Adding a Disk to VxVM

Formatted disks being placed under VxVM control may be new or previously used outside VxVM. The set of disks can consist of all disks on the system, all disks on a controller, selected disks, or a combination of these.

Depending on the circumstances, all of the disks may not be processed in the same way.

When initializing multiple disks at one time, it is possible to exclude certain disks or certain controllers. To exclude disks, list the names of the disks to be excluded in the file /etc/vx/disks.exclude before the initialization. You can exclude all disks on specific controllers from initialization by listing those controllers in the file /etc/vx/cntrls.exclude.

Initialize disks for VxVM use as follows:

1. Select menu item 1 (Add or initialize one or more disks) from the vxdiskadm main menu.
2. At the following prompt, enter the disk device name of the disk to be added to VxVM control (or enter list for a list of disks):
   Add or initialize disks
   Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/AddDisks
   Use this operation to add one or more disks to a disk group. You can add the selected disks to an existing disk group or to a new disk group that will be created as a part of the operation. The selected disks may also be added to a disk group as spares. Or they may be added as nohotuses to be excluded from hot-relocation use. The selected disks may also be initialized without adding them to a disk group leaving the disks available for use as replacement disks.
   More than one disk or pattern may be entered at the prompt.
   Here are some disk selection examples:
   all:        all disks
   c3 c4t2:        all disks on both 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
   Select disk devices to add:
   [<pattern-list>,all,list,q,?]

   <pattern-list> can be a single disk, or a series of disks and/or controllers (with optional targets). If <pattern-list> consists of multiple items, separate them using white space, for example:

   
     c3t0d0 c3t1d0 c3t2d0 c3t3d0

   specifies fours disks at separate target IDs on controller 3.

   If you enter list at the prompt, the vxdiskadm program displays a list of the disks available to the system:

   
   DEVICE       DISK         GROUP        STATUS
   c2t4d0       -            -            LVM
   c2t5d0       -            -            LVM
   c2t6d0       -            -            LVM
   c3t0d0       mydg01       mydg         online
   c3t1d0       mydg03       mydg         online
   c3t2d0       mydg04       mydg         online
   c3t3d0       mydg05       mydg         online
   c3t8d0       mydg06       mydg         online
   c3t9d0       mydg07       mydg         online
   c3t10d0      mydg02       mydg         online
   c4t1d0       mydg08       mydg         online
   c4t2d0       TCd1-18238   TCg1-18238   online
   c4t13d0      -            -            online invalid
   c4t14d0      -            -            online
   .
   .
   .
   
   Select disk devices to add:
   [<pattern-list>,all,list,q,?] 

   The phrase online invalid in the STATUS line indicates that a disk has yet to be added or initialized for VxVM control. Disks that are listed as online with a disk name and disk group are already under VxVM control.

   Enter the device name or pattern of the disks that you want to initialize at the prompt and press Return.

3. To continue with the operation, enter y (or press Return) at the following prompt:
   Here are the disks selected.  Output format: [Device]
   list of device names
   Continue operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y  
4. At the following prompt, specify the disk group to which the disk should be added, or none to reserve the disks for future use:
   You can choose to add these disks to an existing disk group, a new disk group, or you can leave these disks available for use by future add or replacement operations. To create a new disk group, select a disk group name that does not yet exist. To leave the disks available for future use, specify a disk group name of "none".
   Which disk group [<group>,none,list,q,?]
5. If you specified the name of a disk group that does not already exist, vxdiskadm prompts for confirmation that you really want to create this new disk group:
   There is no active disk group named disk group name.
     
   Create a new group named disk group name? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

   You are then prompted to confirm whether the disk group should support the Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature:

   
   Create the disk group as a CDS disk group? [y,n,q,?] (default: n)

   If the new disk group may be moved between different operating system platforms, enter y. Otherwise, enter n.

6. At the following prompt, either press Return to accept the default disk name or enter n to allow you to define your own disk names:
   Use default disk names for the disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) 
7. When prompted whether the disks should become hot-relocation spares, enter n (or press Return):
   Add disks as spare disks for disk group name? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) n 
8. When prompted whether to exclude the disks from hot-relocation use, enter n (or press Return).
   Exclude disk from hot-relocation use? [y,n,q,?} (default: n) n
9. To continue with the operation, enter y (or press Return) at the following prompt:
   The selected disks will be added to the disk group disk group name
   with default disk names.
   list of device names
   Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y
10. If one or more disks already contains a file system, vxdiskadm asks if you are sure that want to destroy it. Enter y to confirm this:
    The following disk device appears to contain a currently unmounted
    file system.
    list of device names
    Are you sure you want to destroy these file systems 
    [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y

    vxdiskadm asks you to confirm that the devices are to be reinitialized before proceeding:

    
    Reinitialize these devices? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) y
    VxVM INFO V-5-2-205 Initializing device device name.
11. You can now choose whether the disk is to be formatted as a CDS disk that is portable between different operating systems, or as a non-portable hpdisk-format disk:
    Enter the desired format [cdsdisk,hpdisk,q,?] (default: cdsdisk)

    Enter the format that is appropriate for your needs. In most cases, this is the default format, cdsdisk.

12. At the following prompt, vxdiskadm asks if you want to use the default private region size of 2048 blocks. Press Return to confirm that you want to use the default value, or enter a different value. (The maximum value that you can specify is 524288 blocks.)
    Enter desired private region length [<privlen>,q,?] (default: 2048)

    vxdiskadm then proceeds to add the disks.

    
    Adding disk device device name to disk group disk group name with
    disk name disk name.
    .
    .
    .

    ---

      Note    To bring LVM disks under VxVM control, use the Migration Utilities. See the VERITAS Volume Manager Migration Guide for details.

    ---

13. At the following prompt, indicate whether you want to continue to initialize more disks (y) or return to the vxdiskadm main menu (n):
    Add or initialize other disks? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) 

See Displaying and Changing Default Disk Layout Attributes for details of how to change the default layout that is used to initialize disks.

Reinitializing a Disk

You can reinitialize a disk that has previously been initialized for use by VxVM by putting it under VxVM control as you would a new disk. See Adding a Disk to VxVM for details.

If the disk you want to add has previously been under LVM control, you can preserve the data it contains on a VxVM disk by the process of conversion (see the VERITAS Volume Manager Migration Guide for more details).

Using vxdiskadd to Place a Disk Under Control of VxVM

As an alternative to vxdiskadm, you can use the vxdiskadd command to put a disk under VxVM control. For example, to initialize the second disk on the first controller, use the following command:

The vxdiskadd command examines your disk to determine whether it has been initialized and also checks for disks that have been added to VxVM, and for other conditions.

The interactive dialog for adding a disk using vxdiskadd is similar to that for vxdiskadm, described in Adding a Disk to VxVM.