Solaris Volume Manager

Solaris Volume Manager (SVM; formerly known as Online: DiskSuite, and later Solstice DiskSuite) is a software package for creating, modifying and controlling RAID-0 (concatenation and stripe) volumes, RAID-1 (mirror) volumes, RAID 0+1 volumes, RAID 1+0 volumes, RAID-5 volumes, and soft partitions.

Version 1.0 of Online: DiskSuite was released as an add-on product for SunOS in late 1991; [cite web
url = http://egle.lanet.lv/ftp/unix/sun-info/sunflash/1991/Nov/35.12.solaris
title = SunSoft Announces Solaris Environment: The SMCC Perspective
accessdate = 2008-07-13
author = John McLaughlin
date = November 1991
work = The Florida SunFlash
publisher = ] the product has undergone significant enhancements over the years. SVM has been included as a standard part of the Solaris Operating System since Solaris 8 was released in February 2000.

SVM is similar in functionality to later software volume managers such as FreeBSD vinum, allowing "metadevices" (virtual disks) to be concatenated, striped or mirrored together from physical ones. It also supports soft partitioning, dynamic hotsparing, and growing metadevices. The mirrors support dirty region logging (DRL, called resync regions in DiskSuite) and logging support for RAID-5.

The ZFS file system, added to Solaris in 2006, has its own integrated volume management capabilities, but SVM will continue to be included with Solaris for use with other file systems.

See also

*Logical volume management
*Sun Microsystems

References

External links

* [http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4520 Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide]
* [http://www.eng.auburn.edu/pub/mail-lists/ssastuff/sdsvxvm.html Comparisons of Disksuite vs Veritas Volume Manager]
* OpenSolaris Community: [http://opensolaris.org/os/community/volume_manager/ Solaris Volume Manager]
** [http://opensolaris.org/os/community/volume_manager/files/svm_history.pdf/ Solaris Volume Manager: History]