VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Administrator's Guide (September 2004)

Understanding VERITAS Volume Manager
Device Discovery
Chapter 1 11
NOTE The vxprint command displays detailed information on existing VxVM
objects. For additional information on the vxprint command, see
“Displaying Volume Information” on page 249 and the vxprint(1M)
manual page.
VM Disks
When you place a physical disk under VxVM control, a VM disk is
assigned to the physical disk. A VM disk is under VxVM control and is
usually in a disk group. Each VM disk corresponds to one physical disk.
VxVM allocates storage from a contiguous area of VxVM disk space.
A VM disk typically includes a public region (allocated storage) and a
private region where VxVM internal configuration information is stored.
Each VM disk has a unique disk media name (a virtual disk name). You
can either define a disk name of up to 31 characters, or allow VxVM to
assign a default name that typically takes the form disk##. Figure 1-5,
“VM Disk Example,” shows a VM disk with a media name of disk01 that
is assigned to the physical disk devname.
Figure 1-5 VM Disk Example
Disk Groups
A disk group is a collection of VM disks that share a common
configuration. A disk group configuration is a set of records with detailed
information about related VxVM objects, their attributes, and their
connections. The default disk group is rootdg (or root disk group). A disk
group name can be up to 31 characters long.
disk01
devname
VM DiskPhysical Disk