A VxFS file placement policy document contains rules by which VxFS creates, relocates, and deletes files, but the placement policy does not refer to specific file systems or volumes. You can create a file system's active file placement policy by assigning a placement policy document to the file system via the fsppadm command or the GUI.

See the fsppadm(1M) manual page.

At most, one file placement policy can be assigned to a VxFS file system at any time. A file system may have no file placement policy assigned to it, in which case VxFS allocates space for new files according to its own internal algorithms.

In systems with Storage Foundation Management Server (SFMS) software installed, file placement policy information is stored in the SFMS database. The SFMS database contains both XML policy documents and lists of hosts and file systems for which each document is the current active policy. When a policy document is updated, SFMS can assign the updated document to all file systems whose current active policies are based on that document. By default, SFMS does not update file system active policies that have been created or modified locally, that is by the hosts that control the placement policies' file systems. If a SFMS administrator forces assignment of a placement policy to a file system, the file system's active placement policy is overwritten and any local changes that had been made to the placement policy are lost.

You can view sample placement policies in the /opt/VRTSvxfs/etc directory. These sample placement policies are installed as part of the VxFS rpm installation.