Disk Utilities

the graphical user interface

a set of command-line utilities

the vxdiskadm menu-based interface

the unrelocate utility

vxdiskadm—the vxdiskadm utility is the Volume Manager Support Operations menu interface. The vxdiskadm utility provides a menu of disk operations. Each entry in the main menu leads you through a particular task by providing you with information and prompts. Default answers are provided for many questions so you can easily select common answers.

vxdiskadd—the vxdiskadd utility is used to add standard disks to the Volume Manager. The vxdiskadd utility leads you through the process of initializing a new disk by displaying information and prompts. See the vxdiskadd(1M) manual page for more information.

vxdisk—the vxdisk utility is the command-line utility for administering disk devices. The vxdisk utility defines special disk devices, initializes information stored on disks (that the Volume Manager uses to identify and manage disks), and performs additional special operations. See the vxdisk(1M) manual page for more information.

In Volume Manager, physical disks connected to the system are represented as metadevices with one or more physical access paths. The access paths depend on whether the disk is a single disk or part of a multiported disk array connected to the system. Use the vxdisk utility to display the paths of a metadevice, and to display the status of each path (for example, enabled or disabled). For example, to display details on disk01, enter:

# vxdisk list disk01 

vxunreloc—VxVM Hot-relocation allows the system to automatically react to I/O failures on a redundant VxVM object at the subdisk level and then take necessary action to make the object available again. This mechanism detects I/O failures in a subdisk, relocates the subdisk, and recovers the plex associated with the subdisk. After the disk has been replaced, Volume Manager provides a utility, vxunreloc, that allows you to restore the system back to the configuration that existed before the disk failure. The vxunreloc utility allows you to move the hot-relocated subdisks back onto a disk that was replaced due to a failure.

When the vxunreloc utility is invoked, you must specify the disk media name where the hot-relocated subdisks originally resided. When the vxunreloc utility moves the subdisks, it moves them to the original offsets. If you try to unrelocate to a disk that is smaller than the original disk that failed, the vxunreloc utility does nothing except return an error.

The vxunreloc utility provides an option to move the subdisks to a different disk from where they were originally relocated. It also provides an option to unrelocate subdisks to a different offset as long as the destination disk is large enough to accommodate all the subdisks. For more information on using the vxunreloc utility, see “vxunrelocate Command”.

vxdiskadd—thevxdiskadd utility and most vxdiskadm operations can be used only with standard disk devices.