VxVM Remove a volume

Remove a volume

Once a volume is no longer necessary (it is inactive and archived, for example), you can remove the volume and free up the disk space for other uses.

Before removing a volume, make sure you do the following:

1. Remove all references to the volume.
2. If the volume is mounted as a file system, unmount it with the command:
umount /dev/vx/dsk/volume_name
3. If the volume is listed in /etc/vfstab, remove its entry.
4. Make sure that the volume is stopped with the command:
vxvol stop volume_name
The vxvol stop command stops all VM activity to the volume.

After following these steps, remove the volume with this command:

vxedit rm volume_name

or

vxedit -rf rm volume_name

The -r option indicates recursive removal, which means the removal of all plexes associated with the volume and all subdisks associated with those plexes. The -f option forces removal, and is necessary if the volume is enabled.

Note: The -r option of vxedit removes multiple objects. Exercise caution when using it.

You can also remove an entire volume with the vxassist command. Use the keywords remove and volume and provide the volume name on the command line as shown in this example:

vxassist remove volume volume_name