[CentOS] Proper partition/LVM growth after RAID migration

Tue Oct 17 06:11:32 UTC 2006
Christian Wahlgren <christian.wahlgren at gmail.com>

On 10/16/06, Shawn K. O'Shea <shawn at ll.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > I did a RAID migration on a 3Ware 9590SE-12, so that an exported disk
> > grew from 700GB to 1400GB. The exported disk is managed by LVM. The
> > problem now is that I don't really know what to do now to let LVM and
> > my locigal volume to make use of this new disk size, and probably
> > future disk size growth.
> >
> I've been doing this recently with VMWare ESX server. To save space, I
> create base disk images of clean OS installs on a minimalistic sized
> disk. If I need space, I use tools from VMWare to make the virtual disk
> bigger, and then grow the bits inside Linux with LVM.

(...) (thanks for the links!)

> To summarize the links...(usual caveats, backup data, etc, etc)
> -Create  a new partition of type 8e (Linux LVM) on the new empty space.
>
> -Add that pv to LVM
>  If the new partition is /dev/sda3, then this would look like
> pvcreate /dev/sda3

This part is actually the main question I had (in the Subject) - each
time I add a disk to my RAID-5 volume on the RAID card, the exported
disk is getting bigger. And every time I do this I have to add a
partition on this disk to use this new space. With primary partitions
I can only repeat this 4 times.

So, is it the "proper way of doing this" when you grow this exported
disk, to add partitions in a extended partition table each time you
add a disk, and then add that PV partition to the VG, resize LVs etc?
Compare to when you add a physical disk "directly" to a VG, you only
create one partition on each new disk and then let your VG and LV to
grow. This other situation with a RAID card you make one exported disk
larger each time you add one or more physical disks to the RAID volume
and then have to add a new partition on the same (emulated) disk (to
the BIOS and operating system).

Regards, Christian

>
> -Shawn
>