Resizing LVM Volumes on a Virtual Linux Host without Reboot

My production server had a single virtual disk, 20GB in size. I wanted to double this, and bring the total available space to 40GB. Using Citrix XenCenter (the graphical manager for XenServer), I added an additional virtual disk (20GB) to the virtual host. This is a relatively trivial operation, and is supported by most virtualization platforms without the need to reboot the virtual host (and presuming the guest OS supports this). Once the virtual host recognized the newly attached virtual disk as a device, I was able to continue.

Partition the Virtual Disk

The next step was to partition the virtual disk so that it was actually usable by the system.

Using fdisk -l, I was able to quickly determine the name of the new virtual disk. The new virtual disk, /dev/xvdb, didn’t have a valid partition table.

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[root@prdsvc1 ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/xvda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/xvda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/xvda2              14        2610    20860402+  8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/xvdb: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/xvdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Then, I used fdisk /dev/xvdb to create a new Linux LVM partition on the new virtual disk.

Step-by-Step

1. Primary Partition

I created a new primary partition in position 1. It started on the first cylinder (default), and ended on the last cylinder (default). This uses the full available disk space.

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[root@prdsvc1 ~]# fdisk /dev/xvdb
Command (m for help): n <RETURN>
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p <RETURN>
Partition number (1-4): 1 <RETURN>
First cylinder (1-2610, default 1): <RETURN>
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-2610, default 2610): <RETURN>
Using default value 2610

2. Change Type

I changed the type of the new partition to “Linux LVM”, identified by hex code 8e.

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Command (m for help): t <RETURN>
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): 8e <RETURN>
Changed system type of partition 1 to 8e (Linux LVM)

3. Print & Verify

I printed out the new partition table to verify it was correct.

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Command (m for help): p <RETURN>

Disk /dev/xvdb: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/xvdb1               1        2610    20964793+  8e  Linux LVM

4. Write to Disk

And finally, I wrote the new partition table to disk.

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Command (m for help): w <RETURN>
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Quick Note on LVM Terminology

LVM defines physical volumes (PV’s) which together can be grouped into volume groups (VG’s). An example of a physical volume would be a physical hard drive, or a virtual disk drive. These physical volumes are usually divided into multiple units referred to as physical extents (PE’s). A volume group consists of at least one physical volume, and may contain several physical volumes. This volume group then has many available physical extents.

Several logical volumes (LV’s) can be created using the physical extents” available in a volume group. Physical extents are allocated to logical volumes as logical extents (LE’s). Unless mirroring is involved, there is a one-to-one mapping between physical extents and logical extents. Mirroring allows several physical extents to correspond to a single logical extent. Logical volumes are the actual disk volumes usable by the OS. In order to expand an existing logical volume, there must be unused physical extents inside the parent volume group. This can generally be accomplished by adding more physical volumes to the volume group.

This can all be a bit confusing at first, the image at the top of this post may be helpful for visualizing the working components of LVM.

Create the LVM Physical Volume, Add it to the Volume Group, & Extend the Logical Volume

Before adding a new physical volume to a volume group, LVM must be made aware of it. I did this using pvcreate /dev/xvdb1, specifying the newly created partition. I checked available physical volumes before and after this operation using pvs.

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[root@prdsvc1 ~]# pvs
  PV         VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree 
  /dev/xvda2 VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   19.88G     0

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# pvcreate /dev/xvdb1
  Physical volume "/dev/xvdb1" successfully created

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# pvs
  PV         VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree 
  /dev/xvda2 VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   19.88G     0 
  /dev/xvdb1            lvm2 --   19.99G 19.99G

Next, I added the new physical volume to my volume group. This is called ‘extending’ the volume group. I accomplished this by executing vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/xvdb1, specifying the volume group and physical volume to use. I checked the size and free space available to the volume group before and after the operation with vgs.

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[root@prdsvc1 ~]# vgs
  VG         #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize  VFree 
  VolGroup00   2   2   0 wz--n- 19.88G    0

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/xvdb1
  Volume group "VolGroup00" successfully extended

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# vgs
  VG         #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize  VFree 
  VolGroup00   2   2   0 wz--n- 39.84G 19.97G

When a volume group has free space, the extra space can be allocated to a new or existing logical volume. Since I wanted to increase the existing logical volume’s size, I used lvextend -l +100%FREE VolGroup00/LogVol00. This specified that I wanted to extend the named logical volume (VolGroup00/LogVol00), using 100% of the available free extents. I checked the size of the logical volume before and after using lvs.

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[root@prdsvc1 ~]# lvs
  LV       VG         Attr   LSize  Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%  Convert
  LogVol00 VolGroup00 -wi-ao 17.84G                                      
  LogVol01 VolGroup00 -wi-ao  2.03G

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# lvextend -l +100%FREE VolGroup00/LogVol00
  Extending logical volume LogVol00 to 37.81 GB
  Logical volume LogVol00 successfully resized

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# lvs
  LV       VG         Attr   LSize  Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%  Convert
  LogVol00 VolGroup00 -wi-ao 37.81G                                      
  LogVol01 VolGroup00 -wi-ao  2.03G

Increasing the size of the logical volume gave the OS access to the additional space. However, this did not make it usable. I needed to resize the filesystem on the volume to actually make the newly allocated space usable. I accomplish this with resize2fs /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00, specifying the filesystem on my logical volume. This resized the filesystem online. Running df showed the change in available disk space on the filesystem.

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[root@prdsvc1 ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                       18G  9.7G  6.8G  59% /
/dev/xvda1             99M   23M   72M  25% /boot
tmpfs                 1.0G     0  1.0G   0% /dev/shm

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# resize2fs /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem at /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 to 9912320 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 is now 9912320 blocks long.

[root@prdsvc1 ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                       37G  9.7G   26G  28% /
/dev/xvda1             99M   23M   72M  25% /boot
tmpfs                 1.0G     0  1.0G   0% /dev/shm

And Voilà! More free space. This allowed my server to continue operating without interruption. No reboot was required, and more disk space became available—an elegant and effective solution.