Veritas Volume Manager state flowchart

While Troubleshooting Veritas Volume Manager, understanding volume and plex states is key part to investigate about the current issue related to the Veritas volumes.

The following diagram is derived from the VxVM Performance and Tuning course notes. Additional state paths have been added.

VxVM flowchart

VOLUME STATES

STATEMEANING
ACTIVE Volume is operational and online
CLEAN Volumes plexes are synched, but vol is not started
EMPTY Uninitialized (new volume)
NEEDS SYNC Volume needs to be synced when started
NO DEVICE No full plex exists due to it being missing or failed disk (or array turned off)
SYNC Volume state ENABLED: plexs being synched volume state DISABLED: plexs need to be synched

VOLUME KERNEL STATES

STATEMEANING
ENABLED Volume fully available
DISABLED Volume not usable
DETACHED Maintenance/resynch

RAID 5 STATES

STATEMEANING
ACTIVE Volume operational and online
CLEAN Volume consistent but has not been started
EMPTY Initialized volume (newly created volume)
NEED SYNC Volume needs parity sync(replay log) when started
SYNC Volume is ENABLED: parity is being synched Volume is DISABLED: parity needs to be synched
REPLAY Volume is running degraded. Log is being used. A stripe is lost (usually bad disk)

PLEX STATES

Old Kernel StateCommandNew Kernel State
(Any except) IOFAIL (Any) vxmend fix empty EMPTY DISABLED
(Disassociated) N/A vxplex att EMPTY DISABLED
ACTIVE (Any) vxmend fix stale STALE ENABLED
ACTIVE (Any) vxmend fix stale STALE DISABLED
ACTIVE DISABLED vxvol start ACTIVE ENABLED
ACTIVE ENABLED (system crash) ACTIVE DISABLED
ACTIVE ENABLED vxvol stop CLEAN DISABLED
ACTIVE ENABLED unrecoverable I/O error IOFAIL DETACHED
ACTIVE ENABLED vxmend off OFFLINE DISABLED
ACTIVE ENABLED vxplex det STALE ENABLED
CLEAN DISABLED vxvol start ACTIVE ENABLED
CLEAN DISABLED vxmend fix stale STALE DISABLED
EMPTY DISABLED vxvol init active ACTIVE ENABLED
EMPTY DISABLED vxvol init clean CLEAN DISABLED
IOFAIL DETACHED vxplex att ACTIVE ENABLED
OFFLINE DISABLED vxplex att STALE DETACHED
OFFLINE DISABLED vxmend on STALE DETACHED
RECOVER DETACHED vxrecover ACTIVE ENABLED
STALE DETACHED vxplex att vxvol start ACTIVE ENABLED
STALE DISABLED vxmend fix active ACTIVE (volume goes to sync) ENABLED
STALE DISABLED vxmend fix clean CLEAN ENABLED
STALE ENABLED vxvol start ACTIVE ENABLED
TEMP DETACHED vxvol start (DISASSOCIATED)