On this tutorial, we will learn how to Create, Display and Resize Physical Volume , Volume Group , Logical Volume

in Logical Volume Manager with example in details.

What is Logical Volume Manager or LVM?

Logical Volume Manager or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes. With LVM or Logical Volume Manager, a hard drive or set of hard drives is allocated to one or more Physical Volume Groupical volumes. Logical Volume Manager (LVM) physical volumes can be placed on other block devices which might span two or more disks. The Physical Volumes are combined into Logical Volumes, with the exception of the /boot/partition. The/boot/partition cannot be on a Logical Volume group because the boot loader cannot read it. The Logical Volume Manager available AIX and OS/2 operating systems etc. in almost all Unix flavour like HP-UX, IBM

Logical Volume Manager or LVM Terms

Physical Volume: A physical volume (PV) is another name for a regular physical disk partition that is used or will be used by LVM or Logical Volume Manager as you can see in the below diagram. Volume Group: Any number of physical volumes or PV on different disk drives can be added together into a volume group (VG) as you can see in the below diagram.. Logical Volumes: Volume Groups or VG must then be subdivided into Logical volumes or LV. Each logical volume can be individually formatted as if it were a regular Linux partition. A logical volume is, therefore, like a virtual partition on your virtual disk drive. as you can see in the below diagram..

The Locaical Volume Manager or LVM features: 1. Resize volume groups online by absorbing new physical volumes (PV) or ejecting existing ones. 2. Resize logical volumes (LV) online by concatenating extents onto them or truncating extents 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. from them. Create read-only snapshots of logical volumes (LVM1). Create read-write snapshots of logical volumes (LVM2). Stripe whole or parts of logical volumes across multiple PVs, in a fashion similar to RAID 0. Mirror whole or parts of logical volumes, in a fashion similar to RAID 1. Move online logical volumes between PVs. Split or merge volume groups in situ (as long as no logical volumes span the split). This can be useful when migrating whole logical volumes to or from offline storage. The LVM will also work in a shared-storage cluster (where disks holding the PVs are shared between multiple host computers), but requires an additional daemon to propagate state changes between cluster nodes.

First lets see the brief Steps of Creating Logical Volume Manager.

Step 1 :List the LUNS : By this step we will identify the LUNs that can be use for creation of VOLUME group ( Explained with Example later section )
#fdisk -l 2> /dev/null | grep Disk

Step 2 : Create Partition : By this step we will create partition on free LUNs
#fdisk /dev/hda# or fdisk /dev/sda# or /dev/dm#

Step 3: Create Physical Volumes

pvcreate /dev/hda# /dev/hda#

Step 4 : Create Volume Group VG1 with two Physical Volumes

vgcreate VG1 /dev/hda# /dev/hda#

Step 5 : Change Volume Group to ACTIVE(optional)

vgchange -a y VG1

Step 6: Create Logical VolumeLV1 of 600 MB in size in Volume Group VG1

lvcreate -L +600M -n LV1 VG1

Step 7 : Create the file system

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/VG1/LV1

If you are creating filesystem for application then you can might use
mkfs.ext3 -m 0 /dev/VG1/LV1 <strong>(this will remove the over head 5% that is reserved for the super-user. Useful when you're creating file system for the application.</strong>)

To turn off filesytem check set the maximum count to 0 with the -c option. ( Optional). Read more on tune2fs
<strong>tune2fs -c -1 /dev/VG1/LV1</strong> ( -c = maximum mount counts. If max-mount-counts is 0 or -1, the number of times the filesystem is mounted will be disregarded by e2fsck(8) and the kernel. The interval between check will still be active, so suppressing mount counts wont cause any problem)

Step 8: Create a directory

mkdir -p /mnt/data

Step 9: Make an entry in /etc/fstab for auto mount on each reboot of the server
/dev/VG1/LV1 0 0 /mnt/data ext3 defaults

Step 10: Activate and Mount the new filesystem

mount /dev/VG1/LV1 /mnt/data

Step 11 : Check the newly mounted Logical Volume

df -h /mnt/data

For Short details output of Physical Volume , Local Volume and Volume Group in Logical Volume Manager use below command
#pvscan #lvscan #vgscan

For Long Full Details output of Physical Volume , Local Volume and Volume Group in Logical Volume Manager use below command
#pvdisplay #lvdisplay #vgdisplay

RESIZING of Logical Volume Manager

Extending a file system : Note Only on RHEL 5.3 and above you can directly increase filesystem without unmount
Step 1: Extend the Logical Volume lvextend -L +200M /dev/VG1/LV1

Step 2: Re size it as below so that Kernal resize2fs /dev/VG1/LV1

Example of How to Create, Display and Resize PV , VG , LV

You have one or more Physical Volumes (/dev/sdb1 /dev/sde1 in our example), and on these Physical Volumes you create one or more volume groups (e.g. fileserver), and in each volume group you can create one or more logical volumes. If you use multiple physical volumes, each logical volume can be bigger than one of the underlying physical volumes. It is a good practice to not allocate the full space to logical volumes, but leave some space unused. That way you can enlarge one or more logical volumes later on if you feel the need for it. Scan the newly assigned LUNs by SAN team by Running below command against each HBA adapter
echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan

Check the avaible disk on the server with following two commands fdisk -l Lets find out about our hard disks:

fdisk -l The output looks like this:webmanual01:~# fdisk -lDisk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 18 144553+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 19 2450 19535040 83 Linux /dev/sda4 2451 2610 1285200 82 Linux swap / SolarisDisk /dev/sdb: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDisk /dev/sdb doesnt contain a valid partition tableDisk /dev/sdc: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDisk /dev/sdc doesnt contain a valid partition tableDisk /dev/sdd: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDisk /dev/sdd doesnt contain a valid partition tableDisk /dev/sde: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDisk /dev/sde doesnt contain a valid partition tableDisk /dev/sdf: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDisk /dev/sdf doesnt contain a valid partition table

There are no partitions yet on /dev/sdb /dev/sdf In the above you can there is no partitions yet on /dev/sdb /dev/sdf means these LUNS are unused and can be use for a new Logical Volume Manager Create Partion On this example, we will create the partitions /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd1, and /dev/sde1 with 25 GB and leave /dev/sdf untouched for now. It will act our hard disks had only 25GB of space instead of 80GB for now, therefore we assign 25GB to /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd1, and /dev/sde1: fdisk /dev/sdb webmanual01:~# fdisk /dev/sdbThe number of cylinders for this disk is set to 10443. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with:

1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)Command (m for help): < m Command action a toggle a bootable flag b edit bsd disklabel c toggle the dos compatibility flag d delete a partition l list known partition types m print this menu n add a new partition o create a new empty DOS partition table p print the partition table q quit without saving changes s create a new empty Sun disklabel t change a partitions system id u change display/entry units v verify the partition table w write table to disk and exit x extra functionality (experts only)Command (m for help): < n Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4) < p Partition number (1-4): < 1 First cylinder (1-10443, default 1): < < Press ENTER> Using default value 1 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-10443, default 10443): < +25000MCommand (m for help): < t Selected partition 1 Hex code (type L to list codes): < L0 Empty 1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix be Solaris boot 1 FAT12 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin bf Solaris 2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 82 Linux swap / So c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT3 XENIX usr 3c PartitionMagic 83 Linux c4 DRDOS/sec (FAT4 FAT16 <32M 40 Venix 80286 84 OS/2 hidden C: c6 DRDOS/sec (FAT5 Extended 41 PPC PReP Boot 85 Linux extended c7 Syrinx 6 FAT16 42 SFS 86 NTFS volume set da Non-FS data 7 HPFS/NTFS 4d QNX4.x 87 NTFS volume set db CP/M / CTOS / . 8 AIX 4e QNX4.x 2nd part 88 Linux plaintext de Dell Utility 9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 8e Linux LVM df BootIt

a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 93 Amoeba e1 DOS access b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 94 Amoeba BBT e3 DOS R/O c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M 9f BSD/OS e4 SpeedStor e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a0 IBM Thinkpad hi eb BeOS fs f W95 Extd (LBA) 54 OnTrackDM6 a5 FreeBSD ee EFI GPT 10 OPUS 55 EZ-Drive a6 OpenBSD ef EFI (FAT-12/16/ 11 Hidden FAT12 56 Golden Bow a7 NeXTSTEP f0 Linux/PA-RISC b 12 Compaq diagnost 5c Priam Edisk a8 Darwin UFS f1 SpeedStor 14 Hidden FAT16 <3 61 SpeedStor a9 NetBSD f4 SpeedStor 16 Hidden FAT16 63 GNU HURD or Sys ab Darwin boot f2 DOS secondary 17 Hidden HPFS/NTF 64 Novell Netware b7 BSDI fs fd Linux raid auto 18 AST SmartSleep 65 Novell Netware b8 BSDI swap fe LANstep 1b Hidden W95 FAT3 70 DiskSecure Mult bb Boot Wizard hid ff BBT 1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX Hex code (type L to list codes): < 8e Changed system type of partition 1 to 8e (Linux LVM)Command (m for help): < w The partition table has been altered! Now we do the same for the hard disks /dev/sdc /dev/sde: fdisk /dev/sdc fdisk /dev/sdd fdisk /dev/sde Verify Run fdisk -l again. The output should look like this: webmanual01:~# fdisk -lDisk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 18 144553+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 19 2450 19535040 83 Linux /dev/sda4 2451 2610 1285200 82 Linux swap / SolarisDisk /dev/sdb: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 3040 24418768+ 8e Linux LVMDisk /dev/sdc: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 3040 24418768+ 8e Linux LVMDisk /dev/sdd: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 1 3040 24418768+ 8e Linux LVMDisk /dev/sde: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 1 3040 24418768+ 8e Linux LVMDisk /dev/sdf: 85.8 GB, 85899345920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/sdf doesnt contain a valid partition table Create PV Now create PV on partition created on the last step webmanual01:~# pvcreate /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 Physical volume /dev/sdb1 successfully created Physical volume /dev/sdc1 successfully created Physical volume /dev/sdd1 successfully created Physical volume /dev/sde1 successfully Create VG Now lets create a VG with name vgtest with PV created on last step vgcreate vgtest /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 Creating LV Create a Logical Volume lvtesta of space 1 G on VG vgtesta root@webmanual:/root> lvcreate -L +1024M /dev/vgtesta -n lvtesta Incorrect metadata area header checksum Logical volume lvtesta created Checking LV properties root@webmanual:/root> lvdisplay /dev/vgtesta/lvtestaIncorrect metadata area header checksum Logical volume LV Name /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta

VG Name vgtesta LV UUID sXOjN8-cWnW-7DKf-Pm32-kuKU-z7ww-hkGGgw LV Write Access read/write LV Status available # open 0 LV Size 1.00 GB Current LE 1 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 253:58 Creating a directory to mount the LV created on previous step root@webmanual:/root> mkdir /tmp/testinga root@webmanual:/root> ls -l /tmp/testinga total 0 Create a filesystem type ext3 on the LV lvtesta root@webmanual:/root> mkfs -t ext3 /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006) Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 131072 inodes, 262144 blocks 13107 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 Maximum filesystem blocks=268435456 8 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16384 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376Writing inode tables: done Creating journal (8192 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: doneThis filesystem will be automatically checked every 36 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override. Make an entry in /etc/fstab and Mount the filesystem

root@webmanual:/root> vi /etc/fstab

Press ESC+G then ESC + O

/dev/vgtesta/lvtesta /tmp/testinga ext3

defaults

0 0 < Make enrty like this

root@webmanual:/root> mount /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta /tmp/testinga Verify the Newly Mounted Filesystem root@webmanual:/root> df -h /tmp/testinga /dev/mapper/vgtesta-lvtesta 1008M 34M 924M 4% /tmp/testinga Extend the newly created Logical Volume or Filesystem root@webmanual:/root> lvextend -L+1G /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta Incorrect metadata area header checksum Extending logical volume lvtesta to 2.00 GB Logical volume lvtesta successfully resized root@webmanual:/root> Resize the Logical Volume so that OS makes the necessarily changes on corresponding files root@webmanual:/root> resize2fs /dev/vgtesta/lvtestaresize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006) Filesystem at /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta is mounted on /tmp/testinga; on-line resizing required Performing an on-line resize of /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-ebilv01 to 5242880 (4k) blocks. The filesystem on/dev/vgtesta/lvtesta is now 5242880 blocks long. Sometimes in OLD Linux Resize failed and asked to run e2fsck . Then un mount the filesystem and run e2fsck as below
root@webmanual:/root> e2fsck -f /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006) Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity

Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta: 11/262144 files (9.1% non-contiguous), 16822/524288 blocks <span style="color: #0000ff;">Resize will work now</span> root@webmanual:/root> resize2fs -p /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta 1G resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006) Resizing the filesystem on /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta to 262144 (4k) blocks. Begin pass 3 (max = 16) Scanning inode table XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The filesystem on /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta is now 262144 blocks long.

Reducing LV
root@webmanual:/root> lvreduce -L -1G /dev/vgtesta/lvtesta Incorrect metadata area header checksum WARNING: Reducing active logical volume to 1.00 GB THIS MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA (filesystem etc.) Do you really want to reduce lvtesta? [y/n]: y Reducing logical volume lvtesta to 1.00 GB Logical volume lvtesta successfullyroot@webmanual:/root> df -h /tmp/testinga Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vgtesta-lvtesta 1008M 34M 934M 4% /tmp/testinga root@webmanual:/root>