[CentOS] ssm vs. lvm: moving physical drives and volume group to another system

Sat Jul 14 16:55:09 UTC 2018
Mike <1100100 at gmail.com>

I did the following test:

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1.

Computer with Centos 7.5 installed on hard drive /dev/sda.

Added two hard drives to the computer: /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc.

Created a new logical volume in RAID-1 using RedHat System Storage Manager:

ssm create --fstype xfs -r 1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /mnt/data

Everything works.
/dev/lvm_pool/lvol001 is mounted to /mnt/data.
Files and folders can be copied/moved, read/written on /mnt/data.

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2.

I erased CentOS 7.5 from /dev/sda.
Wrote zeros to /dev/sda using dd.
Reinstalled CentOS 7 on /dev/sda.
Completed yum update - reboot - yum install system-storage-manager.

RedHat system storage manager listed all existing volumes on the computer:

[root at localhost]# ssm list

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume              Pool   Volume size  FS     FS size       Free
Type    Mount point
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/cl/root        cl        65.00 GB  xfs   64.97 GB   63.67 GB
linear  /
/dev/cl/swap        cl         8.00 GB
linear
/dev/lvm_pool/lvol001 lvm_pool200.00 GB xfs  199.90 GB  184.53 GB
raid1   /mnt/data
/dev/cl/home        cl       200.00 GB  xfs  199.90 GB  199.87 GB
linear  /home
/dev/sda1                      4.00 GB  xfs    3.99 GB    3.86 GB
part    /boot
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[/CODE]

So far, so good.  The new CentOS7 install can see the logical volume.

Mounted the volume:  ssm mount -t xfs /dev/lvm_pool/lvol001 /mnt/data
Works.
cd to /mnt/data and I can see the files left on the volume from the
previous tests.
Moving/copying/read/write -- works.

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3. Is it safe to assume when using RedHat System Storage Manager it's
not necessary to use the lvm commands (vgexport and vgimport) to move
two physical drives containing a logical volume in raid 1 from one
computer to another?

Thanks for your help and guidance.