HP Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

Logical Volume Manager is a disk management subsystem that allows you to manage
physical disks as logical volumes.

The following terms are used when working with LVM:

A volume is a device used for a filesystem, swap or raw data. Without LVM a volume would
Volume
be a disk partition or the whole disk
Physical A physical volume is the disk itself. An entire disk must be initialised if it is to be used by
Volume LVM.
Volume A volume Group is a collection of volumes that are managaed by LVM. Each disk must only
Group belong to one group however a volume group many contain many disks.
This is the space that is defined within a volume group. The volume group is divided into
Logical smaller logical volumes which in turn become the filesystems. A volume group may contain
Volume one or many logical volumes. Logical volumes can be grown or shrunk. A logical volume is a
set of logical extents
A physical extent is a set of contiguous disk blocks on a physical volume. The default size of
Physical
an extent is 4MB but this can be adjusted when initialising the disk. Normally a physical
Extent
extent will have a one to one relationship with logical extents.
Logical A logical volume is a set of logical extents. Logical extents and pyhsical extents are the same
Extent size in a volume. A logical extent is a direct mapping to a pyhsical extent.
This file has in it the device file associated with each disk in a volume group. /sbin/lvmrc
/etc/lvmtab starts each volume group by reading the contents of this file at boot time.This file can be
rebuilt using the command vgscan. The file is a binary file and can be read using Strings.
Physical Volume Links (PV Links) provide dual SCSI or FL links to the same disk. This
PV Links
basically means multipathing to a disk.

Boot Disk Components

Contains a list of other disks in the volume group and whether or not
LIF Directory*
they are bootable
PVRA Contains imports PV-related information such as:

 PV ID number
 VG ID number
 PE Size
  PV size
 bad block directory

This is created when pcreate is run

BDRA* Specifies where the root filesystem is found
Contains ISL, HPUX, AUTO, LABEL that are LIF files. These are
LIF*
put there when the mkboot and lvlnboot commands are run.
Contain volume group description area (VGDA) and volume group
VGRA
status area (VGSA)
Physical Extents Physical extents for the file system, swap, etc
Bad Block Pool Provides alternate locations for bad blocks

* Boot disk Only

Disk Mirroring

Disk Mirroring is preformed by the sftware package MirrorDisk/UK, the product

requires a license from HP. Logical volumes can be mirror one or more times, in other
words the logical extent is mapped to one or more physical extents. There is a mirror
policy called strict which can be set to one of the following:

when set means that mirrored copies of a logical extent can share the same physical volume.
n
This means that your original and mirrored data may be on the same physical disk
when set means that mirrored copies of a logical extent cannot share the same physical
y
volume. This means that your original and mirrored data will not share the physical disk
Mirrored data will not be on the same physical volume group (PVG) as the original data.
g
This policay is called a PVG-strict allocation policy.

Physical Volume Commands

Allows you to change a physical volume is some way. for an example you can allow or
pvchange
disallow adding extents to this physical volume.
pvcreate Is used to create a physical volume that will be part of a volume group.
pvdisplay shows information about a physical volumes you specify
pvmove you can move extents from one physical volume to other physical volumes.
mknod this command is used to create th major/minors numbers of a volume group
Volume Group Commands

vgcfgbackup used to save the configuration of a volume group.

vgcfgrestore used to restore the configuration of a volume group.
vgchange makes a volume active or in-active
vgcreate you can create a volume group and specify all of its parameters.
vgdisplay display information related to a volume group
remove a volume group from the system, but does not modify the logical volume
vgexport information on the physical volumes. You can then import the volume group onto another
system i.e in a cluster environment.
Physical volumes can be added to a volume group by specifying the physical volume to be
vgextend
added to the volume group.
vgimport used to import a volume group from another system
vgreduce reduce the volume group by removing th specified physical volume.
vgremove remove the volume group completely from the system
vgscan rebuild the /etc/lvmtab file
when a volume group become stale you can resync that volume which resync's all the
vgsync
physical extents in each mirrored logical volume in the volume group.

Logical Volume Commands

lvcreate create a new logical volume.

lvchange change the logical volume in some way
lvdisplay display information on a specified logical volume
increase the number of physical extents to a logical volume. You will need to use the
lvextend
extendfs after extending a logical volume.
expands the filesystem within the logical volume. You would use fsadm if you have
extendfs
OnlineJFS installed.
mkboot places boot utilities in boot area
use this to sepup a logical volume to be a root, boot, primary swap or dump volume. This
lvlnboot
can be undo with lvrmboot.
lvsplit or
are used to split or merge a logical volume that is mirrored
lvmerge
prepares a root filesystem in a disk partition for migration to a logical volume. You would
lvmmigrate
use this if you had a partition to convert to a logical volume
lvreduce decrease the number of physical extents allocated to a logical volume
lvremove remove a logical volume from the volume group
lvrmboot if you don't want a logical volume to be root, boot, primary swap or a dump device.
lvsync when a logical volume becomes stale you can resync the logical volume
newfs place a new flesystem on a logical volume

JFS and OnlineJFS Commands

fsck check/repair the integrity of a filesystem

peforms a number of tasks when using a OnlineJFS sch as dfragmentation, resizing, online
fsadm
backup, etc

Commonly used LVM procedures

pvcreate /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0
mkdir /dev/vg01
mknod /dev/vg01/group c 64 0x010000
Create a new volume group, logical
vgcreate /dev/vg01 /dev/dsk/c0t1d0
volume and filesystem
lvcreate -L 2000 /dev/vg01
newfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg01/rlvol1
mkdir /ora_data01
mount /dev/vg01/lvol1 /ora_data01
lvcreate -i 3 -I 32 -L 24 -n lvol1 /dev/vg01

Create a stripped filesystem -i number of stripes

Mirror root and swap disk
-I stripe size of 32KB
-L size of the volume
pvcreate -B /dev/rdsk/c0t6d0
vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c0t6d0
mkboot /dev/rdsk/c0t6d0
mkboot -a "hpux -lq" /dev/rdsk/c0t6d0
mkboot -a "hpux -lq" /dev/rdsk/<primary disk>
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 /dev/dsk/c0t6d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2 /dev/dsk/c0t6d0
lvextend -m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol3 /dev/dsk/c0t6d0
lvextend ........all other volumes on primary disk

replace a non-mirrored disk
setboot -a 8/8.6.0
lvreduce -m 0 -A n /dev/vg01/lvol1 /dev/dsk/cxtxdx
vgreduce vg01 /de/dsk/cxtxdx
or
pvchange -a N /dev/dsk/cxtxdx (if you have online replacement disks)

vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vgXX /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx

vgchange -a y /dev/vgXX

replace a mirrored disk
replace mirrored boot disk
export and import a volume group
extend VxFS file ssytem using
onlineJFS
change a logical volume to support
largefiles
display the boot area
display boot information
display all disks in the system
newfs -F <fstype> /dev/vgXX/rlvolx
mount <mountpoint>
Notes:
Make sure you have /etc/lvmconf/vgXX.conf
vgcfgbackup is run automatically
Defective disk was not mirrored before it failed
vgcfgrestore -n /devvgXX /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx
vgchange -a y /dev/vgXX
vgsync /dev/vgXX
Notes:
Defective disk was mirrored before it failed
vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vg00 /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx
vgchange -a y /dev/vg00
vgsync /dev/vg00
mkboot /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx
mkboot -a "hpux -lq" /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx
shutdown -r -y 0
Notes:
Confirm that you have /etc/lvmconf/vg00.conf
Defective disk was mirrored before it failed
System One:
vgchange -a n /dev/vg01
vgexport -v -m /tmp/mapfile -s /dev/vg01
rcp /tmp/mapfile <system 2>:/tmp/mapfile
System two:
mkdir /dev/vg01
mknod /dev/vg01/group c 64 0xyy0000
vgimport -v -m /tmp/mapfile -s /dev/vg01
vgchange -a y /dev/vg01
mkdir /ora_data01
mount /dev/vg01/ora_data01 /ora_data01
lvextend -L 800 /dev/vg01/lvol1
fsadm -F vxfs -b 800M /ora_data01
fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg01/rlvol1
lifls -Clv /dev/dsk/c0t6d0
lvlnboot -v /dev/vg00
ioscan -funC disk
 lvchange -C y /dev/vg00/dump (makes it contiguous)
make a dump device
lvlnboot -d /dev/vg00/dump
display dump devices lvlnboot -v