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VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Administrator's Guide

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Technical documentation

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 » Table of Contents

 » Index

HP Part Number: 5991-0603

Edition: HP-UX 11i v2

Published: September 2004


Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Audience and Scope
Organization
Related Documents
Conventions
Getting Help
1 Understanding VERITAS Volume Manager
Introduction
VxVM and the Operating System
How Data is Stored
How VxVM Handles Storage Management
Physical Objects—Physical Disks
Device Discovery
Enclosure-Based Naming
Virtual Objects
Combining Virtual Objects in VxVM
Volume Layouts in VxVM
Implementation of Non-Layered Volumes
Implementation of Layered Volumes
Layout Methods
Concatenation and Spanning
Striping (RAID-0)
Mirroring (RAID-1)
RAID-5 (Striping with Parity)
Layered Volumes
Online Relayout
How Online Relayout Works
Permitted Relayout Transformations
Transformation Characteristics
Transformations and Volume Length
Volume Resynchronization
Dirty Flags
Resynchronization Process
Dirty Region Logging (DRL)
Dirty Region Logs
Log subdisks
Sequential DRL
Volume Snapshots
FastResync
FastResync Enhancements
Non-Persistent FastResync
Persistent FastResync
How Non-Persistent FastResync Works with Snapshots
How Persistent FastResync Works with Snapshots
FastResync Limitations
SmartSync Recovery Accelerator
Data Volume Configuration
Redo Log Volume Configuration
Hot-Relocation
2 Administering Disks
Introduction
Disk Devices
Disk Device Naming in VxVM
Private and Public Disk Regions
Metadevices
Configuring Newly Added Disk Devices
Discovering Disks and Dynamically Adding Disk Arrays
Administering the Device Discovery Layer
Placing Disks Under VxVM Control
Changing the Disk-Naming Scheme
Using vxprint with Enclosure-Based Disk Names
Issues Regarding Persistent Simple/Nopriv Disks with Enclosure-Based Naming
Installing and Formatting Disks
Adding a Disk to VxVM
Reinitializing a Disk
Using vxdiskadd to Place a Disk Under Control of VxVM
Rootability
VxVM Root Disk Volume Restrictions
Root Disk Mirrors
Booting Root Volumes
Setting up a VxVM Root Disk and Mirror
Creating an LVM Root Disk from a VxVM Root Disk
Adding Swap Disks to a VxVM Rootable System
Removing Disks
Removing a Disk with Subdisks
Removing a Disk with No Subdisks
Removing and Replacing Disks
Replacing a Failed or Removed Disk
Enabling a Physical Disk
Taking a Disk Offline
Renaming a Disk
Reserving Disks
Displaying Disk Information
Displaying Disk Information with vxdiskadm
3 Administering Dynamic Multipathing (DMP)
Introduction
Path Failover Mechanism
Load Balancing
Disabling and Enabling Multipathing for Specific Devices
Disabling Multipathing and Making Devices Invisible to VxVM
Enabling Multipathing and Making Devices Visible to VxVM
Enabling and Disabling Input/Output (I/O) Controllers
Displaying DMP Database Information
Displaying Multipaths to a VM Disk
Administering DMP Using vxdmpadm
Retrieving Information About a DMP Node
Displaying All Paths Controlled by a DMP Node
Listing Information About Host I/O Controllers
Disabling a Controller
Enabling a Controller
Listing Information About Enclosures
Renaming an Enclosure
Starting the DMP Restore Daemon
Stopping the DMP Restore Daemon
Displaying the Status of the DMP Restore Daemon
Displaying Information About the DMP Error Daemons
DMP in a Clustered Environment
Enabling/Disabling Controllers with Shared Disk Groups
Operation of the DMP Restore Daemon with Shared Disk Groups
4 Creating and Administering Disk Groups
Introduction
Specifying a Disk Group to Commands
Displaying Disk Group Information
Displaying Free Space in a Disk Group
Creating a Disk Group
Adding a Disk to a Disk Group
Removing a Disk from a Disk Group
Deporting a Disk Group
Importing a Disk Group
Renaming a Disk Group
Moving Disks between Disk Groups
Moving Disk Groups Between Systems
Reserving Minor Numbers for Disk Groups
Reorganizing the Contents of Disk Groups
Listing Objects Potentially Affected by a Move
Moving Objects Between Disk Groups
Splitting Disk Groups
Joining Disk Groups
Disabling a Disk Group
Destroying a Disk Group
Upgrading a Disk Group
Managing the Configuration Daemon in VxVM
5 Creating and Administering Subdisks
Introduction
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
6 Creating and Administering Plexes
Introduction
Creating Plexes
Creating a Striped Plex
Displaying Plex Information
Plex States
Plex Condition Flags
Plex Kernel States
Attaching and Associating Plexes
Taking Plexes Offline
Detaching Plexes
Reattaching Plexes
Moving Plexes
Copying Plexes
Dissociating and Removing Plexes
Changing Plex Attributes
7 Creating Volumes
Introduction
Types of Volume Layouts
Creating a Volume
Advanced Approach
Assisted Approach
Using vxassist
Setting Default Values for vxassist
Discovering the Maximum Size of a Volume
Creating a Volume on Any Disk
Creating a Volume on Specific Disks
Specifying Ordered Allocation of Storage to Volumes
Creating a Mirrored Volume
Creating a Mirrored-Concatenated Volume
Creating a Concatenated-Mirror Volume
Creating a Volume with a DCO and DCO Volume
Creating a Mirrored Volume with DRL Logging Enabled
Creating a Striped Volume
Creating a Mirrored-Stripe Volume
Creating a Striped-Mirror Volume
Mirroring across Targets, Controllers or Enclosures
Creating a RAID-5 Volume
Creating a Volume Using vxmake
Creating a Volume Using a vxmake Description File
Initializing and Starting a Volume
Accessing a Volume
8 Administering Volumes
Introduction
Displaying Volume Information
Volume States
Volume Kernel States
Monitoring and Controlling Tasks
Specifying Task Tags
Managing Tasks with vxtask
Stopping a Volume
Putting a Volume in Maintenance Mode
Starting a Volume
Adding a Mirror to a Volume
Mirroring All Volumes
Mirroring Volumes on a VM Disk
Removing a Mirror
Adding a DCO and DCO Volume
Attaching a DCO and DCO volume to a RAID-5 Volume
Specifying Storage for DCO Plexes
Removing a DCO and DCO Volume
Reattaching a DCO and DCO Volume
Adding DRL Logging to a Mirrored Volume
Removing a DRL Log
Adding a RAID-5 Log
Adding a RAID-5 Log using vxplex
Removing a RAID-5 Log
Resizing a Volume
Resizing Volumes using vxresize
Resizing Volumes using vxassist
Resizing Volumes using vxvol
Changing the Read Policy for Mirrored Volumes
Removing a Volume
Moving Volumes from a VM Disk
Enabling FastResync on a Volume
Checking Whether FastResync is Enabled on a Volume
Disabling FastResync
Enabling Persistent FastResync on Existing Volumes with Associated Snapshots
Backing up Volumes Online
Backing Up Volumes Online Using Mirrors
Backing Up Volumes Online Using Snapshots
Converting a Plex into a Snapshot Plex
Backing Up Multiple Volumes Using Snapshots
Merging a Snapshot Volume (snapback)
Dissociating a Snapshot Volume (snapclear)
Displaying Snapshot Information (snapprint)
Performing Online Relayout
Specifying a Non-Default Layout
Specifying a Plex for Relayout
Tagging a Relayout Operation
Viewing the Status of a Relayout
Controlling the Progress of a Relayout
Converting Between Layered and Non-Layered Volumes
9 Administering Hot-Relocation
Introduction
How Hot-Relocation works
Partial Disk Failure Mail Messages
Complete Disk Failure Mail Messages
How Space is Chosen for Relocation
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 and Unrelocating Subdisks
Moving and Unrelocating Subdisks using vxdiskadm
Moving and Unrelocating subdisks using vxassist
Moving and Unrelocating Subdisks using vxunreloc
Restarting vxunreloc After Errors
Modifying the Behavior of Hot-Relocation
10 Administering Cluster Functionality
Introduction
Overview of Cluster Volume Management
Private and Shared Disk Groups
Activation Modes of Shared Disk Groups
Connectivity Policy of Shared Disk Groups
Limitations of Shared Disk Groups
Cluster Initialization and Configuration
Cluster Reconfiguration
Volume Reconfiguration
Node Shutdown
Node Abort
Cluster Shutdown
Upgrading Cluster Functionality
Dirty Region Logging (DRL) in Cluster Environments
Header Compatibility
Dirty Region Log Format and Size Requirements
How DRL Works in a Cluster Environment
Administering VxVM in Cluster Environments
Requesting the Status of a Cluster Node
Determining if a Disk is Shareable
Listing Shared Disk Groups
Creating a Shared Disk Group
Forcibly Adding a Disk to a Disk Group
Importing Disk Groups as Shared
Converting a Disk Group from Shared to Private
Moving Objects Between Disk Groups
Splitting Disk Groups
Joining Disk Groups
Changing the Activation Mode on a Shared Disk Group
Setting the Connectivity Policy on a Shared Disk Group
Creating Volumes with Exclusive Open Access by a Node
Setting Exclusive Open Access to a Volume by a Node
Displaying the Cluster Protocol Version
Displaying the Supported Cluster Protocol Version Range
Upgrading the Cluster Protocol Version
Recovering Volumes in Shared Disk Groups
Obtaining Cluster Performance Statistics
11 Configuring Off-Host Processing
Introduction
FastResync of Volume Snapshots
Disk Group Split and Join
Implementing Off-Host Processing Solutions
Implementing Online Backup
Implementing Decision Support
12 Performance Monitoring and Tuning
Introduction
Performance Guidelines
Data Assignment
Striping
Mirroring
Combining Mirroring and Striping
RAID-5
Volume Read Policies
Performance Monitoring
Setting Performance Priorities
Obtaining Performance Data
Using Performance Data
Tuning VxVM
General Tuning Guidelines
Tuning Guidelines for Large Systems
Changing Values of Tunables
Tunable Parameters
A Commands Summary
Index

List of Figures

1-1 Physical Disk Example
1-2 How VxVM Presents the Disks in a Disk Array as Volumes to the Operating System
1-3 Example Configuration for Disk Enclosures Connected via a Fibre Channel Hub/Switch
1-4 Example HA Configuration Using Multiple Hubs/Switches to Provide Redundant-Loop Access
1-5 VM Disk Example
1-6 Subdisk Example
1-7 Example of Three Subdisks Assigned to One VM Disk
1-8 Example of a Plex with Two Subdisks
1-9 Example of a Volume with One Plex
1-10 Example of a Volume with Two Plexes
1-11 Connection Between Objects in VxVM
1-12 Example of Concatenation
1-13 Example of a Volume in a Concatenated Configuration
1-14 Example of Spanning
1-15 Striping Across Three Columns
1-16 Example of a Striped Plex with One Subdisk per Column
1-17 Example of a Striped Plex with Concatenated Subdisks per Column
1-18 Mirrored-Stripe Volume Laid out on Six Disks
1-19 Striped-Mirror Volume Laid out on Six Disks
1-20 How the Failure of a Single Disk Affects Mirrored-Stripe and Striped-Mirror Volumes
1-21 Parity Locations in a RAID-5 Model
1-22 Traditional RAID-5 Array
1-23 Volume ManagerRAID-5 Array
1-24 Left-Symmetric Layout
1-25 Incomplete Write
1-26 Example of a Striped-Mirror Layered Volume
1-27 Example of Decreasing the Number of Columns in a Volume
1-28 Example of Relayout of a RAID-5 Volume to a Striped Volume
1-29 Example of Relayout of a Concatenated Volume to a RAID-5 Volume
1-30 Example of Increasing the Number of Columns in a Volume
1-31 Example of Increasing the Stripe Width for the Columns in a Volume
1-32 Snapshot Creation and the Backup Cycle
1-33 Mirrored Volume with Persistent FastResync Enabled
1-34 Mirrored Volume After Completion of a Snapstart Operation
1-35 Mirrored Volume and Snapshot Volume After Completion of a Snapshot Operation
1-36 Resynchronizing the Original Volume from the Snapshot
3-1 How DMP Represents Multiple Physical Paths to a Disk as one Metanode
3-2 Example of Multipathing for a Disk Enclosure in a SAN Environment
4-1 Disk Group Move Operation
4-2 Disk Group Split Operation
4-3 Disk Group Join Operation
4-4 Examples of Disk Groups That Can and Cannot be Split
7-1 Example of Using Ordered Allocation to Create a Mirrored-Stripe Volume
7-2 Example of using Ordered Allocation to Create a Striped-Mirror Volume
7-3 Example of Using Concatenated Disk Space to Create a Mirrored-Stripe Volume
7-4 Example of Storage Allocation Used to Create a Mirrored-Stripe Volume Across Controllers
9-1 Example of Hot-Relocation for a Subdisk in a RAID-5 Volume
10-1 Example of a 4-Node Cluster
11-1 Example Implementation of Off-Host Processing
12-1 Use of Striping for Optimal Data Access
12-2 Use of Mirroring and Striping for Improved Performance
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