[nflug] Here is something I should know, but I've never tried it in a production environment, so...

Brian Powell bpowell01 at gmail.com
Tue Jun 24 12:51:24 EDT 2008


You can convert a physical partition to LVM, but you will not retain
any existing data. So to answer your original question the answer is
no ;-)



On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Richard Hubbard <rhubby at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks!
>
> Can I change an existing partition to use LVM without losing data?
>
>
> <span style="font-family:comic sans ms;">Richard Hubbard </span>
> ATTO Technology Inc
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: David J. Andruczyk <djandruczyk at yahoo.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 9:08:25 PM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] Here is something I should know, but I've never tried
> it in a production environment, so...
>
> Quick LVM primer:
>
> using LVM on partitions:
>
> fdisk drive, set aside apartition and set the partition type to 8e
> pvcreate /dev/sdax
> vgcreate  VolGRoupName /dev/sdax
> lvcreate -L 10G -n LVname /dev/mapper/VolGroupName
> mkfs -t ext3 -j /dev/mapper/VolGRoupName-LVname
>
> It's also possible to use LVM ontop of a full device (in that case,  just
> use pvcreate /dev/sda),  partitions are better however as you can see if a
> disk has LVM on it, via using fdisk.
>
> i.e. for me:
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1               1          13      104391   83  Linux
> /dev/sda2              14       30401   244091610   8e  Linux LVM
>
> There are more advanced methods like using multiple disks per volume group,
> striping, etc...
> It gets interesting when u get to play with a Sun Thumper (X4500), with 48 1
> TB disks and you want to slice and dice the disks with SW raid and LVM.
>
>
> -- David J. Andruczyk
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Richard Hubbard <rhubby at yahoo.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 7:02:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] Here is something I should know, but I've never tried
> it in a production environment, so...
>
> Not denying any advantages.
>
> I'm just pretty old school sometimes.
> // In other words, I haven't learned how to do LVM yet!
>
> <span style="font-family:comic sans ms;">Richard Hubbard </span>
> ATTO Technology Inc
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: David J. Andruczyk <djandruczyk at yahoo.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 6:25:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] Here is something I should know, but I've never tried
> it in a production environment, so...
>
>
>  LVM has many advantages. i.e. when your raid card decides to present the
> devices in an alternate order, or you power up with a USB stick plugged in
> and that becomes /dev/sda, or your new box has a SATA device in it and hte
> kernel decides that's /dev/sda,  you'll wish you used LVM, or label based
> mounts.
>
>
>
> -- David J. Andruczyk
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Richard Hubbard <rhubby at yahoo.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 3:59:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] Here is something I should know, but I've never tried
> it in a production environment, so...
>
> Good old fashioned partition mounting (We don't need no stinkin' LVM!). The
> raid is hardware through the megaraid card, so as long as the flash
> remembers it's stuff, I shouldn't have a problem.
>
> The raid partition is 3 virtual machines, 2 running, and the rest of the
> machine is pretty plain jane, with VMWare server installed.  One of the vm's
> is huge, though.(250 gb), so it would be much nicer if I didn't have to
> rebuild it.
>
> I checked with a couple of people here, and they seem to be of the opinion
> that it should work.
>
> Cross your fingers!
>
> <span style="font-family:comic sans ms;">Richard Hubbard </span>
> ATTO Technology Inc
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Darin Perusich <Darin.Perusich at cognigencorp.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 3:25:01 PM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] Here is something I should know, but I've never tried
> it in a production environment, so...
>
> I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't work but without knowing
> how everything is setup, LVM, raid, etc, it's only an informed guess.
> I'd make sure you have a full level 0 backup before you start playing
> around with this, just in case.
>
> Richard Hubbard wrote:
>> I have one older, slower server with CENT OS 5.1 on it.  So far, so good.
>>
>> I want to move it over to another, newer, physical box.  No problem.
>>
>> Problem: I have a drive array set up on the old box using an LSI
>> magaraid 6 SATA card.
>>
>> Could I just take the physical drives out of the old box, put them into
>> the new box, complete with the Megaraid card, and have the CENT OS
>> recognize all the different hardware?
>>
>> // I'm guessing "yes", but I'm worried about the drive array.  That has
>> the important data. The boot drive is a pretty generic setup and can be
>> remade in minutes.  The raid array would take a few days to rebuild.
>>
>> Richard Hubbard
>> ATTO Technology Inc
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>> nflug at nflug.org
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>
> --
> Darin Perusich
> Unix Systems Administrator
> Cognigen Corporation
> 395 Youngs Rd.
> Williamsville, NY 14221
> Phone: 716-633-3463
> Email: darinper at cognigencorp.com
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-- 
Regards,
Brian


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