Placing Disks Under VxVM Control

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.

	CAUTION: 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 used for a file system,VxVM prompts you to confirm that you really want to destroy the file system.

If the disk was previously in use by the LVM subsystem, you can preserve existing data while still letting VxVM take control of the disk. This is accomplished using conversion. With conversion, the virtual layout of the data is fully converted to VxVM control (see the VERITAS Volume Manager Migration Guide).

If the disk was previously in use by the LVM subsystem, but you do not want to preserve the data on it, use the LVM command, pvremove, before attempting to initialize the disk for VxVM.

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.

When initializing multiple disks at once, it is possible to exclude certain disks or controllers.

To exclude disks, list the names of the disks to be excluded in the file /etc/vx/disks.exclude before the initialization. The following is an example of the contents of a disks.exclude file:

		c0t1d0

You can exclude all disks on specific controllers from initialization by listing those controllers in the file /etc/vx/cntrls.exclude. The following is an example of an entry in a cntrls.exclude file:

		c0

You can exclude all disks in specific enclosures from initialization by listing those enclosures in the file /etc/vx/enclr.exclude. The following is an example of an entry in a enclr.exclude file:

		enc1

	NOTE: Only the vxinstall and vxdiskadm commands use the contents of the /etc/vx/disks.exclude, /etc/vx/cntrls.exclude and /etc/vx/enclr.exclude files. You may need to create these files if they do not already exist on the system.