VERITAS Volume Manager

Base VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 for HP-UX (VxVM), is a state-of-the-art online disk management software product. It is the default disk storage mechanism for HP-UX 11i Version 1.5 (B.11.20). VxVM is functionally equivalent to the HP Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and the HP MirrorDisk/UX products.

Base VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 for HP-UX is bundled with all HP-UX 11i Version 1.5 (B.11.20) systems and includes:

support for managing the root disk (i.e., rootability)

VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 for HP-UX (B9116AA) is an optional product available at an extra charge. The add-on VxVM product includes features such as mirroring, RAID-5, and DMP for active/active devices. See VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 for HP-UX Release Notes for more information about the add-on VxVM product.

VxVM Libraries

VxVM adds two new kernel libraries, libvxvm.a and libvxdmp.a, that get built into the base HP-UX kernel. VxVM also provides tunables defined in /usr/conf/space.h.d/vxvm_space.h and /usr/conf/space.h.d/vxdmp_space.h, these tunables can be found in /usr/conf/master.d/vxvm and /usr/conf/master.d/vxdmp. Detailed information of these tunables can be found in the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Administrator's Guide on the http://docs.hp.com web site.

VxVM adds four new init scripts:

/sbin/rc0.d/K930vxvm-daemon-kill
/sbin/rc1.d/S092vxvm-startup2 starts VxVM I/O daemons and enables the VxVM configuration daemon which rebuilds the /dev/vx/dsk and /dev/vx/rdsk directories. This script also rebuilds the user level nodes for all the DMP devices in /dev/vx/dmp and /dev/vx/rdmp that were detected by the kernel.
/sbin/rc1.d/S093vxvm-reconfig VxVM reconfiguration init script
/sbin/rc2.d/S095vxvm-recover handles recovery of stale volumes. Also starts the VxVM watch daemon, vxrelocd(1M), which sends email to the system administrator when any problems are found.

VxVM Compatibility

Coexistence with HP Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

The VERITAS Volume Manager for HP-UX coexists with HP Logical Volume Manager (LVM). With HP-UX 11i Version 1.5, LVM cannot be used to control the root/boot disk, so if a volume manager is used for the root disk, it must be VxVM.

Both LVM and VxVM utilities are aware of the other volume manager, and will not overwrite disks that are being managed by the other volume manager. The administrative utilities (SAM and vmsa) recognize and identify all disks on the system.

A conversion utility, vxvmconvert(1M), is available to convert LVM volume groups to VxVM disk groups. See the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Migration Guide for more information about vxvmconvert and for a comparison of VxVM and LVM.

Storage Administrator Graphical User Interface and SAM

The VERITAS Volume Manager Storage Administrator (vmsa) provides a Java-based graphical user interface for managing VxVM. A command line interface is also available. The Storage Administrator has two parts: a server and a client. The server must run on the system running VxVM. The client can run on the server machine, or the client software can be installed on a different HP-UX 11i Version 1.5 (B.11.20) system to manage VxVM remotely. Note that only HP-UX 11i Version 1.5 clients are supported.

SAM, the HP-UX system administration manager, and Storage Administrator exist as independent entities. The Storage Administrator client can and should be launched from SAM. SAM is used to manage LVM objects and the Storage Administrator is used to manage VxVM objects. However, Storage Administrator recognizes and labels LVM volumes and disks, and similarly, SAM recognizes and labels VxVM volumes and disks. To manage VxVM disks graphically, you must use Storage Administrator. For information about Storage Administrator, see the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Storage Administrator Administrator's Guide.

VxVM Documentation

The following VxVM documents are available in HP-UX 11i Version 1.5 (B.11.20) via the Instant Information CD, and on the http://docs.hp.com web site.

VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 for HP-UX Release Notes
VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Administrator's Guide
VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Reference Guide
VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Storage Administrator Administrator's Guide
VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Migration Guide

VxVM Limitations in this Release

VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 for HP-UX has the following limitations in HP-UX 11i Version 1.5, which will be removed in subsequent releases:

The VERITAS FastResync option (FR) is not available in this release, although it is described in the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Administrator's Guide.
The VERITAS Cluster Volume Manager (CVM) is not available in this release, although it is described in the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Administrator's Guide.
VxVM does not support the HP Process Resource Manager (PRM). If you use PRM, you will not be able to gather statistics on disks managed by VxVM.
A disk monitor integrated with the EMS framework is not yet available for disks being managed by VxVM.

VxVM Known Problems

Bad Disks Cause Long Delays in Initialization and Startup

Problem: You may have a bad disk if you notice long periods of delay (several minutes) when doing any of the following:

Installing the system.

Starting vxconfigd at boot time:

Starting VxVM restore daemon...
VxVM starting in boot mode...

The following message may appear:

DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEM WARNING:
The diagnostic logging facility has started receiving excessive
errors from the I/O subsystem.  I/O error entries will be lost
until the cause of the excessive I/O logging is corrected.
If the diaglogd daemon is not active, use the Daemon Startup command
in stm to start it.  If the diaglogd daemon is active, use the
logtool utility in stm to determine which I/O subsystem is logging
excessive errors.

Starting HP-UX

HP-UX Start-up in progress
__________________________
Configure system crash dumps ........................................ OK
VxVM device node check .............................................. OK
VxVM general startup ................................................




	NOTE: Some delays are expected on machines with a large number of disks, even if no disks are bad.

Workaround: Run vxdisk list after VxVM is up to see if you have a bad disk. In the following example, the error status of c3t11d0 indicates it is a bad disk.

# vxdisk list
DEVICE       TYPE      DISK         GROUP        STATUS
c0t3d0       simple    disk01       rootdg       online
c0t4d0       simple    -            -            LVM
c0t5d0       simple    disk02       rootdg       online
c0t6d0       simple    -            -            LVM
c3t11d0      simple    -            -            error
c3t12d0      simple    -            -            LVM
c3t13d0      simple    -            -            LVM
c3t14d0      simple    -            -            LVM
c3t15d0     simple   -            -           LVM

VxVM DMP Lists Disabled Paths That Have Been Reused

Problem: When one of multiple paths or cables to a disk array is disconnected, fails, or is swapped with another path, and then that same path or cable is reconnected or replaced, it is possible that HP-UX will recognize the recovered path as a new path, not as the same path that has simply recovered. In this case, DMP will list twice as many paths: the “new” ones in the ENABLED state and the “old” ones (that is, from before the paths were swapped, removed or replaced) in the DISABLED state. I/O continues to be routed correctly.
Workaround: None necessary. VxVM DMP will not automatically clean up the paths that are no longer in use, or that are in the DISABLED state. When the host is rebooted, the DMP database will be rebuilt without the DISABLED path definitions.

Run vxdctl enable to Show Status Changes for LVM Disks

Problem: VxVM output will not reflect status changes for LVM disks until vxdctl(1M) is run. For example, if you clear an LVM disk with pvremove(1M), vxdiskadm will still list the status of that disk as "LVM," until you run vxdctl enable. This is also true for vmsa output and the output from other VxVM commands.
Workaround: Run vxdctl enable after making any changes to LVM disks to update VxVM's database.

VMSA Continues Running With No rootdg

Problem: If rootdg is on an external device which must be shut down, then VxVM commands won't run. However, VMSA continues to run, even though it cannot complete operations.
Workaround: None.

Duplicate Device Name Creation in rootdg

Problem: When you create new volumes in the rootdg disk group, two sets of device nodes are created: under both /dev/vx/[r]dsk/ and /dev/vx/[r]dsk/rootdg. Although either path can be used for mkfs(1M) or mount(1M), the duplicate sets of device node names can be confusing.
Workaround: We recommend using the full pathname to rootdg disk devices in command line arguments. This is consistent with the naming of device nodes in other disk groups. For example, to mount a rootdg volume use:
# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg/vol01 /vol01
Do not use /dev/vx/dsk/vol01 as the pathname.
vmsa(1M) will always use the full pathname.

Storage Administrator Issues

The following issues have been identified as VERITAS Storage Administrator problems, and will be fixed in a future release of VxVM.

Splitter Cursor Problem

Problem: The splitter cursor does not always go away. This can prevent the wait cursor from being displayed. This problem is caused by a Java bug.
Workaround: Move the cursor outside the main window and then back into the main window.

Extraneous Scrollbar Warning

Problem: When a dialog box, such as a disk/space allocation dialog box, is brought up, a message similar to the following can display:
Warning: Name: scrollbar Class: XmScrollBar The scrollbar page increment is less than 1.
Workaround: This message can be ignored.

VMSA Failure on a Sun Display

Problem: When the VMSA client is run on an HP system but displayed on a Solaris system with CDE window manager, the VMSA client may fail with a segmentation violation.
The VMSA client for HP displays properly on an HP console running the default HP CDE window manager.
Workaround: Before running vmsa for HP-UX on a Sun display, type
#xrdb -remove

Cannot Use Storage Administrator Across Firewall

Problem: The Storage Administrator does not support communication between the client and server across a firewall.
Workaround: None

Problem with Multiple Host Names

Problem: The Storage Administrator can have trouble connecting to a host machine (server) if multiple host names are associated with a single IP address. The following message is displayed:
Summary: There is no such server (host1)Detail: java.net.UnknownHostException: Unknown host: [host2:32839]; nested exception is: java.net.UnknownHostException:host2
In this example, the administrator specified host1 for the VMSA connection, but the server host machine was identified as host2.
In some cases, this may be a problem with the way DNS is set up. A DNS reverse lookup (by IP address) may return a host name that differs from the host name provided to VMSA at startup (host1). You may have to make appropriate changes to DNS so that the names are consistent. In other cases, this happens because host1 is not the first host in the list of hosts for the associated IP address in the /etc/hosts file.
Workaround: Make sure host1 shows up as the first host in the list of names for the address of host1 in /etc/hosts.

Cannot Grow gen Volume

Problem: VMSA does not grow a volume of use_type gen
Workaround: None

X Window Errors at VMSA Startup

Problem: When the Storage Administrator is started, the following X Window System error can occur:
Xlib: connection to "hostname:0.0" refused by serverXlib: Client is not authorized to connect to Serverjava.lang.InternalError: Can't connect to X11 window server using hostname:0.0'as the value of the DISPLAY variable.at sun.awt.motif.MToolkit.<init>(MToolkit.java:48)at java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(Toolkit.java:244)
Workaround: Type xhost + hostname to explicitly authorize the hostname client, or omit hostname to allow unlimited X server access.