Veritas Storage Foundation 5.1 SP1 Advanced Features Administrator"s Guide (5900-1503, April 2011)

Note: The analysis option is presented as a separate menu item in vxvmconvert,
but there is an implicit analysis with any conversion. If you simply select the
“Convert LVM Volume Groups to VxVM” menu option, vxvmconvert will go through
analysis on any group you specify. When you are using the convert option directly,
you are given a chance to abort the conversion after analysis, and before any
changes are committed to disk.
The analysis option is useful when you have a large number of groups/disks for
conversion and some amount of planning is needed before the actual conversion.
Installations with many users or critical applications can use the analyze option
on a running system. Then conversion downtime can be better planned and
managed. Smaller configurations may be better served by using the convert option
directly while in a downtime period.
More information is available on converting disk groups.
See “Converting LVM volume groups to VxVM disk groups” on page 402.
Sample examples of the analyze option are available.
See “Examples” on page 417.
Taking actions to make conversion possible if analysis fails
Available is a list of reasons that may cause analysis to fail.
See “Volume group conversion limitations” on page 403.
Messages from vxvmconvert will explain the type of failure and any actions that
can be taken before retrying the analysis.
Complete details on specific error messages and actions are available.
See “List of conversion error messages” on page 507.
Backing up your LVM configuration and user data
After analysis you know which volume group or groups you want to convert to
VxVM disk groups. Up to this point, you have not altered your LVM configuration.
By taking the next step (completing the conversion to VxVM), you are significantly
changing access to your storage.
Although the conversion process does not move, or in any other way affect user
data, you are strongly encouraged to back up all data on the affected disks.
Similarly, you should back up the LVM configuration itself.
407Offline data migration
Converting LVM to VxVM