Preparing a Volume for Online Backup

Volume manager provides an easy way to take backup of the online data by creating an offline snapshot mirror of the volume .
The vxassist snapstart operation creates a write-only backup mirror, which is attached to and synchronized with the volume to be backed up and later detached and made offline by vxassist snapshot command . The snapshot volume can be used by backup utilities while the original volume continues to be available for applications and users.
The volume backup method described here does not apply to RAID-5 volumes.
Backing up a volume with vxassist involves the following procedure
Create a snapshot mirror
snapstart starts creating a online snapshot mirror of the volume using the available disk space . The snapshot is completed with vxassist snapshot command when offline snapshot volume is created with a userdefined name .
Command Syntax
* vxassist snapstart volume_name
To create a snapshot mirror of a volume called vol8, type
* #vxassist snapstart vol8
Create a snapshot volume
Command Syntax
vxassist snapshot volume_name new_volume_name
To create a snapshot volume of vol8, type:
#vxassist snapshot vol8 snapvol8
You can now back up the snapshot volume by whatever means you prefer. To avoid wasting space, you can then remove the snapshot volume, which occupies as much space as the original volume
11 Displaying Volume Configuration Information
The vxprint command can be used to display information about how a volume is configured.
Display the volume, mirror, and subdisk record information for all volumes as follows:
#vxprint -ht
Disk group: rootdg

  Disk group: rootdg  

  DG  NAME        NCONFIG    NLOG      MINORS     GROUP-ID
  DM  NAME        DEVICE     TYPE      PRIVLEN    PUBLEN     STATE
  V   NAME        USETYPE    KSTATE    STATE      LENGTH     READPOL      PREFPLEX
  PL  NAME        VOLUME     KSTATE    STATE      LENGTH     LAYOUT       NCOL/WID MODE
  SD  NAME        PLEX       DISK      DISKOFFS LENGTH       [COL/]OFF    DEVICE     MODE  

  dg  rootdg      759096729.1025.tweety  

  dm  disk10      c1t0d0s2 sliced      559        1044400     -
  dm  disk20      c2t0d0s2 sliced      559        1044400     -  

  v   pubs        fsgen      ENABLED ACTIVE       2288       SELECT       -
  pl  pubs-01     pubs       ENABLED ACTIVE       2288       CONCAT       -          RW
  sd  disk10-01 pubs-01      disk10    0          2288       0            c0t0d0     ENA  

  v   vol8      fsgen      ENABLED ACTIVE       20480      SELECT       -
  pl  vol8-01   vol8       ENABLED ACTIVE       20480      CONCAT       -          RW
  sd  disk10-02 vol8-0 disk10        2288       20480      0            c0t1d0     ENA

where dg is a disk group, dm is a disk,
v is a volume,
pl is a plex,
sd is a subdisk.
The top few lines indicate the headers that match each type of output line that follows.
Each volume is listed along with its associated plex(es) and subdisk(s).
Display volume-related information for a specific volume as follows:
#vxprint -t volume_name
To display information about vol8, type:
#vxprint -t vol8