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Moving, Splitting, and Joining Subdisks

The commands Subdisk Move, Split, and Join, enable you to move subdisks to other locations within the dynamic group, split subdisks, and join them back together. The flexibility of moving subdisks, splitting them, and joining them lets you make best use of your disk space.

Moving a Subdisk


Note    You are not allowed to move a subdisk that is part of a boot or system volume.

The Subdisk Move procedure moves the contents of a volume subdisk from one disk to another. This is useful for moving portions of a volume to a different disk for improved performance.

If disk activities are heavily concentrated on one or a small number of disks in the storage subsystem, it may create bottlenecks. You can use the Subdisk Move and possibly the Subdisk Split command to spread out disk accesses more evenly across all the disks to balance the load.

You can use the Subdisk Move command to move all subdisks to healthier disks. The benefit of moving subdisks instead of copying the volumes is that you need only enough space on the receiving disks for the subdisks on the one failed disk, not for entire volumes that may span multiple disks. Another advantage is that there is no interruption in I/O.

Moving subdisks provides you with a flexible means of making adjustments in your storage system while it is up and running.

 
   To perform a subdisk move operation:

You can use the Object View window (Disk Groups > Object View) or the Volume to Disk Mapping window (Disk Groups > Disk/Volume Map) to view the subdisks and gaps on disks in a disk group. In the Object View window, you can move a subdisk by placing the pointer over the subdisk and then pressing and holding the mouse button to drag the subdisk to another location.
To display the subdisk in the right pane, click on its volume in the tree view, and then click on the Subdisks tab in the right pane. The subdisks for that volume will display. You can use the Subdisks Properties command to further identify the characteristics of a volume’s subdisks.
  1. Identify the subdisk that you want to move and display it in the right pane. Right-click on the subdisk you want to move to bring up its context menu.
  2. Select Move from the context menu.
  3. The welcome screen of the Subdisk Move wizard appears. Click Next to continue.
  4. In the screen that appears next, choose either automatic or manual selection of the destination disk for the subdisk to be moved and click Next.
  5. Leave the default value of “Auto assign destination disks” if you want the program to assign the destination disk.
    If you want to select the destination disk, click “Manually assign destinations disks.
  6. If you selected the manual assignment of the destination disk, an extra screen appears. Select the hard disk you wish to move the subdisk to and click Next.

  7. Note    VxVM automatically checks the state of the data before beginning the subdisk move. If the data is degraded, the subdisk can still be moved. After moving, you will need to reactivate the disk to clear the degraded setting.
  8. The final screen of the Subdisk Move wizard appears. Click Finish to complete the command.
  9. After you have provided all necessary information in the dialog box, click OK.

    Notes:



Splitting a Subdisk

The Subdisk Split command allows you to split a subdisk. After the subdisk is split, the resulting two subdisks will reside on the same section of the same disk. You can then use the Subdisk Move command to move one or both subdisks to other disks. You may want to split and move a subdisk to make the best use of your disk space. A split subdisk can be joined back together again with the Subdisk Join command.

You can use the Object View window (Disk Groups > Object View) or the Volume to Disk Mapping window (Disk Groups > Disk/Volume Map) to view the subdisks in a disk group. You can use the Volume Layout Details window (Volumes > Show Layout) to view subdisks in a specific volume.

 
   To split a subdisk into multiple subdisks

  1. Identify the subdisk that you want to split and display it in the right pane.
  2. Right-click on the subdisk you want to split to bring up its context menu.
  3. Select Split from the context menu.
  4. The welcome screen of the Subdisk Split wizard appears. Click Next to continue.
  5. In the next screen that comes up, specify the subdisk size for the first of the two subdisks and Click Next.
  6. The remaining space left over will be assigned to the second subdisk. For example, if the original subdisk was 100 MB and you assigned 40 MB to the first subdisk, the other subdisk will be 60 MB.
  7. The final screen of the Subdisk Split wizard appears. Click Finish to complete the command.
  8. After a few moments, two subdisks will appear in the right pane of the Volume Manager GUI.
    Notes:




Joining a Subdisk

The Subdisk Join procedure joins two or more subdisks together to form a single larger subdisk. Subdisks can only be joined together if they belong to the same volume and occupy adjacent regions of the same disk and mirror. You can join two subdisks that had been one subdisk but that were split by the Subdisk Split command. You cannot split a subdisk and join it back to another subdisk that it was not split from. There also has to be room on the disk for the two subdisks.

You can use the Object View window (Disk Groups > Object View) or the Volume to Disk Mapping window (Disk Groups > Disk/Volume Map) to view the subdisks in a disk group. You can use the Volume Layout Details window (Volumes > Show Layout) to view subdisks in a specific volume.

 
   To join subdisks

  1. Identify one of the two subdisks that you want to join and display it in the right pane.
  2. Right-click on the subdisk you want to join to bring up its context menu.
  3. Select Join from the context menu.
  4. The welcome screen of the Subdisk Join wizard appears. Click Next to continue.
  5. In the screen that comes up next, select the subdisks to be joined together and click Next.
  6. The final screen of the Subdisk Join wizard appears. Click Finish to complete the command.
  7. Within a short time, the two subdisks will be replaced in the right pane of the Volume Manager GUI with one subdisk.
    After you have provided all necessary information in the dialog box, click OK.
    Notes:






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