AIX volume groups do not persist across shutdown

Problem

I have successfully imported VGs, and they're still there after a reboot. But after a shutdown I have to import them again.

Suggestions

Have you already run:

importvg -y <vgname> <hdisk_number>

If you have to run importvg after every shutdown and restart to restore the volume groups, check the ghostdev and clouddev attributes:

lsattr -El sys0 | grep dev

If output from the above command shows that clouddev and ghostdev are enabled, please disable both settings:

chdev -l sys0 -a ghostdev=0
chdev -l sys0 -a clouddev=0

This should ensure that your VGs remain known to the ODM across shutdowns.