Veritas Volume Manager 4.1 Troubleshooting Guide (HP-UX 11i v3, February 2007)

Chapter 1, Recovery from Hardware Failure

Understanding the Plex State Cycle

Changing plex states are part of normal operations, and do not necessarily indicate

abnormalities that must be corrected. A clear understanding of the various plex states and

their interrelationship is necessary if you want to be able to perform the recovery

procedures described in this chapter.

The figure, “Main Plex State Cycle,” shows the main transitions that take place between

plex states in VxVM. (For more information about plex states, see the chapter “Creating

and Administering Plexes” in the VERITAS Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide.)

Main Plex State Cycle

At system startup, volumes are started automatically and the vxvol start task makes all

CLEAN plexes ACTIVE. At shutdown, the vxvol stop task marks all ACTIVE plexes

CLEAN. If all plexes are initially CLEAN at startup, this indicates that a controlled

shutdown occurred and optimizes the time taken to start up the volumes.

The figure, “Additional Plex State Transitions” on page 4, shows additional transitions

that are possible between plex states as a result of hardware problems, abnormal system

shutdown, and intervention by the system administrator.

When first created, a plex has state EMPTY until the volume to which it is attached is

initialized. Its state is then set to CLEAN. Its plex kernel state remains set to DISABLED

and is not set to ENABLED until the volume is started.

PS: CLEAN

PKS: DISABLED

PS: ACTIVE

PKS: ENABLED

Start up

(vxvol start)

Shut down

(vxvol stop)

PS = Plex State

PKS = Plex Kernel State