Veritas Volume Manager 5.1 SP1 Administrator"s Guide (5900-1506, April 2011)

Using vxdiskadd to put a disk under VxVM control
To use the vxdiskadd command to put a disk under VxVM control.
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Type the following command:
# vxdiskadd disk
For example, to initialize the second disk on the first controller:
# vxdiskadd c0t1d0
The vxdiskadd command examines your disk to determine whether it has
been initialized and also checks for disks that have been added to VxVM, and
for other conditions.
If you are adding an uninitialized disk, warning and error messages are
displayed on the console by the vxdiskadd command. Ignore these messages.
These messages should not appear after the disk has been fully initialized;
the vxdiskadd command displays a success message when the initialization
completes.
The interactive dialog for adding a disk using vxdiskadd is similar to that for
vxdiskadm.
See “Adding a disk to VxVM” on page 109.
RAM disk support in VxVM
Some systems support the creation of RAM disks. A RAM disk is a device made
from system memory that looks like a small disk device. Often, the contents of a
RAM disk are erased when the system is rebooted. RAM disks that are erased on
reboot prevent VxVM from identifying physical disks. This is because information
stored on the physical disks (now erased on reboot) is used to identify the disk.
nopriv devices have a special feature to support RAM disks: a volatile option
which indicates to VxVM that the device contents do not survive reboots. Volatile
devices receive special treatment on system startup. If a volume is mirrored,
plexes made from volatile devices are always recovered by copying data from
nonvolatile plexes.
To use a RAM disk with VxVM, both block and character device nodes must exist
for the RAM disk.
To define the RAM disk device to VxVM, use the following command:
# vxdisk define ramd0 type=nopriv volatile
Administering disks
RAM disk support in VxVM
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