Veritas Volume Manager 5.0 Administrator's Guide (September 2006)

Chapter
7
Creating volumes
This chapter describes how to create volumes in Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM).
Volumes are logical devices that appear as physical disk partition devices to data
management systems. Volumes enhance recovery from hardware failure, data availability,
performance, and storage configuration.
Note: You can also use the Veritas Intelligent Storage Provisioning (ISP) feature to create
and administer application volumes. These volumes are very similar to the traditional
VxVM volumes that are described in this chapter. However, there are significant
differences between the functionality of the two types of volume that prevents them from
being used interchangeably. Refer to the Veritas Storage Foundation Intelligent Storage
Provisioning Administrator’s Guide for more information about creating and
administering ISP application volumes.
Volumes are created to take advantage of the VxVM concept of virtual disks. A file
system can be placed on the volume to organize the disk space with files and directories.
In addition, you can configure applications such as databases to organize data on volumes.
Note: Disks and disk groups must be initialized and defined to VxVM before volumes can
be created from them. See “Administering disks” on page 77 and “Creating and
administering disk groups” on page 157 for more information.