ZFS vdev naming?

Question

I have no idea what is the rationale behind naming the vdev (virtual devices) used while creating zfs pools in Solaris. Suppose, I have a disk c4d0, what is meant by c4d0p0 and c4d0s0? And, how would I know what to use with ZFS commands. I am terribly confused since I keep getting "invalid vdev specified". Any pointers?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 24 '08 at 19:43

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c4d0s0 = controller 4, disk 0, slice 0

answered Dec 24 '08 at 19:43

Brian Knoblauch

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 24 '08 at 20:05

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If you want the full disk to be used by ZFS you would want to use the main disk name, c4d0 in your case.

answered Dec 24 '08 at 20:05

X-Istence

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 11 '09 at 07:20

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There is a very good article: "How Solaris disk device names work".
This might help.

answered Apr 11 '09 at 07:20

Cyberdrow

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 31 '09 at 13:06

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ZFS Best Practices Guide recommends using whole disk for production setup - so do what X-Istence said - use c4d0 without the slice number. With ZFs you can throw away all you know about partitioning - they are so 1990s!

answered Mar 31 '09 at 13:06

Lester Cheung

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ZFS vdev naming?

4 Answers4