Disk Operations - VxVM

Few Points to remember:

a. A regular disk can be converted into VM disk (process of bringing under the control of VXVM).

b. A VM Disk contains 2 regios - Private and Public.

c. Private region contains the disk header, configurations details disk group IDs,  Kernel logs and Host ID.

d. Public region contains the Sub Disks (actual data).

e. A VM disk has got 2 types of names

DMN [Disk Media Name] - This name is given while adding a disk into a DG.
DAN [Disk Access Name] - Its the operating system given name. For Ex, c1t0d0

f. A disk can be initialised in 3 type of format

cdsdisk - Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) disk suitable for moving between different operating systems. Its the default format if you don't mention the disk format while initializing a disk.
sliced - The public and private regions are on different disk partitions. Mostly used for solaris boot disks only.
simple - The public and private regions are located sequentially on the same disk area

Here are few commands I normally use to manage VM disks,

1. Initialize a disk (It is the process of bringing a disk under VXVM control):

# vxdisksetup -i c2t0d1 (Solaris and HP-UX)
# vxdisksetup -i hdisk11 (AIX)
# vxdisksetup -i sdb2 (Linux)


Note: You can also use vxdiskadm , a menu based tool.

2. To initialise a disk in a different format :
# vxdisksetup -i c1t1d0 format=cdsdisk
# vxdisksetup -i c1t1d0 format=sliced
# vxdisksetup -i c1t1d0 format=simple


3. To view basic information about all disks :
# vxdisk list
# vxdisk -o alldgs list  (This command shows even deported DG names)

4. To display detailed information about a disk :
# vxdisk -g datadg list datadg01

5. To display summary of all disks :
# vxdisk -s list

6. List disk header :
# vxdisk list datadg01
# vxdisk list c2t0d1s2

7. Evacuate data from one disk to another :
# vxevac -g datadg datadg01 datadg02

8.  Evacuate data from a disk to any disk but datadg08 in datadg :
# vxevac -g datadg datadg01 !datadg08

9. To rename datadg04 device(disk) to datadg05 :
# vxedit -g datadg rename datadg04 datadg05

Note: Renaming a disk does not automatically rename subdisks on the disk.

10. To assign a disk as spare in datadg :
# vxedit -g datadg set spare=on datadg04

11. To unrelocate a disk in datadg :
# vxunreloc -g datadg datadg02

12. To remove a disk from datadg :
# vxdg -g datadg rmdisk datadg02

13. To remove a disk from VxVM control :
# vxdiskunsetup -C datadg02