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Chapter 5. Managing LVM logical volumes

A logical volume is a virtual, block storage device that a file system, database, or application can use. To create an LVM logical volume, the physical volumes (PVs) are combined into a volume group (VG). This creates a pool of disk space out of which LVM logical volumes (LVs) can be allocated.

5.1. Overview of logical volumes

An administrator can grow or shrink logical volumes without destroying data, unlike standard disk partitions. If the physical volumes in a volume group are on separate drives or RAID arrays, then administrators can also spread a logical volume across the storage devices.

You can lose data if you shrink a logical volume to a smaller capacity than the data on the volume requires. Further, some file systems are not capable of shrinking. To ensure maximum flexibility, create logical volumes to meet your current needs, and leave excess storage capacity unallocated. You can safely extend logical volumes to use unallocated space, depending on your needs.

Important

On AMD, Intel, ARM systems, and IBM Power Systems servers, the boot loader cannot read LVM volumes. You must make a standard, non-LVM disk partition for your /boot partition. On IBM Z, the zipl boot loader supports /boot on LVM logical volumes with linear mapping. By default, the installation process always creates the / and swap partitions within LVM volumes, with a separate /boot partition on a physical volume.

The following are the different types of logical volumes:

Linear volumes
A linear volume aggregates space from one or more physical volumes into one logical volume. For example, if you have two 60GB disks, you can create a 120GB logical volume. The physical storage is concatenated.
Striped logical volumes

When you write data to an LVM logical volume, the file system lays the data out across the underlying physical volumes. You can control the way the data is written to the physical volumes by creating a striped logical volume. For large sequential reads and writes, this can improve the efficiency of the data I/O.

Striping enhances performance by writing data to a predetermined number of physical volumes in round-robin fashion. With striping, I/O can be done in parallel. In some situations, this can result in near-linear performance gain for each additional physical volume in the stripe.

RAID logical volumes
LVM supports RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, and 10. RAID logical volumes are not cluster-aware. When you create a RAID logical volume, LVM creates a metadata subvolume that is one extent in size for every data or parity subvolume in the array.
Thin-provisioned logical volumes (thin volumes)
Using thin-provisioned logical volumes, you can create logical volumes that are larger than the available physical storage. Creating a thinly provisioned set of volumes allows the system to allocate what you use instead of allocating the full amount of storage that is requested
Snapshot volumes
The LVM snapshot feature provides the ability to create virtual images of a device at a particular instant without causing a service interruption. When a change is made to the original device (the origin) after a snapshot is taken, the snapshot feature makes a copy of the changed data area as it was prior to the change so that it can reconstruct the state of the device.
Thin-provisioned snapshot volumes
Using thin-provisioned snapshot volumes, you can have more virtual devices to be stored on the same data volume. Thinly provisioned snapshots are useful because you are not copying all of the data that you are looking to capture at a given time.
Cache volumes
LVM supports the use of fast block devices, such as SSD drives as write-back or write-through caches for larger slower block devices. Users can create cache logical volumes to improve the performance of their existing logical volumes or create new cache logical volumes composed of a small and fast device coupled with a large and slow device.

5.2. Using CLI commands

The following sections describe some general operational features of LVM CLI commands.

Specifying units in a command line argument

When sizes are required in a command line argument, units can always be specified explicitly. If you do not specify a unit, then a default is assumed, usually KB or MB. LVM CLI commands do not accept fractions.

When specifying units in a command line argument, LVM is case-insensitive; specifying M or m is equivalent, for example, and powers of 2 (multiples of 1024) are used. However, when specifying the --units argument in a command, lower-case indicates that units are in multiples of 1024 while upper-case indicates that units are in multiples of 1000.

Specifying volume groups and logical volumes

Note the following when specifying volume groups or logical volumes in an LVM CLI command.

  • Where commands take volume group or logical volume names as arguments, the full path name is optional. A logical volume called lvol0 in a volume group called vg0 can be specified as vg0/lvol0.
  • Where a list of volume groups is required but is left empty, a list of all volume groups will be substituted.
  • Where a list of logical volumes is required but a volume group is given, a list of all the logical volumes in that volume group will be substituted. For example, the lvdisplay vg0 command will display all the logical volumes in volume group vg0.

Increasing output verbosity

All LVM commands accept a -v argument, which can be entered multiple times to increase the output verbosity. The following examples shows the default output of the lvcreate command. 

# lvcreate -L 50MB new_vg
  Rounding up size to full physical extent 52.00 MB
  Logical volume "lvol0" created

The following command shows the output of the lvcreate command with the -v argument. 

# lvcreate -v -L 50MB new_vg
  Rounding up size to full physical extent 52.00 MB
    Archiving volume group "new_vg" metadata (seqno 1).
    Creating logical volume lvol0
    Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/new_vg" (seqno 2).
    Activating logical volume new_vg/lvol0.
    activation/volume_list configuration setting not defined: Checking only host tags for new_vg/lvol0.
    Creating new_vg-lvol0
    Loading table for new_vg-lvol0 (253:0).
    Resuming new_vg-lvol0 (253:0).
    Wiping known signatures on logical volume "new_vg/lvol0"
    Initializing 4.00 KiB of logical volume "new_vg/lvol0" with value 0.
  Logical volume "lvol0" created

The -vv, -vvv and the -vvvv arguments display increasingly more details about the command execution. The -vvvv argument provides the maximum amount of information at this time. The following example shows the first few lines of output for the lvcreate command with the -vvvv argument specified. 

# lvcreate -vvvv -L 50MB new_vg
#lvmcmdline.c:913         Processing: lvcreate -vvvv -L 50MB new_vg
#lvmcmdline.c:916         O_DIRECT will be used
#config/config.c:864       Setting global/locking_type to 1
#locking/locking.c:138       File-based locking selected.
#config/config.c:841       Setting global/locking_dir to /var/lock/lvm
#activate/activate.c:358       Getting target version for linear
#ioctl/libdm-iface.c:1569         dm version   OF   [16384]
#ioctl/libdm-iface.c:1569         dm versions   OF   [16384]
#activate/activate.c:358       Getting target version for striped
#ioctl/libdm-iface.c:1569         dm versions   OF   [16384]
#config/config.c:864       Setting activation/mirror_region_size to 512
...

Displaying help for LVM CLI commands

You can display help for any of the LVM CLI commands with the --help argument of the command. 

# commandname --help

To display the man page for a command, execute the man command: 

# man commandname

The man lvm command provides general online information about LVM.

5.3. Creating LVM logical volume

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Create a logical volume: 

    # lvcreate -n mylv -L 500M myvg
Logical volume "mylv" successfully created.

    Use the -n option to set the LV name to mylv, and the -L option to set the size of LV in units of Mb, but it is possible to use any other units. The LV type is linear by default, but the user can specify the desired type by using the --type option.

    Important

    The command fails if the VG does not have a sufficient number of free physical extents for the requested size and type.

  2. View the created logical volumes by using any one of the following commands as per your requirement:

    1. The lvs command provides logical volume information in a configurable form, displaying one line per logical volume: 

      # lvs
  LV   VG   Attr         LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
 mylv myvg -wi-ao----   500.00m

    2. The lvdisplay command displays logical volume properties, such as size, layout, and mapping in a fixed format: 

      # lvdisplay -v /dev/myvg/mylv
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/myvg/mylv
  LV Name                mylv
  VG Name                myvg
  LV UUID                YTnAk6-kMlT-c4pG-HBFZ-Bx7t-ePMk-7YjhaM
  LV Write Access        read/write
[..]

    3. The lvscan command scans for all logical volumes in the system and lists them: 

      # lvscan
 ACTIVE                   '/dev/myvg/mylv' [500.00 MiB] inherit

  3. Create a file system on the logical volume. The following command creates an xfs file system on the logical volume: 

    # mkfs.xfs /dev/myvg/mylv
meta-data=/dev/myvg/mylv       isize=512    agcount=4, agsize=32000 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=1
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=128000, imaxpct=25
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=1368, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
Discarding blocks...Done.

  4. Mount the logical volume and report the file system disk space usage: 

    # mount /dev/myvg/mylv /mnt

# df -h
Filesystem               1K-blocks  Used   Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/myvg-mylv   506528    29388  477140     6%   /mnt

Additional resources

  • lvcreate(8), lvdisplay(8), lvs(8), lvscan(8), lvm(8) and mkfs.xfs(8) man pages

5.4. Creating a RAID0 striped logical volume

A RAID0 logical volume spreads logical volume data across multiple data subvolumes in units of stripe size. The following procedure creates an LVM RAID0 logical volume called mylv that stripes data across the disks.

Prerequisites

  1. You have created three or more physical volumes. For more information about creating physical volumes, see Creating LVM physical volume.
  2. You have created the volume group. For more information, see Creating LVM volume group.

Procedure

  1. Create a RAID0 logical volume from the existing volume group. The following command creates the RAID0 volume mylv from the volume group myvg, which is 2G in size, with three stripes and a stripe size of 4kB: 

    # lvcreate --type raid0 -L 2G --stripes 3 --stripesize 4 -n mylv my_vg
  Rounding size 2.00 GiB (512 extents) up to stripe boundary size 2.00 GiB(513 extents).
  Logical volume "mylv" created.

  2. Create a file system on the RAID0 logical volume. The following command creates an ext4 file system on the logical volume: 

    # mkfs.ext4 /dev/my_vg/mylv

  3. Mount the logical volume and report the file system disk space usage: 

    # mount /dev/my_vg/mylv /mnt

# df
Filesystem             1K-blocks     Used  Available  Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/my_vg-mylv   2002684     6168  1875072    1%   /mnt

Verification

  • View the created RAID0 stripped logical volume: 

    # lvs -a -o +devices,segtype my_vg
  LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta% Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert Devices Type
  mylv my_vg rwi-a-r--- 2.00g mylv_rimage_0(0),mylv_rimage_1(0),mylv_rimage_2(0) raid0
  [mylv_rimage_0] my_vg iwi-aor--- 684.00m /dev/sdf1(0) linear
  [mylv_rimage_1] my_vg iwi-aor--- 684.00m /dev/sdg1(0) linear
  [mylv_rimage_2] my_vg iwi-aor--- 684.00m /dev/sdh1(0) linear

5.5. Renaming LVM logical volumes

This procedure describes how to rename an existing logical volume mylv to mylv1.

Procedure

  1. If the logical volume is currently mounted, unmount the volume: 

    # umount /mnt

    Replace /mnt with the mount point.

  2. Rename an existing logical volume: 

    # lvrename myvg mylv mylv1
Renamed "mylv" to "mylv1" in volume group "myvg"

    You can also rename the logical volume by specifying the full paths to the devices: 

    # lvrename /dev/myvg/mylv /dev/myvg/mylv1

Additional resources

  • lvrename(8) man page

5.6. Removing a disk from a logical volume

This procedure describes how to remove a disk from an existing logical volume, either to replace the disk or to use the disk as part of a different volume.

In order to remove a disk, you must first move the extents on the LVM physical volume to a different disk or set of disks.

Procedure

  1. View the used and free space of physical volumes when using the LV: 

    # pvs -o+pv_used
  PV          VG    Fmt    Attr   PSize      PFree     Used
 /dev/vdb1 myvg  lvm2   a--    1020.00m    0         1020.00m
 /dev/vdb2 myvg  lvm2   a--    1020.00m    0         1020.00m
 /dev/vdb3 myvg  lvm2   a--    1020.00m   1008.00m   12.00m

  2. Move the data to other physical volume:

    1. If there are enough free extents on the other physical volumes in the existing volume group, use the following command to move the data: 

      # pvmove /dev/vdb3
  /dev/vdb3: Moved: 2.0%
 ...
  /dev/vdb3: Moved: 79.2%
 ...
  /dev/vdb3: Moved: 100.0%

    2. If there are no enough free extents on the other physical volumes in the existing volume group, use the following commands to add a new physical volume, extend the volume group using the newly created physical volume, and move the data to this physical volume: 

      # pvcreate /dev/vdb4
  Physical volume "/dev/vdb4" successfully created

# vgextend myvg /dev/vdb4
  Volume group "myvg" successfully extended

# pvmove /dev/vdb3 /dev/vdb4
  /dev/vdb3: Moved: 33.33%
  /dev/vdb3: Moved: 100.00%

  3. Remove the physical volume: 

    # vgreduce myvg /dev/vdb3
Removed "/dev/vdb3" from volume group "myvg"

    If a logical volume contains a physical volume that fails, you cannot use that logical volume. To remove missing physical volumes from a volume group, you can use the --removemissing parameter of the vgreduce command, if there are no logical volumes that are allocated on the missing physical volumes: 

    # vgreduce --removemissing myvg

Additional resources

  • pvmove(8), vgextend(8), vereduce(8), and pvs(8) man pages

5.7. Removing LVM logical volumes

This procedure describes how to remove an existing logical volume /dev/myvg/mylv1 from the volume group myvg.

Procedure

  1. If the logical volume is currently mounted, unmount the volume: 

    # umount /mnt

  2. If the logical volume exists in a clustered environment, deactivate the logical volume on all nodes where it is active. Use the following command on each such node: 

    # lvchange --activate n vg-name/lv-name

  3. Remove the logical volume using the lvremove utility: 

    # lvremove /dev/myvg/mylv1

Do you really want to remove active logical volume "mylv1"? [y/n]: y
Logical volume "mylv1" successfully removed
    Note

    In this case, the logical volume has not been deactivated. If you explicitly deactivated the logical volume before removing it, you would not see the prompt verifying whether you want to remove an active logical volume.

Additional resources

  • lvremove(8) man page

5.8. Managing LVM logical volumes using RHEL System Roles

Use the storage role to perform the following tasks:

  • Create an LVM logical volume in a volume group consisting of multiple disks.
  • Create an ext4 file system with a given label on the logical volume.
  • Persistently mount the ext4 file system.

Prerequisites

  • An Ansible playbook including the storage role

5.8.1. Example Ansible playbook to manage logical volumes

The example Ansible playbook applies the storage role to create an LVM logical volume in a volume group.

Example 5.1. A playbook that creates a mylv logical volume in the myvg volume group

- hosts: all
  vars:
    storage_pools:
      - name: myvg
        disks:
          - sda
          - sdb
          - sdc
        volumes:
          - name: mylv
            size: 2G
            fs_type: ext4
            mount_point: /mnt/data
  roles:
    - rhel-system-roles.storage

  • The myvg volume group consists of the following disks:

    • /dev/sda
    • /dev/sdb
    • /dev/sdc
  • If the myvg volume group already exists, the playbook adds the logical volume to the volume group.
  • If the myvg volume group does not exist, the playbook creates it.
  • The playbook creates an Ext4 file system on the mylv logical volume, and persistently mounts the file system at /mnt.

Additional resources

  • The /usr/share/ansible/roles/rhel-system-roles.storage/README.md file.

5.8.2. Additional resources

5.9. Removing LVM volume groups

You can remove an existing volume group using the vgremove command.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. If the volume group exists in a clustered environment, stop the lockspace of the volume group on all other nodes. Use the following command on all nodes except the node where you are performing the removal: 

    # vgchange --lockstop vg-name

    Wait for the lock to stop.

  2. Remove the volume group: 

    # vgremove vg-name
  Volume group "vg-name" successfully removed

Additional resources

  • vgremove(8) man page