Moving LVM disk from one system to another

[John Urchek]

Is it possible to move a functioning disk (36GB LVM w/o mirror) to another system without losing the data currently on the drive?

[Thierry Poels_1]

hi,

sure, have a look at vgexport/vgimport.

regards,
Thierry Poels.

[Pete Randall]

John,

Is it a volume group unto itself? If so, you can vgexport it and then vgimport it on the new system. If it's part of a larger volume group, I don't think you can.


Pete

[OZ_4 · Accepted solution]

you can move it from one sys to another

but you should take some steps before moving

# umount /dev/vg01/lvol1
# umount /dev/vg01/lvol2
...

# vgchange -a n vg01
# vgexport -m /tmp/mapfile vg01
# ll /dev/*/group (choose a unique minor no.)
# mkdir /dev/vgnew
# mknod /dev/vgnew/group c 64 0x010000
# vgimport -m /tmp/mapfile vgnew /dev/dsk/c4t0d0 /dev/dsk/c5t0d0 ...

[Geoff Wild]

Yes it's possible.

Create a map file:

vgexport -p -v -s -m /tmp/vgXX.map /dev/vgXX

Copy that to other server.

umount all file systems on vgXX

vgchange -a n /dev/vgXX

move the disk

Import it:

mkdir /dev/vgXX
mknod /dev/vgXX/group c 64 0xHH0000

vgimport -v -s -m /tmp/vgXX.map /dev/vgXX

XX is VG number in decimal, and HH is hex equiv of that vg number.

Rgds...Geoff

[John Urchek]

Thank you all. I was aware of the vgexport and vgimport command, but never had used them. I thought that they had some other use.

Thanks again.