VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 Hardware Notes

Hardware Notes
Extended Copy Service
Chapter 116
Extended Copy Service
The Extended Copy Service feature of VxVM automatically works in tandem with the
extended copy engines from array vendors. When VxVM detects that the source and
destination devices are enabled for extended copy, VxVM automatically off loads copy requests
to the array’s copy manager.
The benefits of VxVM Extended Copy Service are:
• Non-disruptive copy operations from disk to disk. The host server remains online during
the copy and the data being copied remains accessible to the server.
• Server-free copy operation. The copy operation is done between the array subsystem and
the target disk. The data copy operation does not use any CPU or I/O resources on the
host server.
To see whether the Extended Copy Service feature is enabled on a disk, use the vxprint
command as shown in the following example. The feature is enabled if an ecopy_enabled
entry appears in the flags line.
# vxprint -l disk03
Disk group: rootdg
Disk: disk03
info: diskid=1234567890.1234.tungsten
assoc: device=sde
flags: autoconfig ecopy_enabled
device: pubpath=/dev/vx/dmp/sde
devinfo: publen=35354136 privlen=9167
NOTE If required, you can use the -o noecopy option to turn off Extended Copy
Service for each invocation of the vxplexatt, cp, mv and snapstart commands,
and the vxsdmv command.
Enabling a Disk for ecopy Operation
To enable a disk for ecopy operation:
1. Install the Hardware Assisted copy license
2. Enable the Extended copy features in the array. (This procedure is vendor specific.)