VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Administrator's Guide

Volume Manager Operations
Common Volume Manager Commands
Chapter 3 133
Some of the advantages of using the vxassist command include:
The use of the vxassist command involves only one step (command)
on the part of the user.
You are required to specify only minimal information to the vxassist
command, yet you can optionally specify additional parameters to
modify its actions.
The vxassist command tasks result in a set of configuration changes
that either succeed or fail as a group, rather than individually. Most
vxassist tasks work so that system crashes or other interruptions do
not leave intermediate states to be cleaned up. If the vxassist command
finds an error or an exceptional condition, it exits without leaving
partially-changed configurations. The system is left in the same state as
it was prior to the attempted vxassist task.
How the vxassist Command Works The vxassist command allows
you to create and modify volumes. You specify the basic volume creation
or modification requirements and the vxassist command performs the
necessary tasks.
The vxassist command obtains most of the information it needs from
sources other than your input. The vxassist command obtains
information about the existing objects and their layouts from the objects
themselves.
For tasks requiring new disk space, the vxassist command seeks out
available disk space and allocates it in the configuration that conforms to
the layout specifications and that offers the best use of free space.
The vxassist command typically takes this form:
# vxassist keyword volume_name [attributes...]
where keyword selects the task to perform. The first argument after a
vxassist command keyword is a volume name, which is followed by a
set of attributes. For details on available vxassist keywords and
attributes, see the vxassist(1M) manual page.
The vxassist command creates and manipulates volumes based on aset
of established defaults, but also allows you to supply preferences for each
task.
vxassist Command Defaults The vxassist command uses a set of
tunable parameters that can be specified in the defaults files or at the
command line. The tunable parameters default to reasonable values if