Affected versions: IBM AIX 7.1

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

PowerHA cluster services fail to start due to shared VG varyon.

Environment & Reproduction

Seen after a node import or when reserve_policy was changed.

Root Cause Analysis

VG is reserved by the other node or LUN reservations remain.

Quick Triage

Run lspv to confirm PV is in shared VG and varyonvg state.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Check /var/hacmp/log/hacmp.out and clstrmgr.debug for vg errors.

Illustrative mockup for aix-7.1 — powerha_clstart_fails_vg_diag
Diagnostic view for powerha-clstart-fails-vg — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Clear reservations with devrsrv -c release -l hdiskN then retry.

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Illustrative mockup for aix-7.1 — powerha_clstart_fails_vg_fix
Remediation steps for powerha-clstart-fails-vg — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Alternative: varyoffvg on other node then importvg -y vgname hdiskN.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Verify clRGinfo shows the RG online and lsvg shows ACTIVE.

Rollback Plan

Roll back via clstop -gr then re-run cluster verification before start.

Prevention & Hardening

Pin reserve_policy=no_reserve on all shared hdisks via chdev.

Related: cl_disk_available errors and SCSI reservation conflicts.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.1.

View all aix-7.1 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

IBM Docs: PowerHA SystemMirror shared storage configuration.

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