Use this page to specify a name for the volume group and
to specify properties for the volume group.
Fields

- Volume group name
- Specify a name for the volume group that is unique to the cluster
and that is the same across cluster nodes. The name you specify must
consist of 1 to 15 characters. You can use alphabetic characters of
A - Z and a - z, numbers of 0 - 9, and the underscore (_), minus sign
(-), and period (.) characters.
Note: If you do not specify a name,
the wizard selects a unique name in the form vg[nn],
where [nn] are numeric characters. These numeric
characters are selected incrementally based on any currently existing
volume group names in this format. For example, the wizard might select
a name of vg00 for the first volume group followed
by vg01 for the next volume group, and so on.
- Volume group type
- Select the type of volume group you want to create:
- Original
- Select this type to allow the volume group to be varied online
for more than one AIX® instance
at a time. This option is the default value.
- Scalable
- Select this type to allow the volume group to accommodate up to
1024 physical volumes, up to 256 logical volumes, and up to 32,768
physical partitions. This option, as well as other configuration properties,
is not available if you assigned the volume group to a resource group
with a startup policy of Online On All Available Nodes.
- Big
- Select this type to allow the volume group to accommodate up to
128 physical volumes and 512 logical volumes.
- Physical partition size (MB)
- Select or specify the size of each physical partition in megabytes.
For
a volume group type of scalable, select or
specify a value of 1 - 131072 that is equal to a power of 2. For all
other volume group types, select or specify a value of 1 - 1024 that
is equal to a power of 2.
If the volume group contains a physical
volume that is larger than 4.064 GB, you must select or specify a
physical partition size that is greater than 4 MB. The default physical
partition size is 4 MB.
- Maximum physical partitions (units of 1024)
- Select or specify the maximum number of physical partitions that
the volume group can accommodate. Valid values are 32, 64, 128, 256,
512 768, 1024, and 2048. You can set this value only for scalable
volume groups. The default value is 32 (32,768 partitions).
- Maximum logical volumes
- Select or specify the number of logical volumes that can be created
for the volume group. Valid values are 256, 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096.
You can set this value only for scalable volume groups. The default
value is 256.
- Enable fast disk takeover or concurrent access
- Select the enhanced concurrent mode properties that you want to
assign to the volume group.
Note: You cannot select any of these configuration
options for the volume group if you assigned it to a resource group
on the prior page. The only exception is if you assigned it to a resource
group that has a startup policy of Online On All Available Nodes.
If you assigned it to such a resource group, the Concurrent
access option is the default value, which you can change
only to the Critical concurrent access value.
Fast disk takeover
- Select this value to create a volume group that uses enhanced
concurrent mode. You must choose this value to allow the disks in
the volume group to be used for disk heartbeat. A heartbeat
is a signal that one entity sends to another to convey that it is
still active. Any shared disk in an enhanced concurrent mode volume
group can support a point-to-point heartbeat connection. Each disk
can support one connection between two nodes. The connection uses
the shared disk hardware as the communication path.
This value also
provides for fast disk takeover for the volume group
by PowerHA® SystemMirror. During
fast disk takeover, PowerHA SystemMirror skips
extra processing steps needed to take over the volume group in the
case of a node failure. As a result, the fast disk takeover method
for enhanced concurrent volume groups is faster than the disk takeover
method for standard volume groups.
- Concurrent access
- Select this value to create a volume group that uses enhanced
concurrent mode. This option is the default value if you assigned
the volume group to a resource group that has a startup policy of
Online On All Available Nodes.
- Critical concurrent access
Select this option to mark the volume group as critical
for high availability for concurrent access. 
- Enable mirror pools
Select whether to enable mirror pools for the volume
group. You can set this value only for scalable volume groups. If
you select Yes, you must also specify a name
for at least two mirror pools.
A mirror pool is
made up of one or more physical volumes. Each physical volume can
only belong to one mirror pool at a time. Therefore, mirror pools
make it possible to divide the physical volumes of a volume group
into separate pools and they provide the ability to restrict the disks
that a logical volume copy can use. 

Enable strict mirror pools
Specifies the mirror pool strictness policy for the
volume group, which is set to superstrict for
all volume groups. This setting requires the use of mirror pools on
each logical volume in the volume group. Partitions allocated for
one mirror pool cannot share a physical volume with the partitions
from another mirror pool. Consequently, all shared disks for the volume
group that you select on the next page of this wizard are included
in a mirror pool. Additionally, PowerHA SystemMirror enforces the
use of mirror pools to be superstrict. Therefore, you must specify
the names for a minimum of two mirror pools and a maximum of three
mirror pools in the volume group.
Mirror pool 1 name
Mirror pool 2 name
Mirror pool 3 name
Specify a name that is unique to the volume group for each mirror
pool to create. You must specify a name for at least two mirror pools.
The name you specify must consist of 1 - 15 alphanumeric characters.
You can use alphabetic characters of A - Z, a - z, and numbers of
0 - 9. This setting is available only if you select Yes for the Enable
mirror pools property.