To access the disk units in an independent disk pool, you must make the disk pool available (vary it on).
To access the disk units in an independent disk pool and the objects in the corresponding database, you must make the disk pool available (vary it on). If you are using geographic mirroring, you must make the production copy of the disk pool available. You can only make the mirror copy available if it is detached. For a geographically mirrored disk pool, you must also make sure that the switchable hardware group is started before attempting to make the disk pool available unless geographic mirroring is suspended.
In a multisystem clustered environment, you can make the disk pool available to the current node or to another node in the cluster. The independent disk pool can only be varied on for one node at a time. When you want to access the independent disk pool from a different node, you must switch the independent disk pool to the backup cluster node. See Perform a switchover for details on switching a device CRG (referred to as a switchable hardware group in iSeries™ Navigator) to the backup node.
When you make a disk pool available or perform disk configuration changes on an independent disk pool, processing can seem to stop. If you are doing other device description activity, then make available and disk configuration changes will wait.
Failures early in make available processing of a geographically mirrored disk pool might cause a full synchronization on the next make available or resume.
You can use the Vary Configuration (VRYCFG) command in the character-based interface to make the disk pool available.
Use the Display ASP Status (DSPASPSTS) command to identify where a step is in the process.