How to reclaim hard disks and IP's in AIX?


 
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Operating Systems AIX How to reclaim hard disks and IP's in AIX?
# 1  
Old 01-12-2017
Wrench How to reclaim hard disks and IP's in AIX?

Hello

I recently received a request to reclaim hard disks and IP addresses within an AIX system(s). THe file systems are no longer in use and the client has indicated that it is OK to remove them and reclaim the disks and release the IP's. Now, since the file systems belong to a Volume group I am assuming I would need to take the VG offline and remove the file systems via smitty. Since the disk belongs to a SAN, I would need to remove the disk definition from ODM and erase the path. What I am looking for is an idea of what steps to follow in order to accomplish the task. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Joe
# 2  
Old 01-12-2017
Hello Joseph Sabo, indeed Welcome! Smilie

AIX is good because you cannot remove anything that the OS believes is in use so it protects itself. You can detach them at the SAN end, but that will cause hardware alerts.

Are you relinquishing all IP addresses? Is this part of a cluster perhaps?

I presume you mean that you want to reclaim the disks/LUNs for use on other servers/partitions so:
  • You cannot remove these safely from AIX without them being removed from the relevant volume group.
  • You cannot remove them from the volume group unless they are empty (no logical volumes)
  • You cannot remove the logical volumes if they are in use as either raw devices (such as for a database) or as formatted and mounted filesystems.
  • You cannot unmount filesystems if they are in use, i.e. open files or any process with their current directory within the tree.

Before going through the process to unwind them, will anything be left of the server at the end of this or is it being turned off? If so, shut it down and use the SAN to detach/dis-associate the LUNs from the client AIX node (or whatever terminology your SAN uses) To reuse the server at a later date, you would be best to re-install over the root volume group so that it doesn't try to use devices that have been removed or use IP addresses that may have been reallocated elsewhere.


If you need to do a partial removal, it would be helpful to know what we're dealing with. Can you share the output (pasted in CODE tags) from the following:-
Code:
oslevel -s
df
lsvg
lsvg -p each volume group in turn
lsvg -l each volume group in turn
lspv


Thanks, in advance,
Robin

Last edited by rbatte1; 01-12-2017 at 10:36 AM.. Reason: Added welcome
# 3  
Old 01-12-2017
Hi Robin, and thank you for replying so quickly.

Code:
oslevel -s
6100-09-06-1543

This is the disk in question. THe command resulted in over 100 disks being displayed.

Code:
lspv
hdisk9          <disk_id>                    <vg_name>        active

as for the rest of the outputs you requested, I would need client permission to post it. I can say that for this server, there are 4 LV's and they all belong to on VG. Hdisk9 is the only disk belonging to this VG. There are 3 servers in all, so whatever i do on one can be replicated for the others.

Code:
<vg_name>:
LV NAME             TYPE       LPs     PPs     PVs  LV STATE      MOUNT POINT
lv_name         jfs2log    1       1       1    open/syncd    
lv_name         jfs2       7       7       1    open/syncd    
lv_name         jfs2       64      64      1    closed/syncd  
lv_name         jfs2       223     223     1    open/syncd    
lv_name         jfs2       6       6       1    open/syncd    
lv_name         jfs2       6       6       1    open/syncd

As for the IP, the file systems are databases that have been decommissioned, so there is 1 IP related to the lv's.

---------- Post updated at 09:56 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:54 AM ----------

Also Robin, this is only an FS, the server will remain in service as it is being used for other things as well. So this is a partial removal.

Thanks again

Joe

Last edited by rbatte1; 01-12-2017 at 11:22 AM.. Reason: Changed icode tags everywhere to code tags
# 4  
Old 01-12-2017
Can we have the output from the other commands too please? They are:-
Code:
df
lsvg -p each volume group in turn

Please wrap the output in CODE tags, not ICODE tags. Use the icon that is a white square and has black "co" over "de" on it, rather than the </> one, thanks. I've changed them in your post.

I'm a bit confused by this:-
Quote:
As for the IP, the file systems are databases that have been decommissioned, so there is 1 IP related to the lv's.
I don't understand how an IP relates to a filesystem. If there are multiple IP addresses offered and there is no clustering in use, then you can just remove them. Can you additionally show us the output from:-
Code:
ifconfig -a


Thanks again,
Robin
# 5  
Old 01-12-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Sabo
Now, since the file systems belong to a Volume group I am assuming I would need to take the VG offline and remove the file systems via smitty. Since the disk belongs to a SAN, I would need to remove the disk definition from ODM and erase the path.
In AIX all (really all) filesystems are managed by a logical volume manager. As a rule of thumb you have:

- one or more filesystems belong to a volume group
- one or more disks provide the space for this volume group (each disk belongs to exactly one VG)

If a system is set up sensibly volume groups build logical groups of FSes, i.e. all FSes for one application are in one VG. Therefore you most probably want to remove all FSes from one VG.


If so:

- lsvg -p to get the disks belonging to the VG (man lsvg). Write these down.
- umount all the FSes in question.
- varyoff the VG after unmounting all the FSes in it. (man varyoffvg)
- export the VG (man exportvg)

The last command will remove the FS definitions from /etc/filesystems as well as the VG. Finally you can remove the disk(s) which (formerly) belonged to the VG:

- rmdev -Rdl <disk> (man rmdev)

Afterwards remove the zoning/LUNs and it might be necessary to remove the disks from the VIOS too (if they are vSCSI).

Finally do a cfgmgr on teh LPAR to make sure the disks are out of the system cleanly (if some artefacts are configured again you know you have more work to do).

Note, that there was a lot of assuming going on when writing this. In principle the procedure will cover the most common cases but you might have to change details for i.e. EMC SAN running PowerPath drivers, etc., so as long as we have no detailed description of your system we can#t tell you in all detail what to do and how.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
# 6  
Old 01-13-2017
Hello

@bakunin and @rbatte1 thank you for your responses.

@rbatte1, The request from my customer was that the database was decommissioned on three servers(LPARS) and that it was ok to remove the file systems (LV's) and reclaim the disks, which belong to a SAN. Because these disks belong to a SAN there is a cost to them, thus the reason for reclaiming them. Also included in the request was to reclaim one DNS and IP per server as it too was no longer needed. What the IP was used for, I do not know.


@bakunin - The setup on all three servers is that the list of 4 or 5 LV's belong to one volume group and each VG has 1 disk assigned to it with the expception of one VG, it has 2 disks. From the looks of it, the general how-to you posted is fine. I have a good direction I can follow. All I really need is concerning removing the IP.

Thank you

Joe
# 7  
Old 01-13-2017
If the IP address was offered as part of a cluster, then that makes a difference. Was this server perhaps part of an Oracle RAC or IBM PowerHA cluster other something similar?

Can we see the output from ifconfig -a?

The content of /etc/hosts might be useful too.

We might need to look at the output from other network commands to be sure, but we'll get to that later.
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