Chapter 7

Creating volumes

This chapter describes how to create volumes in Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM). Volumes are logical devices that appear as physical disk partition devices to data management systems. Volumes enhance recovery from hardware failure, data availability, performance, and storage configuration.

Note: You can also use the Veritas Intelligent Storage Provisioning (ISP) feature to create and administer application volumes. These volumes are very similar to the traditional VxVM volumes that are described in this chapter. However, there are significant differences between the functionality of the two types of volume that prevents them from being used interchangeably. Refer to the Veritas Storage Foundation Intelligent Storage Provisioning Administrator’s Guide for more information about creating and administering ISP application volumes.

Volumes are created to take advantage of the VxVM concept of virtual disks. A file system can be placed on the volume to organize the disk space with files and directories. In addition, you can configure applications such as databases to organize data on volumes.

Note: Disks and disk groups must be initialized and defined to VxVM before volumes can be created from them. See Administering disks” on page 77 and Creating and administering disk groups” on page 165 for more information.