Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide

Preface

The Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide explains how to use SolarisTM Volume Manager to manage your system's storage needs. Solaris Volume Manager enables you to create, modify, and use RAID-0 (concatenation and stripe) volumes, RAID-1 (mirror) volumes,


Note –

This Solaris release supports systems that use the SPARC® and x86 families of processor architectures: UltraSPARC®, SPARC64, AMD64, Pentium, and Xeon EM64T. The supported systems appear in the Solaris 10 Hardware Compatibility List at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl. This document cites any implementation differences between the platform types.

In this document these x86 related terms mean the following:

For supported systems, see the Solaris 10 Hardware Compatibility List.


Who Should Use This Book

System and storage administrators can use this book to identify:

How This Book Is Organized

The Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide includes the following information:

Chapter 1, Getting Started With Solaris Volume Manager provides a detailed “roadmap” to the concepts and tasks described in this book. Use this chapter as a navigational aid to the book's content.

Chapter 2, Storage Management Concepts provides an introduction to general storage management concepts for those readers who are new to this technology.

Chapter 3, Solaris Volume Manager Overview describes Solaris Volume Manager. This chapter introduces essential product-related concepts and explains how to access Solaris Volume Manager tools.

Chapter 4, Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster (Overview) provides an introduction to multi-owner disk sets. Multi-owner disk sets enhance the use of Solaris Volume Manager in a SunTM Cluster environment.

Chapter 5, Configuring and Using Solaris Volume Manager (Scenario) provides the storage configuration scenario used throughout this book. This scenario is intended to help you understand the Solaris Volume Manager product.

Chapter 6, State Database (Overview) describes concepts related to state databases and state database replicas.

Chapter 7, State Database (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to state databases and state database replicas.

Chapter 8, RAID-0 (Stripe and Concatenation) Volumes (Overview) describes concepts related to RAID-0 (stripe and concatenation) volumes.

Chapter 9, RAID-0 (Stripe and Concatenation) Volumes (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to RAID-0 (stripe and concatenation) volumes.

Chapter 10, RAID-1 (Mirror) Volumes (Overview) describes concepts related to RAID-1 (mirror) volumes.

Chapter 11, RAID-1 (Mirror) Volumes (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to RAID-1 (mirror) volumes.

Chapter 12, Soft Partitions (Overview) describes concepts related to Solaris Volume Manager's soft partitioning feature.

Chapter 13, Soft Partitions (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to soft partitioning.

Chapter 14, RAID-5 Volumes (Overview) describes concepts related to RAID-5 volumes.

Chapter 15, RAID-5 Volumes (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to RAID-5 volumes.

Chapter 16, Hot Spare Pools (Overview) describes concepts related to hot spares and hot spare pools.

Chapter 17, Hot Spare Pools (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to hot spares and hot spare pools.

Chapter 18, Disk Sets (Overview) describes concepts related to disk sets.

Chapter 19, Disk Sets (Tasks) explains how to perform tasks related to disk sets.

Chapter 20, Maintaining Solaris Volume Manager (Tasks) explains some general maintenance tasks that are not related to a specific Solaris Volume Manager component.

Chapter 21, Best Practices for Solaris Volume Manager provides some “best practices” information about configuring and using Solaris Volume Manager.

Chapter 23, Top-Down Volume Creation (Tasks) describes concepts of and tasks related to the Solaris Volume Manager top-down volume creation feature.

Chapter 24, Monitoring and Error Reporting (Tasks) provides concepts and instructions for using the Solaris Volume Manager SNMP agent and for other error-checking approaches.

Chapter 25, Troubleshooting Solaris Volume Manager (Tasks) provides information about troubleshooting and solving common problems in the Solaris Volume Manager environment.

Appendix A, Important Solaris Volume Manager Files lists important Solaris Volume Manager files.

Appendix B, Solaris Volume Manager Quick Reference provides tables that summarize commands and other helpful information.

Appendix C, Solaris Volume Manager CIM/WBEM API provides a brief introduction to the CIM/WBEM API that allows open Solaris Volume Manager management from WBEM-compliant management tools.

Related Books

Solaris Volume Manager is one of several system administration tools available for the Solaris operating system. Information about overall system administration features and functions, as well as related tools are provided in the following:

Documentation, Support, and Training

Sun Function 

URL 

Description 

Documentation 

http://www.sun.com/documentation/

Download PDF and HTML documents, and order printed documents 

Support and Training 

http://www.sun.com/supportraining/

Obtain technical support, download patches, and learn about Sun courses 

Typographic Conventions

The following table describes the typographic changes that are used in this book.

Table P–1 Typographic Conventions

Typeface or Symbol 

Meaning 

Example 

AaBbCc123

The names of commands, files, and directories, and onscreen computer output 

Edit your .login file.

Use ls -a to list all files.

machine_name% you have mail.

AaBbCc123

What you type, contrasted with onscreen computer output 

machine_name% su

Password:

AaBbCc123

Command-line placeholder: replace with a real name or value 

The command to remove a file is rm filename.

AaBbCc123

Book titles, new terms, and terms to be emphasized 

Read Chapter 6 in the User's Guide.

Perform a patch analysis.

Do not save the file.

[Note that some emphasized items appear bold online.] 

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.

Table P–2 Shell Prompts

Shell 

Prompt 

C shell prompt 

machine_name%

C shell superuser prompt 

machine_name#

Bourne shell and Korn shell prompt 

$

Bourne shell and Korn shell superuser prompt 

#