Deleting an image mode volume

You can use the rmvolume command-line interface (CLI) command or the management GUI to delete an existing image mode volume.

An image mode volume provides a direct block-for-block translation from the managed disk (MDisk) to the volume with no virtualization. Deleting an image mode volume causes the MDisk that is associated with the volume to be removed. The mode of the MDisk is returned to unmanaged. To delete an image mode volume with the management GUI, select Volumes > Volumes and right-click the image mode volume to delete and select Delete.

Note: A volume is an image mode volume if it has an MDisk name and ID. Right-click the table header to view all available attributes for a volume.

If any remote copy, FlashCopy or host mappings still exist for this volume, the delete fails. If the volume is mapped to hosts, use the -removehostmappings parameter to remove any host mappings to that volume. Similarly, you can use the -removercrelationships and the -removefcmaps parameters to delete any existing remote copy relationships or FlashCopy mappings when the volume is deleted.

The command fails if the data on the managed disk cannot be made consistent with the data that a host could have previously read from the volume. An example scenario where this can happen is where the cache flush could not be completed successfully, for example, because the volume is offline. You can use the -discardimage parameter to force the deletion of an image mode volume.

Note: If you use the -discardimage parameter, data might be lost. Use it only under the direction of support personnel, or if you are willing to accept data loss on the volume.

The volume protection feature can be enabled to prevent a volume being deleted if it has received I/O within a defined time period.

To delete an image mode volume with the command-line interface, enter the following command, where myImageVol is the name of the image mode volume that is being deleted.

rmvolume  myImageVol