How to access the storage unit volumes from an OpenVMS host

This section describes how you access the storage unit volumes from an OpenVMS host.

1. Start the host operating system.

   During the startup procedure, the operating system scans for fibre-channel storage devices and configures them automatically. If you have assigned new storage unit volumes to the host when the operating system was already running, use the following command to configure the new devices manually:

   MCR SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE/LOG

2. Initialize the storage unit volumes.

   On the OpenVMS platform, you can initialize storage unit volumes as ODS-2 or ODS-5 volumes. You can use the volumes to create volume sets. Volume sets are concatenated volumes that form a larger volume. See the HP document, OpenVMS System Manager's Manual, Volume 1: Essentials For OpenVMS shadow sets, HP recommends that you add the qualifiers /SHADOW/ERASE to the INITIALIZE command. See the HP document, Volume Shadowing for OpenVMS, for more information.

3. Mount the storage unit volumes.

   For OpenVMS shadow sets, the storage unit does not support READL or WRITEL commands. Therefore, the volume does not support the shadowing data repair (disk bad block errors) capability as some other disks do. Add the /OVERRIDE=NO_FORCED_ERROR qualifier to the MOUNT command when you use storage unit volumes as a shadow set. This qualifier suppresses bad block handling by OpenVMS shadowing data repair. See the HP document, Volume Shadowing for OpenVMS, for more information.

4. Access the storage unit volumes.

   Figure 1 shows an example of what is displayed when you use the standard OpenVMS storage configuration utilities (SHOW DEVICES DG command).

   Figure 1. Example display from the OpenVMS storage configuration utilities

   $ SHOW DEVICES DG
   
   Device             Device  Error  Volume  Free    Trans  Mnt
   Name               Status  Count  Label   Blocks  Count  Cnt
   1$DGA20: (HANK)    Online      0
   1$DGA21: (HANK)    Online      0
   $ INITIALIZE/SYSTEM $1$DGA20 ESS001
   $ MOUNT/SYSTEM $1$DGA20 ESS001
   %MOUNT-I-MOUNTED, VOLUME_ESS001 mounted on $1$DGA20: (HANK)
   $ DIRECTORY $1$DGA20:[000000]
                                                                           
   000000.DIR;1        BACKUP.SYS;1        BADBLK.SYS;1        BADLOG.SYS;1
   BITMAP.SYS;1        CONTIN.SYS;1        CORIMG.SYS;1        INDEXF.SYS;1
   SECURITY.SYS;1      VOLSET.SYS;1                                        
                                                                           
   Total of 10 files.                                                      
   $ DISMOUNT $1$DGA20
   $