VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 Release Notes (5900-0591, March 2010)

VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 Release Notes
New Features in VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1
Chapter 112
Instant (copy-on-write) snapshots are easier to configure and offer more flexibility of use
than traditional third-mirror break-off snapshots. Once created, an instant snapshot is
immediately available for use. For preference, new volumes should be configured to use
instant snapshots, but this also requires rewriting of administration scripts that assume
the traditional third-mirror snapshot model. Legacy volumes can also be reconfigured to
use instant snapshots.
• Disability Requirements Conformance
VxVM is compliant with the US Government’s section 508 article.
• Menu-driven Installation
With this release, VxVM provides support for installation through a menu-driven front
end. This enhancement, which will be common across all VERITAS products, is intended
to provide a common look and feel to the installation experience.The traditional
installation process using pkgadd is still supported, but users are encouraged to move to
the menu-driven interface.
• Enhancement of Local Detach Policy
Local Detach policy now works uniformly on both master and slave nodes in a cluster. If
the master node cannot handle the local detach policy, it leaves the cluster rather than
disabling disk groups.
• Default Disk Group Behavior in Base-VXVM 4.1
In previous versions of VxVM, a disk group with the name rootdg (root disk group) was
required. For VxVM to function, the rootdg disk group had to exist, and it had to contain
at least one disk. This requirement no longer exists, however you might find it convenient
to create a system-wide default disk group.
For operations that require a disk group, the system wide default disk group will be used
if the VxVM command is not specified with the -g option. The main benefit of creating a
default disk group is that the Base-VXVM commands default to the default disk group
and you will not need to use the -g option. To verify the default disk group after it has
been created, enter the command:
# vxdg defaultdg
• Simplification of vxinstall
Because Base-VXVM no longer requires a rootdg to be configured, vxinstall has been
much simplified, and you can no longer use this command to configure disk groups on
your system after installation. You should now use vxdiskadm or the VERITAS
Enterprise Administrator.
• Temporary File Systems for Use by DMP