VxVM User's Guide

Preface

The VERITAS® Volume Manager User's Guide documents various interfaces to the VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM®) for volume, disk, and file system management.

Audience

This guide is intended for system administrators responsible for configuring and maintaining systems using the VERITAS Volume Manager.

This guide assumes:

A basic understanding of system administration
A working knowledge of the UNIX operating system
Some experience with the X Window System

Scope

The purpose of this guide is to provide the system administrator with information on how to use the VERITAS Volume Manager with the help of available interfaces. This guide describes how to perform a variety of Volume Manager tasks using the Visual Administrator graphical user interface, the Volume Manager command line interface, and the Volume Manager Support Operations menu interface (vxdiskadm).

Organization

This guide is divided into several major sections and is organized as follows:

Part 1: Introduction

This section provides introductory and conceptual information on both the Volume Manager and its graphical user interface, the Visual Administrator.

Chapter 1, "Description of the Volume Manager," is an overview of the VERITAS Volume Manager and related concepts. This chapter also includes an introduction to arrays and Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID).

Chapter 2, "Description of the Visual Administrator," is an overview of the Visual Administrator, which is a graphical user interface to the Volume Manager for volume, disk, and file system management.

Part 2: Using the Visual Administrator

This section provides information on how to use the Visual Administrator. Both basic and advanced operations are described in detail in the chapters within this section. At the end of each chapter, quick reference menus and forms provide easy access to the Visual Administrator topics discussed in the chapter.

Chapter 3, "Getting Started," shows how to start and use the Visual Administrator. It also discusses miscellaneous operations (such as displaying object properties, changing options, and manipulating icons). The quick reference sections discuss various menus and forms relating to general use of the Visual Administrator.

Chapter 4, "Disk Operations," shows how to use the Visual Administrator for operations on physical disks, VM disks, and disk groups. The quick reference sections discuss disk and disk group related menus and forms.

Chapter 5, "File System Operations," shows how to use the Visual Administrator for basic file system operations such as creating, mounting, and unmounting a file system. The quick reference sections discuss file system related menus and forms.

Chapter 6, "Volume Operations," shows how to use the Visual Administrator for volume operations such as creating, resizing, and mirroring volumes. The quick reference sections discuss volume related menus and forms.

Chapter 7, "Plex Operations," shows how to use the Visual Administrator for plex operations such as creating, associating, attaching, and removing plexes. The quick reference sections discuss plex related menus and forms.

Chapter 8, "Subdisk Operations," shows how to use the Visual Administrator for subdisk operations such as creating, associating, splitting, and moving subdisks. The quick reference sections discuss subdisk related menus and forms.

Part 3: Using the Command Line Interface

This section provides information on how to use the Command Line Interface (CLI) to the Volume Manager. The chapters in this section focus on frequently-used Volume Manager operations.

Chapter 9, "CLI Introduction," provides preliminary information relevant to the Volume Manager command line interface.

Chapter 10, "Disk CLI Operations," describes how to use various commands to perform operations on physical disks, VM disks, and disk groups. Topics include placing disks under Volume Manager control and adding disks to disk groups.

Chapter 11, "File System CLI Operations," describes how to use various commands to perform operations on file systems. Topics include creating a file system on a volume, mounting file systems, and unmounting file systems.

Chapter 12, "Volume CLI Operations," describes how to use various commands to perform operations on volumes. Topics include creating, mirroring, and resizing volumes.

Part 4: Using the Menu Interface

This section provides information on how to use the Volume Manager Support Operations menu interface to perform common disk and volume operations.

Chapter 13, "Menu Interface Operations," describes how to use the vxdiskadm (Volume Manager Support Operations) menu interface for performing operations on disks and volumes.

Part 5: Appendices

Appendix A, "X Resources for the Visual Administrator," contains information about X resources that can be used to configure the Visual Administrator working environment.

Glossary

The glossary defines words and phrases found in this guide.

Using This Guide

This guide contains instructions for performing Volume Manager system administration tasks. Volume Manager administration tasks can be performed via one or more of the following interfaces:

the Visual Administrator graphical user interface
a set of VxVM commands (including an automated command -- vxassist)
a menu-driven interface (vxdiskadm)

This guide describes how to use each of these interfaces to perform similar Volume Manager tasks.

The following are guidelines for using this guide:

It is strongly recommended that you refer to Chapters 1 and 2 for important overview information on the Volume Manager and the Visual Administrator.
For detailed information on how to use the Visual Administrator to perform various operations on disks, volumes, file systems, etc., refer to the chapters in Part 2. These chapters also contain detailed explanations of the Visual Administrator menus and forms.
For detailed information on how to use Volume Manager and other commands to perform common operations on disks, volumes, file systems, etc., refer to the chapters in Part 3.
For detailed information on how to use the Volume Manager Support Operations (vxdiskadm) menu interface to perform common disk and volume operations, refer to Chapter 13.
For definitions of terms associated with the Volume Manager or Visual Administrator, refer to the Glossary.

Conventions

The following table describes the typographic conventions used in this guide.

Typographic Conventions
Typeface	Usage	Examples
`courier`	Computer output; user input: names of commands, files, and directories	`$ You have mail.` The `cat` command displays files. ls -a
bold	Glossary terms	`$`
italics	New terms; document titles; words to be emphasized; variables to be substituted with a real name or value	`$ cat filename` Refer to the User's Guide for details.

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