single disk 2 volumes groups ?

[Rob Yohn]

I have an Itanium 11.23 box. Is it possible to partition a single disk so that I can put 2 volume groups on it? The disk is HP 73.4GMAX3073NC.

[Patrick Wallek]

Why do you need 2 VG's on a single disk?

Why not do a single VG with multiple LV's in that VG? IMHO that would be easier to manage and make a lot more sense.

[Rob Yohn]

It's for testing.

We have a production server that has multiple disks and multiple vgs as well as lvs on it. I'm trying to duplicate the layout on this test server so I can get all the steps in order for adding larger drives to the production server. The test server only has 2 73GB drives in it.

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Hi,

No not possible, a disk can only be part of one volume group.

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

As stated, no.

> I'm trying to duplicate the layout on this test server so I can get all the steps in order for adding larger drives to the production server.

Well, disk is cheap to purchase. That aside, the steps for creating volume groups, logical volumes and filesystems are very straightforward. If you want documentation, see:

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90950/ch06.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[Rob Yohn]

Thank you everyone for the information. Points awarded.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Noteworthy is this is not a problem for LVM Linux. The fact that LVM works differently in this respect often causes confusion.

Glad your issue is resolved.

SEP

[Torsten.]

With 11.23 you have the "idisk" utility to create partitions on a disk.

While mirroring the root disk, you work with partitions and extend the vg with a partition

(vgextend ... cxtydzs2 - note "s2"!)

So I could imagine you can create 2 partitions and handle each of them just like a disk - well, this is for testing ;-)

If you try this, come back with your results ...

[Rob Yohn]

I have been able to partition the drive into 2 HPUX partitions, but I am unable to get pvcreate not to recognize the entire disk. If I use pvcreate on /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s2 and then pvcreate /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s3, it tells me the physical volume already belongs to a volume group.

disk 1 0/1/1/0.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP 73.4GMAX3073NC
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0 /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s3 /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s1 /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s4
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s1 /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s4 /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s2
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2 /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s3

[Torsten.]

You say 2 partitions, but you have device files for 4 partitions - step 1 is trial, step 2 is error ... currently on step 2, because of too many steps 1?

[psreedhar]

Hi,
Using idisk we can create upto 15 partitions, and we can create 15 volume groups using that.

Steps:
Create a file which tells how to devide the disk
# vi /tmp/f
"/tmp/f" 12 lines, 94 characters
10
EFI 10MB
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%
HPUX 10%

# idisk -w -p -f /tmp/f /dev/rdisk/disk102
The above step creates 10 partitions in the disk. Each partition get 10% of storage space.

Then you go ahead and create a VG on each partition. See the following steps.

# pvcreate -f /dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s2
Physical volume "/dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s2" has been successfully created.
# vgcreate -V 2.0 -S 100g -s 4 vgtest /dev/dsk/c11t1d3s2

M size = 12288Volume group "/dev/vgtest" has been successfully created.
Volume Group configuration for /dev/vgtest has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vgtest.conf
# pvcreate -f /dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s3
Physical volume "/dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s3" has been successfully created.
# vgcreate -V 2.0 -S 100g -s 4 vgtest1 /dev/dsk/c11t1d3s3

M size = 12288Volume group "/dev/vgtest1" has been successfully created.
Volume Group configuration for /dev/vgtest1 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vgtest1.conf
# pvcreate -f /dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s4
Physical volume "/dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s4" has been successfully created.
# vgcreate -V 2.0 -S 100g -s 4 vgtest2 /dev/dsk/c11t1d3s4

M size = 12288Volume group "/dev/vgtest2" has been successfully created.
Volume Group configuration for /dev/vgtest2 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vgtest2.conf
# pvcreate -f /dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s5
Physical volume "/dev/rdsk/c11t1d3s5" has been successfully created.
# vgcreate -V 2.0 -S 100g -s 4 vgtest3 /dev/dsk/c11t1d3s5

M size = 12288Volume group "/dev/vgtest3" has been successfully created.
Volume Group configuration for /dev/vgtest3 has been saved in /etc/lvmconf/vgtest3.conf
#

[Rob Yohn]

psreedhar, this is what I was looking for!

Thanks!

I think I was missing the -f option for pvcreate. Once I used that I was able to move on and create the VGs on each partition.

Again, many thanks.