pvcreate alternate path dev files?

[Kim Kendall]

Adding new disks on a server. I'm building the volume groups, etc., and realized I can't remember if I have to do a pvcreate on the alternate path devices as well (before I do the vgextend to add the alt path).

Once the physical device has been tagged by the first pvcreate -f command, do I have to pvcreate -f the alt path device as well????

[Pete Randall]

Kim,

See this post:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xdbe86c96588ad4118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

Pete

[Christopher McCray_1 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

No, the alt path refers to the same physical device. pvcreate the primary and then vgcreate by adding both paths.

Enjoy,

Chris

[A. Clay Stephenson]

No. You simply list the primary/alternate paths in your vgcreate and vgextend commands. The first path is considered the primary and the second (or third) paths are the alternates.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Kim,

If you are using a Disk Array, then you don;t have to do a pvcreate on the alternate path. If on the other hand you are using two seperate physical disks and are using mirroring, you should do pvcreate on both the disks.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Kim,

No you don't have to...but if you do there's no harm done. That is of course unless you're into the vgcreate/lvcreate/newfs stages.
You define the alt paths with the vgcreate command.

Rgds,
Jeff

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Kim

pvcreate -f < primary > is enough as the physical device is same . However just to make sure I do the same to both the paths .

Ofcourse
vgcreate /dev/vgXX primary secondary
and then vgextend primary seconday etc etc.


Manoj Srivastava

[Helen French]

Hi Kim:

As suggested, you should not do the pvcreate again on the same disks while adding the alternate paths. Just the vgextend will do the task. If you do pvcreate on any disk, it will erase all LVM information from that.

HTH,
Shiju