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InfoScale™ 9.0 Storage and Availability Management for DB2 Databases - AIX, Linux

Last Published: 2025-09-09

Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)

Platform: AIX,Linux

Section I. Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) management solutions for DB2 databases
1. Overview of Storage Foundation for Databases
Section II. Deploying DB2 with InfoScale products
Section III. Configuring Storage Foundation for Database (SFDB) tools
1. Configuring and managing the Storage Foundation for Databases repository database
2. Configuring authentication for Storage Foundation for Databases (SFDB) tools
Section IV. Improving DB2 database performance
Section V. Using point-in-time copies
Section VI. Optimizing storage costs for DB2
1. Understanding storage tiering with SmartTier
  1. About SmartTier
  2. SmartTier in a High Availability (HA) environment
2. SmartTier use cases for DB2
Section VII. Storage Foundation for Databases administrative reference

vxsfadm command reference

vxsfadm is a command line utility that can be used to perform point-in-time copy operations such as FlashSnap and Database Storage Checkpoints for DB2 databases. This utility uses the underlying features of Storage Foundation to perform these operations. The vxsfadm command can be run by DB2 instance owner only.

Note:

SFDB tools do not support taking point-in-time copies while structural changes to the database are in progress, such as adding or dropping tablespaces and adding or dropping data files. However, once a point-in-time copy is taken, a clone can be created at any time, regardless of the status of the database.

The vxsfadm utility is supported in multiple database configurations including:

DB2 single-partition database in a standalone setup
DB2 single-partition database with off-host
DB2 single-partition database in a highly available setup (VCS cluster)
DB2 single-partition database with Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability

The syntax of the vxsfadm command is as follows:

vxsfadm -s <service_type> -a <application-name> -o <operation>
[ -c config-file ]
[ -r repository-host ]
[ service-specific parameters ]
[ application-specific parameters ]

vxsfadm -s <service-type> -a application-name> -o list
[ service-specific parameters ]
[ application-specific parameters ]

vxsfadm -s <service-type> -a application-name> -o setdefaults
[ service-specific parameters ]
[ application-specific parameters ]

The following are the vxsfadm parameters.

-s service_type	Specifies the service type for the point-in-time copy operation. Supported service types are: flashsnap: Volume-level snapshots checkpoint: File system checkpoints
-o operation	Specifies the point-in-time copy operation that is being performed. The supported operations vary for the different service types. For more information on the operations supported for a service type, refer to the respective vxsfadm man page. The following operations are common to all service types: -o list: Lists all the configurations/services for the specified application. If service_type is specified then all existing configurations for the specified service_type are displayed. -o setdefaults: Generates the default configuration that can be saved to a file and then it can be used for the remainder of the operations.
-a application_name	Specifies the application for which the point-in-time-copy operation is being performed.
-c config_file	All the command line options specific to applications apart from service_type, application_name, and operation can be provided in the configuration file. The information in the configuration file should be in the format PARAMETER_NAME=VALUE. For information about the parameters supported for a service, refer to the respective vxsfadm man page.
-r repository-host	Specifies the host of the SFDB repository for off-host operations.
service-specific parameters	These parameters are required by a service for processing. The most important service-specific parameter is --service_name. For example, if you want to create a third-mirror break-off snapshot (flashsnap), the service_name parameter is flashsnap_name and you can specify a unique identifier for this parameter as follows: --flashsnap_name=dailysnap. This identifier can be used for all operations performed on that copy. These parameters can be provided in the configuration file or they can be exported in the environment. For more information, refer to the vxsfadm man pages.
application-specific parameters	These parameters are required by application for processing. The most important application-specific parameter is the one that uniquely identifies an application instance. For example, if there are two DB2 databases running on a system, db2instance and db2database parameters uniquely identify the application instance. These parameter are used for all the point-in-time copy operations for the specific application instance. These parameters can be provided in the configuration file or they can be exported in the environment. For more information, refer to the vxsfadm man pages.

Note:

The vxsfadm parameters specified on the command line override the parameters specified in the configuration file and the parameters exported in the environment. The parameters specified in the configuration file override the parameters exported in the environment.

You can use vxsfadm logs and error messages for troubleshooting.

See Resources for troubleshooting SFDB tools.

For more information, refer to the following man pages:

vxsfadm-flashsnap(1M), vxsfadm-checkpoint(1M)

vxsfadm-db2-flashsnap(1M), vxsfadm-db2-checkpoint(1M)