replacing mirror disk

Hi Admins,

I am new into aix.I was surfing aix pages and reading how to replace failed mirror disks.I read in one of the posts that we have to reboot the server to replace the disk. actually i was a HPUX admin and many times replaced root mirror disk online.Ofcourse it was hot swappable.

Now i have not checkd my aix disks are hot swappable or not.and OS version is 5.3. Need i reboot server to replace disk in aix 5.3.. please explain in detail.

Regards
newaix

As far as I am concerned the simple answer is no you do not have to reboot! First you unmirror rootvg; then withdraw the offending disk with reducevg; delete the disk the rmdev; if the disk is hot swap then withdraw the disk and replace it, however if the disk is not hot swap the system will need to be shutdown and the disk replaced. Once the system is restarted add the new disk to rootvg with the extendvg command and remirror to the new drive. Once this is complete do not forget to set the bosboot and bootlist.

That is that!

I will use rootvg as an example with hdisk0 and hdisk1, where hdisk1 will be the failing one. This manual suppose that failing disk hdisk1 is still available and not in missing state and is hot swap-able and secondary dump device is used on hdisk1.

  1. Unmirror rootvg
  1. Check where your primary/secondary sysdump logical volume goes
  1. If it goes to lv which is on failing hdisk1 redirect it for time being to /dev/sysdumpnull, see sysdumpdev
  1. Check if you have any logical volumes left on hdisk1
  1. If you have any logical volumes left on failing disk you can move them to hdisk0, if you need to (if you have secondary dump device present you can remove it with rmlv -f secondary_dump_device_lv_name)
  1. Reduce hdisk1 from rootvg
  1. Take location code of failing hdisk1
  1. Set hdisk1 in to define state
  1. Use diag to replace and identify failing hdisk1
  1. Once done add new replaced hdisk1 to rootvg
  1. Create secondary dump device on hdisk1 if needed and point second dump device to it (xx represent the size which should be and it can be calculated with command sysdumpdev -e (in bytes))
  1. Mirror rootvg
  1. Create boot image on hdisk1
  1. Add hdisk1 to bootlist
  1. Check bootlist

That should be all. If I forgot something please advice me.

Thank you.