Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) – Add A Disk To The Default LVM Volume Group
If you initially install XCP using only one disk you can still add more drives later if you find you need more room. XCP uses LVM storage to manage the partitions created for new Virtual Machines which allows you to extend the default volume group at your leisure among other things.
In order to add a new disk to your default volume group perform the following steps.
Install the new drive into the computer
Partition it using fdisk
fdisk /dev/sdb
After you create the partition change it’s type to Linux LVM:
Enter the menu option T to change the partition type:
Enter the menu option 1 to choose the first partition:
Enter the menu item 8e to choose Linux LVM:
Enter the menu item p to print the partition output to verify that it is set to Linux LVM:
Enter the menu item w to save the partition information:
Enter the menu item q to quit:
Now we can add the partition to the volume group.
Set the partition as a physical volume:
pvcreate /dev/sdb1
Find out the name of the existing volume group:
pvdisplay
This should output something like this:
--- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sda3 VG Name VG_XenStorage-be47438c-f310-dcf6-744e-651ba2bfaff9 PV Size 457.76 GB / not usable 6.62 MB Allocatable yes PE Size (KByte) 4096 Total PE 117183 Free PE 96097 Allocated PE 21086 PV UUID ZCI4EI-EURD-H5lK-VTlt-ZahV-itnl-bgMyiN
We are interested in this line:
VG Name VG_XenStorage-be47438c-f310-dcf6-744e-651ba2bfaff9
Add the new physical volume to the existing volume group
vgextend /dev/VG_XenStorage-be47438c-f310-dcf6-744e-651ba2bfaff9 \ /dev/sdb1
Now you can verify that it worked by typing:
vgs
This should list the volume group and display it’s current size, which should indicate the size of the old volume group + the size of the added disk.
