[CentOS-virt] Move Windows within an LV to another pv safely

Sun Oct 25 19:48:28 UTC 2009
Ben M. <centos at rivint.com>

Thanks again Christopher, you continue to be a welcome source of help. 
Though I have some knowledge gaps on the veracity of snapshots on a 
"non-ext3" lv I am going to try this and am starting the snapshot.

Does this appear to be a sound procedure? I have one inline question.

1. Shutdown domU source (source lvname = win2k8-source) which is never 
file mounted in Xen dom0, just "lvm'd".
2. snapshot source win2k8-source to win2k8-snapshot

[How long do I wait before bringing DomU source back up? Is there in 
indication when it is done? It is approx. 50gig]

3. Bring up domU (Is this necessary if seeking accurate data state, 
would rather keep offline on a weekend dayrather than lose data entries.)
4. Create identical lv extent space (win3k8-target) on target pv/vg
5. dd if=/dev/vgsnapshotsource/win2k8-snapshot 
of=/dev/vgtarget/win2k8-target
6. Shutdown DomU, change xen win2k8-source domU conf file phy: reference 
to win2k8-target
6a. Drop snapshot, rename source lv to win2k8-old
7. Start "new" domU.
8. test extensively, if works, run for few a day or two. Keep *-old as 
fallback for a week or so. Then move to an archive using dd.



Christopher G. Stach II wrote:
> ----- "Ben M." <centos at rivint.com> wrote:
> 
>> BUT, according to 'man pvmove' it doesn't have a switch to leave a
>> copy 
>> behind, or the old extents in place for a fallback. That makes me a 
>> little apprehensive about having something ready to roll back to in
>> its 
>> most current "data" state.
> 
> Right, it doesn't. To keep downtime minimal, you can shut down the windows guest, create an LVM snapshot of the guest's LV, boot the guest back up, dd from the snapshot to a new LV for your backup, remove the snapshot, and then pvmove. Be patient with pvmove, as it can take a while.
>