This chapter provides information about performing general storage administration maintenance tasks with Solaris Volume Manager. This is a list of the information in this chapter:Solaris Volume Manager Maintenance (Task Map) Viewing the Solaris Volume Manager Configuration Renaming Volumes Working With Configuration Files Changing Solaris Volume Manager Default Values Expanding a File System Using the growfs Command Overview of Replacing and Enabling Components in RAID-1 and RAID-5 Volumes The following task map identifies the procedures that are needed to maintain Solaris Volume Manager.Task Description For Instructions View the Solaris Volume Manager configuration Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metastat command to view the system configuration. How to View the Solaris Volume Manager Volume Configuration Rename a volume Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metarename command to rename a volume. How to Rename a Volume Create configuration files Use the metastat -p command and the metadb command to create configuration files. How to Create Configuration Files Initialize Solaris Volume Manager from configuration files Use the metainit command to initialize Solaris Volume Manager from configuration files. How to Initialize Solaris Volume Manager From a Configuration File Expand a file system Use the growfs command to expand a file system. How to Expand a File System Enable components Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metareplace command to enable components. Enabling a Component Replace components Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metareplace command to replace components. Replacing a Component With Another Available Component The metastat command does not sort output. Pipe the output of the metastat -p command to the sort or grep commands for a more manageable listing of your configuration. To view the volume configuration, use one of the following methods:From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. For more information, see the online help. Use the following form of the metastat command:# metastat -p -i component-namepSpecifies to show output in a condensed summary. This output is suitable for use in creating the md.tab file. iSpecifies to verify that RAID-1 (mirror) volumes, RAID-5 volumes, and hot spares can be accessed. component-nameSpecifies the name of the volume to view. If no volume name is specified, a complete list of components is displayed. The following example illustrates output from the metastat command.# metastat d50: RAID State: Okay Interlace: 32 blocks Size: 20985804 blocks Original device: Size: 20987680 blocks Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c1t4d0s5 330 No Okay Yes c1t5d0s5 330 No Okay Yes c2t4d0s5 330 No Okay Yes c2t5d0s5 330 No Okay Yes c1t1d0s5 330 No Okay Yes c2t1d0s5 330 No Okay Yes d1: Concat/Stripe Size: 4197879 blocks Stripe 0: Device Start Block Dbase Reloc c1t2d0s3 0 No Yes d2: Concat/Stripe Size: 4197879 blocks Stripe 0: Device Start Block Dbase Reloc c2t2d0s3 0 No Yes d80: Soft Partition Device: d70 State: Okay Size: 2097152 blocks Extent Start Block Block count 0 1 2097152 d81: Soft Partition Device: d70 State: Okay Size: 2097152 blocks Extent Start Block Block count 0 2097154 2097152 d70: Mirror Submirror 0: d71 State: Okay Submirror 1: d72 State: Okay Pass: 1 Read option: roundrobin (default) Write option: parallel (default) Size: 12593637 blocks d71: Submirror of d70 State: Okay Size: 12593637 blocks Stripe 0: Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c1t3d0s3 0 No Okay Yes Stripe 1: Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c1t3d0s4 0 No Okay Yes Stripe 2: Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c1t3d0s5 0 No Okay Yes d72: Submirror of d70 State: Okay Size: 12593637 blocks Stripe 0: Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c2t3d0s3 0 No Okay Yes Stripe 1: Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c2t3d0s4 0 No Okay Yes Stripe 2: Device Start Block Dbase State Reloc Hot Spare c2t3d0s5 0 No Okay Yes hsp010: is empty hsp014: 2 hot spares Device Status Length Reloc c1t2d0s1 Available 617652 blocks Yes c2t2d0s1 Available 617652 blocks Yes hsp050: 2 hot spares Device Status Length Reloc c1t2d0s5 Available 4197879 blocks Yes c2t2d0s5 Available 4197879 blocks Yes hsp070: 2 hot spares Device Status Length Reloc c1t2d0s4 Available 4197879 blocks Yes c2t2d0s4 Available 4197879 blocks Yes Device Relocation Information: Device Reloc Device ID c1t2d0 Yes id1,sd@SSEAGATE_ST39204LCSUN9.0G3BV0N1S200002103AF29 c2t2d0 Yes id1,sd@SSEAGATE_ST39204LCSUN9.0G3BV0P64Z00002105Q6J7 c1t1d0 Yes id1,sd@SSEAGATE_ST39204LCSUN9.0G3BV0N1EM00002104NP2J c2t1d0 Yes id1,sd@SSEAGATE_ST39204LCSUN9.0G3BV0N93J000071040L3S c0t0d0 Yes id1,dad@s53554e575f4154415f5f53543339313430412525415933 The following example illustrates output from the metastat command for a multi-terabyte storage volume (11 Tbytes).# metastat d0 d0: Concat/Stripe Size: 25074708480 blocks (11 TB) Stripe 0: (interlace: 32 blocks) Device Start Block Dbase Reloc c27t8d3s0 0 No Yes c4t7d0s0 12288 No Yes Stripe 1: (interlace: 32 blocks) Device Start Block Dbase Reloc c13t2d1s0 16384 No Yes c13t4d1s0 16384 No Yes c13t6d1s0 16384 No Yes c13t8d1s0 16384 No Yes c16t3d0s0 16384 No Yes c16t5d0s0 16384 No Yes c16t7d0s0 16384 No Yes c20t4d1s0 16384 No Yes c20t6d1s0 16384 No Yes c20t8d1s0 16384 No Yes c9t1d0s0 16384 No Yes c9t3d0s0 16384 No Yes c9t5d0s0 16384 No Yes c9t7d0s0 16384 No Yes Stripe 2: (interlace: 32 blocks) Device Start Block Dbase Reloc c27t8d2s0 16384 No Yes c4t7d1s0 16384 No Yes Stripe 3: (interlace: 32 blocks) Device Start Block Dbase Reloc c10t7d0s0 32768 No Yes c11t5d0s0 32768 No Yes c12t2d1s0 32768 No Yes c14t1d0s0 32768 No Yes c15t8d1s0 32768 No Yes c17t3d0s0 32768 No Yes c18t6d1s0 32768 No Yes c19t4d1s0 32768 No Yes c1t5d0s0 32768 No Yes c2t6d1s0 32768 No Yes c3t4d1s0 32768 No Yes c5t2d1s0 32768 No Yes c6t1d0s0 32768 No Yes c8t3d0s0 32768 No Yes For more information, see the metastat1M man page. Solaris Volume Manager enables you to rename most types of volumes at any time, subject to some constraints. You can use either the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console or the command line (the metarename1M command) to rename volumes. Renaming volumes or switching volume names is an administrative convenience for the management of volume names. For example, you could arrange all file system mount points in a desired numeric range. You might rename volumes to maintain a naming scheme for your logical volumes or to allow a transactional volume to use the same name as the name of the underlying volume.Transactional volumes are no longer valid in Solaris Volume Manager. You can rename transactional volumes to replace them. Before you rename a volume, make sure that it is not currently in use. For a file system, make sure that it is not mounted or being used as swap. Other applications that use the raw device, such as a database, should have their own way of stopping access to the data.Specific considerations for renaming volumes include the following:You can rename any volume except the following:Soft partitions Volumes on which soft partitions are directly built Volumes that are being used as log devices Hot spare pools You can rename volumes within a disk set. However, you cannot rename volumes to move them from one disk set to another disk set. Using the metarename command with the x option exchanges the names of volumes that have a parent-child relationship. For more information, see How to Rename a Volume and the metarename1M man page. The name of an existing volume is exchanged with one of its subcomponents. For example, this type of exchange can occur between a mirror and one of its submirrors. The metarename x command can make it easier to mirror or unmirror an existing volume.You must use the command line to exchange volume names. This functionality is currently unavailable in the Solaris Volume Manager GUI. However, you can rename a volume with either the command line or the GUI. Consider the following guidelines when you want to rename a volume:You cannot rename a volume that is currently in use. This restriction includes volumes that are used as mounted file systems, as swap, or as active storage for applications or databases. Thus, before you use the metarename command, stop all access to the volume that is being renamed. For example, unmount a mounted file system. You cannot exchange volumes in a failed state. You cannot exchange volumes that are using a hot spare replacement. An exchange can only take place between volumes with a direct parent-child relationship. You cannot exchange (or rename) a log device. The workaround is to detach the log device and attach another log device of the desired name. Only volumes can be exchanged. You cannot exchange slices or hot spares. Check the volume name requirements (Volume Names), and Background Information for Renaming Volumes. Unmount the file system that uses the volume.# umount /filesystem To rename the volume, use one of the following methods:From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes. Select the volume you want to rename. Click the right mouse on the icon. Choose the Properties option. Then, follow the onscreen instructions. For more information, see the online help. Use the following form of the metarename command:# metarename old-volume-name new-volume-nameold-volume-nameSpecifies the name of the existing volume. new-volume-nameSpecifies the new name for the existing volume. See the metarename1M man page for more information. Edit the /etc/vfstab file to refer to the new volume name, if necessary. Remount the file system.# mount /filesystem In the following example, the volume, d10, is renamed to d100.# umount /home # metarename d10 d100 d10: has been renamed to d100 (Edit the /etc/vfstab file so that the file system references the new volume) # mount /homeBecause d10 contains a mounted file system, the file system must be unmounted before the volume can be renamed. If the volume is used for a file system with an entry in the /etc/vfstab file, the entry must be changed to reference the new volume name.For example, if the /etc/vfstab file contains the following entry for the file system:/dev/md/dsk/d10 /dev/md/rdsk/d10 /docs home 2 yes -Change the entry to read as follows:/dev/md/dsk/d100 /dev/md/rdsk/d100 /docs home 2 yes -Then, remount the file system.If you have an existing mirror or transactional volume, you can use the metarename x command to remove the mirror or transactional volume and keep data on the underlying volume. For a transactional volume, as long as the master device is a volume ( either a RAID-0, RAID-1, or RAID-5 volume), you can keep data on that volume. Solaris Volume Manager configuration files contain basic Solaris Volume Manager information, as well as most of the data that is necessary to reconstruct a configuration. The following procedures illustrate how to work with these files. Once you have defined all appropriate parameters for the Solaris Volume Manager environment, use the metastat p command to create the /etc/lvm/md.tab file. # metastat -p > /etc/lvm/md.tabThis file contains all parameters for use by the metainit command and metahs command. Use this file if you need to set up several similar environments or if you need to recreate the configuration after a system failure.For more information about the md.tab file, see Overview of the md.tab File and the md.tab4 man page. Use this procedure in the following circumstances:If you have experienced a complete loss of your Solaris Volume Manager configuration If you have no configuration yet, and you want to create a configuration from a saved configuration file On occasion, your system loses the information maintained in the state database. For example, this loss might occur if the system was rebooted after all of the state database replicas were deleted. As long as no volumes were created after the state database was lost, you can use the md.cf or md.tab files to recover your Solaris Volume Manager configuration.The md.cf file does not maintain information on active hot spares. Thus, if hot spares were in use when the Solaris Volume Manager configuration was lost, those volumes that were using active hot spares are likely corrupted. For more information about these files, see the md.cf4 and the md.tab4 man pages. Create state database replicas.See Creating State Database Replicas for more information. Create or update the /etc/lvm/md.tab file.If you are attempting to recover the last known Solaris Volume Manager configuration, copy the md.cf file into the /etc/lvm/md.tab file. If you are creating a new Solaris Volume Manager configuration based on a copy of the md.tab file that have you preserved, copy the preserved file into the /etc/lvm/md.tab file. Edit the “new” /etc/lvm/md.tab file and do the following:If you are creating a new configuration or recovering a configuration after a crash, configure the mirrors as one-way mirrors. For example:d80 -m d81 1 d81 1 1 c1t6d0s3If the submirrors of a mirror are not the same size, be sure to use the smallest submirror for this one-way mirror. Otherwise, data could be lost. If you are recovering an existing configuration and Solaris Volume Manager was cleanly stopped, leave the mirror configuration as multi-way mirrors. For example:d70 -m d71 d72 1 d71 1 1 c1t6d0s2 d72 1 1 c1t5d0s0 Specify RAID-5 volumes with the k option, to prevent reinitialization of the device. For example:d45 -r c1t3d0s5 c1t3d0s3 c1t3d0s4 -k -i 32bSee the metainit1M man page for more information. Check the syntax of the /etc/lvm/md.tab file entries without committing changes by using one of the following forms of the metainit command: # metainit -n md.tab-entry# metainit -n -aThe metainit command does not maintain a hypothetical state of the devices that might have been created while running with the n, so creating volumes that rely on other, nonexistent volumes will result in errors with the n even though the command may succeed without the n option.nSpecifies not to actually create the devices. Use this option to verify that the results are as you expected. md.tab-entrySpecifies the name of the component to initialize. aSpecifies to check all components. If no problems were apparent from the previous step, recreate the volumes and hot spare pools from the md.tab file:# metainit -aaSpecifies to activate the entries in the /etc/lvm/md.tab file. As needed, make the one-way mirrors into multi-way mirrors by using the metattach command.# mettach mirror submirror Validate the data on the volumes to confirm that the configuration has been reconstructed accurately.# metastat With the Solaris 10 release, Solaris Volume Manager has been enhanced to configure volumes dynamically. You no longer need to edit the nmd and the md_nsets parameters in the /kernel/drv/md.conf file. New volumes are dynamically created, as needed.The maximum Solaris Volume Manager configuration values remain unchanged:The maximum number of volumes that is supported is 8192. The maximum number of disk sets supported is 32. After a volume that contains a UFS file system is expanded (meaning that more space is added), you also need to expand the file system in order to recognize the added space. You must manually expand the file system with the growfs command. The growfs command expands the file system, even while the file system is mounted. However, write access to the file system is not possible while the growfs command is running. An application, such as a database, that uses the raw device must have its own method to incorporate the added space. Solaris Volume Manager does not provide this capability. The growfs command “write-locks” a mounted file system as it expands the file system. The length of time the file system is write-locked can be shortened by expanding the file system in stages. For instance, to expand a 1-Gbyte file system to 2 Gbytes, the file system can be grown in 16 Mbyte stages by using the s option. This option specifies the total size of the new file system at each stage. During the expansion, the file system is not available for write access because of the write-lock feature. Write accesses are transparently suspended and are restarted when the growfs command unlocks the file system. Read accesses are not affected. However, access times are not kept while the lock is in effect. Solaris Volume Manager volumes can be expanded. However, volumes cannot be reduced in size. A volume can be expanded whether it is used for a file system, application, or database. You can expand RAID-0 (stripe and concatenation) volumes, RAID-1 (mirror) volumes, and RAID-5 volumes and soft partitions. You can concatenate a volume that contains an existing file system while the file system is in use. As long as the file system is a UFS file system, the file system can be expanded (with the growfs command) to fill the larger space. You can expand the file system without interrupting read access to the data. Once a file system is expanded, it cannot be reduced in size, due to constraints in the UFS file system. Applications and databases that use the raw device must have their own method to expand the added space so that they can recognize it. Solaris Volume Manager does not provide this capability. When a component is added to a RAID-5 volume, it becomes a concatenation to the volume. The new component does not contain parity information. However, data on the new component is protected by the overall parity calculation that takes place for the volume. You can expand a log device by adding additional components. You do not need to run the growfs command, as Solaris Volume Manager automatically recognizes the additional space on reboot. Soft partitions can be expanded by adding space from the underlying volume or slice. All other volumes can be expanded by adding slices. Check Prerequisites for Creating Solaris Volume Manager Components. Review the disk space associated with a file system.# df -hkSee the df1M man page for more information. Expand a UFS file system on a logical volume.# growfs -M /mount-point /dev/md/rdsk/volume-nameM /mount-pointSpecifies the mount point for the file system to be expanded. /dev/md/rdsk/volume-nameSpecifies the name of the volume on which you want to expand. See the following example and the growfs1M man page for more information. In the following example, a new slice is added to a volume, d10, which contains the mounted file system, /home2. The growfs command specifies the mount point with the M option to be /home2, which is expanded onto the raw volume /dev/md/rdsk/d10. The file system will span the entire volume when the growfs command is complete. You can use the df hk command before and after expanding the file system to verify the total disk capacity.# df -hk Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on ... /dev/md/dsk/d10 69047 65426 0 100% /home2 ... # growfs -M /home2 /dev/md/rdsk/d10 /dev/md/rdsk/d10: 295200 sectors in 240 cylinders of 15 tracks, 82 sectors 144.1MB in 15 cyl groups (16 c/g, 9.61MB/g, 4608 i/g) super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at: 32, 19808, 39584, 59360, 79136, 98912, 118688, 138464, 158240, 178016, 197792, 217568, 237344, 257120, 276896, # df -hk Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on ... /dev/md/dsk/d10 138703 65426 59407 53% /home2 ...For mirror volumes, always run the growfs command on the top-level volume. Do not run the command on a submirror or master device, even though space is added to the submirror or master device. Solaris Volume Manager can replace and enable components within RAID-1 (mirror) and RAID-5 volumes. In Solaris Volume Manager terminology, replacing a component is a way to substitute an available component on the system for a selected component in a submirror or RAID-5 volume. You can think of this process as logical replacement, as opposed to physically replacing the component. For more information see Replacing a Component With Another Available Component.Enabling a component means to “activate” or substitute a component with itself (that is, the component name is the same). For more information, see Enabling a Component.When recovering from disk errors, scan /var/adm/messages to see what kind of errors occurred. If the errors are transitory and the disks themselves do not have problems, try enabling the failed components. You can also use the format command to test a disk. You can enable a component when any of the following conditions exist:Solaris Volume Manager cannot access the physical drive. This problem might occur, for example, due to a power loss, or a loose drive cable. In this case, Solaris Volume Manager puts the components in the “Maintenance” state. You need to make sure that the drive is accessible (restore power, reattach cables, and so on), and then enable the components in the volumes. You suspect that a physical drive is having transitory problems that are not disk-related. You might be able to fix a component in the “Maintenance” state by simply enabling it. If enabling the component does not fix the problem, then you need to do one of the following:Physically replace the disk drive and enable the component Replace the component with another available component on the system When you physically replace a disk, be sure to partition the disk like the replaced disk to ensure adequate space on each used component. Always check for state database replicas and hot spares on the disk that is being replaced. Any state database replica in an erred state should be deleted before you replace the disk. Then, after you enable the component, recreate the state database replicas using the same size. You should treat hot spares in the same manner. You use the metareplace command when you replace or swap an existing component with a different component that is available and not in use on the system.You can use this command when any of the following conditions exist:A disk drive has problems, and you do not have a replacement drive. However, you do have available components elsewhere on the system. You might want to use this strategy when a replacement is absolutely necessary, but you do not want to shut down the system. You see soft errors on the physical disks. Physical disks might report soft errors even though Solaris Volume Manager shows the mirror/submirror or RAID-5 volume in the “Okay” state. Replacing the component in question with another available component enables you to perform preventative maintenance and potentially prevent hard errors from occurring. You want to do performance tuning. One way that you can evaluate components is by using the performance monitoring feature available from the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console. For example, you might see that a particular component in a RAID-5 volume is experiencing a high load average, even though it is in the “Okay” state. To balance the load on the volume, you can replace that component with a component from a disk that is less utilized. You can perform this type of replacement online without interrupting service to the volume. When a component in a RAID-1 or RAID-5 volume experiences errors, Solaris Volume Manager puts the component in the “Maintenance” state. No further reads or writes are performed to a component in the “Maintenance” state.Sometimes a component goes into a “Last Erred” state. For a RAID-1 volume, this usually occurs with a one-sided mirror. The volume experiences errors. However, there are no redundant components to read from. For a RAID-5 volume this occurs after one component goes into “Maintenance” state, and another component fails. The second component to fail goes into the “Last Erred” state.When either a RAID-1 volume or a RAID-5 volume has a component in the “Last Erred” state, I/O is still attempted to the component marked “Last Erred.” This I/O attempt occurs because a “Last Erred” component contains the last good copy of data from Solaris Volume Manager's point of view. With a component in the “Last Erred” state, the volume behaves like a normal device (disk) and returns I/O errors to an application. Usually, at this point, some data has been lost. The subsequent errors on other components in the same volume are handled differently, depending on the type of volume. RAID-1 VolumeA RAID-1 volume might be able to tolerate many components in the “Maintenance” state and still be read from and written to. If components are in the “Maintenance” state, no data has been lost. You can safely replace or enable the components in any order. If a component is in the “Last Erred” state, you cannot replace it until you first replace the components in the “Maintenance” state. Replacing or enabling a component in the “Last Erred” state usually means that some data has been lost. Be sure to validate the data on the mirror after you repair it. RAID-5 VolumeA RAID-5 volume can tolerate a single component in the “Maintenance” state. You can safely replace a single component in the “Maintenance” state without losing data. If an error on another component occurs, it is put into the “Last Erred” state. At this point, the RAID-5 volume is a read-only device. You need to perform some type of error recovery so that the state of the RAID-5 volume is stable and the possibility of data loss is reduced. If a RAID-5 volume reaches a “Last Erred” state, there is a good chance it has lost data. Be sure to validate the data on the RAID-5 volume after you repair it. Always replace components in the “Maintenance” state first, followed by those in the “Last Erred” state. After a component is replaced and resynchronized, use the metastat command to verify its state. Then, validate the data. When you replace components in a RAID-1 volume or a RAID-5 volume, follow these guidelines: Always replace components in the “Maintenance” state first, followed by those components in the “Last Erred” state. After a component is replaced and resynchronized, use the metastat command to verify the state of the volume. Then, validate the data. Replacing or enabling a component in the “Last Erred” state usually means that some data has been lost. Be sure to validate the data on the volume after you repair it. For a UFS, run the fsck command to validate the “metadata” (the structure of the file system). Then, check the actual user data. (Practically, users will have to examine their files.) A database or other application must have its own way of validating its internal data structure. Always check for state database replicas and hot spares when you replace components. Any state database replica in an erred state should be deleted before you replace the physical disk. The state database replica should be added back before you enable the component. The same procedure applies to hot spares. During component replacement for a RAID-5 volume, data is recovered in one of two ways. The data is recovered either from a hot spare currently in use or from using the RAID-5 parity, when no hot spare is in use. When you replace a component for a RAID-1 volume, Solaris Volume Manager automatically starts resynchronizing the new component with the rest of the volume. When the resynchronization completes, the replaced component becomes readable and writable. If the failed component has been replaced with data from a hot spare, the hot spare is placed in the “Available” state and made available for other hot spare replacements. The new component must be large enough to replace the old component. As a precaution, back up all data before you replace “Last Erred” devices.