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VXDISKADD (1M)

Maintenance Commands

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPERATIONS
Hardware-Specific Note
FILES
NOTES
SEE ALSO

NAME

vxdiskadd - add one or more disks for use with Veritas Volume Manager

SYNOPSIS

vxdiskadd disk_address_pattern_list

DESCRIPTION

The vxdiskadd utility configures disks for use by Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM). Disks must already have been formatted (see format(1M)) and have a valid VTOC or EFI label (see prtvtoc(1M)). vxdiskadd prompts the user for a disk group name and disk name for the disks. If no disk group name specified, the disks will be left as unassigned replacement disks for future use. A new disk group may be created that will become the disks' disk group. If a disk group is specified for the disks, the user is prompted for whether the disks should be designated as spares for the disk group. If a disk is found to already contain partitioning not set up by VxVM, the user will be asked whether the disk should be encapsulated. Encapsulation will turn each partition of the disk into a volume. A disk should be encapsulated if it contains file systems or data that should not be overwritten. If encapsulation is not desired for a disk, the disk can be initialized as a new disk for use by VxVM. For new disks, all space on the disk becomes free space in the disk's disk group. vxdiskadd interactively allows encapsulation or initialization to be done for all the disks specified or allows the user to ask to make the decision for each disk individually.

One or more disks may be specified with a disk_address_pattern_list. The basic form of a disk address is c#t#d#. Any leading portion of this address may be specified to indicate that all disks that match that leading portion should be used. For example c2t0 may be used to specify all disks on controller 2, target 0. More than one disk address or address pattern may be specified on the command line. In case of enclosure-based names, the disk address will be of the form enclosurename_diskno. The enclosurename indicates that all disks in the specified enclosure are used. For example, emc1_ is used to specify all disks in the enclosure emc1. The word all may be used to specify all disks on the system. Disk address names relate directly to device node names in the /dev/dmp and /dev/rdmp directories. Here are more examples:


all:      all disks
c3 c4t2:  all disks on 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

The files /etc/vx/cntrls.exclude, /etc/vx/disks.exclude and /etc/vx/enclr.exclude may be used to exclude controllers or disks from use by vxdiskadd. Each line of cntrls.exclude specifies the address of a controller to exclude, for example, c2. Each line of disks.exclude specifies a disk to exclude, for example, c0t3d0. Each line of enclr.exclude specifies the name of an enclosure to exclude, for example, enc0.

All courses of action that do not involve clear failure conditions require prompts from the user, with defaults supplied as appropriate. Help is made available at every prompt. Entering ? in response to a prompt displays a context-sensitive help message.

OPERATIONS

Reconnecting a drive that was temporarily inaccessible: This situation is detected automatically by noting that the specified drive has a disk ID that matches a disk media record with no currently associated physical disk. After reconnection, any stale plexes referring the disk are reattached, and any stopped volumes referring the disk are restarted. This reattach action is performed by calling the vxrecover utility.
Encapsulation of disks that have existing contents: This is the default action for disks that do not have a valid, existing Veritas Volume Manager private region, but that do have a VTOC or EFI label. Encapsulation is performed by calling vxencap.
Initialization of a disk with reserved regions and partitions: Initialization of the disk is performed by calling vxdisksetup.
Adding a disk to an existing disk group: This operation can be performed independently of the initialization of the disk drive. The operation adds the disk to the group so that its storage is added to the free space pool in that disk group. The vxassist utility can subsequently allocate from that free space.
Creation of new disk groups in which to import a new disk: If disks are added that are required to be put into a disk group that does not exist, the option of creating the disk group is offered.

Hardware-Specific Note

Some environments provide guidelines to optimize VxVM's interaction with intelligent storage systems. If these guidelines are present, VxVM follows the guidelines when adding disks to disk groups. If the operation fails due to these guideline(s), you are prompted to use the force option. The force option ignores any such storage-specific guidelines.

FILES

/etc/vx/cntrls.exclude: Specifies the address of controllers to exclude from vxdiskadd operations.
/etc/vx/disks.exclude: Specifies the address of disks to exclude from vxdiskadd operations.
/etc/vx/enclr.exclude: Specifies the address of enclosures to exclude from vxdiskadd operations.

NOTES

EFI disks cannot be added to a disk group that is compatible with the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature, nor can they be formatted as CDS disks.

VXDISKADD (1M)

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