To prevent active volumes or host mappings from being deleted inadvertently, the system supports a global setting that prevents these objects from being deleted if the system detects recent I/O activity.
When you delete a volume, the system verifies whether it is a part of a host mapping, FlashCopy mapping, or remote-copy relationship. In these cases, the system fails to delete the volume, unless the -force parameter is specified. Using the -force parameter can lead to unintentional deletions of volumes that are still active. Active means that the system detected recent I/O activity to the volume from any host.
To prevent an active volume from being deleted unintentionally, administrators can use a global system setting to enable volume protection. They can also specify a time period that the volume must be idle before it can be deleted. If volume protection is enabled and the time period is not expired, the volume deletion fails even if the -force parameter is used.