You must have root privilege to administer Solaris Volume Manager. Equivalent privileges granted through the User Profile feature in the Solaris Management Console allow administration through the Solaris Management Console. However, only the root user can use the Solaris Volume Manager command-line interface.

Before you can create volumes with Solaris Volume Manager, state database replicas must exist on the Solaris Volume Manager system. A state database replica contains configuration and status information for all volumes, hot spares, and disk sets. At least three replicas should exist, and the replicas should be placed on different controllers and different disks for maximum reliability. See About the Solaris Volume Manager State Database and Replicas for more information about state database replicas. See Creating State Database Replicas for instructions on how to create state database replicas.