VXVM interview questions

One more on VXVM 1. Name the mandatory disk group in VxVM 3.5 ? How will you configure VxVM in 3.5 ? ANS: rootdg is the mandatory disk group in VxVM 3.5, vxinstall is the command to configure VxVM, It will create the disk groups, initializes the disks and adds them to the group. 2. How will you create private and shared disk group using VxVM ? ANS: For Private DG: Command: vxdg init For Shared DG: Command: vxdg -s init < disk1 disk2 disk3 > 3. Which are the different layouts for volumes in VxVM ? ANS: mirror, stripe, concat (default one), raid5, stripe-mirror, mirror-stripe. 4. What is the basic difference between private disk group and shared disk group ? ANS: Private DG: The DG which is only visible for the host on which you have created it, if the host is a part of cluster, the private DG will not be visible to the other cluster nodes. Shared DG: The DG which is sharable and visible to the other cluster nodes. 5. How will you add new disk to the existing disk group ? ANS: Run vxdiskadm command, which will open menu driven program to do various disk operations, select add disks option or you can use another command vxdiskadd. 6. How will you grow/shrink the volume/file system ? What is the meaning of growby and growto options ? What is the meaning on shrinkto and shrinkby options ? ANS: vxassist command is used to do all volume administration, following is the description and syntax. Growby option: This is will grow your file system by adding new size to the existing file system. Growto option: This will grow your file system as per the new size. This WILL NOT ADD new size to the existing one. Shrinkby option: This will shrink your file system by reducing new size from existing file system. Shrinkto option: This will shrink your file system as per the new size. This WILL NOT REDUCE the file system by reducing new size.

Command: vxassist -g [growto, growby, shrinkto, shrinkby] length 7. How will you setup and unsetup disks explicitly using VxVM ? ANS: You can use /etc/vx/bin/vxdiskunsetup to unsetup the disk, and /etc/vx/vxdisksetup to setup the disk. 8. How will you list the disks, which are in different disk groups ? ANS: vxdisk list is the command will list the disks from the DG which is currently imported, you can check the same using vxprint command too. vxdisk -o alldgs list command list all the disks which are in different dg's. 9. What is the private region in VxVM ? ANS: Private region stores the structured VxVM information, it also stores the disk ID and disk geometry. In short words it has metadata of the disk. 10. If, vxdisk list command gives you disks status as "error", what steps you will follow to make the respective disks online ? ANS: If you faced this issue because of fabric disconnection then simply do vxdisk scandisks, otherwise unsetup the disk using using /etc/vx/bin/vxdiskunsetup and setup the disks again using /etc/vx/bin/vxdisksetup, this will definitely help! [ /etc/vx/bin/vxdiskunsetup will remove the private region from the disk and destroys data, backup the data before using this option]

1) What file do you modify to change the mail aliases (Provide the full path) ? 2) What command do you run after modifying the aliases file make the changes active? 3) How do you enable logging on a UFS file system? 4) What commands can you use to dynamically add scsi disks to a sun system? 5) How do you install package to a specific directory? e.g like to install wget in /home/vin/wget rather than the default one "/usr". ---This was not answered by me. 6) What command shows what modules are loaded into the Kernel? 7) What command increases the priority of a process and all sub processes on a solaris system? 8) What command in Solaris, do you use to setup aliases for devices? 9) How do you watch network traffic on interface qfe3? 10 ) What command shows TCP/IP parameter settings? 11) How do you set Network cards to 100 full interactively & permanently? 12) What tools in Solaris help you diagnose harware failures? 13) How do you determine by how much a Veritas Volume can be expanded? 14) How do you grow a Veritas VXVM volume? 15) Where is the dump from a system crash normally kept? Can we customize it? 16) How do you determine Volume Status in Veritas VxVM? 17) Why would you deport a diskgroup in VxVM? 18) How do you create additional state databases in solaris volume manager? -- This was the tough one..!! 19) Does Solaris Volume Manager have soft partitioning? 20) How do you clear volume information from a solaris volume manager disk? 21) How do you shutdown a Veritas Cluster Server, leaving the applications running from the command line? 22) How do you speed up processing of a process and All it's child processes? -- This was quite tricky..!!S

UNIXLOG Solaris L1/L2 interview questions:

- What would be the action u'll take if ur root file system get full(like 98%). - diff kind of patches.What is the need to install paches. - What r the diff level of RAIDS.(In Detail like how to setup diff RAIDS with commands) - Why we implement RAID 5. - In which case we use RAID 1 and RAID 5. - Diff bettween diff SUN Servers (eg v440 and v 480) - like how to check file system status - how u monitor logs and rotate logs - NFS daemons.How to share files Across n/w. - some user admin commands.(Like how to add /delete/modify user credential info,how to see passwd status,how to update /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file ),how to check passwd consistency,change file permission,RBAC) -IMP Troubleshootings on sol,vxvm,vcs -And some basic commands...

Solaris, VxVM, Cluster L1/L2 and L3 also Interview questions

1. How do you replace a failed boot disk under meta in solaris? Step by step explanation? 2. How do you remove meta only for the root slice? remaining slices should run under meta? 3. what you would do if you want to replace a slice using metareplace option? 4. what is the significance of 51% state database replicas in SVM? 5. what are the common errors you find in Solaris Volume manager? 6. You have a boot disk under svm, the machine fails to boot and remains in ok prompt? what could be the possible reason? 7. metastat -p shows a metavolume needs replacement. Metavolume is a single way mirror only. Actually you find disk and metavolumes are ok and I/O is happening to the filesystems how will you remove the metareplace message that comes out of metastat. 8. How to create a shared disk group in VxVM? 9. What is the difference between private and public regions in Veritas Volume manager? 10. what would you do if the private region of a particular disk group is full? What are the design considerations for the size of private region in Vxvm disk group? 11. How to replace a corrupt private region? in vxvm 4, 5 and greater versions 12. How would you convert a volume from gen to fsgen? why should you do that? 13. How can you unencapsulate a boot disk in VxVM? 14. How to identify multiple paths for a disk. 15. What is the difference between Vxdmp and EMC powerpath? 16. vxdisk -o alldgs list o/p shows some disk groups in braces What does that signify? 17. what are the various layouts that are available in VxVM? 18.What is a layered volume? how to create it using vxmake? 19.How to quickly mirror a volume, if the volume is empty? 20. How to grow a volume? 21. What is the difference between failing and failed disks? 22. How to replace a failed disk in Veritas?

23. Plex is in a disabled state. How will you recover? what are the steps to follow? 24.what is the difference between detached and disassociate state of plexes? 25. Whats the boot process of VxVM? 26. Whats the difference between SVM and VxVM? What would you recommend to your clients? why? 27.What are the various clusters you have worked on? 28. Which cluster is better VCS or Sun cluster? 29. Compare and contrast VCS and Sun Cluster. 30.how will you start VCS service? What are the configuration files in VCS? 31. How would switch a service group? 32. How would you freeze a service group? 33. What is a Split brain scenario ?

cfgadm:::Device being used by VxVM

November 3, 2010 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

root@abc>/> cfgadm -c unconfigure c1::dsk/c1t0d0 cfgadm: Component system is busy, try again: failed to offline: /devices/ssm@0,0/pci@1c,700000/pci@1/SUNW,isptwo@4/sd@0,0 Resource Information /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s2 Device being used by VxVM cfgadm unconfigure command fails here. The way to resolve this is to disable the disks path from DMP control. Since there is only one path to this disk, the -f (for force) option needs to be used: root@abc>/> vxdmpadm -f disable path=c1t0d0s2 root@abc>/> vxdmpadm getsubpaths ctlr=c1 NAME STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] DMPNODENAME ENCLR-TYPE ENCLRNAME ATTRS ===================================================================== =========== c1t0d0s2 DISABLED c1t0d0s2 Disk Disk c1t6d0s2 ENABLED(A) c1t6d0s2 Disk Disk You can see the path now disabled from DMP. root@abc>/> cfgadm -c unconfigure c1::dsk/c1t0d0 cfgadm goes through fine. root@abc>/>
Categories: Solaris, veritas volume manager

Rootdg corruption Server fails to boot

May 1, 2010 krishsubramanian 1 comment

There are times when one has to go through the cut Server has a bad panic/power trip and it corrupts the rootdg badly and the server is unable to boot with VxVM. Here is a procedure to recover from the situation. 1. Boot from the cdrom or from the network 2. Mount the rootdisk.

3. Once mounted, disable the start up of VxVM. - Edit /a/etc/system. Comment out the vx parameter as follow: *rootdev:/pseudo/vxio@0:0 *set vxio:vol_rootdev_is_volume=1 - cd /a/etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/ - rm root-done - touch install-db - cp -p /a/etc/vfstab /a/etc/vfstab.withvm - cp -p /a/etc/vfstab.prevm /a/etc/vfstab - init 6 4. Ensure the server comes up without veritas starting up. 5. Manually start the veritas volume manager. - vxiod set 10 - ps -ef |grep vxconfigd. If vxconfigd is not running, then run /usr/sbin/vxconfigd -m disable - vxdctl mode. Should see it is in disabled mode. - vxdctl init - vxdctl enable - vxdctl mode 6. Check the diskgroups. - vxdg list 7. Deport the rootdg so that it does not come up again. - vxdg deport rootdg 8. Zero out private and public region partitions from the disks on the rootdg. - format -d <c#t#d#> 9. Once this is done, the disks should show as error. - vxdisk list 10. Re encapsulate the disk. - cd /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/ - rm install-db - vxdiskadm. Option 2 to encapsulate the primary bootdisk - Reboot machine upon completed Option 2 above.

11. Verify for the boot and all volumes coming up clean. - vxprint -ht, to verify all the volume are enabled. If the volume not started, then run vxvol -g groupname startall to start the volume. - Revert back the /etc/vfstab.withvm to /etc/vfstab - mount all the volume and verify. 12. Mirror to second bootdisk - vxdiskadm. Option 1 to Add or initialize the second bootdisk - vxdiskadm. Option 6 to mirror the secondary bootdisk
Categories: veritas volume manager

VxVM Upgrade
February 13, 2010 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

Lets look at VxVM Upgrade this week The setup is a) Solaris 9 b) VxVM 4.0 / VxDMP > No powerpath c) Oracle databases. I upgraded to Storage Foundation 5.0 MP3. The tech plan is as below:

1. Install the VRTSspt Package. Down load the package from symantec website 2. Run the VRTSexplorer and keep the file at a safe location if you may need it in case you run in any issue. 3. Break the rootmirror 4. Unencapsulate the rootmirror. # mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 /alt.root # cd /alt.root/etc # touch /alt.root/etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/install-db rootdev:/pseudo/vxio@0:0 set vxio:vol_rootdev_is_volume=1 Remove the above lines from /alt.root/etc/system file

Make changes to /etc/vfstab to ensure the system boots from the mirror disk ( c#t#d#) 5. Boot the server from rootmirror and verify for the server coming up. 6. Boot again from the rootdisk. 7. Check for the pre-requiste packages. Solaris 9 for Storage Foundation need SUNWcfcl,SUNWcfclr, SUNWcfclx packages and patch 114477-04. 8. Install the packages first and then the patches. Packages and patches can be downloaded from http://www.sun.com/downloads and choose A-Z downloads 9. Verify the pre-staged software is not corrupted and working fine. ( You can do this by doing a tar and keeping the software ready) 10. Ensure all applications/Databases are shutdown and the file-systems are down. 11. Ensure all the apps/dbs are umounted clean . # echo 8192B.p S | fsdb -F vxfs <Raw_Device> | grep clean Receive: flags 0 mod 0 clean clean_value Note: A clean_value value of 0x5a indicates the file system is clean, 0x3c incidates the file system is dirty, and 069 indicates the file system is dusty. A dusty file system has pending extended operations. Note: If a file system is not clean, enter the following commands for that file system: Enter: fsck -F vxfs filesystem Enter: mount -F vxfs [Block_Device] [mountpoint] Enter: umount [mountpoint] Note: This should complete any extended operations that were outstanding on the file system and unmount the file system cleanly. 12. Run the upgrade_start -check # /storage_foundation/scripts/upgrade_start -check -Note: this is a veritas check script that will check to see if this machine is eligible for upgrade.

13.Ensure that the root mirror is removed from rootdg. # /sbin/vxdg g rootdg f rmdisk rootmirror 14. Un encapsulate the rootdisk Remove the following lines from /etc/system rootdev:/pseudo/vxio@0:0 set vxio:vol_rootdev_is_volume=1 Prevent veritas from starting up. #/usr/bin/cd /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d #/usr/bin/rm root-done #/usr/bin/touch install-db 15 . Deport all appdiskgroups. 16. Reboot the node to single user mode. 17. Remove all packages that start with VRTS but for VRTSvlic. Dont remove the VRTSvlic packages. I believe you can remove this as well, but I have not tried it myself. # pkginfo | grep VRTS # pkgrm VRTSxxxx 18. Install the Veritas 5.0 Software # ./installer Note : Answer the questions and complete the installation. Insome cases veritas may not start correctly and will require a reboot. 19. If you are upgrading from 4.0 or later the licenses should take of themselves. 20. Manually Encapsualte the rootdisk after upgrade. # vxdiskadm Choose option 2 and give the root disk for encapsulation. 21. Import the disk groups and mount the filesystems. 22. Ensure applications are working fine

23. Remirror the rootdrive follow standard procedures.

Categories: veritas volume manager

Extending Filesystems in Sun Cluster using VxVM

October 25, 2009 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

I did an activity to add LUNS to existing database file systems running sun Cluster 3.1, Solaris 9 OS with VxVM. The steps I followed are : a) Get the LUN information from Storage and update the sd.conf accordingly on both the servers b) Make the LUNS Visible on the server. Run the command on both the nodes #update_drv -f sd c) Verify for the LUNS present; # format d) Configure emcpower devices. Run on both the servers. # /etc/powermt config # /etc/powermt save e) Create the Sun Cluster DID devices. Run on both nodes if required. # devfsadm # scgdevs f) Verify the sun Cluster DID devices. # scdidadm -L g) Add the disks to veritas diskgroup ; # vxdiskadm h) Grow the FS
Categories: Solaris, Sun cluster, veritas volume manager Tags: Sun cluster, Veritas

Identifying multiple paths for a disk under VxVM control

December 8, 2008 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

This is a routine task for people dealing with VERITAS volume manager. There are times when one need to confirm the number of paths for the disk. This can be accomplished by the below command. # vxdisk list <diskname>

In this one can look at the numpaths value at the bottom of the output.
Categories: veritas volume manager

Mirroring an Empty volume under VxVM

November 14, 2008 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

If you are mirroring empty Veritas plexes, this post is for you. Normally we would wait ensuring the plexes are in sync. If the plex size is large, then the waiting time is more. A workaround is # vxassist -g <dgname> make testvol 1g layout=mirror init=active dgname01 dgname02 init=active is the keyword here. This should save lot of time.
Categories: veritas volume manager

Identifying and Replacing failed disks in V880

October 17, 2008 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

Hi, recently i ran in to a problem of failed disk with V880. I wanted to make sure if the disk has indeed failed. Server was running VxVM. Did these commands to identify the disk failure. V880 has internal FCAL loop. So to identify that #luxadm probe Found Enclosure: SUNWGS INT FCBPL Name:LoopA Node WWN:508002000011d7d8 Logical Path:/dev/es/ses0 #luxadm display LoopA SUNWGS INT FCBPL DISK STATUS SLOT DISKS (Node WWN) 0 On (O.K.) 2000002037f87099 1 On (O.K.) 2000002037f39796 2 On (Login failed) 3 Not Installed 4 Not Installed 5 Not Installed 6 Not Installed 7 Not Installed

8 9 10 11

Not Installed Not Installed Not Installed Not Installed SUBSYSTEM STATUS FW Revision:9218 Box ID:0 Node WWN:508002000011d7d8 Enclosure Name:LoopA SSC100 s 0=Base Bkpln, 1=Base LoopB, 2=Exp Bkpln, 3=Exp LoopB SSC100 #0: O.K.(11.A) SSC100 #1: O.K.(11.A) SSC100 #2: Not Installed SSC100 #3: Not Installed Temperature Sensors 0 Base, 1 Expansion 0:21C 1:Not Installed Here we can identify the disk failure at the slot no 2. This is a good way to identify the failed disk under internal FCAL loop. Since its a VxvM disk, make sure its in failed was or removed state. # vxdisk list DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS c1t0d0s2 sliced rootdisk rootdg online c1t1d0s2 sliced disk01 rootdg online c1t1d0s2 sliced online disk02 rootdg failed was:c1t2d0s2 Run vxdiskadm option 4 to remove the disk for replacement. After running vxdiskadm the output should look similar to this: # vxdisk list DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS c1t0d0s2 sliced rootdisk rootdg online c1t1d0s2 sliced disk01 rootdg online c1t2d0s2 sliced online disk02 rootdg removed was:c1t2d0s2 1. Put the disk into offline state; # vxdisk offline c1t2d0s2 2. VxVM is ready for removal of the disk, run the luxadm offline to remove the WWN entries and device links for the failed drive ; # luxadm -e offline /dev/rdsk/c1t2d0s2 3. Do the luxadm to remove the device. ; #luxadm remove_device /dev/rdsk/c1t2d0s2 4. check the device file ; #devfsadm -C ; # ls -ld /dev/rdsk/c1t2d0*

5. Replace the disk physically 6. Run the devfsadm ; # devfsadm 7. verify with luxadm display ; # luxadm display LoopA 8. label the disk ; use format and label 9. # vxdctl enable 10. # vxdisk list ; you would see a new disk. 11. Now use vxdiskadm option 5 to replace the disk. Give yes to the access question. 12. Verify the sync ; # vxtask list Thats it you should see the replaced disk doing just fine.
Categories: Servers, veritas volume manager

Veritas recovery features

August 19, 2008 krishsubramanian Leave a comment

In this post i will explain the volume recovery and disk group recovery in veritas volume manager. As an admin, we may face situations where one deletes a volume accidentally or destroy a dg by mistake. If we do not have configuration backups of the objects, we are in for some trouble. In order to save our a** its always better to be proactive and do the objects backups. From 3.5 MP3 ( if am correct) vxvm offers vxconfigbackup & vxconfigrestore options for automatic object backups. vxconfigbackupd is a daemon which runs in the background and do upto date backups of all the disk group and the objects associated with it. All the backups are stored in /etc/vx/cbr/bk/dgname directory. Whenever a configuration change occurs, vxconfigbackupd daemon updates the directories with the latest configuration. One can also manually do the object backups using the vxconfigbackup command. One can use the -l option to change the default location of the backups. vxconfigbackup -l /var/vxvmbackups datadg This would update all the configuration backups to /var/vxvmbackups directory for datadg. If we need to recover the configuration information for the entire datadg, we can use the vxconfigrestore option. There can be situations where the configuration information is completely lost due to system outages or reboots. /etc/vx/bin/vxconfigrestore -p /var/vxvmbackups datadg # to precommit the changes

/etc/vx/bin/vxconfigrestore -c /var/vxvmbackups datadg # to commit the changes A vxprint output will give the confirmation vxprint -g datadg I just explained how to go about backingup and recovering configuration data using the vxconfigbackup and vxconfigrestore options. There may be situations when someone accidentally deletes the volume of a diskgroup. In such situations, backups of individual object information will come in handy You can schedule a cron to backup individual object configuration /usr/sbin/vxprint -rhmvps ${volume_name} > ${DIR_NAME}/${volume_name}.${DATE} using the backed up file and vxmake we can easily recover the deleted volume configuration vxmake -g <dgname> -d <file_name> Verify the recovery using vxprint ; vxprint -g datadg -hrt Start the volume ; vxvol -g <dgname> start <vol_name> Volume is ready to do I/O. As with the case with any recovery options, these options should be experimented before using in the production setup.
Categories: Recovery, veritas volume manager

Converting a volume from gen to fsgen

August 14, 2008 krishsubramanian 11 comments

There might be situations where one has to convert a volume from gen type to fsgen type. Before going any further on the topic lets see what really fsgen and gen mean. fsgen assumes that the volume contains a filesystem while gen assumes there is no filesystem. fsgen and gen volume types provide similar but not identical semantics for operations using the vxplex utility. In particular fsgen usage type attempts to flush in-memory data cached for the filesystem residing on the volume. For most file systems this is the calling of sync to attempt to flush all in-memory data to disk. I believe it is for this reason we associate all volumes that are using filesystems to be of fsgen type. vxassist uses fsgen as the default type, where as vxmake uses gen as the default type Conversion of volume from one usage type to other cannot be done on the fly, it requires a volume downtime. Lets take a look at this output v simplevol gen ENABLED ACTIVE 8388608 SELECT -

pl simplevol-01 simplevol ENABLED ACTIVE 8392167 CONCAT RW sd simple01-01 simplevol-01 simple-01 0 8392167 0 c1t0d0 ENA As you can see from the output, we have a gen volume named simplevol, we now need to convert this simplevol from gen to fsgen type. These are the steps that needs to be followed. 1. vxprint -g dgname -rhmvps simplevol > simplevol.vxout 2. open the file simplevol.vxout using your fav editor and change the use_type field alone from gen to fsgen. 3. save the file. make sure you edit the use_type field alone 4. Umount the filesystem ; umount /simplevol 5. stop the volume ; vxvol -g dgname stop simplevol 6. remove the volume ; vxedit -g dgname -rf rm simplevol 7. using vxmake rebuild the volume from the saved file ; vxmake -g dgname -d simplevol.vxout 8. check the vxprint out; vxprint -g dgname -hrt ; check for the usage type; it would be fsgen 9. start the volume; vxvol -g dgname start simplevol 10. do a fsck for the volume; fsck -y /dev/vx/rdsk/dgname/simplevol 11. mount the filesystem ; mount /simplevol You are ready to perform I/O for the filesystem..