tristan,
This is relevant to AIX 4.3.0 only.
Well you are misunderstanding the difference between a big VG and the number of PP's per PP (factoring) i.e. 1016 is the default.
A big VG allows support for up to 128 disk drives in a VG.
You only have two so forget about it.
You will just need to work out a PP size to use the default max. 1016 physical partitions per physical volume. If you set a PP size of 16 when you set up your volume group and select both disks this means that you can add another 30 disks into the volume group which are 9GB or less. The idea is 1016 * PP size = the max. size of any disk you can add to the VG. To get around this you can change the volume group via:
chvg -t 2 appsvg
This will change the max. num of PP's per PV to 2032 and therefore the maximum size of any disk you can add to the VG change to 2032 * PP size. i.e. 18GB disks.
As you have two 9GB disks you do not have to worry about factoring but in future if you do need to add 18.2's or 36's then you can use the factoring flag at any time to enable you to add these to the VG, of course the down side to this is that you will reduce the maximum no. of phyiscal volumes you can add to the volume group.
To sum up
smitty mkvg
PP size=16
select both disks
select concurrent capable
et voila.
PSD
IBM Certified Specialist - AIX V4.3 Systems Support
IBM Certified Specialist - AIX V4 HACMP