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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.

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

To exclude a device from the view of VxVM, select item 17 (Prevent multipathing/Suppress devices from VxVM's view) from the vxdiskadm main menu.

See "Disabling multipathing and making devices invisible to VxVM" on page 129.

 To initialize disks for VxVM use

1. Select menu item 1 (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):

   Add or initialize disks

   Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/AddDisks

   Use this operation to add one or more disks to a disk group.

   You can add the selected disks to an existing disk group or to

   a new disk group that will be created as a part of the

   operation. The selected disks may also be added to a disk group

   as spares. Or they may be added as nohotuses to be excluded

   from hot-relocation use. The selected disks may also be

   initialized without adding them to a disk group leaving the

   disks available for use as replacement disks.

   More than one disk or pattern may be entered at the prompt.

   Here are some disk selection examples:

all: all disks

c3 c4t2: all disks on both controller 3 and controller

4,target 2

c3t4d2: a single disk (in the c#t#d# naming scheme)

xyz_0 : a single disk (in the enclosure based naming

scheme)

xyz_ : all disks on the enclosure whose name is xyz

Select disk devices to add:

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

<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:

c3t0d0 c3t1d0 c3t2d0 c3t3d0

specifies fours disks at separate target IDs on controller 3.

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

DEVICE DISK GROUP STATUS

c2t4d0 - - LVM

c2t5d0 - - LVM

c2t6d0 - - LVM

c3t0d0 mydg01 mydg online

c3t1d0 mydg03 mydg online

c3t2d0 mydg04 mydg online

c3t3d0 mydg05 mydg online

c3t8d0 mydg06 mydg online

c3t9d0 mydg07 mydg online

c3t10d0 mydg02 mydg online

c4t1d0 mydg08 mydg online

c4t2d0 TCd1-18238 TCg1-18238 online

c4t13d0 - - online invalid

c4t14d0 - - online

.

.

.

Select disk devices to add:

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

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.

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)

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

12. If one or more disks already contains a file system, vxdiskadm asks if you are sure that want to destroy it. Enter y to confirm this:

    The following disk device appears to contain a currently

    unmounted file system.

    list of device names

    Are you sure you want to destroy these file systems

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

    vxdiskadm asks you to confirm that the devices are to be reinitialized before proceeding:

    Reinitialize these devices? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y

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

13. 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 hpdisk-format disk:

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

    (default: cdsdisk)

    Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the default format, cdsdisk.

14. At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private region size of 32768 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: 32768)

    vxdiskadm then proceeds to add the disks.

    Adding disk device device name to disk group disk group name with

    disk name disk name.

    .

    .

    .

15. 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 98.