vxdiskadm - menu-driven Veritas Volume Manager disk administrator

vxdiskadm

vxdiskadm provides a menu-driven interface to perform common Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) disk administration tasks.

The vxdiskadm script is interactive and prompts you for responses, supplying defaults where appropriate. Help is available at every prompt by entering a question mark (?) to display a context-sensitive help message.

To add disks, specify one or more disks with a disk-address-pattern-list. The basic format for disk addresses is hdisk# or enclosure-based names such as enc1_0. You can specify just the controller to add all the disks at that SCSI address. For example, use scsi2 to specify all disks on SCSI controller two. You can specify more than one disk address or address pattern on the command line. The word all specifies all disks on the system. Disk address names relate directly to device node names in the /dev directory.

You can use the files /etc/vx/disks.exclude, /etc/vx/cntrls.exclude and /etc/vx/enclr.exclude to exclude disks, controllers and enclosures from use by vxdiskadm. Each line of disks.exclude specifies a disk to exclude, for example, hdisk12. Each line of cntrls.exclude specifies the address of a controller to exclude, for example, scsi2. Each line of enclr.exclude specifies an enclosure to be excluded, for example, enc1.

Add or initialize one or more disks
	Prompts for one or more disk device addresses, and a disk group to which these are to be added.
	When initializing disks into a new disk group, you are prompted to choose whether this disk group should be compatible with the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature.
	You are also given the alternative of initializing the disk but leaving it unallocated to a disk group. A default disk name is assigned with the format, diskgroup##, such that the names are unique within all imported disk groups. You are prompted to specify whether to designate the disks as spares for the disk group.
Remove a disk
	Prompts for a disk, by disk media name. The disk is checked to ensure that no subdisks reside on the disk. If the disk is in use, the operation fails with a recommendation to first move all volumes off the disk. If this disk is the last disk in a group, you are also prompted whether to remove the disk group from the system.
	The operation then calls vxdg rmdisk to remove the disk from its disk group. If this is the last disk in its disk group, vxdg deport is used instead.
Remove a disk for replacement
	Prompts for a disk by disk media name. The disk is checked for volumes that would lose all mirrors as a result of the operation. If such volumes exist, those volumes are listed and you are prompted whether to continue the operation.
	The operation calls vxdg -k rmdisk to dissociate the media record from the physical disk. If there are formatted disks available that have disk headers but no disk group, you are prompted whether to use one of these disks as a replacement.
Replace a failed or removed disk
	Prompts for a disk media name. The named media record must be dissociated from a disk. If the media record is not in the removed state, unused disks are scanned for matching disk IDs. If a disk with a matching disk ID is found, you are prompted whether to reattach that disk.
	If a matching disk is not used, you are prompted for a new disk, by device address. If the named replacement disk has a valid disk header, but is not allocated to a disk group, you are prompted whether to reinitialize the disk. If the named replacement disk is listed as allocated to a disk group or to another host, you are prompted whether to continue the operation.
	If the device is initialized, vxdisksetup is called to set up public and private regions and to create the disk header.
	Given an initialized disk, the operation replaces the disk in a disk group with vxdg -k adddisk.
Mirror volumes on a disk
	Prompts for a disk, by media name. It then prompts for a destination disk within the same disk group, also by media name. Specifying no destination disks indicates that any disk can be the destination. The operation calls vxmirror to mirror the volumes.
Move volumes from a disk
	Prompts for a disk, by media name. It then prompts for a possible list of destination disks, also by disk media name. Specifying no destination disks indicates that any disk is suitable. The operation calls vxevac to move subdisks off the disk.
Enable access to (import) a disk group
	Prompts for a disk group name. The operation calls vxdg import to import the disk group stored on that disk.
Remove access to (deport) a disk group
	Prompts for a disk group name. The prompt lists alternate disk groups and the disks (media name and access name) that they contain. The operation calls vxdg deport.
Enable (online) a disk device
	Prompts for a disk device. The prompt lets you display the disks on the system. The operation functions only for disks currently offline. It then makes the disk accessible.
Disable (offline) a disk device
	Prompts for a disk device. The prompt lets you display the disks on the system. The operation functions only for disks currently online, but not part of any disk group. It then marks the disk as offline such that VxVM no longer tries to access the disk.
Mark a disk as a spare for a disk group
	Sets up a disk as a spare device for its disk group. A spare disk can be used to automatically replace a disk that has failed. No space can be used on a disk that is marked as a spare.
Turn off the spare flag for a disk
	Removes a disk from the list of spare disks, and returns its space to the general pool of available space.
Unrelocate subdisks back to a disk
	Moves subdisks which were hot-relocated following a disk failure back to the original disk, or to a disk with a different name, possibly with a different offset.
Exclude a disk from hot-relocation use
	Sets up a disk to be excluded from use by hot-relocation. The disk is marked as nohotuse and it cannot be used by hot-relocation to replace a disk that has failed. However, it remains available to be used as free space for its disk group.
Make a disk available for hot-relocation use
	Turns off the nohotuse flag on a disk. Use this option to make a disk available for hot-relocation use. This only applies to disks that were previously excluded from hot-relocation use.
Prevent multipathing/Suppress devices from VxVM’s view
	Excludes devices from VxVM’s view, or prevents them from being multipathed by the dynamic multipathing (DMP) driver, vxdmp.
	There are three ways of specifying the devices on which these operations are to be performed: o As a controller for all devices connected through the controller. o As a physical pathname for all devices under that path. o As a combination of the Vendor ID and Product ID (VID:PID) for all devices of that type.
	This option also provides a method to define pathgroups in case of disks which are not multipathed by VxVM. Only one path from a pathgroup will be made visible to VxVM. This is useful to avoid duplicate entries for devices that are not multipathed by vxdmp.
Allow multipathing/Unsuppress devices from VxVM’s view
	Makes devices visible to VxVM again or makes vxdmp multipath these devices again. This can be performed only on devices that have already been specified using the "Prevent multipathing/Suppress devices from VxVM’s view" option.
List currently suppressed/non-multipathed devices
	Lists all devices suppressed from VxVM’s view and all devices prevented from being multipathed by vxdmp.
Change the disk naming scheme
	Changes the disk naming scheme from the hdisk# format to enclosure-based. Alternatively, if the existing naming scheme is enclosure-based, it is changed to hdisk# format.
	This option is equivalent to using the vxddladm set namingscheme={ebn|osn} command.
	Note: Devices with very long device names (for example, Fibre Channel devices that include worldwide name (WWN) identifiers) are always represented by enclosure-based names. This operation has no effect on such devices.
Change/Display the default disk layouts
	Allows you to change or display the default disk format and private region length that are used when initializing disks.
List disk information
	Displays a list of disks. You can also choose to list detailed information about the disk at a specific disk device address.

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 and when mirroring the volumes on a disk. 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.

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

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.

See the vxddladm(1M) manual page for information on using the vxddladm command to include or exclude specific array libraries from device discovery.

vxddladm(1M), vxdg(1M), vxdisk(1M), vxdiskadd(1M), vxdisksetup(1M), vxevac(1M), vxintro(1M), vxmirror(1M)