Error Message

vxvm:vxconfigd: V-5-1-12223 Error in claiming /dev/sdclh: Too many open files

When disks attached to a system are in an "online invalid" state, the VxVM vxconfigd daemon will read these devices to confirm whether the underlying device(s) have  a VxVM Private region present on them. This cannot be avoided from a VxVM perspective.

 

To prevent such unwanted reads against the “online invalid” disks, the disks can be offlined.

NOTE: Do not offline any internal disks, only SAN attached devices reporting an "online invalid" state.

As "vxdmpadm exclude dmpnodename=" can be an expensive operation when a large number of LUNs and paths are presented.  The "vxdisk offline " command can be used instead to offline disks reporting an "online invalid" state. The "vxdisk online " command can be performed to online a disk or disks as required.

VMWare SNAPSHOTs taken against the VMWare datastore LUNs can still be accessed when in an offline state, as the underlying paths are still in an ENABLED state.

Products such as NetBackup will still be able to access the underlying sd# device paths.

Where a large number of online invalid disks are present, the user can create a file containing the device names to be offline/onlined:

# vxdisk -l filename offline

# vxdisk -l filename online

When using the -l filename option, disk access names can be specified through a file. Each line in the file should contain one disk access (da) name.

 

Sample syntax

To offline all emc and san disks, type:
 

vxdisk -q list | grep "online invalid" | egrep 'emc|san' | awk ' { print $1 }' > /tmp/disklist

vxdisk -l /tmp/disklist offline
 

NOTE: The offline state is not persistent across reboots.

Due to the CPU cycles required to manage 3 or more paths per DMPNODE, Veritas also recommends changing the DMP iopolicy from MinimumQ (default) to round-robin where possible.

# vxdmpadm setattr enclosure iopolicy=round-robin

 

 

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) & Veritas DMP (Dynamic Multipathing) monitors all generic devices presented to the host by default. Until a disk is initialized and managed by VxVM, the device will report an "online invalid" VxVM disk status.

VxVM uninitialized (online invalid & nolabel) disks can cause unwanted read activity to determine if the disk has a valid VxVM private region. In addition, intermittent hangs of vxconfigd and general slowness can be seen on systems where "online invalid" disks are presented. The vxdisksetup command is normally used to prepare the disk for use with Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM), although in some instances, disks will not be initialized for VxVM use and should not be initialized by VxVM. This includes Veritas Netbackup images and other raw devices.