Tag: LUN

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Changing the PVID of a Physical Volume

Each physical volume used by AIX LVM has a unique physical volume ID, or PVID for short. The PVID is a software-generated ID that is stored in the header area of a disk (block 0). When a new disk is added to an AIX system, the new physical volume does not yet have a PVID. As soon as a physical volume is added to a volume group, a PVID is automatically generated if the physical volume should not already have a PVID. An already existing PVID is adopted.

A PVID can also be created manually, using the chdev command. The pv attribute is set to the value yes:

# chdev -l hdisk3 -a pv=yes
hdisk3 changed
#

The set PVID can be displayed either with the lsattr command or simply with lspv:

$ lsattr -El hdisk3 -a pvid -F value
00c276b0084049750000000000000000
$
$ lspv |grep hdisk3
hdisk3          00c276b008404975                    None                       
$

A PVID can also be removed again. However, the physical volume must not be in use for this (e.g. as part of a volume group).

To clear a PVID of a physical volume, the pv attribute can be set to the value clear:

# chdev -l hdisk3 -a pv=clear
hdisk3 changed
#

The PVID has been removed as shown by the following outputs:

$ lsattr -El hdisk3 -a pvid -F value
none
$
$ lspv |grep hdisk3
hdisk3          none                                None                       
$

Attempting to delete the PVID of a physical volume that is in use, results in the following error message:

# chdev -l hdisk0 -a pv=clear
Method error (/usr/lib/methods/chgdisk):
        0514-062 Cannot perform the requested function because the
                 specified device is busy.
     pv    

#
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Determining the Size of a Physical Volume

There are a number of different ways to determine the size of a physical volume (disk, LUN) under AIX.

If you have root privileges, you can use the bootinfo command with the “-s” (size) option:

#  bootinfo -s hdisk0
51200
#

The size of the physical volume is given in MB. In the example 51,200 MB or about 50 GB.

Without root privileges, the getconf command can be used. With this command, system-wide configuration parameters as well as device-specific variables can be displayed. The device-specific variable DISK_SIZE can be used to display the size of a physical volume. The physical volume in question is specified by the absolute path of the physical volume’s block or character device file:

$ getconf DISK_SIZE /dev/hdisk0
51200
$

Here, too, the size is given in MB.

Another option, which again requires root privileges, is to use the lsmpio command. The command offers the option “-q” (query) to display data about an MPIO storage device:

# lsmpio -ql hdisk0
Device:  hdisk0
…
           Capacity:  50.00GiB
…
#

The size is directly displayed in GB (GiB) this time.

If the physical volume is part of a volume group, the lspv command can also be used to at least estimate the size:

$ lspv hdisk0
…
TOTAL PPs:          199 (50944 megabytes)    VG DESCRIPTORS:   2
…                                      
$

The area that can be used for data is specified here (50,944 MB), the physical volume itself is somewhat larger, since space is also used for administrative information.