This page is meant as a repository for helpful hints for managing storage producs using Veritas Volume Manager (and some for SolsticeDisksuite). All content is contributed by users and, thus, unverified.

For a quick leg-up on vxvm you might like this link Also, Chapters 1-3 of SEVM 2.6 volume manager are still online at Sun and still provide an excellent overview of how VxVM works, while being a little short on new product features like the ability to relayout a volume (first appearing in VxVM3.1). The answerbook volume is available here.

Quick Links
_bluedot.gif_ Tools, source, and scripts
_bluedot.gif_ Todd Stansell's www.vxideas.org pages. (more tools and tips)
_bluedot.gif_ A small collection of Veritas release notes.
_bluedot.gif_ Sun Storage products firmware, patches, OS, etc.
_bluedot.gif_ Sol9 UFS vs VxFS benchmarks
_bluedot.gif_ Useful Veritas VX, HA and VCS tips
  1. Upgrading VxVM versions or Solaris OS is easy
  2. Seth Rothenberg contributes some experiences with SSA-112s, Veritas FirstWatch, and DiskSuite.
  3. How do I find out about some issue relating to an old Sun ssa 1XX/2XX model
  4. How to disable DMP (if wanting to use A3500 or Alternate pathing (AP))
  5. SparcStorage Array 1XX power supply issues
  6. E3500 internal FC drive replacement procedure
  7. another E3500 internal FC drive replacement procedure
  8. Regenerating parity on a Raid-5 volume
  9. Move a volume from one dg to another without destroying it.
  10. Doing a new VxVM install quickly without reboots and without encapsulation (e.g. scripting)
  11. How to take a single physical disk and put parts of it in two separate disk groups (e.g. use your OS emergency mirror also as a place to put RAID5 logs).
  12. Procedure to replace a failed or failing primary VxVM rootdisk
  13. How do I re-organize a disk to compact out space from grow, move, and other operations (i.e. consolidate the free space holes)
  14. How do create and attach a raid-5 log plex by hand (or maybe you're just curious what's going on behind the scenes)
  15. How do I setup VxVM without encapsulating my rootdisk?
  16. How do VxVM versions correspond to SEVM versions and VMSA versions and VxVA versions, and Solaris OS versions?
  17. No suitable partition from swapvol to set as the dump device
  18. What are some good tools for measuring/benchmarking the performance of my volumes/filesystems?
  19. What is the difference between a gen and a fsgen VxVM volume?
  20. Solstice DiskSuite vs. Veritas Volume Manager (SDS vs. VxVM). Features, benefits, drawbacks, table comparison
  21. Looking for a better notification mechanism for SDS or VxVM in the event of disk or other failures?
  22. How do I do quotas over NFS with VxFS filesystem?
  23. Moving a rootdg to another system or taking disks out of existing rootdg to another dg
  24. VxVM Disaster recovery techniques.
  25. DMP issues between VxVM and Hitachi arrays
  26. Sun best practices paper for VxVM (PDF) and a supplement with more specifics on the boot disk.
  27. How to find out the percentage of completion of an atomic copy or mirrored plex resync?
  28. PatchPro online configurator will advise you of the patches for many combinations of hardware and software (Veritas and/or Sun).
  29. Using a spare mirror as a means of archiving or backing up a filesystem
  30. Building a stripe pro volume bottom-up
  31. Poor man's failover using VxVM and diskgroups
  32. Installing an A1000 on Solaris8
  33. Simple mirroring without DiskSuite and without Veritas (using cron)
  34. Replacing disks in D1000
  35. Automatically encapsulating rootdisks during jumpstart
  36. Mirroring quickly on an empty volume
  37. Recovery of root password (or other file) on SDS mirrored root disks.
  38. How to inform VxVM that the hostname has changed
  39. How do I figure out (in vxvm) which root mirror I am currently bootted off of?
  40. How does RDAC failover work (overview, PS format)
  41. Where can I find the SUNWsan package (required by VxVM 3.2 on Sol8)
  42. jtplex is a script that allows you to visualize volumes and plexes in ascii tabular format or a spreadsheet.
  43. How do I switch from device based to enclosure based naming in VxVM3.2 and vice versa?
  44. An SDS Agent for CVS service groups.
  45. savecore: no dump device configured
  46. A1000 emergency recovery procedure Warning - destroys all data!
  47. When I try to mirror my VxVM 3.2 encapsulated rootdisk to a disk of the same size, it fails on the last volume. Why?
  48. Orca rules for graphing DBED /dev/odm/stats data
  49. VxVM 3.2 does not multipath internal FCAL disks on E3500/V880 by default
  50. Moving a PCI card in a v880 so as not to impact DMP
  51. fixing A1000 microcode issues using serial console
  52. Solaris Disksuite/Volume Manager (SDS/ODS/SVM) Metadb rules
  53. Using EMC BCV to copy disks and reimport without conflict
  54. Having two separate rootdg on same system
  55. Growing rootvol on an encapsulated rootdisk
  56. How much scratch space does a relayout require?