vgexport and vgimport

[khilari]

I want to clear a concept. When you give the command vgexport -s -p -m -v /tmp/vg01.map /dev/vg01 basically you are making a mapfile with vgid and lv info in that volume group. Then you ftp the /thp/vg01.map file containing that info and then on the recieving server issue vgimport -v -s -m /tmp/vg01.map /dev/vg01. When u issue -s it also gets the disk or pv info. Now, can we use this technique to restore a particular system lets say i have a rp7420 and after taking an ignite image and restoring vg00 i ftp the map file into the restoring system and then issue vgimport will this be good enough to make all the lv's on the other system. Another thing do i have to make vg01 on the restoring system or will vgimport make the volume group itself.
Thanks

[skt_skt]

We can restore/move the data to a diff server if that LUN/disk is allocated o the target. Then the vgimport/export process should help yo bring up the Vgs.

[Wim Rombauts]

That procedure with vgimport will certainly help, but there are some things to take care of : The disks should be accessed on the new system by identically the same /dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk device files.
If these device files are different, you need to edit the disk map of the volume group.
Before importing, you need to create directory /dev/vgwhatever manually (with mkdir), including the group file of the volume group (mknod /dev/vgwhatever/group c 64 0x0n0000), where "n" should be an unused volumegroup number (check the output of "ll /dev/vg*/group")

[Mridul Shrivastava]

If you have a valid map file containing VGID ( used -s option at the time of vgexport) then it is not mandatory that device file name should remain the same, hence you can definitely vgimport to the new server without any issues.

Even If you don't have map file and you know all the detail about the VG ( like major, minor no.s and all the PV disks ) then you could import it by specifying the PV disks....