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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 a controller, selected disks, or a combination of these.
When initializing or encapsulating 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.
Depending on the circumstances, all of the disks may not be processed in the same way. For example, some may be initialized, while others may be encapsulated to preserve existing data on the disks.
A disk cannot be initialized if it does not have a valid useable partition table. You can use the fdisk command to create an empty partition table on a disk as shown here:
where /dev/sdX is the name of the disk device, for example, /dev/sdi.
fdisk command can destroy data on the disk. Do not use this command if the disk contains data that you want to preserve.See "Disabling multipathing and making devices invisible to VxVM" on page 145.
To initialize disks for VxVM use
1 (Add or initialize one or more disks) from the vxdiskadm main menu.
list for a list of 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
More than one disk or pattern may be entered at the prompt.
Here are some disk selection examples:
sdb hdc: add both disk sdb and hdc
xyz_0: a single disk (in the enclosure-based naming
xyz_: all disks on the enclosure whose name is xyz
<pattern-list> can be a single disk, or a series of disks. If <pattern-list> consists of multiple items, separate them using white space, for example:
If you enter list at the prompt, the vxdiskadm program displays a list of the disks available to the system:
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.
y (or press Return) at the following prompt:
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
vxdiskadm prompts for confirmation that you really want to create this new disk group:
There is no active disk group named anotherdg.
Create a new group named disk group name? [y,n,q,?]
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,?]
If the new disk group may be moved between different operating system platforms, enter y. Otherwise, enter n.
n to allow you to define your own disk names:
Use default disk names for the disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: y)
n (or press Return):
n (or press Return).
Exclude disks from hot-relocation use? [y,n,q,?}
(default: n) n
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.
y (or press Return) at the following prompt:
The selected disks will be added to the disk group
Enter site tag for disks on enclosure enclosure_name
[<name>,q,?] site_name
y to indicate that all of these disks should now be used:
The following disk devices appear to have been initialized
Use these devices? [Y,N,S(elect),q,?] (default: Y) Y
Note that 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.
Reinitialize these devices? [Y,N,S(elect),q,?] (default: Y) Y
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
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.
Continue with encapsulation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y
vxdiskadm now displays an encapsulation status and informs you
VxVM INFO V-5-2-333 The disk device device name will be
encapsulated and added to the disk group diskgroup with the
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,?]
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'
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.
vxdiskadm then proceeds to encapsulate the disks.
VxVM INFO V-5-2-340 The first stage of encapsulation has
completed successfully.
You should now reboot your system at the earliest possible
opportunity.
The encapsulation will require two or three reboots which will
happen automatically after the next reboot. To reboot execute
the command:
This will update the /etc/fstab file so that volume devices
are used to mount the file systems on this disk device. You
will need to update any other references such as backup
scripts, databases, or manually created swap devices.
vxdiskadm asks if you want to initialize the disk instead. Enter y to confirm this:
Instead of encapsulating, initialize? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y
vxdiskadm 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.
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)
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.
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 96.