Veritas Volume Manager 4.1 Release Notes (5900-0590, March 2010)

• Detecting and correcting the Serial Split Brain Condition in a Disk Group
Serial Split Brain (SSB) checks for changes to disk group configuration copies and data. SSB
checks are done, when a disk is added to a disk group or when a disk group is imported.
SSB increments are done when a disk becomes non-available or when a disk group is
imported with missing disks.
A serial split brain condition occurs in a disk group when the actual serial numbers on disks
are different from those listed in the configuration copies on the disks. To recover from such
a situation, use the vxsplitlines command. The vxsplitlines command to display
the commands that you can use to correct the condition.
• Disability Requirements Conformance
VxVM is compliant with section 508 article on Disability Conformance Requirement of the
US Government.
• Enhancements to the Device Discovery Layer (DDL)
The following enhancements has been done in this release to the DDL feature:
— Dynamic discovery of disks or disk attributes.
— VxVM supports two naming schemes, OS Legacy Naming Scheme and Enclosure-based
Naming Scheme. You can change between the two naming schemes dynamically.
However, in the previous releases it was necessary to restart the vxconfigd daemon
after changing between naming schemes. With the current release of VxVM, the
vxconfigd daemon restart operation is no longer required.
— Multithreaded device discovery.
• Configuration Backup and Restore Support
Configuration backup and restore support allows you to backup and restore or replicate all
VxVM configuration data for disk groups and volumes. This applies only to VxVM
configuration data and does not apply to user and application data.
• Unique Number for Messages
Each message contains a unique identifier which enables easy identification of the problem.
Use this ID number when reporting messages to HP Technical support.
• Storage Expert
Storage Expert consists of a set of commands that collect VxVM configuration data and
compare them with rules stored in the executable rule files located in the directory,
/opt/VRTS/vxse/vxvm. Storage Expert generates a summary report that displays the
objects that do not meet these criteria and makes recommendations for improving VxVM
configuration.
• Default Disk Format
With the introduction of the Cross-Platform Data Sharing (CDS) feature, the format for a
disk defaults to CDS rather than to simple, which was the format in earlier releases. In
addition, the simple disk format has been renamed as hpdisk. A further change in this
release is that the default disk type is now auto. This means that disks that used to show
up in the output from vxdisk list as simple will now show up as auto:hpdisk.
Features not Supported
The following features are not supported with Veritas Volume Manager 4.1 on HP-UX 11i v3:
• Cross-Platform Data Sharing
• Intelligent Storage Provisioning
• FastResync (FlashSnap)
• Off-Host Processing
8 Veritas Volume Manager 4.1 Release Notes