Solstice DiskSuite Soft Partitions

Solaris Volume Manager provides the ability to create more partitions than the limit of 7 using traditional partitions. Such partitions are called soft partitions.

This post provides use of the commands by example:

  • Creating a soft partition The following commands will create a 4gb soft-partition device name /dev/md/dsk/d101 from partition c3t1d0s0:
    # metainit <name> -p <dev> <size>
    # metainit d101 -p c3t1d0s0 4g
  • Viewing details of all soft partitions
    # metastat
  • Viewing the details of a single soft partition
    # metastat d101
  • Deleting a single soft partition
    # metaclear d101
  • Deleting all soft partitions on a traditional partition
    # metaclear -p c3t1d0s0