license 496 SNAPTMP plex state 304
site consistency spanned volumes 37
configuring 497 spanning 37
defined 490 spare disks
site failure displaying 435
simulating 498 marking disks as 435
site failures used for hot-relocation 433
host failures 506 sparse plexes 56, 296, 306, 311
loss of connectivity 505 specifying
recovery from 499, 507 redundancy levels 194
scenarios and recovery procedures 505 split read policy 391
storage failures 506 STALE plex state 304
site-based allocation standby path attribute 193
configuring for disk groups 497 states
defined 490 for plexes 302
site-based consistency volume 358
configuring on existing disk groups 495 statistics gathering 161
siteconsistent attribute 497 storage
siteread read policy 391, 491–492, 494 ordered allocation of 328, 335, 342
sites storage accounts 72
reattaching 499 storage attributes and volume layout 325
size units 292 storage failures 506
storage groups 72
 Index 609

storage processor 158 subdisks (continued)

storage relayout 52 DRL log 59
stripe columns 39 hot-relocation 72, 427, 434
stripe unit size recommendations 579 hot-relocation messages 439
stripe units joining 295
changing size 399 len attribute 300
defined 39 listing original disks after hot-relocation 443
stripe-mirror-col-split-trigger-pt 339 maximum number per plex 525
striped plexes mirroring in striped-mirror volumes 339
adding subdisks 296 moving after hot-relocation 439
defined 39 moving contents of 294
striped volumes name attribute 299
changing number of columns 399 partial failure messages 431
changing stripe unit size 399 physical disk placement 577
creating 337 putil attribute 299
defined 316 RAID-5 failure of 429
failure of 39 RAID-5 plex, configuring 580
performance 510 removing from VxVM 298–299
specifying non-default number of columns 338 restrictions on moving 294
specifying non-default stripe unit size 338 specifying different offsets for unrelocation 442
striped-mirror volumes splitting 294
benefits of 44 tutil attribute 300
converting to mirrored-stripe 402 unrelocating after hot-relocation 439
creating 339 unrelocating to different disks 442
defined 317 unrelocating using vxassist 441
mirroring columns 339 unrelocating using vxdiskadm 440
mirroring subdisks 339 unrelocating using vxunreloc 441
performance 511 Switching the CVM master 474
trigger point for mirroring 339 SYNC volume state 359
striping 39
striping guidelines 579 T
striping plus mirroring 43
t# 24, 82
subdisk names 32
tags
subdisks
for tasks 360
associating log subdisks 297
listing for disks 254
associating with plexes 295
removing from disks 255
associating with RAID-5 plexes 296
removing from volumes 389
associating with striped plexes 296
renaming 389
blocks 32
setting on disks 254
changing attributes 299
setting on volumes 343, 389
comment attribute 300
specifying for online relayout tasks 400
complete failure messages 432
specifying for tasks 360
copying contents of 294
target IDs
creating 292
number 24
defined 32
specifying to vxassist 325
determining failed 432
target mirroring 328, 339
displaying information about 293
targets
dissociating from plexes 298
listing 92
dividing 294
task monitor in VxVM 360
610 Index

tasks tunables (continued)

aborting 361 dmp_restore_cycles 535
changing state of 361–362 dmp_restore_interval 536
identifiers 360 dmp_restore_policy 536
listing 362 dmp_retry_count 536
managing 361 dmp_scsi_timeout 536
modifying parameters of 362 dmp_sfg_threshold 537
monitoring 362 dmp_stat_interval 537
monitoring online relayout 401 vol_checkpt_default 521
pausing 362 vol_default_iodelay 521
resuming 362 vol_fmr_logsz 65, 522
specifying tags 360 vol_kmsg_resend_period 523
specifying tags on online relayout operation 400 vol_kmsg_resend_period_usecs 523
tags 360 vol_kmsg_send_period 523
TEMP plex state 304 vol_kmsg_send_period_usecs 523
temporary area used by online relayout 53 vol_max_vol 523
TEMPRM plex state 305 vol_maxio 524
TEMPRMSD plex state 305 vol_maxioctl 524
Thin Reclamation 366 vol_maxparallelio 524
third-mirror vol_maxspecialio 525
snapshots 62 vol_subdisk_num 525
third-party driver (TPD) 89 volcvm_smartsync 525
throttling 161 voldrl_max_drtregs 526
TPD voldrl_max_seq_dirty 59, 526
displaying path information 182 voldrl_min_regionsz 526
support for coexistence 89 voliomem_chunk_size 526
tpdmode attribute 108 voliomem_maxpool_sz 527
trigger point in striped-mirror volumes 339 voliot_errbuf_dflt 527
tunables voliot_iobuf_default 528
changing values of 519 voliot_iobuf_limit 528
displaying using prtconf 520 voliot_iobuf_max 528
dmp_cache_open 530 voliot_max_open 528
dmp_daemon_count 530 volpagemod_max_memsz 529
dmp_delayq_interval 531 volraid_minpool_size 529
dmp_enable_restore 531 volraid_rsrtransmax 530
dmp_fast_recovery 531 tutil
dmp_health_time 531 plex attribute 312
dmp_log_level 532 subdisk attribute 300
dmp_low_impact_probe 532
dmp_lun_retry_timeout 532 U
dmp_monitor_fabric 533
UDID flag 252
dmp_monitor_osevent 533
udid_mismatch flag 252
dmp_native_multipathing 533
UFS file system resizing 372
dmp_native_support 534
unencapsulating the root disk 140
dmp_path_age 534
units of size 292
dmp_pathswitch_blks_shift 534
Upgrading
dmp_probe_idle_lun 535
ISP disk group 288
dmp_probe_threshold 535
use_all_paths attribute 198
dmp_queue_depth 535
 Index 611

use_avid vol_max_vol tunable 523

vxddladm option 106 vol_maxio tunable 524
user-specified device names 171 vol_maxioctl tunable 524
usesfsmartmove parameter 323 vol_maxparallelio tunable 524
vol_maxspecialio tunable 525
V vol_subdisk_num tunable 525
volatile devices 122
V-5-1-2536 373
volcvm_smartsync tunable 525
V-5-1-2829 232
voldrl_max_drtregs tunable 526
V-5-1-552 240
voldrl_max_seq_dirty tunable 59, 526
V-5-1-569 461
voldrl_min_regionsz tunable 526
V-5-1-587 247
voliomem_chunk_size tunable 526
V-5-2-3091 275
voliomem_maxpool_sz tunable 527
V-5-2-369 241
voliot_errbuf_dflt tunable 527
V-5-2-4292 275
voliot_iobuf_default tunable 528
version 0
voliot_iobuf_limit tunable 528
of DCOs 66
voliot_iobuf_max tunable 528
version 20
voliot_max_open tunable 528
of DCOs 66
volpagemod_max_memsz tunable 529
versioning
volraid_minpool_size tunable 529
of DCOs 66
volraid_rsrtransmax tunable 530
versions
volume kernel states
disk group 285
DETACHED 359
displaying for disk group 285
DISABLED 359
upgrading 285
ENABLED 359
virtual objects 29
volume length, RAID-5 guidelines 580
VM disks
volume resynchronization 57
defined 31
volume sets
determining if shared 476
adding volumes to 409
displaying spare 435
administering 407
excluding free space from hot-relocation use 437
controlling access to raw device nodes 413
initializing 102
creating 408
making free space available for hot-relocation
displaying access to raw device nodes 413
use 438
enabling access to raw device nodes 412
marking as spare 435
listing details of 409
mirroring volumes on 376
raw device nodes 411
moving volumes from 393
removing volumes from 409
names 32
starting 410
postponing replacement 146
stopping 410
removing from pool of hot-relocation spares 436
volume states
renaming 154
ACTIVE 358
vol## 34
CLEAN 358
vol##-## 34
EMPTY 358
vol_checkpt_default tunable 521
INVALID 358
vol_default_iodelay tunable 521
NEEDSYNC 358
vol_fmr_logsz tunable 65, 522
REPLAY 358
vol_kmsg_resend_period tunable 523
SYNC 359
vol_kmsg_resend_period_usecs tunable 523
volumes
vol_kmsg_send_period tunable 523
accessing device files 348, 581
vol_kmsg_send_period_usecs tunable 523
612 Index

volumes (continued) volumes (continued)

adding DRL logs 386 creating using vxmake description file 345
adding logs and maps to 380 creating with version 0 DCOs attached 333
adding mirrors 375 creating with version 20 DCOs attached 336
adding RAID-5 logs 403 defined 34
adding sequential DRL logs 386 detaching plexes from temporarily 308
adding subdisks to plexes of 296 disabling FastResync 395
adding to volume sets 409 disconnecting plexes 307
adding version 20 DCOs to 381 displaying information 356
advanced approach to creating 319 dissociating plexes from 311
assisted approach to creating 319 DRL 578
associating plexes with 306 effect of growing on FastResync maps 70
attaching plexes to 306 enabling FastResync on 394
block device files 348, 581 enabling FastResync on new 334
boot-time restrictions 131 excluding storage from use by vxassist 325
booting root 130–131 finding maximum size of 323
changing layout online 396 finding out maximum possible growth of 371
changing number of columns 399 flagged as dirty 57
changing read policies for mirrored 391 initializing contents to zero 347
changing stripe unit size 399 initializing using vxassist 346
character device files 348, 581 initializing using vxvol 347
checking if FastResync is enabled 395 kernel states 359
combining mirroring and striping for layered 44, 50, 317
performance 511 limit on number of plexes 34
combining online relayout and conversion 403 limitations 34
concatenated 37, 316 listing on boot (root) disk 136
concatenated-mirror 45, 317 making immediately available for use 346
configuring exclusive open by cluster node 482– maximum number of 523
483 maximum number of data plexes 512
configuring on SAN storage 72 mirrored 42, 317
configuring site consistency on 501 mirrored-concatenated 43
converting between layered and non-layered 402 mirrored-stripe 43, 317
converting concatenated-mirror to mirroring across controllers 330, 339
mirrored-concatenated 402 mirroring across targets 328, 339
converting mirrored-concatenated to mirroring all 376
concatenated-mirror 402 mirroring on disks 376
converting mirrored-stripe to moving from VM disks 393
striped-mirror 402 moving to improve performance 515
converting striped-mirror to names 34
mirrored-stripe 402 obtaining performance statistics 513
creating 319 performance of mirrored 510
creating concatenated-mirror 332 performance of RAID-5 511
creating mirrored 331 performance of striped 510
creating mirrored-concatenated 332 performing online relayout 396
creating mirrored-stripe 338 placing in maintenance mode 370
creating RAID-5 341 preparing for DRL and instant snapshot
creating striped 337 operations 381
creating striped-mirror 339 preventing recovery on restarting 371
creating using vxmake 344 RAID-0 39
 Index 613

volumes (continued) vxassist (continued)

RAID-0+1 43 adding a RAID-5 log 403
RAID-1 42 adding DRL logs 386
RAID-1+0 44 adding mirrors to volumes 307, 375
RAID-10 44 adding sequential DRL logs 386
RAID-5 46, 317 advantages of using 320
raw device files 348, 581 command usage 321
reattaching plexes 308 configuring exclusive access to a volume 482
reconfiguration in clusters 466 configuring site consistency on volumes 501
recovering after correctable hardware converting between layered and non-layered
failure 432 volumes 402
removing 392 creating concatenated-mirror volumes 332
removing DRL logs 387 creating mirrored volumes 332
removing from /etc/vfstab 392 creating mirrored-concatenated volumes 332
removing mirrors from 379 creating mirrored-stripe volumes 338
removing plexes from 379 creating RAID-5 volumes 341
removing RAID-5 logs 404 creating striped volumes 337
removing sequential DRL logs 387 creating striped-mirror volumes 339
removing support for DRL and instant creating volumes 320
snapshots 385 creating volumes with DRL enabled 336
resizing using vxassist 373 creating volumes with version 0 DCOs
resizing using vxresize 372 attached 334
resizing using vxvol 375 creating volumes with version 20 DCOs
snapshots 61 attached 336
spanned 37 defaults file 321
specifying default layout 324 defining layout on specified storage 325
specifying non-default number of columns 338 discovering maximum volume size 323
specifying non-default relayout 399 excluding storage from use 325
specifying non-default stripe unit size 338 finding out how much volumes can grow 371
specifying storage for version 20 DCO listing tags set on volumes 343, 390
plexes 382 mirroring across controllers 330, 339
specifying use of storage to vxassist 325 mirroring across enclosures 339
starting 370 mirroring across targets 328, 330
starting using vxassist 346 mirroring file systems on root disk 136
starting using vxvol 347 moving DCO log plexes 382
states 358 moving subdisks after hot-relocation 441
stopping 369 moving volumes 516
stopping activity on 392 relaying out volumes online 396
striped 39, 316 removing DCOs from volumes 389
striped-mirror 44, 317 removing DRL logs 387
striping to improve performance 516 removing mirrors 379
tracing operations 513 removing plexes 379
trigger point for mirroring in striped-mirror 339 removing RAID-5 logs 404
types of layout 316 removing tags from volumes 389
upgrading to use new features 387 removing volumes 392
using logs and maps with 318 replacing tags set on volumes 389
zeroing out contents of 347 reserving disks 156
vxassist resizing volumes 373
adding a log subdisk 298 setting default values 321
614 Index

vxassist (continued) vxdg (continued)

setting tags on volumes 343, 389–390 configuring site-based allocation for a disk
specifying number of mirrors 332 group 497
specifying number of RAID-5 logs 341 controlling CDS compatibility of new disk
specifying ordered allocation of storage 328 groups 239
specifying plexes for online relayout 400 converting shared disk groups to private 480
specifying storage attributes 325 correcting serial split brain condition 269
specifying tags for online relayout tasks 400 creating disk groups 238
unrelocating subdisks after hot-relocation 441 creating disk groups with old version
vxclust 464 number 239
vxclustadm 465 creating shared disk groups 478
vxconfigd deporting disk groups 243
managing with vxdctl 285 destroying disk groups 284
monitoring configuration changes 287 disabling a disk group 283
operation in clusters 468 displaying boot disk group 231
vxdarestore displaying default disk group 231
handling simple/nopriv disk failures 109 displaying disk group version 285
vxdctl displaying free space in disk groups 237
checking cluster protocol version 483 displaying information about disk groups 236
enabling disks after hot swap 153 forcing import of disk groups 248
managing vxconfigd 285 importing a disk group containing cloned
setting a site tag 496, 499 disks 253
setting default disk group 232 importing cloned disks 255
usage in clusters 473 importing disk groups 244
vxdctl enable importing shared disk groups 479
invoking device discovery 88 joining disk groups 282
vxddladm listing disks with configuration database
adding disks to DISKS category 99 copies 255
adding foreign devices 101 listing objects affected by move 275
changing naming scheme 106 listing shared disk groups 477
displaying the disk-naming scheme 106 listing spare disks 435
excluding support for disk arrays 96 moving disk groups between systems 246
listing all devices 91 moving disks between disk groups 241
listing configured devices 94 moving objects between disk groups 277
listing configured targets 93 obtaining copy size of configuration
listing excluded disk arrays 96, 99 database 229
listing ports on a Host Bus Adapter 92 placing a configuration database on cloned
listing supported disk arrays 96 disks 254
listing supported disks in DISKS category 97 reattaching a site 499
listing supported HBAs 92 recovering destroyed disk groups 284
re-including support for disk arrays 96 removing disks from disk groups 240
removing disks from DISKS category 90, 100– renaming disk groups 261
101 setting a site name 501, 505
setting iSCSI parameters 94 setting base minor number 250
vxdg setting disk connectivity policy in a cluster 482
changing activation mode on shared disk setting disk group policies 458
groups 481 setting failure policy in a cluster 482
clearing locks on disks 248 setting maximum number of devices 251
configuring site consistency for a disk group 497 simulating site failure 498
 Index 615

vxdg (continued) vxdiskadm (continued)

splitting disk groups 280 Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group 436
upgrading disk group version 285 marking disks as spare 436
vxdisk Mirror volumes on a disk 377
clearing locks on disks 248 mirroring disks 130
defaults file 85, 113 mirroring root disks 133
determining if disks are shared 476 mirroring volumes 377
discovering disk access names 111–112 Move volumes from a disk 393
displaying information about disks 237 moving disk groups between systems 249
displaying multi-pathing information 170 moving disks between disk groups 242
listing disks 141 moving subdisks after hot-relocation 440
listing spare disks 435 moving subdisks from disks 241
listing tags on disks 254 moving volumes from VM disks 393
placing a configuration database on a cloned Remove a disk 143, 241
disk 254 Remove a disk for replacement 147
removing tags from disks 255 Remove access to (deport) a disk group 242
scanning disk devices 85 removing disks from pool of hot-relocation
setting a site name 500 spares 437
setting tags on disks 254 Replace a failed or removed disk 150
updating the disk identifier 253 Turn off the spare flag on a disk 437
vxdisk scandisks Unrelocate subdisks back to a disk 440
rescanning devices 86 unrelocating subdisks after hot-relocation 440
scanning devices 86 vxdiskconfig
vxdiskadd purpose of 85
adding disks to disk groups 240 vxdiskunsetup
creating disk groups 238 removing disks from VxVM control 146, 240
placing disks under VxVM control 122 vxdmpadm
vxdiskadm changing TPD naming scheme 108
Add or initialize one or more disks 113, 238 configuring an APM 211
adding disks 113 configuring I/O throttling 205
adding disks to disk groups 239 configuring response to I/O errors 203, 207
Change/display the default disk layout 113 disabling controllers in DMP 167
changing the disk-naming scheme 104 disabling I/O in DMP 201
creating disk groups 238 discovering disk access names 111–112
deporting disk groups 242 displaying APM information 211
Disable (offline) a disk device 154 displaying DMP database information 168
Enable (online) a disk device 153 displaying DMP node for a path 174, 176
Enable access to (import) a disk group 243 displaying DMP node for an enclosure 174–175
Encapsulate one or more disks 125 displaying I/O error recovery settings 207
Exclude a disk from hot-relocation use 437 displaying I/O policy 194
excluding free space on disks from displaying I/O throttling settings 207
hot-relocation use 437 displaying information about controllers 179
importing disk groups 243 displaying information about enclosures 180
initializing disks 113 displaying partition size 194
List disk information 142 displaying paths controlled by DMP node 177
listing spare disks 435 displaying status of DMP error handling
Make a disk available for hot-relocation use 438 thread 210
making free space on disks available for displaying status of DMP restoration thread 210
hot-relocation use 438 displaying TPD information 182
616 Index

vxdmpadm (continued) vxnotify

enabling I/O in DMP 202 monitoring configuration changes 287
gathering I/O statistics 186 vxplex
listing information about array ports 181 adding RAID-5 logs 404
removing an APM 211 attaching plexes to volumes 306, 376
renaming enclosures 203 copying plexes 311
setting I/O policy 197–198 detaching plexes temporarily 308
setting path attributes 192 dissociating and removing plexes 312
setting restore polling interval 208 dissociating plexes from volumes 312
specifying DMP path restoration policy 208 moving plexes 310
stopping DMP restore daemon 210 reattaching plexes 308
vxdmpadm list removing mirrors 379
displaying DMP nodes 174 removing mirrors of root disk volumes 141
vxedit removing plexes 379
changing plex attributes 313 removing RAID-5 logs 404
changing subdisk attributes 299–300 vxprint
configuring number of configuration copies for checking if FastResync is enabled 395
a disk group 519 determining if DRL is enabled 384
excluding free space on disks from displaying DCO information 382
hot-relocation use 437 displaying plex information 301
making free space on disks available for displaying subdisk information 293
hot-relocation use 438 displaying volume information 356
marking disks as spare 435 enclosure-based disk names 111–112
removing disks from pool of hot-relocation identifying RAID-5 log plexes 404
spares 436 listing spare disks 435
removing plexes 312 listing volumes on boot disks 136
removing subdisks from VxVM 299 used with enclosure-based disk names 111–112
removing volumes 392 viewing base minor number 250
renaming disks 155 vxrecover
reserving disks 156 preventing recovery 371
vxencap recovering plexes 432
defaults file 113 restarting volumes 371
VxFS file system resizing 372 vxrelayout
vxiod I/O kernel threads 22 resuming online relayout 401
vxmake reversing direction of online relayout 402
associating plexes with volumes 307 viewing status of online relayout 401
associating subdisks with new plexes 295 vxrelocd
creating plexes 301, 376 hot-relocation daemon 428
creating striped plexes 301 modifying behavior of 444
creating subdisks 292 notifying users other than root 445
creating volumes 344 operation of 429
using description file with 345 preventing from running 445
vxmend reducing performance impact of recovery 445
re-enabling plexes 309 vxresize
taking plexes offline 307, 370 growing volumes and file systems 372
vxmirror limitations 372
configuring VxVM default behavior 376 shrinking volumes and file systems 372
mirroring root disks 133 vxsd
mirroring volumes 376 adding log subdisks 298
 Index 617

vxsd (continued) VxVM

adding subdisks to RAID-5 plexes 296 benefits to performance 509
adding subdisks to striped plexes 296 cluster functionality (CVM) 461
associating subdisks with existing plexes 296 configuration daemon 285
dissociating subdisks 298 configuring to create mirrored volumes 376
filling in sparse plexes 296 dependency on operating system 22
joining subdisks 295 disk discovery 85, 87
moving subdisk contents 294 granularity of memory allocation by 526
removing subdisks from VxVM 298 limitations of shared disk groups 459
splitting subdisks 294 maximum number of data plexes per
vxsnap volume 512
preparing volumes for DRL and instant maximum number of subdisks per plex 525
snapshots operations 381 maximum number of volumes 523
removing support for DRL and instant maximum size of memory pool 527
snapshots 385 minimum size of memory pool 529
vxspcshow objects in 29
discovering device names 74 operation in clusters 448
vxsplitlines performance tuning 518
diagnosing serial split brain condition 268 removing disks from 240
vxstat removing disks from control of 145
determining which disks have failed 432 rootability 129
obtaining disk performance statistics 515 shared objects in cluster 451
obtaining volume performance statistics 513 size units 292
usage with clusters 485 task monitor 360
zeroing counters 515 types of volume layout 316
vxtask upgrading 285
aborting tasks 363 upgrading disk group version 285
listing tasks 362 VXVM_DEFAULTDG environment variable 230
monitoring online relayout 401 vxvol
monitoring tasks 363 configuring exclusive access to a volume 483
pausing online relayout 401 configuring site consistency on volumes 501
resuming online relayout 401 disabling DRL 385
resuming tasks 363 disabling FastResync 395
vxtrace enabling FastResync 394
tracing volume operations 513 initializing volumes 347
vxtune putting volumes in maintenance mode 370
setting volpagemod_max_memsz 529 re-enabling DRL 385
vxunreloc resizing logs 375
listing original disks of hot-relocated resizing volumes 375
subdisks 443 setting read policy 391
moving subdisks after hot-relocation 441 starting volumes 347, 370
restarting after errors 443 stopping volumes 369, 392
specifying different offsets for unrelocated zeroing out volumes 347
subdisks 442 vxvset
unrelocating subdisks after hot-relocation 441 adding volumes to volume sets 409
unrelocating subdisks to different disks 442 controlling access to raw device nodes 413
vxunroot creating volume sets 408
removing rootability 141 creating volume sets with raw device access 412
unencapsulating the root disk 141 listing details of volume sets 409
618 Index

vxvset (continued)
removing volumes from volume sets 409
starting volume sets 410
stopping volume sets 410

W
worldwide name identifiers 81, 105
WWN identifiers 81, 105

Z
zero
setting volume contents to 347