VxVM allows a system administrator to configure various volume layouts for the volume thus allowing high redundancy and high performance. Let us see how we can create a basic volume and a file system with Veritas Volume Manager.
- Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) is a popular and powerful, enterprise-class storage management tool. When you want to inspect a large setup (or sometimes even a small one!), its output ( vxprint ) can be unclear, even cryptic.
- Creating Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) Volume & Filesystem in RHEL 7 1. First of all, check the disks which are visible to Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) and this can be done by “ vxdisk ” command as below. # vxdisk -o alldgs list.
- If disk was in use & something happened to private region where vxvm is unable to read the disk private region, in this case, you should see disk going in 'failed was' state in vxdisk list. In most of the case, you need to a bottoms up analysis & find what happened underneath to the disk.
VxVM Tutorials
VxVM allows a system administrator to configure various volume layouts for the volume thus allowing high redundancy and high performance. Let us see how we can create a basic volume and a file system with Veritas Volume Manager.
I have added six, 1 GB disks (other than two, 16 GB disks for root mirroring) to my vmware virtual machine for future tutorials.
To check all the disks scanned under the Operating System:
OS native Vs Enclosure based naming Scheme
We can have disks naming scheme in 2 ways – OS native and Enclosure based. For my convenience I will be using OS native disk scheming. But you can have it your way. To change the scheme use vxdiskadm command and select option 20. You can use enclosure based naming scheme if you prefer that. You would see the difference in the DEVICE column in the output of “vxdisk -eoalldgs list” as shown above and below in the vxdisk command output.
To check the current naming scheme
To change the naming scheme through command line
I would exclude the root disk (c1t0d0) and a disk supposed to be mirrored (c1t1d0) with it later on.
Now first initialize the disk we want to use for the disk group creation. If you have seen output of vxdisk list, you would see all the disks with STATUS of online invalid. This indicates that the disk is not under VxVM control. To take it under VxVM control we would initialize it.
vxdiks list would now show you the status as online implying that the disk is now under VxVM control.
Initialization Vs Encapsulation
Now before going forward let us see whats the difference between encapsulation and initialization.
Initialization – When a disk is initialized a private and public region is created on the disk (placed under VxVM control) and VM disk header information is written to the private region. All the data already present on the disk is erased.
Encapsulation – Disk is taken under VxVM control when it is initialized but the data is preserved in this method.
Now create the disk group mydg by specifying the disk we just initialized. You can give any name to disk you prefer instead of disk01.
Now create a simple concatenated volume myvol of around 500 MB size in the mydg.
Create a vxfs file system on this volume and also create a directory to mount this volume.
To make the mount to persists after reboot you can add an entry to /etc/vfstab. Also it is a preferred way to check the entry in vfstab by mounting it with just “mount /mount-point” or “mountall” command.
Adding a new disk to the existing disk group
We can also add disks after we create the disk group. Before adding a new disk initialize it.
To check the layout of the volume we just create:
As you can see in the output above, a plex with one subdisk is created which comprises the volume myvol. You can also see the layout as concat in the 6th column.
To heck the disk property of a disk in the mydg :
Veritas Infoscale Vxvm
Remove volume , diks and diskgroups
Before removing the volume umount the mount point /data and remove the entry from vfstab.
Veritas Vxvm Download
After removing the volume you can remove the disks in the diskgroup. But the last disk can not be removed. For that we have to remove the entire disk group mydg. After removing the DG we can use these disks in any other DG.