HP-UX Logical Volume Manager and MirrorDisk/UX Release Notes (March 2010 Update release)

Logical Volume Manager and MirrorDisk/UX Release Notes
About this document
This document provides information about the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and
MirrorDisk/UX products in the March 2010 release of HP-UX 11i v3.
LVM and MirrorDisk/UX overview
Logical Volume Manager (bundle BaseLVM) is the HP-UX default Volume Manager. It provides
the user with flexibility in configuring and managing mass storage resources. In HP-UX 11i v3,
the LVM kernel and commands are bundled with the core HP-UX product.
MirrorDisk/UX (bundle B2491BA) is an optionally purchased HP-UX product to enable LVM
mirroring functionality.
Overview of changes
The initial HP-UX 11i v3 release of LVM and MirrorDisk/UX was integrated with the new mass
storage stack, delivering significant performance, scalability, availability, and usability
enhancements. LVM was enhanced to support larger logical volumes, temporary quiescing of
volume groups, and striping with mirroring. Volume group availability was improved: resizing
a LUN and modifying volume group characteristics no longer required the volume group to be
recreated, and replacing a disk could be done online.
The March 2010 release of LVM and MirrorDisk/UX provides introduces snapshot logical volumes
that enable you to capture the point-in-time images of logical volumes. It also introduces a new
command to migrate logical volumes within the given volume group and support for bootable
Version 2.x volume groups.
New and changed features in this release
New features
The following LVM features are new with the March 2010 release of HP-UX 11i v3:
Snapshot
LVM now supports the creation of snapshot logical volumes. A snapshot is a point-in-time image
of a logical volume. LVM snapshots enable you to perform the following tasks:
• Use snapshots to back up data on the logical volume without splitting the logical volume.
This reduces the space requirement.
• Create snapshots faster than manually copying over multiple point-in-time copies of the
logical volume.
• Create multiple snapshots of a logical volume. This enables you to have images of the logical
volume for multiple points in time without allocating space equivalent to the entire size of
the logical volume per copy.
Snapshots are supported for Version 2.2 or higher volume groups.
For more information, see lvcreate(1M) and lvm(7).
Logical volume migration
The new lvmove command enables you to migrate logical volumes within a specified volume
group. With this new feature, you can migrate the logical volumes to either the exiting set of
disks or to a new set of disks you specify. If you specify a new set of disks, they are first added
to the volume group and then the logical volume or volumes are migrated.
About this document 5