Re: TSM 5.1.5.4 and raw Solaris Volume Manager partitions

I ran into this problem as well, TSM 5.2 on solaris 9, maybe it's
different with TSM 5.3 but I didn't see it in any patch/fix list.

TSM doesn't support the EFI labels, which I think are required for large >
1 TB disks on native Solaris 9+.

However, to get around this, I encapsulated the disk slice into Solaris
volume manager and then TSM was able to read the lvm information to find
the disk size.  TSM does work for me with Solaris Volume Manager
encapsulaed disks.

But it looks like you did that, which is exactly the problem I ran into...

I also found out that it appears that > 1 TB raw volumes with TSM +
Solaris doesn't work either.  (undocumented?)

Split it it into 4x600 GB disk stripes and it should work.
You also don't need the 'formatsize' parameter when adding raw disks.
Of course always remember to skip cylinder 0 when partitioning a solaris
disk for TSM Raw volume usage, with or without volume manger.

You could also use 'FILE' device class and normal solaris file system
instead of random 'DISK' device class with raw volumes to make use of the
2.3 TB as a single large striped volume.

Check the mailing list achives to form your opinion on the pros/cons of
using DISK vs FILE device classes for large disk based storage pools...

Matthew Glanville




Lance Nakata <LNakata AT SLAC.STANFORD DOT EDU>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
05/30/2006 07:28 PM
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Subject
TSM 5.1.5.4 and raw Solaris Volume Manager partitions






I'm running a Sun V880 with Solaris 9 8/03 and TSM 5.1.5.4 server.
I used Solaris Volume Manager to stripe together two 1.2TB T3B disk
arrays, for a total usable area of about 2.3TB.  However, when I run
the command

TSMSERV1> define volume BKP.DSK /dev/md/rdsk/d70 formatsize=2421136

I get the following error:

ANR7807W Unable to get information for file /dev/md/rdsk/d70.
ANR9999D blkdisk.c(1032): ThreadId<21> ioctl, errno=25, (Inappropriate
ioctl for device).
ANR2404E DEFINE VOLUME: Volume /dev/md/rdsk/d70 is not available.

Question: does TSM support raw Solaris Volume Manager partitions?
Or is this more a problem with EFI disk labels?  Is there a way
around this issue if you want to use LUNs larger than 1TB?

Thanks,
Lance