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Changing the Volume Group Factor value and Factor calculation

How To


Summary

This Technote is about the different Values of Volume Group Factor and how to calculate the required Factor based on the number of disks ((Max PVs)) and number of PPs on each disk, ((Max PPs per PV)) that you need.

Steps

The two common barriers people hit with Small and Big volume groups is the limit on the maximum number of disks in the volume group ("MAX PVs") and the limit on how many PPs can be on the disk which directly impacts how large a disk in the volume group can be ("MAX PPs per PV").

By default A Small VG is limited to 32512 physical partitions. (32 physical volumes, each with 1016 partitions) and Big VG is limited to 130048 physical partitions. (128 physical volumes, each with 1016 partitions) these limitation can prevent you from adding a big disk to your VG if your PP size is small, however you can change this limit with: chvg -t or in other words change the factor.

Let's say that you have a Small VG and you want to extend it with a PV with of size :- 200 GB

And you have a PP size of :- 128 MB

If we want to calculate the Number of PPs that this PV will be divided to it will be :- 204,800 MB/128MB =  1600 PPs. Given that the limit of 1016 is smaller than 1600, this PV will not be added to the VG. So how can we solve this limitation?

The issue that we have in the example above is that we want to add a big disk to the VG but we hit the 1016 PPs per PV limit. To solve that we will have to change the VG "Factor". The factor is a number between 1-16 for original volume groups, and between 1-64 for Big volume groups. As you increase the factor, the "MAX PVs" goes down and the "MAX PPs per PV" goes up. It is essentially a trade off:  if you would like larger disks, you can't have as many disks.  If you want more disks, they can't have as many PPs on them, The -t factor allows (factor * 1016) PPs per physical volume.
 

Small and Big VG

Factor

Max PVs for Small VG

Max PVs for
Big VG

Max PPs per PV

  1

32

128

1016

2

16

64

2032

3

10

42

3048

4

8

32

4064

5

6

25

5080

6

5

21

6096

7

4

18

7112

8

4

16

8128

9

3

14

9144

10

3

12

10160

11

2

11

11176

12

2

10

12192

13

2

9

13208

14

2

9

14224

15

2

8

15240

16

2

8

16256

for Big VG only

Factor

Max PVs for
Big VG

Max PPs per PV

17

7

17272

18

7

18288

19

6

19304

20

6

20320

21

6

21336

22

5

22352

23

5

23368

24

5

24384

25

5

25400

26

4

26416

27

4

27432

28

4

28448

29

4

29464

30

4

30480

31

4

31496

32

4

32512

33

3

33528

34

3

34544

35

3

35560

36

3

36576

37

3

37592

38

3

38608

39

3

39624

40

3

40640

41

3

41656

42

3

42672

43

2

43688

44

2

44704

45

2

45720

46

2

46736

47

2

47752

48

2

48768

49

2

49784

50

2

50800

51

2

51816

52

2

52832

53

2

53848

54

2

54864

55

2

55880

56

2

56896

57

2

57912

58

2

58928

59

2

59944

60

2

60960

61

2

61976

62

2

62992

63

2

64008

64

2

65024

The factor of a volume group can be changed with the "chvg -t" command.

How to know my Current VG factor :-

Factor = Max PPs per PV/1016 (where Max PPs per PV can be found by lsvg vgname)

How to calculate the factor value that I require :-

1 - Identify new disk size

2 - Identify the PP size defined for the VG

3 - First you will have to find :- Number of pps on the new disk that you want to add

          Number of pps on the new disk = disk size (PV) / your VG (PP) size (make sure your unit is the same)

          In our previous example :- 204,800 MB /128 MB =  1600

4 - Factor value = Number of pp’s on the new disk / 1016

          Factor value = 1600 / 1016 = 1.5 we take this value to the next available value which is = 2

         Required t - Factor value here = 2

This will limit the Max PVs in the VG to 16, and increase the Max PPs per PV to 2032 PP which is more than the required 1600 PP

In this case we will run the command

#chvg -t <factor> vgname

#chvg -t 2 vgname

 

Document Location

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Document Information

Modified date:
26 September 2021

UID

ibm16372976