Logical Volume Name Standards

This document describes the standards for assigning AIX Logical Volume (LV) names. A single standard has been developed for use in standalone, High Availability, and Disaster Recovery environments. This LV naming standard provides the mechanism to assign enterprise wide unique names to all AIX LV's and will eliminate naming conflicts in the event of a manual or automated failover, or if multiple instances of an application are running on a single server.

To assign enterprise wide unique LV names, the system administrator must first define the resource groups names. Once the resource group names have been defined, then a Volume Group (VG) must be defined based on the RG name. After the VG has been created, LV's can be assigned. A VG will typically contain several LV's, and each LV will be named based on the resource group to which it is associated.

To define a LV name, obtain the 8 character resource group name, then add a 4 digit logical volume sequence identifier that will uniquely identify the LV, followed by the characters "lv". The 4 digit LV sequence identifier will consist of alpha-numeric characters and must always be exactly 4 characters in length. The LV name will always end with the characters "lv".

The LV name shall consist of exactly 14 characters with the following structure:

ApplicationCode + Environment + Function + Company + Sequence ID + LV Sequence ID + "lv"
     3 char     +    1 char   +  1 char  +  2 char +   1 char    +      4 char    + 2 char

As an example, a resource group named "egaaptu0", may have a volume group named "egaaptu00vg". This volume group may have multiple LV's associated with it:

RG Name Component	LV Sequence Identifier	LV Identifier	LV Name
egaaptu0	db20	lv	egaaptu0db20lv
egaaptu0	db21	lv	egaaptu0db21lv
egaaptu0	db22	lv	egaaptu0db22lv

JFS filesystems will require a logical volume for the JFS log. This must also have an enterprise wide unique name.

JFS Log Logical Volume Name Standards

The following is a description of the standards for assigning AIX JFS Log Logical Volume (JFS Log LV) names. A single standard has been developed for use in standalone, High Availability, and Disaster Recovery environments. This JFS Log LV naming standard provides the mechanism to assign enterprise wide unique names to all AIX JFS Log LV's and will eliminate naming conflicts in the event of a manual or automated failover, or if multiple instances of an application are running on a single server.

To assign enterprise wide unique JFS Log LV names, the system administrator must first define the resource groups names. Once the resource group names have been defined, then a Volume Group (VG) must be defined based on the RG name. After the VG has been created, JFS Log LV's can be assigned. A VG will typically contain one JFS Log LV's, however multiple JFS Log LV's can exist.

To define a JFS Log LV name, obtain the 8 character resource group name, then add the 4 digit logical volume sequence identifier that will uniquely identify the JFS Log LV, followed by the characters "lv". The 4 digit JFS Log LV sequence identifier will consist of the characters "jfs" followed by a single digit to uniquely identify the JFS Log LV. The JFS Log LV name will always end with the characters "lv".

The JFS Log LV name shall consist of exactly 14 characters with the following structure:

ApplicationCode + Environment + Function + Company + Sequence ID +  "jfs" + JFS Log Sequence ID + "lv"
     3 char     +    1 char   +  1 char  +  2 char +   1 char    + 3 char +       1 char        + 2 char

As an example, a resource group named "egaaptu0", may have a volume group named "egaaptu00vg". This volume group may have multiple JFS Log LV's associated with it:

RG Name Component	JFS Log LV Sequence ID	JFS Log LV ID	JFS Log LV Name
egaaptu0	jfs0	lv	egaaptu0jfs0lv
egaaptu0	jfs1	lv	egaaptu0jfs1lv
egaaptu0	jfs2	lv	egaaptu0jfs2lv

JFS filesystems will require a logical volume for the JFS log. This must also have an enterprise wide unique name.