VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Storage Administrator Administrator's Guide

Volume Tasks

Changing a Volume’s Layout

Chapter 4168

Notes:

• This task requires a volume name and a different volume layout.

• Volumes remain accessible during online relayout.

• This task may take a long time, depending on the volume size and other

factors. The Relayout Status Monitor shows the progress of the layout

change and allows you to abort, pause, or reverse the task.

• If no disk space is speciﬁed, the Volume Manager uses available space on

disks in the current disk group.

• If the temporary space size is not speciﬁed, the Volume Manager uses an

appropriate size. Specifying a larger temporary space size speeds up the

layout change process because larger pieces of data are copied at a time. If

the speciﬁed temporary space size is too small, the Volume Manager uses a

larger size.

• If all of the plexes in the volume have identical layouts, the Volume

Manager changes all plexes (except log plexes) to the new layout. If the

volume contains plexes with different layouts, a target plex must be

speciﬁed. When a target plex is speciﬁed, the Volume Manager changes the

layout of the target plex and leaves the other plexes in the volume alone.

• Log plex layouts do not change. The Volume Manager may remove and/or

replace log plexes, depending on the new layout.

• If the volume length changes as a result of the layout change and the

volume contains a ﬁle system, the ﬁle system length is automatically

adjusted (if possible).

• A volume cannot undergo multiple relayouts at the same time.

• This task cannot be used to change the layout of a volume with a sparse

plex.

• This task may fail for volumes that were not created by the Storage

Administrator or the vxassist command.

• If the relayout is reversed, the volume returns to its original layout.

However, data in the volume may not return to its original storage

location.

• During a relayout, many other tasks are unavailable for the volume.

• A mirrored or striped volume requires at least two disks.

• A RAID-5 volume requires at least three disks.