Using ncpcon to display volume ID's

In Novell Cluster Service environments (NCS), especially with Novell Business Continuity Clustering (BCC), it is mandatory to ensure that volid's are unique across all BCC peer clusters.

As NCS is not aware that a cluster may be a peer in a BCC environment, it will always assign the next available volid when creating a new resource.

To list the available volumes the administrator ideally would have use the 'ncpcon volume' command but that does not list any volid's.

For example :
77160:/ # ncpcon volumes
... Executing " volumes"

Mounted Volumes
    SYS
    ADMIN
    _ADMIN
    VDNS
    VDATA2
    VDST
    VGWISE
    VIFOLDER
    VDFS
    VDATA

10 volumes mounted.

... completed OK [elapsed time = 501 usecs]
77160:/ #


To find out the volid for any given volume, the administrator would now have to go in and verify the 'ncpcon volume <volume_name>' command for each individual volume available to that server :

For example :
77160:/ # ncpcon volume vdata
... Executing " volume vdata"

                Volume: VDATA
                Status: online mounted NSS Long "cluster resource"salvageable
           Mount point: /media/nss/VDATA
    Shadow Mount point: (null)
              Capacity: 29.90 GB
                    ID: 254
                  GUID: 0742964c-6e82-01e1-80-00-11e44cf2ebe8
             Pool name: PDATA

... completed OK [elapsed time = 406 usecs]
77160:/ #

The larger and more dynamic the customer environment will be, the more cumbersome the volid management becomes.

The solution provided was to add a parameter to ncpcon.

To find out the volid for any of the volumes available on a server, the administrator will now be able to use one single 'ncpcon volumes /v'  command :

For example :
77160:/ # ncpcon volumes /v
... Executing " volumes /v"

Mounted Volumes                         NCP Volume ID
-----------------------------------------------------
    SYS                                       0
    ADMIN                                     1
    _ADMIN                                    2
    VDNS                                    248
    VDATA2                                  249
    VDST                                    250
    VGWISE                                  251
    VIFOLDER                                252
    VDFS                                    253
    VDATA                                   254

10 volumes mounted.

... completed OK [elapsed time = 457 usecs]
77160:/ #

The solution to this has been released to the patch channels with the May 2012 Scheduled Maintenance for OES11 - 6147 patch.

A solution for OES2 has been targeted for a upcoming patch release following this date.