LVM or Veritas VM?

[Edward McCouch]

I have to setup a RP 8400 running HP-UX 11.i. Do I have to setup all the volume groups with the Veritas Volume Manager or can I setup the volume groups with LVM? I understand that eventually LVM will "go away," but I would prefer to use LVM now and migrate to Veritas VM later. I have read many forum topics concerning LVM vs. VxVM, but none of them specifically said "If you are running 11.i then you MUST use VxVM for all volume groups past vg00." It seems that I can use either volume manager, but I want to make the right choice.

Thanx in Advance,
-Ed

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Ed,

You can use either or both. I don't see any real advantage to VxVM and went with LVM on my 11i machines.

Pete

[harry d brown jr]

You can continue to use LVM. Personally I find it sad that we need to move to VxVM (veritas) in the future. I guess I need to get that AIX loaner box in ASAP.

live free or die
harry

[ASSIST]

Remember that the root volume group (vg00) still must be LVM!!!

Joaquin

[Pete Randall]

To carry Joaquin's comment a little further, the following can NOT be VxVM:

VG's containing mirrors that use Mirror Write Cache

VG containing /usr

VG containing any dump or primary swap area

VG's use in MC/ServiceGuard clusters

VG's used for cluster lock disks

VG's that have any blocks in the bad block directory

etc.
etc.
etc.

Sure makes me eager (not!) to convert. Welcome to the New HP!

Pete

[Hai Nguyen_1]

Edward,

I think you should continue using LVM. VxVM got a friendlier GUI Volume Manager and can handle more RAID configurations than LVM could. But it does have some drawback. By default, your root volume is not controlled by VxVM, to get the root volume mirrored for better protection, you need to bring it into VxVM. If you later want to upgrade the OS, then you have to first remove the root volume out of the VM, do the OS upgrade then bring it back into the VM. With LVM, upgrading the OS is much easier.

Hai

[Edward McCouch]

Ok. Thank you for all of your answers. I just wanted to make sure that I could continue to use LVM.

[Martin Johnson]

Harry,

AIX is converting to veritas LVM too.

Marty

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

I haven't read all of the replies, maybe someone has already mentioned this..
In any case, from my experience, I previously mastered LVM and moving on to VxVM kinda scared me.. can't teach an old dog..

Also, VxVM is good for SAN environments and is not a propriatory Disk manager. Windows will not snuff a VxVM disk when it sees it in your SAN.

VxVM main disadvantage is that it costs $$ to use most of the interesting features. (as does lvm - mirrordisk, online JFS I suppose)

I'd never consider using most of those interesting features such as s/w raid on lower end systems... other than mirroring of course

VxVM gui is nice, however, I'd hate to troubleshoot vxvm managed disk groups without it..

All the best,
Bill

[Deshpande Prashant]

HI
LVM and VxVM can co-exists on 11i system.
And Basic VxVM comes with base 11iOE.
As vg00 need to be in LVM, you might have Mirror-UX/JFS from HP to safe guard your self against crashes of root disk. Then to use mirror and additional features of VxVM you need to spend additional dollars.

You may experiment with one VG with VxVM to see the difference. I belive there is a utility to convert existing LVM disks to VxVM in case you need to do.


I personally would continue with LVM, untill HP forces LVM out.

Thanks.
Prashant.