Using alternate link in volume group

[Kishore Vinjam]

We have EMC storage attached to hp-unix servers. There are alternate links for each disks. When i assign these disks to the volume group and create a VG, it shows it as two disks in the volume group. Since there is only one physical disk available when i deactivate teh VG and activate the VG, it wont activate back.
Is there any special process to assign these kind of the disks to a volume group. Your help would be highly appreciated.

[Bryan D. Quinn · Accepted solution]

Hello,

We do this and we use vgextend to add the alternate path to the VG. So, create the VG with one path and then after that is complete add the other path using vgextend. Are you running EMC's Power Path software? I beleive this is necessary to do the alternate links...I could be wrong. Hopefully somebody can back me up on this information.

Hope this helps!
-Bryan

[Kishore Vinjam]

Thank you Bryan, it worked perfect.

[Chris Wilkinson]

Guys, powerpath doesn't need the alternate path in the VG/lvmtab. powerpath operates independantly and in the event of a path failure, powerpath reroutes to the alternate without LVM even seeing it.

So if you have powerpath, basically it doesn't matter if the alternates are in or not.