Note: Before performing a Mirror Break or Mirror Remove operation, check the Tasks tab at the lower left of the VEA GUI to ensure that no mirror resync operations are in progress.

 

There are two methods that can be used to stop the mirroring of a volume:

- Mirror Break

- Mirror Remove

 

Both of these options are available in several locations in the Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA) console.

One method is to expand the left pane tree view of the VEA console as follows:

Host_Name > Volumes > Volume_Name

* Host_Name is the name of the host where the volume is currently online.
* Volume_Name is the name of the mirrored volume that is to be broken or removed

 

Once the mirrored volume is highlighted, right-click and select 'Mirror' which will then provide the 'Break' or 'Remove' option as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1


The explanations of both processes below should provide the needed information for determining which solution will be best used in the environment.

Mirror Break:
Breaking a Mirror takes away a Redundant Mirror (or Plex) of a volume and provides the option to leave the Plex that is broken off unmounted or to assign a new drive letter or drive path to it. The data on the Plex that is broken off is a snapshot of the original volume at the time of breaking. Breaking off a Plex of the mirrored volume does not delete the information, but it does mean that the plex that is broken off will no longer mirror information from the original Plex. Essentially, by selecting the option to Mirror Break, the Mirroring process is halted, where no additional data is written to the copy volume (Plex), and the Mirrored Volume and Original Volume are now completely separate entities, each with their own copy of the data.

Note: A plex is simply an instance of a volume. A volume with 2 mirrors would contain 2 plexes. A volume with 4 mirrors would contain 4 plexes. When performing a mirror break operation on a 2 mirror volume, 1 plex would remain as the original volume, and one plex (the plex selected when running through the 'Mirror Break' wizard) would become a new volume with all the original mirrored volume data, up to the point of the break operation, in tact.

Mirror Remove:
Removing a mirror from a volume "removes" or destroys the data from the selected mirror (plex) and leaves the other mirror or mirrored plexes intact. After removing a mirror, the space on the disk used by the removed mirror becomes unallocated free space. By using the Mirror Remove process, the data on the Mirrored Volume and the Mirrored Volume itself are both completely removed from the environment.