Chapter 68. Configuring and managing logical volumes

The following are the components of LVM:

The following diagram illustrates the components of LVM:

Figure 68.1. LVM logical volume components

Logical volumes provide the following advantages over using physical storage directly:

Initializing a block device as a physical volume places a label near the start of the device. The following describes the LVM label:

The following describes the LVM metadata:

The following diagram illustrates the layout of an LVM physical volume. The LVM label is on the second sector, followed by the metadata area, followed by the usable space on the device.

Figure 68.2. Physical volume layout

You can create physical volumes (PV) out of disk partitions by using LVM.

Red Hat recommends that you create a single partition that covers the whole disk to label as an LVM physical volume for the following reasons:

Although it is not recommended, there may be specific circumstances when you will need to divide a disk into separate LVM physical volumes. For example, on a system with few disks it may be necessary to move data around partitions when you are migrating an existing system to LVM volumes. Additionally, if you have a very large disk and want to have more than one volume group for administrative purposes then it is necessary to partition the disk. If you do have a disk with more than one partition and both of those partitions are in the same volume group, take care to specify which partitions are to be included in a logical volume when creating volumes.

Note that although LVM supports using a non-partitioned disk as physical volume, it is recommended to create a single, whole-disk partition because creating a PV without a partition can be problematic in a mixed operating system environment. Other operating systems may interpret the device as free, and overwrite the PV label at the beginning of the drive.

This procedure describes how to create and label LVM physical volumes (PVs).

In this procedure, replace the /dev/vdb1, /dev/vdb2, and /dev/vdb3 with the available storage devices in your system.

If a device is no longer required for use by LVM, you can remove the LVM label by using the pvremove command. Executing the pvremove command zeroes the LVM metadata on an empty physical volume.

If the physical volume you want to remove is currently part of a volume group, you must remove it from the volume group with the vgreduce command. For more information, see Removing physical volumes from a volume group

This procedure describes how to create an LVM volume group (VG) myvg, by using the /dev/vdb1 and /dev/vdb2 physical volumes.

To combine two volume groups into a single volume group, use the vgmerge command. You can merge an inactive "source" volume with an active or an inactive "destination" volume if the physical extent sizes of the volume are equal and the physical and logical volume summaries of both volume groups fit into the destination volume groups limits.

To remove unused physical volumes from a volume group, use the vgreduce command. The vgreduce command shrinks a volume group’s capacity by removing one or more empty physical volumes. This frees those physical volumes to be used in different volume groups or to be removed from the system.

This procedure describes how to split the existing volume group. If there is enough unused space on the physical volumes, a new volume group can be created without adding new disks.

In the initial setup, the volume group myvg consists of /dev/vdb1, /dev/vdb2, and /dev/vdb3. After completing this procedure, the volume group myvg will consist of /dev/vdb1 and /dev/vdb2, and the second volume group, yourvg, will consist of /dev/vdb3.

You can move an entire LVM volume group to another system. It is recommended that you use the vgexport and vgimport commands when you do this.

The vgexport command makes an inactive volume group inaccessible to the system, which allows you to detach its physical volumes. The vgimport command makes a volume group accessible to a machine again after the vgexport command has made it inactive.

To move a volume group from one system to another, perform the following steps:

This procedure describes how to remove an existing volume group.

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.

The following are the different types of logical volumes:

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.

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.

This procedure describes how to create mylv LVM logical volume (LV) from the myvg volume group, which is created by using the /dev/vdb1, /dev/vdb2, and /dev/vdb3 physical volumes.

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.

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

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.

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

Major and minor device numbers are allocated dynamically at module load. Some applications work best if the block device is always activated with the same device (major and minor) number. You can specify these with the lvcreate and the lvchange commands by using the following arguments:

--persistent y --major major --minor minor

Use a large minor number to be sure that it has not already been allocated to another device dynamically.

If you are exporting a file system using NFS, specifying the fsid parameter in the exports file may avoid the need to set a persistent device number within LVM.

When physical volumes are used to create a volume group, its disk space is divided into 4MB extents, by default. This extent is the minimum amount by which the logical volume may be increased or decreased in size. Large numbers of extents will have no impact on I/O performance of the logical volume.

You can specify the extent size with the -s option to the vgcreate command if the default extent size is not suitable. You can put limits on the number of physical or logical volumes the volume group can have by using the -p and -l arguments of the vgcreate command.

Use the storage role to perform the following tasks:

- 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

This procedure describes how to remove an existing volume group.

This procedure describes how to extend the logical volume and grow a file system on the same logical volume.

To increase the size of a logical volume, use the lvextend command. When you extend the logical volume, you can indicate how much you want to extend the volume, or how large you want it to be after you extend it.

You can reduce the size of a logical volume with the lvreduce command.

If the logical volume you are reducing contains a file system, to prevent data loss you must ensure that the file system is not using the space in the logical volume that is being reduced. For this reason, it is recommended that you use the --resizefs option of the lvreduce command when the logical volume contains a file system.

When you use this option, the lvreduce command attempts to reduce the file system before shrinking the logical volume. If shrinking the file system fails, as can occur if the file system is full or the file system does not support shrinking, then the lvreduce command will fail and not attempt to shrink the logical volume.

In order to increase the size of a striped logical volume, there must be enough free space on the underlying physical volumes that make up the volume group to support the stripe. For example, if you have a two-way stripe that that uses up an entire volume group, adding a single physical volume to the volume group will not enable you to extend the stripe. Instead, you must add at least two physical volumes to the volume group.

For example, consider a volume group vg that consists of two underlying physical volumes, as displayed with the following vgs command.

# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     2   0   0 wz--n- 271.31G 271.31G

You can create a stripe using the entire amount of space in the volume group.

# lvcreate -n stripe1 -L 271.31G -i 2 vg
  Using default stripesize 64.00 KB
  Rounding up size to full physical extent 271.31 GB
  Logical volume "stripe1" created
# lvs -a -o +devices
  LV      VG   Attr   LSize   Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%  Devices
  stripe1 vg   -wi-a- 271.31G                               /dev/sda1(0),/dev/sdb1(0)

Note that the volume group now has no more free space.

# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     2   1   0 wz--n- 271.31G    0

The following command adds another physical volume to the volume group, which then has 135 gigabytes of additional space.

# vgextend vg /dev/sdc1
  Volume group "vg" successfully extended
# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     3   1   0 wz--n- 406.97G 135.66G

At this point you cannot extend the striped logical volume to the full size of the volume group, because two underlying devices are needed in order to stripe the data.

# lvextend vg/stripe1 -L 406G
  Using stripesize of last segment 64.00 KB
  Extending logical volume stripe1 to 406.00 GB
  Insufficient suitable allocatable extents for logical volume stripe1: 34480
more required

To extend the striped logical volume, add another physical volume and then extend the logical volume. In this example, having added two physical volumes to the volume group we can extend the logical volume to the full size of the volume group.

# vgextend vg /dev/sdd1
  Volume group "vg" successfully extended
# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     4   1   0 wz--n- 542.62G 271.31G
# lvextend vg/stripe1 -L 542G
  Using stripesize of last segment 64.00 KB
  Extending logical volume stripe1 to 542.00 GB
  Logical volume stripe1 successfully resized

If you do not have enough underlying physical devices to extend the striped logical volume, it is possible to extend the volume anyway if it does not matter that the extension is not striped, which may result in uneven performance. When adding space to the logical volume, the default operation is to use the same striping parameters of the last segment of the existing logical volume, but you can override those parameters. The following example extends the existing striped logical volume to use the remaining free space after the initial lvextend command fails.

# lvextend vg/stripe1 -L 406G
  Using stripesize of last segment 64.00 KB
  Extending logical volume stripe1 to 406.00 GB
  Insufficient suitable allocatable extents for logical volume stripe1: 34480
more required
# lvextend -i1 -l+100%FREE vg/stripe1

Whether you use the pvs, lvs, or vgs command determines the default set of fields displayed and the sort order. You can control the output of these commands with the following arguments:

You can use the -P argument of the lvs or vgs command to display information about a failed volume that would otherwise not appear in the output.

For a full listing of display arguments, see the pvs(8), vgs(8) and lvs(8) man pages.

Volume group fields can be mixed with either physical volume (and physical volume segment) fields or with logical volume (and logical volume segment) fields, but physical volume and logical volume fields cannot be mixed. For example, the following command will display one line of output for each physical volume.

# vgs -o +pv_name
  VG     #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize  VFree  PV
  new_vg   3   1   0 wz--n- 51.42G 51.37G /dev/sdc1
  new_vg   3   1   0 wz--n- 51.42G 51.37G /dev/sdd1
  new_vg   3   1   0 wz--n- 51.42G 51.37G /dev/sdb1

You can display additional information about the LVM objects with the pvs, vgs, and lvs commands.

A field name prefix can be dropped if it matches the default for the command. For example, with the pvs command, name means pv_name, but with the vgs command, name is interpreted as vg_name.

Executing the following command is the equivalent of executing pvs -o pv_free.

# pvs -o free
  PFree
  17.14G
  17.09G
  17.14G

Table 68.1, “The pvs Command Display Fields” lists the display arguments of the pvs command, along with the field name as it appears in the header display and a description of the field.

By default, the pvs command displays the pv_name, vg_name, pv_fmt, pv_attr, pv_size and pv_free fields. The display is sorted by pv_name.

# pvs
  PV         VG     Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree
  /dev/sdb1  new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G
  /dev/sdc1  new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.09G
  /dev/sdd1  new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.13G

Using the -v argument with the pvs command adds the following fields to the default display: dev_size, pv_uuid.

# pvs -v
    Scanning for physical volume names
  PV         VG     Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree  DevSize PV UUID
  /dev/sdb1  new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G  17.14G onFF2w-1fLC-ughJ-D9eB-M7iv-6XqA-dqGeXY
  /dev/sdc1  new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.09G  17.14G Joqlch-yWSj-kuEn-IdwM-01S9-XO8M-mcpsVe
  /dev/sdd1  new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.13G  17.14G yvfvZK-Cf31-j75k-dECm-0RZ3-0dGW-tUqkCS

You can use the --segments argument of the pvs command to display information about each physical volume segment. A segment is a group of extents. A segment view can be useful if you want to see whether your logical volume is fragmented.

The pvs --segments command displays the following fields by default: pv_name, vg_name, pv_fmt, pv_attr, pv_size, pv_free, pvseg_start, pvseg_size. The display is sorted by pv_name and pvseg_size within the physical volume.

# pvs --segments
  PV         VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree  Start SSize
  /dev/hda2  VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   37.16G 32.00M     0  1172
  /dev/hda2  VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   37.16G 32.00M  1172    16
  /dev/hda2  VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   37.16G 32.00M  1188     1
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G     0    26
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G    26    24
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G    50    26
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G    76    24
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G   100    26
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G   126    24
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G   150    22
  /dev/sda1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 16.75G   172  4217
  /dev/sdb1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G     0  4389
  /dev/sdc1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G     0  4389
  /dev/sdd1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G     0  4389
  /dev/sde1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G     0  4389
  /dev/sdf1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G     0  4389
  /dev/sdg1  vg         lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G     0  4389

You can use the pvs -a command to view devices detected by LVM that are not initialized as LVM physical volumes.

# pvs -a
  PV                             VG     Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree
  /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01                   --       0      0
  /dev/new_vg/lvol0                          --       0      0
  /dev/ram                                   --       0      0
  /dev/ram0                                  --       0      0
  /dev/ram2                                  --       0      0
  /dev/ram3                                  --       0      0
  /dev/ram4                                  --       0      0
  /dev/ram5                                  --       0      0
  /dev/ram6                                  --       0      0
  /dev/root                                  --       0      0
  /dev/sda                                   --       0      0
  /dev/sdb                                   --       0      0
  /dev/sdb1                      new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G
  /dev/sdc                                   --       0      0
  /dev/sdc1                      new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.09G
  /dev/sdd                                   --       0      0
  /dev/sdd1                      new_vg lvm2 a-   17.14G 17.14G

Table 68.2, “vgs Display Fields” lists the display arguments of the vgs command, along with the field name as it appears in the header display and a description of the field.

The vgs command displays the following fields by default: vg_name, pv_count, lv_count, snap_count, vg_attr, vg_size, vg_free. The display is sorted by vg_name.

# vgs
  VG     #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize  VFree
  new_vg   3   1   1 wz--n- 51.42G 51.36G

Using the -v argument with the vgs command adds the vg_extent_size and vg_uuid fields to te default display.

# vgs -v
    Finding all volume groups
    Finding volume group "new_vg"
  VG     Attr   Ext   #PV #LV #SN VSize  VFree  VG UUID
  new_vg wz--n- 4.00M   3   1   1 51.42G 51.36G jxQJ0a-ZKk0-OpMO-0118-nlwO-wwqd-fD5D32

Table 68.3, “lvs Display Fields” lists the display arguments of the lvs command, along with the field name as it appears in the header display and a description of the field.

The lvs command provides the following display by default. The default display is sorted by vg_name and lv_name within the volume group.

# lvs
  LV     VG              Attr       LSize    Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  origin VG              owi-a-s---    1.00g
  snap   VG              swi-a-s---  100.00m      origin 0.00

A common use of the lvs command is to append devices to the command to display the underlying devices that make up the logical volume. This example also specifies the -a option to display the internal volumes that are components of the logical volumes, such as RAID mirrors, enclosed in brackets. This example includes a RAID volume, a striped volume, and a thinly-pooled volume.

# lvs -a -o +devices
  LV               VG            Attr       LSize   Pool   Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert Devices
  raid1            VG            rwi-a-r---   1.00g                                      100.00           raid1_rimage_0(0),raid1_rimage_1(0)
  [raid1_rimage_0] VG            iwi-aor---   1.00g                                                       /dev/sde1(7041)
  [raid1_rimage_1] VG            iwi-aor---   1.00g                                                       /dev/sdf1(7041)
  [raid1_rmeta_0]  VG            ewi-aor---   4.00m                                                       /dev/sde1(7040)
  [raid1_rmeta_1]  VG            ewi-aor---   4.00m                                                       /dev/sdf1(7040)
  stripe1          VG            -wi-a-----  99.95g                                                       /dev/sde1(0),/dev/sdf1(0)
  stripe1          VG            -wi-a-----  99.95g                                                       /dev/sdd1(0)
  stripe1          VG            -wi-a-----  99.95g                                                       /dev/sdc1(0)
  [lvol0_pmspare]  rhel_host-083 ewi-------   4.00m                                                       /dev/vda2(0)
  pool00           rhel_host-083 twi-aotz--  <4.79g               72.90  54.69                            pool00_tdata(0)
  [pool00_tdata]   rhel_host-083 Twi-ao----  <4.79g                                                       /dev/vda2(1)
  [pool00_tmeta]   rhel_host-083 ewi-ao----   4.00m                                                       /dev/vda2(1226)
  root             rhel_host-083 Vwi-aotz--  <4.79g pool00        72.90
  swap             rhel_host-083 -wi-ao---- 820.00m                                                       /dev/vda2(1227)

Using the -v argument with the lvs command adds the following fields to the default display: seg_count, lv_major, lv_minor, lv_kernel_major, lv_kernel_minor, lv_uuid.

# lvs -v
    Finding all logical volumes
  LV         VG     #Seg Attr   LSize  Maj Min KMaj KMin Origin Snap%  Move Copy%  Log Convert LV UUID
  lvol0      new_vg    1 owi-a- 52.00M  -1  -1 253  3                                          LBy1Tz-sr23-OjsI-LT03-nHLC-y8XW-EhCl78
  newvgsnap1 new_vg    1 swi-a-  8.00M  -1  -1 253  5    lvol0    0.20                         1ye1OU-1cIu-o79k-20h2-ZGF0-qCJm-CfbsIx

You can use the --segments argument of the lvs command to display information with default columns that emphasize the segment information. When you use the segments argument, the seg prefix is optional. The lvs --segments command displays the following fields by default: lv_name, vg_name, lv_attr, stripes, segtype, seg_size. The default display is sorted by vg_name, lv_name within the volume group, and seg_start within the logical volume. If the logical volumes were fragmented, the output from this command would show that.

# lvs --segments
  LV       VG         Attr   #Str Type   SSize
  LogVol00 VolGroup00 -wi-ao    1 linear  36.62G
  LogVol01 VolGroup00 -wi-ao    1 linear 512.00M
  lv       vg         -wi-a-    1 linear 104.00M
  lv       vg         -wi-a-    1 linear 104.00M
  lv       vg         -wi-a-    1 linear 104.00M
  lv       vg         -wi-a-    1 linear  88.00M

Using the -v argument with the lvs --segments command adds the seg_start, stripesize and chunksize fields to the default display.

# lvs -v --segments
    Finding all logical volumes
  LV         VG     Attr   Start SSize  #Str Type   Stripe Chunk
  lvol0      new_vg owi-a-    0  52.00M    1 linear     0     0
  newvgsnap1 new_vg swi-a-    0   8.00M    1 linear     0  8.00K

The following example shows the default output of the lvs command on a system with one logical volume configured, followed by the default output of the lvs command with the segments argument specified.

# lvs
  LV    VG     Attr   LSize  Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%
  lvol0 new_vg -wi-a- 52.00M
# lvs --segments
  LV    VG     Attr   #Str Type   SSize
  lvol0 new_vg -wi-a-    1 linear 52.00M

Normally the entire output of the lvs, vgs, or pvs command has to be generated and stored internally before it can be sorted and columns aligned correctly. You can specify the --unbuffered argument to display unsorted output as soon as it is generated.

To specify an alternative ordered list of columns to sort on, use the -O argument of any of the reporting commands. It is not necessary to include these fields within the output itself.

The following example shows the output of the pvs command that displays the physical volume name, size, and free space.

# pvs -o pv_name,pv_size,pv_free
  PV         PSize  PFree
  /dev/sdb1  17.14G 17.14G
  /dev/sdc1  17.14G 17.09G
  /dev/sdd1  17.14G 17.14G

The following example shows the same output, sorted by the free space field.

# pvs -o pv_name,pv_size,pv_free -O pv_free
  PV         PSize  PFree
  /dev/sdc1  17.14G 17.09G
  /dev/sdd1  17.14G 17.14G
  /dev/sdb1  17.14G 17.14G

The following example shows that you do not need to display the field on which you are sorting.

# pvs -o pv_name,pv_size -O pv_free
  PV         PSize
  /dev/sdc1  17.14G
  /dev/sdd1  17.14G
  /dev/sdb1  17.14G

To display a reverse sort, precede a field you specify after the -O argument with the - character.

# pvs -o pv_name,pv_size,pv_free -O -pv_free
  PV         PSize  PFree
  /dev/sdd1  17.14G 17.14G
  /dev/sdb1  17.14G 17.14G
  /dev/sdc1  17.14G 17.09G

To specify the units for the LVM report display, use the --units argument of the report command.

The default display is r, human-readable. You can override the default by setting the units parameter in the global section of the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file.

The following example specifies the output of the pvs, vgs and lvs commands in base 2 gigabytes unit:

# pvs --units g /dev/sdb
  PV        VG    Fmt  Attr PSize   PFree
  /dev/sdb  test  lvm2 a--  931.00g 930.00g

# vgs --units g test
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize   VFree
  test   1   1   0 wz-n 931.00g 931.00g

# lvs --units g test
  LV    VG   Attr     LSize Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  lvol0 test wi-a---- 1.OOg

The following example specifies the output of the pvs, vgs and lvs commands in base 10 gigabytes unit:

# pvs --units G /dev/sdb
  PV        VG   Fmt  Attr  PSize   PFree
  /dev/sdb  test lvm2 a--   999.65G 998.58G

# vgs --units G test
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize   VFree
  test   1   1   0 wz-n 999.65G 998.58G

# lvs --units G test
  LV    VG   Attr     LSize Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  lvol0 test wi-a---- 1.07G

You can specify sectors (s), defined as 512 bytes, or custom units. The following example displays the output of the pvs command as several sectors:

# pvs --units s
  PV         VG     Fmt  Attr PSize       PFree
  /dev/sdb   test   lvm2 a--  1952440320S 1950343168S

The following example displays the output of the pvs command in units of 4 MB:

# pvs --units 4m
  PV         VG     Fmt  Attr PSize      PFree
  /dev/sdb   test   lvm2 a--  238335.00U 238079.00U

The purpose of the r unit is that it works similarly to h (human-readable), but in addition, the reported value gets a prefix of < or > to indicate that the actual size is slightly more or less that the displayed size. The r setting is the default for LVM commands. LVM rounds the decimal value, causing non-exact sizes to be reported. Notice the following:

# vgs --units g test
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize   VFree
  test   1   1   0 wz-n 931.00g 930.00g

# vgs --units r test
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize    VFree
  test   1   1   0 wz-n <931.00g <930.00

# vgs test
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize    VFree
  test   1   1   0 wz-n <931.00g <930.00g

Note that the r is the default unit when --units is not specified. It also shows how --units g (or other --units) do not always display exactly correct sizes. It also shows the primary purpose of r, which is the < to indicate that the displayed size is not exact. In th is example, the value is not exact because the VG size is not an exact multiple of gigabytes, and .01 is also not an exact representation of the fraction.

You can use the --reportformat option of the LVM display commands to display the output in JSON format.

The following example shows the output of the lvs in standard default format.

# lvs
  LV      VG            Attr       LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  my_raid my_vg         Rwi-a-r---  12.00m                                    100.00
  root    rhel_host-075 -wi-ao----   6.67g
  swap    rhel_host-075 -wi-ao---- 820.00m

The following command shows the output of the same LVM configuration when you specify JSON format.

# lvs --reportformat json
  {
      "report": [
          {
              "lv": [
                  {"lv_name":"my_raid", "vg_name":"my_vg", "lv_attr":"Rwi-a-r---", "lv_size":"12.00m", "pool_lv":"", "origin":"", "data_percent":"", "metadata_percent":"", "move_pv":"", "mirror_log":"", "copy_percent":"100.00", "convert_lv":""},
                  {"lv_name":"root", "vg_name":"rhel_host-075", "lv_attr":"-wi-ao----", "lv_size":"6.67g", "pool_lv":"", "origin":"", "data_percent":"", "metadata_percent":"", "move_pv":"", "mirror_log":"", "copy_percent":"", "convert_lv":""},
                  {"lv_name":"swap", "vg_name":"rhel_host-075", "lv_attr":"-wi-ao----", "lv_size":"820.00m", "pool_lv":"", "origin":"", "data_percent":"", "metadata_percent":"", "move_pv":"", "mirror_log":"", "copy_percent":"", "convert_lv":""}
              ]
          }
      ]
  }

You can also set the report format as a configuration option in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file, using the output_format setting. The --reportformat setting of the command line, however, takes precedence over this setting.

Both report-oriented and processing-oriented LVM commands can report the command log if this is enabled with the log/report_command_log configuration setting. You can determine the set of fields to display and to sort by for this report.

The following examples configures LVM to generate a complete log report for LVM commands. In this example, you can see that both logical volumes lvol0 and lvol1 were successfully processed, as was the volume group VG that contains the volumes.

# lvmconfig --type full log/command_log_selection
command_log_selection="all"

# lvs
  Logical Volume
  ==============
  LV    LSize Cpy%Sync
  lvol1 4.00m 100.00
  lvol0 4.00m

  Command Log
  ===========
  Seq LogType Context    ObjType ObjName ObjGrp  Msg     Errno RetCode
    1 status  processing lv      lvol0   vg      success     0       1
    2 status  processing lv      lvol1   vg      success     0       1
    3 status  processing vg      vg              success     0       1

# lvchange -an vg/lvol1
  Command Log
  ===========
  Seq LogType Context    ObjType ObjName ObjGrp  Msg     Errno RetCode
    1 status  processing lv      lvol1   vg      success     0       1
    2 status  processing vg      vg              success     0       1

For further information on configuring LVM reports and command logs, see the lvmreport man page.

Logical volume manager (LVM) supports Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, and 10. An LVM RAID volume has the following characteristics:

Other characteristics include:

The following are the supported configurations by RAID, including levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and linear:

To create a RAID logical volume, you can specify a RAID type by using the --type argument of the lvcreate command. For most users, specifying one of the five available primary types, which are raid1, raid4, raid5, raid6, and raid10, should be sufficient.

The following table describes the possible RAID segment types.

You can create RAID1 arrays with multiple numbers of copies, according to the value you specify for the -m argument. Similarly, you can specify the number of stripes for a RAID 0, 4, 5, 6, and 10 logical volume with the -i argument. You can also specify the stripe size with the -I argument. The following procedure describes different ways to create different types of RAID logical volume.

# lvs -a -o name,copy_percent,devices _my_vg_
  LV                Copy%  Devices
  my_lv             6.25    my_lv_rimage_0(0),my_lv_rimage_1(0)
  [my_lv_rimage_0]         /dev/sde1(0)
  [my_lv_rimage_1]         /dev/sdf1(1)
  [my_lv_rmeta_0]          /dev/sde1(256)
  [my_lv_rmeta_1]          /dev/sdf1(0)

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.

You can create a RAID0 striped logical volume using the lvcreate --type raid0[meta] --stripes _Stripes --stripesize StripeSize VolumeGroup [PhysicalVolumePath] command.

The following table describes different parameters, which you can use while creating a RAID0 striped logical volume.

Soft corruption in data storage implies that the data retrieved from a storage device is different from the data written to that device. The corrupted data can exist indefinitely on storage devices. You might not discover this corrupted data until you retrieve and attempt to use this data.

Depending on the type of configuration, a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) logical volume(LV) prevents data loss when a device fails. If a device consisting of a RAID array fails, the data can be recovered from other devices that are part of that RAID LV. However, a RAID configuration does not ensure the integrity of the data itself. Soft corruption, silent corruption, soft errors, and silent errors are terms that describe data that has become corrupted, even if the system design and software continues to function as expected.

Device mapper (DM) integrity is used with RAID levels 1, 4, 5, 6, and 10 to mitigate or prevent data loss due to soft corruption. The RAID layer ensures that a non-corrupted copy of the data can fix the soft corruption errors. The integrity layer sits above each RAID image while an extra sub LV stores the integrity metadata or data checksums for each RAID image. When you retrieve data from an RAID LV with integrity, the integrity data checksums analyze the data for corruption. If corruption is detected, the integrity layer returns an error message, and the RAID layer retrieves a non-corrupted copy of the data from another RAID image. The RAID layer automatically rewrites non-corrupted data over the corrupted data to repair the soft corruption.

When creating a new RAID LV with DM integrity or adding integrity to an existing RAID LV, consider the following points:

When you create a RAID LV with device mapper (DM) integrity or add integrity to an existing RAID LV, it mitigates the risk of losing data due to soft corruption. Wait for the integrity synchronization and the RAID metadata to complete before using the LV. Otherwise, the background initialization might impact the LV’s performance.

When you create a RAID logical volumes, the background I/O required to initialize the logical volumes with the sync operation can expel other I/O operations to LVM devices, such as updates to volume group metadata, particularly when you are creating many RAID logical volumes. This can cause the other LVM operations to slow down.

You can control the rate at which a RAID logical volume is initialized by implementing recovery throttling. To control the rate at which sync operations are performed, set the minimum and maximum I/O rate for those operations with the --minrecoveryrate and --maxrecoveryrate options of the lvcreate command.

You can specify these options as follows:

For example, use the lvcreate --type raid10 -i 2 -m 1 -L 10G --maxrecoveryrate 128 -n my_lv my_vg command to create a 2-way RAID10 array my_lv, which is in the volume group my_vg with 3 stripes that is 10G in size with a maximum recovery rate of 128 kiB/sec/device. You can also specify minimum and maximum recovery rates for a RAID scrubbing operation.

You can convert an existing linear logical volume to a RAID logical volume. To perform this operation, use the --type argument of the lvconvert command.

RAID logical volumes are composed of metadata and data subvolume pairs. When you convert a linear device to a RAID1 array, it creates a new metadata subvolume and associates it with the original logical volume on one of the same physical volumes that the linear volume is on. The additional images are added in a metadata/data subvolume pair. If the metadata image that pairs with the original logical volume cannot be placed on the same physical volume, the lvconvert fails.

You can convert an existing RAID1 LVM logical volume to an LVM linear logical volume. To perform this operation, use the lvconvert command and specify the -m0 argument. This removes all the RAID data subvolumes and all the RAID metadata subvolumes that make up the RAID array, leaving the top-level RAID1 image as the linear logical volume.

You can convert an existing mirrored LVM device with a segment type mirror to a RAID1 LVM device. To perform this operation, use the lvconvert command with the --type raid1 argument. This renames the mirror subvolumes named mimage to RAID subvolumes named rimage.

In addition, it also removes the mirror log and and creates metadata subvolumes named rmeta for the data subvolumes on the same physical volumes as the corresponding data subvolumes.

You can resize a RAID logical volume in the following ways;

You can change the number of images in an existing RAID1 array, similar to the way you can change the number of images in the implementation of LVM mirroring.

When you add images to a RAID1 logical volume with the lvconvert command, you can perform the following operations:

You can split off an image of a RAID logical volume to form a new logical volume. When you are removing a RAID image from an existing RAID1 logical volume or removing a RAID data subvolume and its associated metadata subvolume from the middle of the device, any higher numbered images will be shifted down to fill the slot. The index numbers on the logical volumes that make up a RAID array will thus be an unbroken sequence of integers.

You can temporarily split off an image of a RAID1 array for read-only use while tracking any changes by using the --trackchanges argument with the --splitmirrors argument of the lvconvert command. Using this feature, you can merge the image into an array at a later time while resyncing only those portions of the array that have changed since the image was split.

When you split off a RAID image with the --trackchanges argument, you can specify which image to split but you cannot change the name of the volume being split. In addition, the resulting volumes have the following constraints:

You can merge an image that was split off. When you merge the image, only the portions of the array that have changed since the image was split are resynced.

LVM RAID handles device failures in an automatic fashion based on the preferences defined by the raid_fault_policy field in the lvm.conf file.

As long as there are enough devices remaining to support usability, the RAID logical volume will continue to operate.

# lvs -a -o name,copy_percent,devices my_vg
  LV               Copy%  Devices
  my_lv            100.00 my_lv_rimage_0(0),my_lv_rimage_1(0),my_lv_rimage_2(0)
  [my_lv_rimage_0]        /dev/sde1(1)
  [my_lv_rimage_1]        /dev/sdf1(1)
  [my_lv_rimage_2]        /dev/sdg1(1)
  [my_lv_rmeta_0]         /dev/sde1(0)
  [my_lv_rmeta_1]         /dev/sdf1(0)
  [my_lv_rmeta_2]         /dev/sdg1(0)

# grep lvm /var/log/messages
Jan 17 15:57:18 bp-01 lvm[8599]: Device #0 of raid1 array, my_vg-my_lv, has failed.
Jan 17 15:57:18 bp-01 lvm[8599]: /dev/sde1: read failed after 0 of 2048 at
250994294784: Input/output error
Jan 17 15:57:18 bp-01 lvm[8599]: /dev/sde1: read failed after 0 of 2048 at
250994376704: Input/output error
Jan 17 15:57:18 bp-01 lvm[8599]: /dev/sde1: read failed after 0 of 2048 at 0:
Input/output error
Jan 17 15:57:18 bp-01 lvm[8599]: /dev/sde1: read failed after 0 of 2048 at
4096: Input/output error
Jan 17 15:57:19 bp-01 lvm[8599]: Couldn't find device with uuid
3lugiV-3eSP-AFAR-sdrP-H20O-wM2M-qdMANy.
Jan 17 15:57:27 bp-01 lvm[8599]: raid1 array, my_vg-my_lv, is not in-sync.
Jan 17 15:57:36 bp-01 lvm[8599]: raid1 array, my_vg-my_lv, is now in-sync.

# lvs -a -o name,copy_percent,devices vg
  Couldn't find device with uuid 3lugiV-3eSP-AFAR-sdrP-H20O-wM2M-qdMANy.
  LV            Copy%  Devices
  lv            100.00 lv_rimage_0(0),lv_rimage_1(0),lv_rimage_2(0)
  [lv_rimage_0]        /dev/sdh1(1)
  [lv_rimage_1]        /dev/sdf1(1)
  [lv_rimage_2]        /dev/sdg1(1)
  [lv_rmeta_0]         /dev/sdh1(0)
  [lv_rmeta_1]         /dev/sdf1(0)
  [lv_rmeta_2]         /dev/sdg1(0)

# lvs -a -o name,copy_percent,devices my_vg
  LV               Copy%  Devices
  my_lv            100.00 my_lv_rimage_0(0),my_lv_rimage_1(0),my_lv_rimage_2(0)
  [my_lv_rimage_0]        /dev/sdh1(1)
  [my_lv_rimage_1]        /dev/sdf1(1)
  [my_lv_rimage_2]        /dev/sdg1(1)
  [my_lv_rmeta_0]         /dev/sdh1(0)
  [my_lv_rmeta_1]         /dev/sdf1(0)
  [my_lv_rmeta_2]         /dev/sdg1(0)

You can replace a RAID device in a logical volume.

LVM provides scrubbing support for RAID logical volumes. RAID scrubbing is the process of reading all the data and parity blocks in an array and checking to see whether they are coherent.

LVM supports Raid takeover, which means converting a RAID logical volume from one RAID level to another (such as from RAID 5 to RAID 6). Changing the RAID level is usually done to increase or decrease resilience to device failures or to restripe logical volumes. You use the lvconvert for RAID takeover. For information on RAID takeover and for examples of using the lvconvert to convert a RAID logical volume, see the lvmraid(7) man page.

RAID reshaping means changing attributes of a RAID logical volume while keeping the same RAID level. Some attributes you can change include RAID layout, stripe size, and number of stripes. For information on RAID reshaping and examples of using the lvconvert command to reshape a RAID logical volume, see the lvmraid(7) man page.

You can control the I/O operations for a device in a RAID1 logical volume by using the --writemostly and --writebehind parameters of the lvchange command. The format for using these parameters is as follows.

When you create a RAID logical volume, the region size for the logical volume will be the value of the raid_region_size parameter in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file. You can override this default value with the -R option of the lvcreate command.

After you have created a RAID logical volume, you can change the region size of the volume with the -R option of the lvconvert command. The following example changes the region size of logical volume vg/raidlv to 4096K. The RAID volume must be synced in order to change the region size.

# lvconvert -R 4096K vg/raid1
Do you really want to change the region_size 512.00 KiB of LV vg/raid1 to 4.00 MiB? [y/n]: y
  Changed region size on RAID LV vg/raid1 to 4.00 MiB.

When you modify the original volume (the origin) after you take a snapshot, the snapshot feature makes a copy of the modified data area as it was prior to the change so that it can reconstruct the state of the volume. When you create a snapshot, full read and write access to the origin stays possible.

Since a snapshot copies only the data areas that change after the snapshot is created, the snapshot feature requires a minimal amount of storage. For example, with a rarely updated origin, 3-5 % of the origin’s capacity is sufficient to maintain the snapshot. It does not provide a substitute for a backup procedure. Snapshot copies are virtual copies and are not an actual media backup.

The size of the snapshot controls the amount of space set aside for storing the changes to the origin volume. For example, if you create a snapshot and then completely overwrite the origin, the snapshot should be at least as big as the origin volume to hold the changes. You should regularly monitor the size of the snapshot. For example, a short-lived snapshot of a read-mostly volume, such as /usr, would need less space than a long-lived snapshot of a volume because it contains many writes, such as /home.

If a snapshot is full, the snapshot becomes invalid because it can no longer track changes on the origin volume. But you can configure LVM to automatically extend a snapshot whenever its usage exceeds the snapshot_autoextend_threshold value to avoid snapshot becoming invalid. Snapshots are fully resizable and you can perform the following operations:

The snapshot volume provide the following benefits:

Use lvcreate command with the -s or --size argument followed by the required size to create a snapshot of the original volume (the origin). A snapshot of a volume is writable. By default, a snapshot volume is activated with the origin during normal activation commands as compared to the thinly-provisioned snapshots. LVM does not support creating a snapshot volume that is larger than the sum of the origin volume’s size and the required metadata size for the volume. If you specify a snapshot volume that is larger than this, LVM creates a snapshot volume that is required for the size of the origin.

The following procedure creates an origin logical volume named origin and a snapshot volume of this original volume named snap.

Use the lvconvert command with the --merge option to merge a snapshot into its original (the origin) volume. You can perform a system rollback if you have lost data or files, or otherwise you have to restore your system to a previous state. After you merge the snapshot volume, the resulting logical volume has the origin volume’s name, minor number, and UUID. While the merge is in progress, reads or writes to the origin appear as they were directed to the snapshot being merged. When the merge finishes, the merged snapshot is removed.

If both the origin and snapshot volume are not open and active, the merge starts immediately. Otherwise, the merge starts after either the origin or snapshot are activated and both are closed. You can merge a snapshot into an origin that cannot be closed, for example a root file system, after the origin volume is activated.

Many modern storage stacks now provide the ability to choose between thick provisioning and thin provisioning:

By using thin provisioning, you can over-commit the physical storage, and instead can manage a pool of free space known as a thin pool. You can allocate this thin pool to an arbitrary number of devices when needed by applications. You can expand the thin pool dynamically when needed for cost-effective allocation of storage space.

For example, if ten users each request a 100GB file system for their application, then you can create what appears to be a 100GB file system for each user but which is backed by less actual storage that is used only when needed.

The following are a few advantages of using thin-provisioned devices:

The following are the potential drawbacks of using thin-provisioned devices:

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.

Using the -T or --thin option of the lvcreate command, you can create either a thin pool or a thin volume. You can also use the -T option of the lvcreate command to create both a thin pool and a thin volume at the same time with a single command. This procedure describes how to create and grow thinly-provisioned logical volumes.

A chunk is the largest unit of physical disk dedicated to snapshot storage.

Use the following criteria for using the chunk size:

Be default, lvm2 starts with a 64KiB chunk size and estimates good metadata size for such chunk size. The minimal metadata size lvm2 can create and use is 2 MiB. If the metadata size needs to be larger than 128 MiB it begins to increase the chunk size, so the metadata size stays compact. However, this may result in some big chunk size values, which are less space efficient for snapshot usage. In such cases, a smaller chunk size and bigger metadata size is a better option.

To specify the chunk size according to your requirement, use the -c or --chunksize parameter to overrule lvm2 estimated chunk size. Be aware that you cannot change the chunk size once the thinpool is created.

If the volume data size is in the range of TiB, use ~15.8GiB as the metadata size, which is the maximum supported size, and set the chunk size according to your requirement. But, note that it is not possible to increase the metadata size if you need to extend the volume’s data size and have a small chunk size.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports thinly-provisioned snapshot volumes. A snapshot of a thin logical volume also creates a thin logical volume (LV). A thin snapshot volume has the same characteristics as any other thin volume. You can independently activate the volume, extend the volume, rename the volume, remove the volume, and even snapshot the volume.

Traditional snapshots must allocate new space for each snapshot created, where data is preserved as changes are made to the origin. But thin-provisioning snapshots share the same space with the origin. Snapshots of thin LVs are efficient because the data blocks common to a thin LV and any of its snapshots are shared. You can create snapshots of thin LVs or from the other thin snapshots. Blocks common to recursive snapshots are also shared in the thin pool.

Thin snapshot volumes provide the following benefits:

Although there are many advantages for using thin snapshot volumes, there are some use cases for which the traditional LVM snapshot volume feature might be more appropriate to your needs. You can use traditional snapshots with all types of volumes. However, to use thin-snapshots requires you to use thin-provisioning.

By default, a thin snapshot volume is skipped during normal activation commands.

Using thin-provisioned snapshot volumes, you can have more virtual devices stored on the same data volume.

Thin snapshots can be created for thinly-provisioned origin volumes, or for origin volumes that are not thinly-provisioned. The following procedure describes different ways to create a thinly-provisioned snapshot volume.

LVM provides the following kinds of caching. Each one is suitable for different kinds of I/O patterns on the logical volume.

LVM provides support for adding a cache to LVM logical volumes. LVM caching uses the following LVM logical volume types:

All of these associated LVs must be in the same volume group.

You can combine a main logical volume (LV) with a faster, usually smaller, LV that holds the cached data. The fast LV is created from fast block devices, such as SSD drives. When you enable caching for a logical volume, LVM renames and hides the original volumes, and presents a new logical volume that is composed of the original logical volumes. The composition of the new logical volume depends on the caching method and whether you are using the cachevol or cachepool option.

The cachevol and cachepool options expose different levels of control over the placement of the caching components:

In all configurations, LVM exposes a single resulting device, which groups together all the caching components. The resulting device has the same name as the original slow logical volume.

This procedure enables caching of commonly used data on a logical volume using the dm-cache method.

This procedure enables you to create the cache data and the cache metadata logical volumes individually and then combine the volumes into a cache pool.

This procedure enables caching of write I/O operations to a logical volume using the dm-writecache method.

This procedure disables dm-cache or dm-writecache caching that is currently enabled on a logical volume.

Autoactivation of a logical volume refers to the event-based automatic activation of a logical volume during system startup. As devices become available on the system (device online events), systemd/udev runs the lvm2-pvscan service for each device. This service runs the pvscan --cache -aay device command, which reads the named device. If the device belongs to a volume group, the pvscan command will check if all of the physical volumes for that volume group are present on the system. If so, the command will activate logical volumes in that volume group.

You can use the following configuration options in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf configuration file to control autoactivation of logical volumes.

For information on setting these options, see the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf configuration file.

You can control the activation of logical volume in the following ways:

You can set the activation skip flag on a logical volume in the following ways.

To determine whether the activation skip flag is set for a logical volume run the lvs command, which displays the k attribute as in the following example.

# lvs vg/thin1s1
LV         VG  Attr       LSize Pool  Origin
thin1s1    vg  Vwi---tz-k 1.00t pool0 thin1

You can activate a logical volume with the k attribute set by using the -K or --ignoreactivationskip option in addition to the standard -ay or --activate y option.

By default, thin snapshot volumes are flagged for activation skip when they are created. You can control the default activation skip setting on new thin snapshot volumes with the auto_set_activation_skip setting in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file.

The following command activates a thin snapshot logical volume that has the activation skip flag set.

# lvchange -ay -K VG/SnapLV

The following command creates a thin snapshot without the activation skip flag

# lvcreate --type thin -n SnapLV -kn -s ThinLV --thinpool VG/ThinPoolLV

The following command removes the activation skip flag from a snapshot logical volume.

# lvchange -kn VG/SnapLV

You can control logical volume activation of a shared logical volume with the -a option of the lvchange and vgchange commands, as follows.

You can configure which logical volumes with missing devices are activated by setting the activation_mode parameter with the lvchange command to one of the following values.

The default value of activation_mode is determined by the activation_mode setting in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file. For further information, see the lvmraid(7) man page.

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) device filter is a list of device name patterns.

Patterns are regular expressions delimited by any character and preceded by a for accepting, or r for rejecting. The first regular expression in the list that matches a device determines if LVM accepts or rejects (ignores) a specific device. A device can have several names through symlinks. If the filter accepts any one of those device names, LVM uses the device. LVM also accepts devices that do not match any patterns.

The default device filter accepts all devices on the system. An ideal user configured device filter accepts one or more patterns and rejects everything else. For example, in such cases, the pattern list can end with r|.*|.

You can find the LVM devices filter configuration in the devices/filter and devices/global_filter fields in the lvm.conf file.

When an LVM operation needs to allocate physical extents for one or more logical volumes, the allocation proceeds as follows:

The allocation policy restrictions are as follows:

The allocation policies can be changed using the vgchange command.

To view the way the allocation process currently works in any specific case, you can read the debug logging output, for example by adding the -vvvv option to a command.

You can prevent allocation of physical extents on the free space of one or more physical volumes with the pvchange command. This may be necessary if there are disk errors, or if you will be removing the physical volume.

The following command disallows the allocation of physical extents on /dev/sdk1.

# pvchange -x n /dev/sdk1

You can also use the -xy arguments of the pvchange command to allow allocation where it had previously been disallowed.

When extending an LVM volume, you can use the --alloc cling option of the lvextend command to specify the cling allocation policy. This policy will choose space on the same physical volumes as the last segment of the existing logical volume. If there is insufficient space on the physical volumes and a list of tags is defined in the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file, LVM will check whether any of the tags are attached to the physical volumes and seek to match those physical volume tags between existing extents and new extents.

For example, if you have logical volumes that are mirrored between two sites within a single volume group, you can tag the physical volumes according to where they are situated by tagging the physical volumes with @site1 and @site2 tags. You can then specify the following line in the lvm.conf file:

cling_tag_list = [ "@site1", "@site2" ]

In the following example, the lvm.conf file has been modified to contain the following line:

cling_tag_list = [ "@A", "@B" ]

Also in this example, a volume group taft has been created that consists of the physical volumes /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd1, /dev/sde1, /dev/sdf1, /dev/sdg1, and /dev/sdh1. These physical volumes have been tagged with tags A, B, and C. The example does not use the C tag, but this will show that LVM uses the tags to select which physical volumes to use for the mirror legs.

# pvs -a -o +pv_tags /dev/sd[bcdefgh]
  PV         VG   Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree  PV Tags
  /dev/sdb1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g A
  /dev/sdc1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g B
  /dev/sdd1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g B
  /dev/sde1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g C
  /dev/sdf1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g C
  /dev/sdg1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g A
  /dev/sdh1  taft lvm2 a--  15.00g 15.00g A

The following command creates a 10 gigabyte mirrored volume from the volume group taft.

# lvcreate --type raid1 -m 1 -n mirror --nosync -L 10G taft
  WARNING: New raid1 won't be synchronised. Don't read what you didn't write!
  Logical volume "mirror" created

The following command shows which devices are used for the mirror legs and RAID metadata subvolumes.

# lvs -a -o +devices
  LV                VG   Attr       LSize  Log Cpy%Sync Devices
  mirror            taft Rwi-a-r--- 10.00g       100.00 mirror_rimage_0(0),mirror_rimage_1(0)
  [mirror_rimage_0] taft iwi-aor--- 10.00g              /dev/sdb1(1)
  [mirror_rimage_1] taft iwi-aor--- 10.00g              /dev/sdc1(1)
  [mirror_rmeta_0]  taft ewi-aor---  4.00m              /dev/sdb1(0)
  [mirror_rmeta_1]  taft ewi-aor---  4.00m              /dev/sdc1(0)

The following command extends the size of the mirrored volume, using the cling allocation policy to indicate that the mirror legs should be extended using physical volumes with the same tag.

# lvextend --alloc cling -L +10G taft/mirror
  Extending 2 mirror images.
  Extending logical volume mirror to 20.00 GiB
  Logical volume mirror successfully resized

The following display command shows that the mirror legs have been extended using physical volumes with the same tag as the leg. Note that the physical volumes with a tag of C were ignored.

# lvs -a -o +devices
  LV                VG   Attr       LSize  Log Cpy%Sync Devices
  mirror            taft Rwi-a-r--- 20.00g       100.00 mirror_rimage_0(0),mirror_rimage_1(0)
  [mirror_rimage_0] taft iwi-aor--- 20.00g              /dev/sdb1(1)
  [mirror_rimage_0] taft iwi-aor--- 20.00g              /dev/sdg1(0)
  [mirror_rimage_1] taft iwi-aor--- 20.00g              /dev/sdc1(1)
  [mirror_rimage_1] taft iwi-aor--- 20.00g              /dev/sdd1(0)
  [mirror_rmeta_0]  taft ewi-aor---  4.00m              /dev/sdb1(0)
  [mirror_rmeta_1]  taft ewi-aor---  4.00m              /dev/sdc1(0)

You can assign tags to LVM RAID objects to group them, so that you can automate the control of LVM RAID behavior, such as activation, by group.

The physical volume (PV) tags are responsible for the allocation control in the LVM raid, as opposed to logical volume (LV) or volume group (VG) tags, because allocation in lvm occurs at the PV level based on allocation policies. To distinguish storage types by their different properties, tag them appropriately (e.g. NVMe, SSD, HDD). Red Hat recommends that you tag each new PV appropriately after you add it to a VG.

This procedure adds object tags to your logical volumes, assuming /dev/sda is an SSD, and /dev/sd[b-f] are HDDs with one partition.

If an LVM command is not working as expected, you can gather diagnostics in the following ways.

You can display information about a failed LVM volume that can help you determine why the volume failed.

If a physical volume fails, you can activate the remaining physical volumes in the volume group and remove all the logical volumes that used that physical volume from the volume group.

If the volume group’s metadata area of a physical volume is accidentally overwritten or otherwise destroyed, you get an error message indicating that the metadata area is incorrect, or that the system was unable to find a physical volume with a particular UUID.

This procedure finds the latest archived metadata of a physical volume that is missing or corrupted.

This procedure restores metadata on a physical volume that is either corrupted or replaced with a new device. You might be able to recover the data from the physical volume by rewriting the metadata area on the physical volume.

LVM commands that report the space usage in volume groups round the reported number to 2 decimal places to provide human-readable output. This includes the vgdisplay and vgs utilities.

As a result of the rounding, the reported value of free space might be larger than what the physical extents on the volume group provide. If you attempt to create a logical volume the size of the reported free space, you might get the following error:

Insufficient free extents

To work around the error, you must examine the number of free physical extents on the volume group, which is the accurate value of free space. You can then use the number of extents to create the logical volume successfully.

When creating an LVM logical volume, you can specify the number of logical extents of the logical volume to avoid rounding error.

You can troubleshoot various issues in LVM RAID devices to correct data errors, recover devices, or replace failed devices.

When using LVM with multipathed storage, LVM commands that list a volume group or logical volume might display messages such as the following:

Found duplicate PV GDjTZf7Y03GJHjteqOwrye2dcSCjdaUi: using /dev/dm-5 not /dev/sdd
Found duplicate PV GDjTZf7Y03GJHjteqOwrye2dcSCjdaUi: using /dev/emcpowerb not /dev/sde
Found duplicate PV GDjTZf7Y03GJHjteqOwrye2dcSCjdaUi: using /dev/sddlmab not /dev/sdf

You can troubleshoot these warnings to understand why LVM displays them, or to hide the warnings.