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About migration from Solaris Volume Manager

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) provides utilities that you can use to convert objects, file systems, and device partitions controlled by the Sun Microsystems Solaris Volume Manager software (also known as Solstice Disk Suite^TM) software to VxVM control. The tools convert all Solaris Volume Manager objects into VxVM objects and encapsulate file systems and swap device partitions used by Solaris Volume Manager software. The conversion happens in place. You do not need to copy data into temporary storage. After the conversion, the Solaris Volume Manager software is disabled and can be removed.

The conversion utilities have the following characteristics:

• The utilities are provided in the VRTSvxvm package.
• All objects under Solaris Volume Manager control are converted. The conversion commands have no partial conversion option.
• You must use the recommended root disk conversion procedure if you want to move only a root disk from under Solaris Volume Manager control to VxVM.

  See "Converting a root disk" on page 546.

  Warning: You cannot use the conversion utilities in a mixed environment. Even if you move only the root disk from Solaris Volume Manager software to VxVM, you cannot later use the conversion utilities to move other Solaris Volume Manager objects to VxVM.
  
• The conversion cannot be done on systems that already have VxVM disk groups or objects.
• All file systems that are on a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice and that are listed in /etc/vfstab are put under VxVM control.
• A conversion retains the on-disk layouts of Solaris Volume Manager volumes and does not improve layouts as supported by VxVM.
• The conversion utilities do not allow a conversion to be reversed. Once the conversion process starts, the best way to return to the Solaris Volume Manager configuration is to restore it from backups.
• After the conversion process starts on RAID-5 volumes, the data in these volumes is reorganized. Returning RAID-5 volumes to Solaris Volume Manager control can be done only by restoring the Solaris Volume Manager configuration and the volume data from backups.
• If you are very familiar with Solaris Volume Manager software and VxVM, you may be able to reverse a conversion without performing a full Solaris Volume Manager restoration from backups. However, RAID-5 volumes must always be restored from backups because the conversion utilities always reorganize RAID-5 parity. To manually reverse a conversion, preserve all Solaris Volume Manager configuration information that is required for its restoration. This includes output from metastat -p and metadb for every diskset, and prtvtoc output for all disks.
• Any partition that is on a disk with Solaris Volume Manager metadevices and that is not listed as a file system in /etc/vfstab is lost during the conversion. The partition is considered free space when the disk is converted to VxVM control. Even if the partitions are in use, such as for Oracle raw tablespace data, they are not encapsulated during the conversion. The raw partitions are lost when the disk layout changes. Either encapsulate the partition under Solaris Volume Manager control and allow the conversion to convert the resulting metadevice, or back up the partition, plan to create a new volume for it, and restore the partition after the conversion.