Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide

ProcedureHow to Expand Storage Capacity for Existing Data

Caution – Caution –

Do not create volumes larger than 1Tbyte if you expect to run the Solaris software with a 32-bit kernel. Additionally, do not create volumes larger than 1 Tbyte if you expect to use a version of the Solaris OS prior to the Solaris 9 4/03 release. See Overview of Multi-Terabyte Support in Solaris Volume Manager for more information about multi-terabyte volume support in Solaris Volume Manager.

Before You Begin

Check Prerequisites for Creating Solaris Volume Manager Components and Background Information for Creating RAID-0 Volumes.

  1. Unmount the file system.

    # umount /filesystem
  2. To create a concatenation, use one of the following methods:

    • From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose Action⇒Create Volume, then follow the instructions in the wizard. For more information, see the online help.

    • Use the following form of the metainit command:

      # metainit volume-name number-of-stripes

      Specifies is the name of the volume to create.


      Specifies the number of stripes to create.


      Specifies the number of components each stripe should have.


      Specifies the names of the components that are used. If more than one component is used, separate each component with a space.


  3. Edit the /etc/vfstab file so that the file system references the name of the concatenation.

  4. Remount the file system.

    # mount /filesystem

Example 9–5 Expanding a File System by Creating a Concatenation

# umount /docs
# metainit d25 2 1 c0t1d0s2 1 c0t2d0s2
d25: Concat/Stripe is setup
(Edit the /etc/vfstab file so that the file system  references the volume d25 instead of slice c0t1d0s2)
# mount /docs

This example shows the creation of a concatenation, d25, out of two slices, /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s2 (which contains a file system mounted on /docs) and /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s2. The file system must first be unmounted. Note that the first slice in the metainit command must be the slice that contains the file system. If not, you will corrupt your data.

Next, the entry for the file system in the /etc/vfstab file is changed (or entered for the first time) to reference the concatenation. For example, initially, the following line appears in the /etc/vfstab file:

/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s2 /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2 /docs ufs 2 yes -

This line should be changed to the following:

/dev/md/dsk/d25 /dev/md/rdsk/d25 /docs ufs 2 yes -

Finally, the file system is remounted.

See Also

For a UFS file system, run the growfs command on the concatenation. See How to Expand a File System.

Some applications, such as a database, do not use a file system. An application such as a database uses the raw concatenation and must have its own way of recognizing the concatenation, or of growing the added space.