Creating Volumes Automatically

The Solaris Volume Manager metassist command allows you to create individual Solaris Volume Manager volumes as well as sets of volumes based on quality of service criteria, with fewer commands than traditional Solaris Volume Manager commands would require.

Creating a Volume Automatically

You can use the metassist command to create RAID 1 (mirror) volumes directly, without having to first create the submirrors (concatenations or stripes) used as component parts of the RAID 1 (mirror) volume.

To Create a RAID 1 (Mirror) Volume with the metassist command

Steps

1. Make sure that you have the necessary prerequisites for using top down volume creation (the metassist command).

2. Identify available storage on which to create the mirror.

   If you do not explicitly specify any storage, Solaris Volume Manager will identify unused storage on the system and use it as appropriate. If you choose to specify storage, either broadly (for example, all storage on controller 1) or specifically (for example, use c1t4d2, but do not use c1t4d1), Solaris Volume Manager will use the storage you specify as needed.

3. Use the following form of the metassist command to create a two–way mirror:

   metassist create-s diskset-name-r redundancy -S size

   • create is the subcommand to create volumes.

   • -s diskset-name specifies the name of the disk set to use for the volumes.

   • -r redundancy specifies the level of redundancy (number of data copies) to create.

   • -S size specifies the size of the volume to create in KB, MB, GB, or TB, for kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes, respectively.

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

4. Use the metastat command to view the new volumes (two striped submirrors and one mirror).

   metastat -s diskset-name

Example—Creating a Two-Way Mirror with the metassist command

# metassist create -s myset -r 2 -S 10mb

This example shows how to create a two-way mirror, 10Mb in size, with the metassist command. The metassist command identifies unused disks and creates the best mirror possible using those disks. The -s myset argument specifies that the volumes will be created in the myset disk set, which will be created if necessary.

Example—Creating a Two-Way Mirror and Hot Spare with the metassist command

# metassist create -s myset -f -r 2 -S 10mb
 

This example shows how to use the metassist command to create a two-way mirror, 10Mb in size, with a hot spare to provide additional fault tolerance (the -f option specifies fault tolerance).

Example—Creating a Stripe using a Specific Controller with the metassist command

# metassist create -s myset -a c1 -S 10mb

This example shows how to use the metassist command to create a stripe using disks available on controller 1 (the -a option specifies the available controller).