DEC OSF/1 Logical Storage Manager CookBook

This document, the "DEC OSF/1 Logical Storage Manager CookBook," is an internal guide for understanding, configuring, and administering the Logical Storage Manager (LSM) within the DEC OSF/1 operating system. LSM, based on Veritas Logical Volume Manager, is presented as a robust, feature-rich component enabling concatenation, mirroring, striping, and online management of storage.

The guide introduces LSM's core concepts and architecture, detailing application and system administration views, command-line interfaces, configuration daemons, and key objects such as volumes, plexes, subdisks, and disk groups. It provides comprehensive instructions for manually and automatically configuring LSM, including starting error daemons, initializing vold, setting up the rootdg disk group, and managing system restarts. Practical examples illustrate how to use top-down (volassist), bottom-up (volmake), and informational (volprint) commands for various configurations, including big, mirrored, striped, and mirrored-striped volumes.

The document further elaborates on LSM's advanced features, such as mirroring for data availability (covering read/write policies, copies, block change logging, and failure behavior) and striping for I/O performance. It addresses considerations for large configurations, offering guidance on private regions, startup overhead, and managing multiple disk groups. A dedicated section provides extensive troubleshooting information for common issues like failed devices, disk errors, missing files, and process hangs. Finally, the guide covers LSM's integration with other technologies, including the Unix File System (UFS), Advanced File System (AdvFS), RAID5, and the Advanced Server Environment (ASE), providing details on volume management, pseudo online backups, and failover scenarios in these contexts.