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OpenSolaris Community: Solaris Volume Manager

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Community for the Solaris Volume Manager (SVM).

Solaris Volume Manager is an enterprise class logical volume manager available in Solaris. It lets you manage large numbers of disks and the data on those disks. Although there are many ways to use Solaris Volume Manager, most tasks include the following:

  • Increasing storage capacity
  • Increasing data availability
  • Easing administration of large storage devices

In some instances, Solaris Volume Manager can also improve I/O performance. Solaris Volume Manager evolved from another product called Solstice DiskSuite. While Solstice DiskSuite was not included as part of the Solaris OS, and instead was an unbundled product, Solaris Volume Manager is included with the Solaris OS.

Blogs

Sanjay Nadkarni Jerry Jelinek Andre Molyneux

Susan Kamm-Worrell Steve Peng Moriah Waterland

Basic Capabilities

  • Supports RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5
  • Support for online disk repair with hotspares
  • Multipath I/O capability supported with MPxIO
  • Manages storage grouped in disksets
  • Transparently supports disk relocation
  • Root mirroring
  • Seamless upgrades and live upgrades
  • Soft partitioning enables users to divide a disk or logical volume into thousands of volumes

Enterprise Features

  • Online maintenance with dynamic reconfiguration
  • Support for multi-terabyte volumes
  • Supports online volume and file system(UFS) expansion
  • RAID 1 (mirror)devices support logging by default to enable quick recovery
  • Ability to move volumes across systems
  • Supports remote replication of volumes
  • Cluster Volume Management capability.
  • Support for Oracle RAC.

Terminology

TermsDescription
mddb, replicaAll these refer to persistent configuration database
metadeviceAny logical volume is called a metadevice
hotspareA disk or a slice that is kept in reserve. Associated with either a mirror or a RAID-5 device.
hotspare poolA pool of hotspare devices
disksetsStorage pool
quorumTo avoid split brain scenarios, Solaris Volume Manager requires greater than 50% of the mddbs to agree. If this is met, quorum is achieved.