2015  
   

Hands  On  Labs  

Managing
            Logical Volumes
With LVM On CentOS 7

LINUX ACADEMY | http://www.linuxacademy.com

 
Table  of  Contents  
Introduction  .................................................................................................................................................  2  
Lab  Exercises  And  Setup  ...............................................................................................................................  3  
Physical  Volumes  ..........................................................................................................................................  3  
Volume  Groups  ............................................................................................................................................  3  
Preparing  The  Physical  Disks  ........................................................................................................................  4  
Creating  Physical  Volumes  For  LVM  .............................................................................................................  4  
Creating  A  Volume  Group  ............................................................................................................................  4  
Create  The  Logical  Volume  ...........................................................................................................................  5  
View  The  Device  In  /dev  ...............................................................................................................................  6  
Create  A  File  System  And  Mount  The  Logical  Volume  .................................................................................  6  
Extending  Logical  Volumes  and  Volume  Groups  ..........................................................................................  7  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  1  
 
  

Introduction  
The  Logical  Volume  Manager,  also  known  as  LVM,  provides  a  great  amount  of  flexibility  for  applications  
that  require  expanding  disk  space.  LVM  works  by  creating  a  virtual  layer  of  storage  on  top  of  physical  
devices.  The  OS  operates  against  the  LVM  disk  as  if  it  was  a  regular  disk.  However,  the  advantages  allow  
us  to  expand  the  disk  without  having  to  re-­‐format  the  file  system  or  create  new  partitions.  If  your  
application  starts  off  needing  50gig  and  you  attach  a  50gig  disk  drive,  what  happens  when  your  disk  fills  
up?  Very  simply,  with  LVM  you  would  attach  new  device,  add  it  to  the  volume  group  and  expand  your  
virtual  LVM  disk.  There  are  other  uses  of  LVM  such  as  the  ability  to  take  any  combination  of  physical  
devices  to  create  an  abstract  layer  that  allows  that  disk  space  to  be  combined  together  with  LVM.  

   
 
 
 
 

  2  
 
Lab  Exercises  And  Setup  
In  this  lab  there  are  three  physical  disks  attached  to  the  lab  server  provided  on  the  LInuxAcademy.com  
lab  page.  This  lab  is  going  to  go  through  creating  our  initial  physical  volumes,  volume  groups,  and  the  
first  Logical  Volume.  Upon  completion  we  will  then  learn  how  to  expand  or  “extend”  the  logical  volume  
by  attaching  a  new  device  to  the  volume  group.  At  this  point  you  should  be  connected  to  the  
LinuxAcademy.com  lab  server  provided  from  this  self  paced  lab.    

The  username  will  be  linuxacademy  and  password  123456.  

If  you  are  not  acting  as  the  root  user,  type  “sudo  su  -­‐“  and  login  as  the  root  user  to  continue.  This  lab  will  
assume  you  are  either  using  sudo  with  each  command  or  are  acting  as  the  root  user.    

Physical  Volumes    
Each LVM logical volume has an underlying physical storage unit. This is the physical volume
component of LVM. A physical volume can either be a partition of a device or the entire disk. In
order to use a physical volume, the physical volume must be initialized as a physical volume
A.K.A (PV). By doing this a label is placed in the first part of the volume to help identify and
provide meta data about the physical volume to our LVM manager. It is placed in the second
512-by sector of the physical volume. 0, 1, or 2 copies of this data can be stored on each physical
volume; the default is 1 copy. Once configured, you cannot change the number of copies
available. We know the first copy is stored at the start of the device but the second copy is stored
at the end of the device. This helps protect against accidental overwriting of data.

Volume  Groups  
Volume group is a combination of physical volumes that creates a pool of space that the LVM or
logical volumes can allocate.
Extents - Inside of a volume group, disk space is provided inside of allocatable fixed units called
“extents”. An extent is the smallest unit of space that can be assigned to a volume group. Volume
group extents are referred to as physical extents and a logical volume is allocated into sets of
logical extents that are the same size as the physical extents. Thus the logical volume extents
map to the physical volume extents and that is how a logical volume communicates with the
physical volume data.
 

  3  
 
Preparing  The  Physical  Disks  
As  we  know,  a  physical  disk  is  just  an  attached  piece  of  storage.  This  is  normally  what  we  would  use  for  
storage  on  a  file  system  if  we  were  not  using  LVM.  

On  your  lab  server  you  have  three  disks  attached  to  the  server  for  this  lab.  For  this  portion  of  the  lab  we  
are  going  to  be  using  two  of  them.  The  names  will  match  here  in  the  lab  guide.  

1. Navigate  into  the  /dev  directory  

a. cd  /dev  
2. View  the  contents  of  the  /dev  directory.  You  will  notice  there  is  xvdf  and  xvdg  -­‐  those  are  the  
two  disks  we  will  be  using  for  this  lab.  
3. We  must  create  a  partition  on  each  disk.  For  the  purposes  of  this  lab,  we  are  going  to  create  1  
partition  that  is  the  size  of  the  entire  disk.  
4. gdisk  xvdf  
a. n  -­‐  for  new  partition  
b. Partition  Number:  Keep  defaults  -­‐  Press  enter  
c. First  sector:  Keep  defaults  -­‐  Press  enter  
d. Last  sector:  Keep  defaults  -­‐  press  enter  
e. Hex  code  or  GUID  8e00  (we  need  to  define  what  type  of  volume  this  is  so  providing  the  
Linux  LVM  label  for  the  volume  with  8e00  is  required)  
f. Back  at  the  command  for  gdisk,  it  is  time  to  write  the  changes  to  disk  -­‐  hit  w,  confirm  
with  Y  
5. Repeat  step  4  for  the  xvdg  disk.  

Creating  Physical  Volumes  For  LVM  

Now  that  our  disks  have  been  created  correctly,  we  need  to  prepare  them  for  use  by  the  LVM  manager.  
In  order  to  do  this,  we  will  use  the  pvcreate  and  pvdisplay  commands.  

1. At  the  command  line  we  need  to  define  our  physical  volumes  to  be  used  with  LVM  
a. pvcreate  /dev/xvdg1  /dev/xvdf1  
2. We  can  now  view  the  physical  volumes  that  are  available  to  LVM  by  typing  pvdisplay  

Creating  A  Volume  Group  

A  volume  group  is  a  group  of  physical  volumes  that  make  up  our  allocatable  disk  space  for  a  logical  
volume.  A  physical  volume  is  made  up  of  extents;  an  extent  is  also  mapped  from  the  volume  group  to  
the  physical  volume.  This  makes  it  easy  to  move  data  from  one  volume  to  another  or  transfer  data  from  
an  old  physical  storage  to  a  new  physical  storage  device  without  interrupting  our  file  system.  

1. vgcreate  battlestar  /dev/xvdg1  /dev/xvdf1  

Here  we  created  a  volume  group.  It’s  important  to  know  that  we  didn’t  have  to  use  both  disks.  In  fact,  
we  can  have  multiple  volume  groups  that  make  up  a  disk  and  organize  our  data.  In  this  lab  we  are  
keeping  it  simple  and  combing  both  disks  into  a  single  volume  group  that  our  LVM  volume  will  choose  

  4  
 
from.  Battlestar  is  the  name  of  the  volume  group;  this  is  important  because  when  we  create  our  LVM  
volume  we  will  have  to  choose  available  space  from  the  battlestar  volume  group.  We  will  likely  name  
our  LVM  volume  “galactica”  or  another  ship  in  the  battlestar  fleet.  No,  this  is  not  required  for  naming  
conventions;  battlestar  was  chosen  to  represent  a  grouping  for  our  naming  convention.  You  are  free  to  
name  it  whatever  you  see  fit.  

1. vgdisplay    
a. Look  at  the  output  of  the  vgdisplay  command.  It  is  showing  our  volume  groups.  You  can  
optionally  pass  the  volume  group  name  as  a  parameter  to  the  command.  PE  size  is  the  
physical  extent  size.  This  is  the  unit  of  measurement  that  maps  to  a  4MiB  amount  of  
data  on  the  physical  volume.  You’ll  also  notice  the  VG  size  which  is  the  size  of  your  
volume  group.  It  should  be  close  to  40GB.  

Create  The  Logical  Volume  

Now  that  we  have  prepared  our  physical  volumes  and  associated  them  with  a  volume  group,  we  can  
now  create  a  logical  volume.  The  logical  volume  will  use  disk  space  available  from  the  volume  group,  
which  again  maps  to  the  physical  volume.  

Key  knowledge  

• lvcreate  command  has  several  flags  associated  with  it.  Please  take  note  to  what  they  are  below:  
o -­‐n  (volume  name)  
o -­‐L  size  of  the  volume  in  bytes  i.e  1M  1G  20G  1M  etc.  
o -­‐l  size  in  physical  extents.    
§ If  a  physical  extent  is  4MiB  (and  it  is  for  us)  and  you  want  to  create  an  8MiB  LVM  
volume  then  -­‐l  would  be  2.  

Now  it’s  time  to  create  the  LVM  

1. lvcreate  -­‐n  galactica  -­‐L  20G  battlestar  

a. galactica  is  the  name  of  our  volume  
b. 20G  is  the  size  of  the  volume  
c. battlestar  is  the  volume  group  we  are  using.  
2. View  your  created  volumes  with  lvdisplay  

Now  that  we  have  created  the  volume  we  can  use  it  just  like  a  regular  disk.  We  need  to  add  a  file  system  
and  mount  it  to  the  operating  system.  It’s  important  to  know  that  XFS  file  system  is  most  commonly  
used  with  LVM.  This  is  because  XFS  allows  LVM  to  scale  up  in  data  as  well  as  scale  down  in  data  with  
little  effort.  EXT  file  systems  do  not  allow  you  to  shrink  the  device  size  like  XFS  does.  

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View  The  Device  In  /dev  
1. cd  /dev  
2. ls  
a. You  will  notice  a  new  directory  called  “battlestar”  which  is  the  name  of  our  volume  
group  
3. cd  battlestar  
4. ls  
a. You  will  see  galactica,  our  logical  volume.  All  logical  volumes  created  from  the  battlestar  
volume  group  will  be  listed  here.  We  format  and  mount  the  disk  just  like  we  would  
another  device  in  /dev  

Create  A  File  System  And  Mount  The  Logical  Volume  

1. mkfs  -­‐t  xfs  /dev/battlestar/galactica  
2. mkdir  /mnt/mydir  
3. mount  /dev/battlestar/galactica  /mnt/mydir  
4. df  -­‐h  
a. You  will  see  the  file  system  mounted  at  /mnt/mydir  and  is  20G  in  size.  
b. You  can  optionally  now  add  this  to  /etc/fstab  and  it  acts  just  like  a  regular  file  system  
with  the  advantages  of  being  able  to  resize  the  file  system  and  move  data  and  
add/remove  physical  volumes  to  volume  groups  easily.  

 
 
 
 
 
 

  6  
 
  

Extending  Logical  Volumes  and  Volume  Groups  

As  part  of  this  lab,  there  is  a  third  physical  volume  available  in  /dev.  For  the  rest  of  this  lab  we  will  add  
that  volume  to  the  battlestar  volume  group  and  then  extend  our  already  existing  logical  volume  with  the  
name  of  galactica  to  be  60G  in  available  disk  size.  You’ll  notice  we  are  using  three  physical  disks  and  
mounting  them  as  one  using  the  LVM.  

1. gdisk  /dev/xvdj  
a. If  you  need  help  on  this  section,  go  to  the  first  part  of  the  lab  to  follow  the  instructions  
on  using  gdisk  to  create  an  LVM  labeled  disk.  
2. partprobe  -­‐  this  command  will  register  any  new  partitions  to  the  kernel  if  it  is  not  already  
completed.  
3. pvcreate  /dev/xvdj1  
a. We  need  to  create  a  physical  volume  for  LVM  using  the  pvcreate  command  
4. Next  we  need  to  add  the  new  /dev/xvdj1  physical  volume  to  our  volume  group  
a. vgextend  battlestar  /dev/xvdj1  
b. vgdisplay  will  show  that  the  volume  group  now  supports  almost  60G  in  storage  space.  
5. Now  that  our  volume  group  is  60GiB,  we  can  extend  our  current  logical  volume  or  create  a  
new  logical  volume.  In  this  lab  we  are  going  to  extend  it  and  look  at  the  different  ways  we  
can  extend  it  
6. We  want  to  add  39G  to  our  current  battlestar  LVM  so  that  it  is  59G  in  size.  Here  is  a  list  of  
ways  you  can  do  so:  
a. Extend  the  volume  to  be  a  total  of  59G  
i. lvextend  -­‐L  59G  /dev/battlestar/galactica  
b. Add  39G  to  the  logical  volume  
i. lvextend    -­‐L  +39G  /dev/battlestar/galactica    
c. Please  remember  you  can  specify  or  do  this  with  extents  using  the  -­‐l  (lower  case  L)  flag  
7. Using  lvdisplay  we  can  see  that  the  LV  size  is  now  59.00  GiB  
8. Using  df  -­‐h  we  see  that  the  operating  system  only  sees  20G  of  that.  We  now  need  to  execute  
the  xfs_growfs  command  in  order  to  resize  the  file  system  on  the  LVM  volume.  
9. xfs_growfs  /mnt/mydir    
10. df  -­‐h  
a. Will  show  the  disk  is  now  59G  in  usable  disk  space!  

Great  job!    That  concludes  the  LVM  lab.  

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