How to re-configure a data disk into a VG

[SF_learner]

Hi Team,

I have a AIX 5.3 server with veritas 5.1, on which 2 disks (hdisk 4,5) are part of oravg. with VXFS file system.
All data residing on hdisk4 and mirror with hdisk5.  
We had activity for replacing faulty disk 5 and I followed below steps.

1. unmirrorvg oravg hdisk5
2. reducevg oravg hdisk5
3. rmdev -Rdl /dev/hdisk4 ----> here in place of hdisk 5, by mistake hdisk 4 is removed.

Now my query is if I insert the disk again and configure the VG will I get data of hdisk 4 ?
Or Do I need to follow some certain steps for getting data again. 

[Gaurav_S · Accepted solution]

Hi,

though this is more of AIX stuff but from my assumption I would say rmdev doesn't deletes the data unless there has been writes made on disk is any other way ... rmdev is removing the device from device tree just like "vxdisk rm" in Veritas, refer below link

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v7r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.aix.cmds%2Fdoc%2Faixcmds4%2Frmdev.htm

From little googling, I understand that you can use "cfgmgr" to import VG back & you need to remember atleast one PVID from that VG & major number of the VG to import VG on same name. This should get back disk in device tree.

from vxfs point of view, if the superblock in intact (i.e disk was simply removed from device tree & brought back in), data should still be intact.

I understand from above that by mistake incorrect disk name was mentioned, did you actually loose the data ?

G

[mikebounds · Accepted solution]

As you did not remove disk from vg (i.e you didn't run "reducevg oravg hdisk4"), then I would think if you do a cfgmgr, then this will do a rescan and add the device back in, but you may need to deactivate and activate the diskgroup to get data back.  As cfgmgr and reactivating diskgroup do not remove anything, I can't see any downside of trying this.

Mike