vxddladm

NAME

vxddladm - Device Discovery Layer subsystem administration

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The vxddladm utility is an administrative interface to the dynamic array support facility of the Device Discovery Layer (DDL). This utility lists the types of arrays supported, adds or removes array support from DDL, and allows dynamic addition of JBOD support for disks from different vendors. It additionally lists supported JBODs, and allows addition or removal of JBOD support. The vxddladm utility is also used to customize the set of array libraries that can participate in device discovery.

DDL cannot discover some devices that are controlled by third-party drivers (for example, EMC PowerPath and RAM disks). Additionally, it may be preferable to use the multipathing capability that is provided by the third-party drivers for some arrays rather than use the VERITAS Dynamic Multipathing (DMP) feature. Such foreign devices can be made available as simple disks to VxVM by using the vxddladm addforeign command. This command also has the effect of bypassing DMP for the specified devices.

If a foreign device has alias devices in the OS-maintained device tree, DDL/DMP creates additional disk access records that point to the same physical device. As such additional records are usually not required, you can specify the -a option to prevent them from being created.

After adding or removing foreign device entries, use either the vxdisk scandisks command or the vxdctl enable command to discover the foreign devices as simple disks. These disks then behave in the same way as autoconfigured disks.

KEYWORDS

addforeign

Adds an entry to the list of foreign devices that are not autoconfigurable by VxVM.

See the ATTRIBUTES section for a description of the attributes that can be used with addforeign: blockdir, blockpath, chardir, charpath, dir, dirname, path and pathname. All directory and device arguments to these attributes must be specified as absolute pathnames. Device paths may include the * wildcard.

One of the following options may also be specified to define how alternate device entries that are discovered by VxVM are to be treated:

-a

Suppresses any entries for matching devices in the OS-maintained device tree that are found by the VxVM autodiscovery mechanism. This is the default action if no option is specified to addforeign.

-f

Retains any entries for matching devices found by the VxVM autodiscovery mechanism, and suppresses any foreign device entries that are defined.

-n

Does not suppress any entries. Duplicate entries for foreign devices are allowed.

addjbod

Adds disks having the specified VID and PID in the JBOD category (DISKS). The policy option may be specified to handle JBOD arrays in either active/active (aa) or active/passive (ap) mode. By default, JBOD disks are handled as active/active arrays.

disablescsi3

Disables the discovery of SCSI3 disks in the JBOD category.

enablescsi3

Initiates the method to discover SCSI3-conformant disks. Such disks, if found, are categorized in the JBOD category. The method comes into effect when the discovery operation is subsequently invoked.

The policy option may be specified to discover devices in active/active (aa) or active/passive (ap) mode. By default, devices are discovered in active/active mode.

excludearray

Excludes the specified array libraries from participating in device discovery. This does not remove the specified libraries from the system. As a result, vxddladm listsupport displays the corresponding disk arrays.

includearray

Includes the array libraries previously excluded by excludearray. These can be used for device discovery operations.

listexclude

Lists information about the disk array libraries excluded from device discovery functionality.

listforeign

Lists information about foreign devices that have been defined to VxVM.

listjbod

Lists information about the types of disks supported in JBOD category (DISKS).

listsupport

Lists summary information about supported disk arrays. The libname attribute can be used to display a detailed list of attributes for a specified library.

listversion

Lists the version numbers of array support libraries and the minimum VxVM release that is required for each library. The libname attribute can be used to request that the information is to be displayed only for the specified library.

modescsi3

Displays the mode for SCSI3 disk discovery. By default, devices are discovered in active/active mode.

rmforeign

Removes a matching entry from the list of foreign directories and devices. See the ATTRIBUTES section for a description of the attributes that can be used with rmforeign: blockdir, blockpath, chardir, charpath, dir, dirname, path and pathname.

rmjbod

Removes disk with the specified VID and PID from the JBOD category (DISKS). These disks are categorized as OTHER_DISKS and are not multipathed.

set namingscheme={ebn|osn}

Bases the device naming convention on enclosure name (ebn), or on the device name that is used by the operating system (osn). The change is immediate, and does not require vxconfigd to be restarted.

ATTRIBUTES

The attribute all selects all objects for an operation.

Other attributes are specified using the format attribute=value.

blockdir

Absolute pathname of a directory that contains block device entries for foreign devices.

blockpath

Absolute pathname of the block device for a foreign device.

chardir

Absolute pathname of a directory that contains character device entries for foreign devices.

charpath

Absolute pathname of of a character device for a foreign device.

dir

Absolute pathname of a directory that contains character and block device entries for foreign devices.

dirname

Equivalent to dir.

length

Size of the field containing unique disk serial number.

libname

Name of the array library on which the operation is to be performed.

offset

Offset on the page code.

opcode

SCSI opcode.

pagecode

Page code for SCSI command.

path

Absolute pathname of a single character or block device for a foreign device.

pathname

Equivalent to path.

pid

Product ID of the disk array.

policy

Sets the policy of the specified device to aa (active/active) or ap (active/passive).

vid

Vendor ID of the disk array.

NOTES

If you specify values for vid or pid to the excludearray or includearray operations, this excludes or includes all arrays that are supported by the corresponding array library.

The value for vid and pid should be taken from the output of the vxddladm listsupport command. These values may be different from the actual vid and pid values of the disks within an array.

See the vxdiskadm(1M) manual page for information on using the vxdiskadm command to suppress or unsuppress individual devices from the view of VxVM, or to disable or enable multipathing for these devices.

FILES

/etc/vx/darecs

Used to store records for foreign devices.

SEE ALSO

vxconfigd (1M), vxdctl (1M), vxdisk (1M), vxdiskadm (1M), vxdmpadm (1M)