Importing Disk Groups Between Linux and Non-Linux Machines

A disk group created on non-Linux platforms typically has device numbers above 1000. When that disk group is imported on a Linux machine with a pre-2.6 kernel, the devices are reassigned minor numbers below 256.

If this disk group is now imported to a non-Linux machine, all device numbers will be less than 256. If those devices are available (that is, they do not conflict with devices in an imported boot disk group) they will be used. Otherwise new device numbers will be reassigned.

A single disk group could contain a number of devices exceeding the maximum number of devices for a given platform. In this case, the disk group cannot be imported on that platform because import would exhaust available minor devices for the VxVM driver. Although the case of minor number exhaustion is possible in a homogeneous environment, it will be more pronounced between platforms with different values for the maximum number of devices supported, such as Linux with a pre-2.6 kernel. This difference will render platforms with low maximum devices supported values less useful as heterogeneous disk group failover or recovery candidates.