Chapter 1 Getting Started With Solaris Volume Manager
The Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide describes how to set up and maintain systems using Solaris Volume Manager to manage storage for high availability, flexibility, and reliability.
This chapter serves as a high-level guide to find information for certain Solaris Volume Manager tasks, such as setting up storage capacity. This chapter does not address all the tasks that you will need to use Solaris Volume Manager. Instead, this chapter provides an overview of new features and an easy way to find procedures describing common tasks associated with Solaris Volume Manager concepts.
This chapter includes the following roadmaps:
Caution – If you do not use Solaris Volume Manager correctly, you can destroy data. Solaris Volume Manager provides a powerful way to reliably manage your disks and data on them. However, you should always maintain backups of your data, particularly before you modify an active Solaris Volume Manager configuration.
Solaris Volume Manager Roadmap—What's New
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Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|---|---|
|
Manage storage in which one or more components is greater than 1 TB |
Use physical logical unit numbers (LUNs) that are greater than 1 TB in size, or create logical volumes that are greater than 1 TB. |
Overview of Multi-Terabyte Support in Solaris Volume Manager |
|
Import a disk set from one system to another |
Use the metaimport command to import disk sets, even disk sets created on different systems. This command uses expanded device ID support to automatically track disk movement within named disk sets. | |
|
Create and manage multi-owner disk sets |
Use the metaset -M to administer multi-owner disk sets in a Sun Cluster environment. |
Solaris Volume Manager Roadmap—Storage Capacity
|
Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|---|---|
|
Set up storage |
Create storage that spans slices by creating a RAID-0 or a RAID-5 volume. The RAID-0 or RAID-5 volume can then be used for a file system or any application, such as a database, that accesses the raw device. |
How to Create a RAID-0 (Stripe) Volume How to Create a RAID-0 (Concatenation) Volume How to Create a RAID-1 Volume From Unused Slices |
|
Expand an existing file system |
Increase the capacity of an existing file system by creating a RAID-0 (concatenation) volume, then adding additional slices to that volume. | |
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Expand an existing RAID-0 (concatenation or stripe) volume |
Expand an existing RAID-0 volume by concatenating additional slices to it. | |
|
Expand a RAID-5 volume |
Expand the capacity of a RAID-5 volume by concatenating additional slices to it. | |
|
Increase the size of a UFS file system on an expanded volume |
Expand a file system by using the growfs command to expand the size of a UFS while it is mounted and without disrupting access to the data. | |
|
Subdivide slices or logical volumes into smaller partitions, breaking the 8-slice hard partition limit |
Subdivide logical volumes or slices by using soft partitions. | |
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Create a file system |
Create a file system on a RAID-0 (stripe or concatenation), RAID-1 (mirror), RAID-5, or on a soft partition. |
Solaris Volume Manager Roadmap—Availability
|
Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|---|---|
|
Maximize data availability |
Use Solaris Volume Manager's mirroring feature to maintain multiple copies of your data. You can create a RAID-1 volume from unused slices in preparation for data, or you can mirror an existing file system, including root (/) and /usr. | |
|
Add data availability with minimum hardware cost |
Increase data availability with a minimum of hardware by using Solaris Volume Manager's RAID-5 volumes. | |
|
Increase data availability for an existing RAID-1 or RAID-5 volume |
Increase data availability for a RAID-1 or a RAID-5 volume, by creating a hot spare pool then associating it with the submirrors of a RAID-1 volume, or a RAID-5 volume. |
Solaris Volume Manager Roadmap—I/O Performance
|
Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|---|---|
|
Tune RAID-1 volume readanwrite policies |
Specify the read and write policies for a RAID-1 volume to improve I/O performance for a given configuration. | |
|
Optimize device performance |
Create RAID-0 (stripe) volumes to optimize I/O performance of devices that make up the stripe. The interlace value can be optimized for random or sequential access. | |
|
Maintain device performance within a RAID-0 (stripe) |
Expand a stripe or concatenation that has run out of space by concatenating a new component to it. A concatenation of stripes is better for I/O performance than a concatenation of slices. |
Solaris Volume Manager Roadmap—Administration
|
Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|---|---|
|
Graphically administer your volume management configuration |
Use the Solaris Management Console graphical user interface (GUI) to administer your volume management configuration. |
Online help from within Solaris Volume Manager (Enhanced Storage) node of the Solaris Management Console application |
|
Graphically administer slices and file systems |
Use the Solaris Management Console GUI to administer your disks and file systems, performing such tasks as partitioning disks and constructing UFS file systems. |
Online help from within the Solaris Management Console application |
|
Optimize Solaris Volume Manager |
Solaris Volume Manager performance is dependent on a well-designed configuration. Once created, the configuration needs monitoring and tuning. | |
|
Plan for future expansion |
Because file systems tend to run out of space, you can plan for future growth by putting a file system into a concatenation. |
Solaris Volume Manager Roadmap—Troubleshooting
|
Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|---|---|
|
Replace a failing slice |
If a disk fails, you must replace the slices used in your Solaris Volume Manager configuration. In the case of RAID-0 volume, you have to use a new slice, delete and re-create the volume, then restore data from a backup. Slices in RAID-1 and RAID-5 volumes can be replaced and resynchronized without loss of data. | |
|
Recover from boot problems |
Special problems can arise when booting the system, due to a hardware problem or operator error. |
How to Recover From Improper /etc/vfstab Entries |
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