You want to expand an existing device by 1T or you are adding 1T worth of devices to your device group ?

you can obtain the steps from Symmetrix DMX Procedure Generator found at:


Home > Support > Product and Diagnostic Tools > Symmetrix Tools > Symmetrix Procedure Generator

1) create metas
2) map devices to FAs
3) mask devices to host WWNs (i am not sure if you need to mask BCV, depends if you use them for backups, reporting ..etc)
4) create temporary device group and add new STD and BCV to it.
5) perform full establish
6) once fully established, look at devices status of existing production group, if all devices are in synced state ..simply move your devices from temporary group into your production group (symld -g tempgroup moveall prodgroup -rename). If devices in prod group are split ..you need to split devices in your temporary group and then move them to production group. That way all devices are in consistent state and it will not tank your daily sync job.

Let us know if you need help with specific steps. No outage is required for any of these steps.

I want to add additional 1TB to the existing sym group ...

I have 100 STD =====100 BCV already .....

i want to add to this group....is there any outage required for doing this or it can be done online?

Also I need the steps for doing this..

I want to add additional 1TB to the existing sym group ...

I have 100 STD =====100 BCV already .....

i want to add to this group....is there any outage required for doing this or it can be done online?

Also I need the steps for doing this..

i want step creating meta/map/mask for STD as well as BCV and adding to the existing symdg group... and it should be part of daily incremental sync...do we need full sync STD to BCV when we add to the DG?

Thanks for the details reply

can you send the steps for adding to the existing sym group?
the time associated with production to BCV Sync is not a concern at this point.

I have completed the meta creation through EMC control center.

is the meta creation for BCV also same like STD?

mapping /masking for BCV same as STD? while we add to sydg ,any operation will effect production data? i need to also map and mask the BCV to another two host.

After meta creation what are the exact steps?

do we have to add to symdg after mapping and masking or before mapping and masking..

I have my sync/split script running on different host than the
symmetrix management host, is there anything to take care for that..?

if you created a temporary group for new STD and BCV devices and you are ready to move them into production group after they have been fully established, the command is:

symld -g temp_dg moveall prod_dg -rename
symbcv -g temp_dg moveall prod_dg -rename

in this example you are moving STD and BCV devices from temporary group to production while renaming logical devices names at the same time. If your production group looks like this:

   Standard (STD) Devices (5):
        {
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                      Sym               Cap
        LdevName              PdevName                Dev  Att. Sts     (MB)
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
        DEV001                N/A                     037E (M)  RW      4313
        DEV002                N/A                     065C      RW      8632
        DEV003                N/A                     065D      RW      8632
        DEV004                N/A                     065E      RW      8632
        DEV005                N/A                     065F      RW      8632
        }
 
    BCV Devices Locally-associated (5):
        {
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                      Sym               Cap
        LdevName              PdevName                Dev  Att. Sts     (MB)
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
        BCV001                N/A                     080B (M)  NR      4313
        BCV002                N/A                     07D0      NR      8632
        BCV003                N/A                     07D1      NR      8632
        BCV004                N/A                     0969      NR      8632
        BCV005                N/A                     096A      NR      8632
        

and your temporary group looks like this:

    Standard (STD) Devices (2):
        {
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                      Sym               Cap
        LdevName              PdevName                Dev  Att. Sts     (MB)
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
        DEV001                N/A                     014E      RW      8632
        DEV002                N/A                     014F      RW      8632
        }
 
    BCV Devices Locally-associated (2):
        {
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                      Sym               Cap
        LdevName              PdevName                Dev  Att. Sts     (MB)
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
        BCV001                N/A                     0239      NR      8632
        BCV002                N/A                     023A      NR      8632
        }

after you complete the move steps with "-rename" option your production group will look like this:

    Standard (STD) Devices (7):
        {
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                      Sym               Cap
        LdevName              PdevName                Dev  Att. Sts     (MB)
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
        DEV001                N/A                     037E (M)  RW      4313
        DEV002                N/A                     065C      RW      8632
        DEV003                N/A                     065D      RW      8632
        DEV004                N/A                     065E      RW      8632
        DEV005                N/A                     065F      RW      8632
        DEV006                N/A                     014E      RW      8632
        DEV007                N/A                     014F      RW      8632
 
    BCV Devices Locally-associated (7):
        {
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                      Sym               Cap
        LdevName              PdevName                Dev  Att. Sts     (MB)
        --------------------------------------------------------------------
        BCV001                N/A                     080B (M)  NR      4313
        BCV002                N/A                     07D0      NR      8632
        BCV003                N/A                     07D1      NR      8632
        BCV004                N/A                     0969      NR      8632
        BCV005                N/A                     096A      NR      8632
        BCV006                N/A                     0239      NR      8632
        BCV007                N/A                     023A      NR      8632

identical, if you are creating striped STD meta ..you have to create striped BCV meta. Meta member count has to be the same too.



exactly the same steps for masking STD and BCV devices. Adding new devices will not effect production. The only thing that i mentioned in my last post is before you move devices from temporary group to production .. make sure devices in temporary group are in the same TimeFinder state (either split or established) as production. This way if your script issues commands against device group it will not tank saying "device is already in specified state" or something of that nature.



you have to map devices to your FAs and mask them to your hosts. The steps are explained in great details in "Symmetrix DMX Procedure Generator"



it does not matter, your choice.


you will need to update these hosts with new devices. If your management host contains the group that has all devices in it, then you export this device group to a file and import it on the other hosts. To export device group on the management host you will need to run "symdg export prod_dg -f prod_dg.txt -sid 123". This steps creates a file called prod_dg.txt that contains your STD and BCV devices. You can actually open it vi or notepad and see it's content. There are some situations where it's good to know it's content and know that you modify it. Now you will need to copy this file to your other systems (ftp, rcp, ssh ..etc). If your device group names are identical between your managment host and other system, you will first need to delete the device group and then import it from the file. So on one of the other hosts you first run "symdg export prod_dg -f prod_dg_backup.txt -sid 123" to create a backup of your existing group, then you run "symdg delete prod_dg -force". This step deletes this device group. Next you run "symdg import prod_dg -f prod_dg.txt". At this point if you run symdg list -sid 123, you will see your brand new device group that should identical as the one on your management host.

awesome ... this is very good explanation..thans for all the help..

This should be also correct if i add to existing group instead of creating new temporary dg?

symld -g prod_group add devs
symbcv -g prod_group associate dev symid

then normal sync/split ( which is incremental in my case ) will take care of the Establish and split.. that looks like easy to me. but dont know any issues with that.

Then import the DG and populate to all servers which are using this device group

the new STD and BCV devices have to by fully established, so you have two choices, either create a temporary group and run "symmir -g temp_group" establish -full" or add new devices to the production group and "symmir -g prod_group establish -full DEV005 BCV ld BCV005 DEV006 BCV ld BCV006". Here i am doing a full establish on two new STD devices. If your daily timefinder scripts simply runs the establish command against your production group ..it will fail when it gets to your newly added devices unless you fully establish them prior.

if you dont prefer to import a tempdg then do a full sync using "file based"(put the entr of STD and BCV on a file) and once est/spit then go ahead with symld&symbcv steps metioned above

"symld -g tempgroup moveall prodgroup -rename"

Is this necessary to use "-rename" option while moving to prod_gp? does this add (append) the new devices to existing group?

As i'm a child learning symmetrix please explain

"you will first need to delete the device group and then import it from the file. So on one of the other hosts you first run "symdg export prod_dg -f prod_dg_backup.txt -sid 123" to create a backup of your existing group, then you run "symdg delete prod_dg -force". This step deletes this device group. Next you run "symdg import prod_dg -f prod_dg.txt". -- deleting and importing device group we require scheduled down time? Am I right?

Thank you so much

yes, it will append them to the existing group. You want to use rename otherwise you will get conflict since DEV001 in your temp group already exists in your prod group.




not necessarily. If you don't' have any scheduled scripts running against this group you can do it any time.

I have question on how the logical number ( eg: DEV001 ,DEV002)
getting allocated . is the the order in which we add to the device group? or
we can explicitly specify the name.

When I execuetd the folllowing command ( no where in the command we are mentioning the SV name , then how it is associating to a particular SV?

synbcv -g tempdg associate dev 0A5E ...

Another question is how much time it will take to full establish /split 1TB data?

yes, it's the order in which you add them to the group, default names are DEV001, DEV002 ..etc, but you can assign your own names ..for example:

symld -g prod_group add dev 0BAD newSTD

so when you run symdg show prod_group ..you will see one device named newSTD. When you add new devices to a device group ..it will use the next available logical name. When you run your symmir establish command you can pass a couple of different arguments. For example you can pass "-exact" option that will tell TimeFinder to pick STD to BCV relationship just like it's listed in the device group. Meaning DEV001 will be paired to BCV001. Another option is to use "-opt" flag. It applies to the full establish operation that optimizes the standard/BCV pair selection to achieve the highest copy speed between them.(Basically, the device pair selection is such that they are not connected to the same disk adapters to distribute the I/O.)

Establish 1TB ? It depends ...i can't give you an answer because it depends on so many factors (DA number, backend layout, spindle count ..etc).

Adding 1TB in production and BCV in backup host

The steps followed:


Outage is not required for doing this on any of the host if the Operating system detectes devices without reboot.

I put each source device and target device in a file
and did symmir -sid 1377 -file establish
and then split.

map and mask all STD volume to production host
and map and mask all bcv devices to backup host.

Once it is in split state i added each device in
my existing symdg.

My existing script which does the normal routine establish /split took care of future establish /split.