VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 Troubleshooting Guide

Recovery from Hardware Failure
Understanding the Plex State Cycle
Chapter 1 13
See the “Creating and Administering Plexes” and “Administering Volumes” chapters in the
VERITAS VolumeManager Administrator’s Guide for a description of the possible plex and
volume states.
Understanding the Plex State Cycle
Changing plex states are part of normal operations, and do not necessarily indicate
abnormalities that must be corrected. A firm understanding of the various plex states and
their interrelationship is necessary if you want to be able to perform the recovery procedure
described in this chapter.
The Figure 1-1, “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.)
Figure 1-1 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.
PS: CLEAN
PKS: DISABLED
PS: ACTIVE
PKS: ENABLED
Start up
(vxvol start)
Shut down
(vxvol stop)
PS = Plex State
PKS = Plex Kernel State