Solaris Commands Interview Question:

What is the difference between detached and
disassociate state of plexes?

Submitted by: Administrator

Source: Symantec Docs
Detach State
Detaching a plex leaves the plex associated with its
volume, but prevents normal volume I/O from being directed
to the plex. This operation can be applied to plexes that
are enabled or disabled. The rules for performing the
detach depend upon the usage types of the volumes involved.
The operation does not apply to dissociated plexes.

Disassociate State
Dissociate each of the named plexes. Dissociating a plex
breaks the link between the plex and its volume. A
dissociated plex is inaccessible until it is reassociated,
which can be done either with vxplex att or with vxmake.
Any checks and synchronizations that apply to the det
operation also apply to the dis operation.
Plex dissociation is the normal means of unmirroring a
volume, or reducing the mirror count for a volume. To
support this use, -o rm can be used to dissociate and
remove the plex (and its associated subdisks) in the same
operation. This makes the space used by those subdisks
usable for new allocations (such as with vxassist or with
vxmake).

Plex dissociation can also be used for file system backups
of volumes that are normally mirrored. Plex devices are not
directly mountable, so the backup method described for the
det operation will not work if the backup program requires
a mounted file system. To support such backup programs, a
plex can be dissociated and can then be allocated to a new
volume, such as with the command:

vxmake -U gen vol volume plex=plex
The created volume can then be started and mounted for use
by the backup program.
Submitted by: Administrator