Why use metadevices in Solaris Disk Suite?

[Bes]

Hi

I have been put on a project where I have some Solaris boxes running Disk Suite and a RAID 1 configuration.

There are a number of metadevices and I am strugggling to understand why these metadevices actually exist. Would someone care to explain what role metadevices actually play/ what the point of them is?

Thanks

 

[Dave77]

Do you really mean Metadevices or meta db replicas? metadevices are just like a collection of disks/disk sections that are shown to Solaris as a virtual/logial device.

e.g. you could combine 5 disks into a single metadevice, then raid that with another one to create a mirror etc.

 

[sportq]

Hi

I have been put on a project where I have some Solaris boxes running Disk Suite and a RAID 1 configuration.

There are a number of metadevices and I am strugggling to understand why these metadevices actually exist. Would someone care to explain what role metadevices actually play/ what the point of them is?

Thanks

Solaris metadevices are really no different to Linux md's.

The metadevices combine physical disks into software RAID devices which could be of stripe, mirror or raid5 type.

On Solaris they have an extra function. A metadevice can be carved into soft-slices which are themselves metadevices. This allows more than the usual 7 slices that a Solaris partition table normally supports.

When it comes to actually using them, just like Linux, it's the metadevice file that you format and mount.

-Peter