Answers to Interview Questions on Veritas Volume Manager

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Thanks to Ashish Pathak for all the questions and also answers to Interview questions on Veritas Volume Manager.

# Name the mandatory disk group in VxVM 3.5 ? How will you configure VxVM in 3.5 ?
ANS: rootdg is the mandatory disk group in VxVM 3.5, vxinstall is the command to configure VxVM, It will create the disk groups, initializes the disks and adds them to the group.

# How will you create private and shared disk group using VxVM ?
ANS: For Private DG:
Command: vxdg init

For Shared DG:
Command: vxdg -s init < disk1 disk2 disk3 >

# Which are the different layouts for volumes in VxVM ?
ANS: mirror, stripe, concat (default one), raid5, stripe-mirror, mirror-stripe.

# What is the basic difference between private disk group and shared disk group ?
ANS: Private DG: The DG which is only visible for the host on which you have created it, if the host is a part of cluster, the private DG will not be visible to the other cluster nodes.
Shared DG: The DG which is sharable and visible to the other cluster nodes.

# How will you add new disk to the existing disk group ?
ANS: Run vxdiskadm command, which will open menu driven program to do various disk operations, select add disks option or you can use another command vxdiskadd.

# How will you grow/shrink the volume/file system ? What is the meaning of growby and growto options ? What is the meaning on shrinkto and shrinkby options ?
ANS: vxassist command is used to do all volume administration, following is the description and syntax.

Growby option: This is will grow your file system by adding new size to the existing file system.

Growto option: This will grow your file system as per the new size. This WILL NOT ADD new size to the existing one.

Shrinkby option: This will shrink your file system by reducing new size from existing file system.

Shrinkto option: This will shrink your file system as per the new size. This WILL NOT REDUCE the file system by reducing new size.

Command:
vxassist -g [growto, growby, shrinkto, shrinkby] length

# How will you setup and unsetup disks explicitly using VxVM ?
ANS: You can use /etc/vx/bin/vxdiskunsetup to unsetup the disk, and /etc/vx/vxdisksetup to setup the disk.

# How will you list the disks, which are in different disk groups ?
ANS: vxdisk list is the command will list the disks from the DG which is currently imported, you can check the same using vxprint command too. vxdisk -o alldgs list command list all the disks which are in different dg's.

# What is the private region in VxVM ?
ANS: Private region stores the structured VxVM information, it also stores the disk ID and disk geometry. In short words it has metadata of the disk.

# If, vxdisk list command gives you disks status as "error", what steps you will follow to make the respective disks online ?
ANS: If you faced this issue because of fabric disconnection then simply do vxdisk scandisks, otherwise unsetup the disk using using /etc/vx/bin/vxdiskunsetup and setup the disks again using /etc/vx/bin/vxdisksetup, this will definitely help! [ /etc/vx/bin/vxdiskunsetup will remove the private region from the disk and destroys data, backup the data before using this option]

I am greatly thankful to Ashish Pathak ashish.rp AT gmail.com for emailing & contributing this real interview questions on Veritas Volume Manager

Interview questions on Veritas Volume Manager

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Veritas Volume Manager Overview


Some good questions on VERITAS Volume Manager. Before asking these questions make sure that candidate is familiar with LVM or VxVM and knows the benefits of these tools over traditional partitioning/file system.

1. Name the mandatory disk group in VxVM 3.5 ? How will configure VxVM in 3.5 ?
2. How will you create private and shared disk group using VxVM ?
3. Which are the different layouts for volumes in VxVM ?
4. What is the basic difference between private disk group and shared disk group ?
5. How will you add new disk to the existing disk group ?
6. How will grow/shrink the volume/file system ? What is the meaning of growby and growto options ? What is the meaning on shrinkto and shrinkby options ?
7. How will you setup and unsetup disks explicitly using VxVM ?
8. How will list the disks, which are in different disk groups ?
9. What is private region in VxVM ?
10. If, vxdisk list command gives you disks status as "error", what steps you will follow to make the respective disks online ?

These are some questions which I feel every storage professional should know. Please let me know if these are useful, answers will be posted in coming posts.

THANKS ASHISH FOR CONTRIBUTING ABOVE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ON VERITAS VOLUME MANAGER