Veritas™ Volume Manager Administrator's Guide

private region

A small area where configuration information is stored, including a disk header label, configuration records for VxVM objects, and an intent log for the configuration database.

The default private region size is 32 megabytes (except for VxVM boot disk groups where the private region size must be 1 megabyte), which is large enough to record the details of several thousand VxVM objects in a disk group.

Under most circumstances, the default private region size should be sufficient. For administrative purposes, it is usually much simpler to create more disk groups that contain fewer volumes, or to split large disk groups into several smaller ones.

If required, the value for the private region size may be overridden when you add or replace a disk using the vxdiskadm command.

Each disk that has a private region holds an entire copy of the configuration database for the disk group. The size of the configuration database for a disk group is limited by the size of the smallest copy of the configuration database on any of its member disks.

public region

An area that covers the remainder of the disk, and which is used for the allocation of storage space to subdisks.

auto

When the vxconfigd daemon is started, VxVM obtains a list of known disk device addresses from the operating system and configures disk access records for them automatically.

nopriv

There is no private region (only a public region for allocating subdisks). This is the simplest disk type consisting only of space for allocating subdisks. Such disks are most useful for defining special devices (such as RAM disks, if supported) on which private region data would not persist between reboots. They can also be used to encapsulate disks where there is insufficient room for a private region. The disks cannot store configuration and log copies, and they do not support the use of the vxdisk addregion command to define reserved regions. VxVM cannot track the movement of nopriv disks on a SCSI chain or between controllers.

simple

The public and private regions are on the same disk area (with the public area following the private area).

cdsdisk

The disk is formatted as a Cross-platform Data Sharing (CDS) disk that is suitable for moving between different operating systems. This is the default format for disks that are not used to boot the system. Typically, most disks on a system are configured as this disk type. However, it is not a suitable format for boot, root or swap disks, or for mirrors or hot-relocation spares of such disks.

hpdisk

The disk is formatted as a simple disk. This format can be applied to disks that are used to boot the system. The disk can be converted to a CDS disk if it was not initialized for use as a boot disk.