HP-UX Logical Volume Manager and MirrorDisk/UX Release Notes HP-UX 11i v3 (September 2011)

Logical Volume Manager and MirrorDisk/UX Release Notes
About this document
This document provides information about the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and MirrorDisk/UX
products in the September 2011 release of HP-UX 11i v3.
LVM and MirrorDisk/UX overview
Logical Volume Manager (bundle BaseLVM) is the HP-UX default Volume Manager. It provides user
with flexibility in configuring and managing mass storage resources. In HP-UX 11i v3, the LVM
kernel and commands are bundled with the core HP-UX product.
MirrorDisk/UX (bundle B2491BA) is an optionally purchased HP-UX product to enable LVM
mirroring functionality.
Overview of changes
The initial HP-UX 11i v3 release of LVM and MirrorDisk/UX was integrated with the new mass
storage stack, delivering significant performance, scalability, availability, and usability
enhancements. LVM was enhanced to support larger logical volumes, temporary quiescing of
volume groups, and striping with mirroring. Volume group availability was improved: resizing a
LUN and modifying volume group characteristics no longer required the volume group to be
recreated, and replacing a disk could be done online.
This September 2011 of LVM and MirrorDisk/UX provides defect fixes as described in “Fixed
issues in this version” (page 4). In addition, it provides an enhancement to deal with VxVM GPT
formatted disks that was first released in the LVM April 2011 web release.
New and changed features in this release
New features
The following LVM feature is new in the April 2011 web release of HP-UX 11i v3, which is included
in the September 2011 release:
Handling VxVM GPT Formatted Disks
Starting with the VxVM 5.1 SP1 release, VxVM uses GPT (GUID Partition Table) when configuring
disks that are larger than 1 TB in size with Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) format. An LVM
enhancement (QXCR1001097943) is added to detect such GPT formatted disks when configuring
these disks in LVM using pvcreate and vgcfgrestore commands.
For example, with this enhancement, when a VxVM GPT disk is supplied for the LVM pvcreate
command, it reports the following error:
$ pvcreate /dev/rdisk/disk35
pvcreate: Could not perform LVM operation on VxVM disk “/dev/rdisk/disk35”
This enhancement will help customers avoid using VxVM GPT formatted disk in LVM by mistake.
However, customers can also enforce the pvcreate operation with the pvcreate -f option.
Fixed issues in this version
The following table lists the known LVM and MirrorDisk/UX defects fixed in the September 2011
release of HP-UX 11i v3.
4 Logical Volume Manager and MirrorDisk/UX Release Notes