Re: Question about hiding disks from smit

From: Ford, Phillip (phillip.ford_at_SPCORP.COM)
Date: 08/26/05

  • Next message: Bob Booth - CITES: "Re: Question about hiding disks from smit" 
    Date:         Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:16:52 -0400
To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU

    I have the same problem with TSM. But you missed understood me. I am not
    talking about logical volumes. At least with these the drives (hdiskxx) do
    not show up in the smit create volume group or extend volume group. I am
    talking about drives. We now give drives to Oracle not logical volumes.
    Under this when I go to smit create logical volume I will see disks that are
    not used and disks that I have given to Oracle. So now even when I do it I
    have to look and get a total list of all drives given to Oracle and not pick
    one of these drives to create a new volume group from (or extend a current
    volume group). I would rather see a list of actual unused drives and some
    how get smit to not list the ones I have give to Oracle. 

    --
Phillip
320-4462
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Booth - CITES [mailto:booth@UIUC.EDU] 
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 11:27 AM
To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: Question about hiding disks from smit
On Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 11:45:04AM -0400, Ford, Phillip wrote:
> Most of my system are for Oracle databases.  Most are AIX 5.2 but I do 
> have some 4.3.3 still.  Up until now we have used raw logical volumes 
> or cooked file systems with oracle.  During the process of using smit 
> to create or extend volume groups, smit will only show the disks that 
> are not being used. This is nice and makes sure that an administrator 
> does not try and use a disk in two volume groups.
> 
> Now the DBAs have decided to try and use the new Oracle 10g ASM 
> (Automatic Storage Management) feature of Oracle 10g.  With this we 
> give oracle control of raw disks.  We do this by making Oracle owner 
> of the raw device.  Then Oracle can use them as he wishes.  The 
> problem is that when a system administrator goes into smit to create 
> or extend a volume group he sees what smit thinks are unused disks and 
> this includes the ones used by Oracle ASM. So now the administrator 
> has to be careful and remember which disks are used by Oracle directly 
> and not use any of them for vg creation or extension.
> 
> My question, is there something that I can do to the ODM to have smit 
> think that the Oracle disks are in use so that he will not show me 
> these disks during a vg create or extension?  This must not affect 
> Oracle though.  I do not know much about the ODM and have no idea what 
> smit keys off of to tell whether a disk is in use or not.  Thanks in 
> advance.
No, smit uses a set of LVM commands to find all LV's to do operations on.
The one you are most worried about is extendlv, since it will cause Oracle
all kinds of grief.  If an LV is open, you can't create a filesystem, or
delete it.
I have this same problem with TSM, since I use raw logical volumes for the
database, log, and storage pools.
Here is what I suggest:
1.	Keep fools that don't know the system off of it (if possible)
2.	Place your LV's in specficially named volume groups such as
	'OracleProdVG'
3.	Name your LV's 'hands off' names, such as OracleRawLV1
4.	Have a standard and documentation for the 'number 1's' that you
can't 
	keep off your system.
Dinking with the ODM is always painful, since you don't know what is going
to go tweaking it in the future, blowing your entire system out of the
water.
hth,
bob
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  • Next message: Bob Booth - CITES: "Re: Question about hiding disks from smit"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: Question about hiding disks from smit
      ... At least with these the drives do ... We now give drives to Oracle not logical volumes. ... > not used and disks that I have given to Oracle. ... Do you see any garbage in the PVID section when you do a lspv for instance, ...
      (AIX-L)
    • Re: Question about hiding disks from smit
      ... Question about hiding disks from smit ... These disks were part of a volume group before so they may have pv ... The DBAs have not loaded the Oracle yet so I do not know ... Do you see any garbage in the PVID section when you do a lspv for instance, ...
      (AIX-L)
    • Re: Question about hiding disks from smit
      ... When I do a lspv it says that the disk is not assigned ... The DBAs have not loaded the Oracle yet so I do not know ... At least with these the drives> do not show up in the smit create volume group or extend> volume group. ...
      (AIX-L)
    • Re: Question about hiding disks from smit
      ... > Most of my system are for Oracle databases. ... smit will only show the disks that are not being used. ...
      (AIX-L)
    • Question about hiding disks from smit
      ... Most of my system are for Oracle databases. ... Up until now we have used raw logical volumes or cooked ... smit will only show the disks that are not being used. ...
      (AIX-L)