LUN (VLL) and Volume Shredder User Guide (T5214-96094, November 2011)

• Journal volumes

• Volumes for a system disk

• Quorum disks

Overview of Configuring External Mainframe Volumes

To use external volumes with the storage system, usually you must use HP XP External Storage

Software to perform external volume mapping, and then use the Format command of Virtual LVI

to format the volumes (see “Formatting the LDEVs” (page 70)). However, when you format external

mainframe volumes in this way, the formatting operation may take some time.

If you follow the procedure in this section, you will be able to make external mainframe volumes

usable more quickly.

Only storage administrators can perform the following operation. Storage partition administrators

cannot perform this operation:

1. Zero-format the external mainframe volumes.

The term zero-formatting refers to a formatting operation that writes the number 0 (zero) to

the entire disk areas. For information on how to zero-format volumes, see the documentation

for the mainframe system or the external storage system that you are using.

2. Use XP External Storage to perform mapping of zero-formatted external volumes and register

the volumes in an external volume group. For detailed instructions on how to do this, see the

HP XP24000/XP20000 External Storage Software User Guide.

CAUTION: Ensure that the external volume group does not include volumes that are not

zero-formatted. If an external volume group includes volumes that are not zero-formatted, the

volumes will be blocked when you perform the operation described in the next step and,

therefore, hosts will be unable to read from or write to the volumes. If you have not

zero-formatted external volumes, but you want to make the external volumes usable with the

storage system, you must use the Format command of Virtual LVI.

3. Use Virtual LVI to specify the external volume group, and then overwrite control blocks in the

volumes in the specified external volume groups. After the overwriting process finishes, the

external volumes will be usable with the storage system. For detailed information on how to

overwrite control blocks, see “Making External Mainframe Volumes Usable” (page 78).

Control blocks are a type of area in a volume and contain information other than user data.

Information required for managing a volume is recorded in the control blocks.

Overview of Volume Shredder

Volume Shredder is the software that can delete data in volumes and prevent the deleted data

from being restored.

When the user of a volume is changed, the data stored by the previous user should be deleted for

security reasons. Volume Shredder is based on DoD5220.22-M (the standard defined by the U.S.

Department of Defense); therefore, it can delete all data in the volume completely. In this manual,

the function provided by Volume Shredder is called the shredding function.

The shredding function completely deletes data in the specified volume by repeatedly overwriting

the data with dummy data. This function can be executed from HP Remote Web Console computers.

An example of executing the shredding function from a Remote Web Console computer is shown

in Figure 5 (page 20).

When you execute the shredding function, all user data in a volume is overwritten by dummy data,

and the user data will be deleted. However, because of the nature of hard disks, one overwrite is

not enough to delete the user data completely, and the deleted user data could be restored.

Overview of Configuring External Mainframe Volumes 19