5.4. Removing a Disk from a Logical Volume
This example shows how you can remove a disk from an existing logical volume, either to replace the disk or to use the disk as part of a different volume. In order to remove a disk, you must first move the extents on the LVM physical volume to a different disk or set of disks.
5.4.1. Moving Extents to Existing Physical Volumes
In this example, the logical volume is distributed across four physical volumes in the volume group myvg.
[root@tng3-1]# pvs -o+pv_used
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree Used
/dev/sda1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 12.15G 5.00G
/dev/sdb1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 12.15G 5.00G
/dev/sdc1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 12.15G 5.00G
/dev/sdd1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 2.15G 15.00G
We want to move the extents off of /dev/sdb1 so that we can remove it from the volume group.
If there are enough free extents on the other physical volumes in the volume group, you can execute the pvmove command on the device you want to remove with no other options and the extents will be distributed to the other devices.
[root@tng3-1 ~]# pvmove /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb1: Moved: 2.0%
...
/dev/sdb1: Moved: 79.2%
...
/dev/sdb1: Moved: 100.0%
After the pvmove command has finished executing, the distribution of extents is as follows:
[root@tng3-1]# pvs -o+pv_used
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree Used
/dev/sda1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 7.15G 10.00G
/dev/sdb1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 17.15G 0
/dev/sdc1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 12.15G 5.00G
/dev/sdd1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 2.15G 15.00G
Use the vgreduce command to remove the physical volume /dev/sdb1 from the volume group.
[root@tng3-1 ~]# vgreduce myvg /dev/sdb1
Removed "/dev/sdb1" from volume group "myvg"
[root@tng3-1 ~]# pvs
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
/dev/sda1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 7.15G
/dev/sdb1 lvm2 -- 17.15G 17.15G
/dev/sdc1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 12.15G
/dev/sdd1 myvg lvm2 a- 17.15G 2.15G
The disk can now be physically removed or allocated to other users.
