Logical volume subsystem provides flexible access and control for complex physical storage systems.
The following topics describe how the logical volume device driver (LVDD) interacts with physical volumes:
Direct access storage devices (DASDs) are fixed or removable storage devices. Typically, these devices are hard disks. A fixed storage device is any storage device defined during system configuration to be an integral part of the system DASD. The operating system detects an error if a fixed storage device is not available at some time during normal operation.
A removable storage device is any storage device defined by the person who administers your system during system configuration to be an optional part of the system DASD. The removable storage device can be removed from the system at any time during normal operation. As long as the device is logically unmounted first, the operating system does not detect an error.
The following types of devices are not considered DASD and are not supported by the logical volume manager (LVM):
For a description of the DASD device block level, see "DASD Device Block Level Description".
A logical volume is a portion of a physical volume viewed by the system as a volume. Logical records are records defined in terms of the information they contain rather than physical attributes.
A physical volume is a DASD structured for requests at the physical level, that is, the level at which a processing unit can request device-independent operations on a physical block address basis. A physical volume is composed of the following:
When performing I/O at a physical level, no bad-block relocation is supported. Bad blocks are not hidden at this level as they are at the logical level. Typical operations at the physical level are read-physical-block and write-physical-block .
The following are terms used when discussing DASD volumes:
The number of blocks in a partition, as well as the number of partitions in a given physical volume, are fixed when the physical volume is installed in a volume group. Every physical volume in a volume group has exactly the same partition size. There is no restriction on the types of DASDs (for example, Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI), Enhanced Small Device Interface (ESDI), or IPI) that can be placed in a given volume group.
Note: A given physical volume must be assigned to a volume group before that physical volume can be used by the LVM.
When composing a physical volume from a DASD, the following implementation restrictions apply to DASD characteristics:
A physical volume consists of a logically contiguous string of physical sectors. Sectors are numbered 0 through the last physical sector number (LPSN) on the physical volume. The total number of physical sectors on a physical volume is LPSN + 1. The actual physical location and physical order of the sectors are transparent to the sector numbering scheme.
Note: Sector numbering applies to user-accessible data sectors only. Spare sectors and Customer-Engineer (CE) sectors are not included. CE sectors are reserved for use by diagnostic test routines or microcode.
A physical volume reserves the first 128 sectors to store various types of DASD configuration and operation information. The /usr/include/sys/hd_psn.h file describes the information stored on the reserved sectors. The locations of the items in the reserved area are expressed as physical sector numbers in this file, and the lengths of those items are in number of sectors.
The 128-sector reserved area of a physical volume includes a boot record, the bad-block directory, the LVM record, and the mirror write consistency (MWC) record. The boot record consists of one sector containing information that allows the read-only system (ROS) to boot the system. A description of the boot record can be found in the /usr/include/sys/bootrecord.h file.
The boot record also contains the pv_id field. This field is a 64-bit number uniquely identifying a physical volume. This identifier is assigned by the manufacturer of the physical volume. However, if a physical volume is part of a volume group, the pv_id field may be assigned by the LVM.
The bad-block directory records the blocks on the physical volume that have been diagnosed as unusable. The structure of the bad-block directory and its entries can be found in the /usr/include/sys/bbdir.h file.
The LVM record consists of one sector and contains information used by the LVM when the physical volume is a member of the volume group. The LVM record is described in the /usr/include/lvmrec.h file.
The MWC record consists of one sector. It identifies which logical partitions may be inconsistent if the system is not shut down properly. When the volume group is varied back online for use, this information is used to make logical partitions consistent again.
If a physical volume is part of a volume group, the physical volume is used by the LVM and contains two additional reserved areas. One area contains the volume group descriptor area/volume group status area and follows the first 128 reserved sectors. The other area is at the end of the physical volume reserved as a relocation pool for bad blocks that must be software-relocated. Both of these areas are described by the LVM record. The space between these last two reserved areas is divided into equal-sized partitions.
The volume group descriptor area (VGDA) is divided into the following:
When a volume group is varied online, a majority (also called a quorum) of VGDAs must be present to perform recovery operations unless you have specified the force flag. (The vary-on operation, performed by using the varyonvg command, makes a volume group available to the system.) See "Logical Volume Storage Overview" in AIX Version 4.3 System Management Guide: Operating System and Devices for introductory information about the vary-on process and quorums.
Attention: Use of the force flag can result in data inconsistency.
A volume group with only one physical volume must contain two copies of the physical volume group descriptor area. For any volume group containing more than one physical volume, there are at least three on-disk copies of the volume group descriptor area. The default placement of these areas on the physical volume is as follows:
When a vary-on operation is performed, a majority of copies of the volume group descriptor area must be able to come online before the vary-on operation is considered successful. A quorum ensures that at least one copy of the volume group descriptor areas available to perform recovery was also one of the volume group descriptor areas that were online during the previous vary-off operation. If not, the consistency of the volume group descriptor area cannot be ensured.
The volume group status area (VGSA) contains the status of all physical volumes in the volume group. This status is limited to active or missing. The VGSA also contains the state of all allocated physical partitions (PP) on all physical volumes in the volume group. This state is limited to active or stale. A PP with a stale state is not used to satisfy a read request and is not updated on a write request.
A PP changes from active to stale after a successful resynchronization of the logical partition (LP) that has multiple copies, or mirrors, and is no longer consistent with its peers in the LP. This inconsistency can be caused by a write error or by not having a physical volume available when the LP is written to or updated.
A PP changes from stale to active after a successful resynchronization of the LP. A resynchronization operation issues resynchronization requests starting at the beginning of the LP and proceeding sequentially through its end. The LVDD reads from an active partition in the LP and then writes that data to any stale partition in the LP. When the entire LP has been traversed, the partition state is changed from stale to active.
Normal I/O can occur concurrently in an LP that is being resynchronized.
Note: If a write error occurs in a stale partition while a resynchronization is in progress, that partition remains stale.
If all stale partitions in an LP encounter write errors, the resynchronization operation is ended for this LP and must be restarted from the beginning.
The vary-on operation uses the information in the VGSA to initialize the LVDD data structures when the volume group is brought online.
Serial DASD Subsystem Device Driver.
Understanding the Logical Volume Device Driver.
How to Change the mwcc_entries Variable.