Chapter 12 Soft Partitions (Tasks)

This chapter provides information about performing tasks that are associated with Solaris Volume Manager soft partitions. For information about the concepts involved in these tasks, see Chapter 11, Soft Partitions (Overview).

Soft Partitions (Task Map)

The following task map identifies the procedures needed to manage Solaris Volume Manager soft partitions.

Creating Soft Partitions

How to Create a Soft Partition

1. Check the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions.

2. Use one of the following methods to create a soft partition:

   • From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose Action->Create Volume, then follow the instructions in the wizard. For more information, see the online help.

   • To create a soft partition, use the following form of the metainit command:

     metainit [-s set] soft-partition -p [-e] component size

     -s is used to specify which set is being used. If -s isn't specified, the local (default) disk set is used.

     -e is used to specify that the entire disk should be reformatted. The format provides a slice 0, taking most of the disk, and a slice 7 of a minimum of 4 Mbytes in size to contain a state database replica.

     soft-partition is the name of the soft partition. The name is of the form dnnn, where nnn is a number in the range of 0 to 8192.

     component is the disk, slice, or (logical) volume from which to create the soft partition. All existing data on the component is destroyed because the soft partition headers are written at the beginning of the component.

     size is the size of the soft partition, and is specified as a number followed by one of the following:

     • M or m for megabytes

     • G or g for gigabytes

     • T or t for terabyte

     • B or b for blocks (sectors)

   See the following examples and the metainit(1M) man page for more information.

Example—Creating a Soft Partition

# metainit d20 -p c1t3d0s2 4g

Example—Taking a Whole Disk for Soft Partitions

This example shows repartitioning disk c1t2d0, thus destroying any data on that disk, and creating a new soft partition on slice 0. The command looks like the following:

metainit d7 -p -e c1t2d0 1G

Maintaining Soft Partitions

Maintaining soft partitions is no different from maintaining other logical volumes. The following outlines the procedure.

How to Check the Status of a Soft Partition

1. Read the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions.

2. Use one of the following methods to check the status of a soft partition:

   • From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose the soft partition that you want to monitor, then choose Action->Properties, then follow the instructions on screen. For more information, see the online help.

   • To view the existing configuration, use the following format of the metastat command:

     metastat soft-partition

     soft-partition is the name of the partition you want to check.

Example—Checking the Status of a Soft Partition

This example shows checking the status of soft partition d1, which includes two extents and is built on the RAID 1 volume d100.

# metastat d1
d1: soft partition 
    component:  d100 
    state: OKAY 
    size:  42674285 blocks 
             Extent              Start Block                Block Count 
             0                          10234                   40674285 
             1                       89377263                    2000000 
d100: Mirror 
    Submirror 0: d10 
    State: OKAY 
    Read option: roundrobin (default) 
    Write option: parallel (default) 
    Size: 426742857 blocks 

d10: Submirror of d100 
    State:  OKAY 
    Hot spare pool: hsp002 
    Size: 426742857 blocks 
    Stripe 0: (interlace: 32 blocks) 
        Device              Start Block  Dbase State        Hot Spare 
        c3t3d0s0                  0             No    Okay 
  

How to Expand a Soft Partition

When no other logical volumes have been built on a soft partition, you can add space to the soft partition. Free space is located and used to extend the partition. Existing data is not moved.

If a soft partition has been used to create another volume (for example, if it is a component of a RAID 0 volume), the soft partition cannot be expanded. In most cases, the same objective (providing more space for the device that contains the soft partition) can be achieved by concatenating other volumes onto the containing device. See Expanding Storage Space for more information.

1. Read the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions.

2. Use one of the following methods to expand a soft partition:

   • From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose the soft partition that you want to expand, then choose Action->Properties, then follow the instructions on screen. For more information, see the online help.

   • To add space to a soft partition, use the following form of the metattach command:

     metattach [-s disk-set] soft-partition size

     disk-set is the name of the disk set in which the soft partition exists.

     soft-partition is the name of an existing soft partition.

     size is the amount of space to add.

Example—Expanding a Soft Partition

This example shows how to attach space to a soft partition and then expand the file system on it while the soft partition is online and mounted:

# mount /dev/md/dsk/d20 /home2
# metattach d20 10g
# growfs -M /home2 /dev/md/rdsk/d20

How to Remove a Soft Partition

1. Read the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions.

2. Use one of the following methods to delete a soft partition:

   • From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose the soft partition that you want to expand, then choose Action->Properties, then follow the instructions on screen. For more information, see the online help.

   • To delete a soft partition, use one of the following forms of the metaclear command:

     metaclear [-s disk-set] component metaclear [-s disk-set] -r soft-partition metaclear [-s disk-set] -p component

     where:

     • disk-set is the disk set in which the soft partition exists.

     • soft-partition is the soft partition to delete.

     • r specifies to recursively delete logical volumes, but not volumes on which others depend.

     • p specifies to purge all soft partitions on the specified component, except those soft partitions that are open.

     • component is the component from which to clear all of the soft partitions.

Example—Removing a Soft Partition

This example shows how to delete all soft partitions on c1t4d2s0.

# metaclear -p c1t4d2s0