How to extend XFS LVM in Red Hat

How to extend a logical volume (LVM) on Red Hat Linux with XFS filesystem

Scenario – Customer requires a 1TB LUN adding to a Production Linux Database server and the /data partition extending by 1TB. A Server is a Virtual Machine on VMware. The filesystem is XFS.

Actions

This is a very common task performed by Linux system administrators, but to others, this may seem a daunting task. The process may seem difficult but it’s not when you get your head around how Red Hat manages the filesystem and Logical Volumes (LVM)

• Take a snapshot of the VM to create a rollback point
• Log in to vCenter and locate the Virtual Machine. (preferably use the VMware Web Client)
• Right Click on the VM and select Edit Settings
• Add a new Hard Disk, set the size to 1TB, and type to your preference (My policy is to use Thick provision lazy zero)

• SSH to the VM or connect via the VMware Console.
• For ease of use, I will sudo -su to root : type sudo su –
• Type pvs to list the disks attached to the server

• Find the 1TB LUN you just added. it will usually be the last one on the list. make a note of the mount point (eg. /dev/sdd)
• Next work out how many volume groups you have: Type vgs

• Now, for my example, I will be using physical volume /dev/sdd and Volume Group VG01 as that is where /data resides
• type fdisk /dev/sdd   (Amend to your physical volume if needed)
• This will open fdisk – note any changes you make here will not be committed to disk until you type W for write!
• press n to create a new disk partition,
• press p to create a primary disk partition,
• press 1 to denote it as 1st disk partition,
• Press ENTER twice to accept the default of 1st and last cylinder – to convert the whole secondary hard disk to a single disk partition,
• press t (will automatically select the only partition – partition 1) to change the default Linux partition type (0x83) to LVM partition type (0x8e),
• press L to list all the currently supported partition type,
• press 8e (as per the L listing) to change partition 1 to 8e, i.e. Linux LVM partition type,
• press p to display the secondary hard disk partition setup. Please take note that the first partition is denoted as /dev/hdb1 in Linux,
• press w to write the partition table and exit fdisk upon completion.
• type partprobe to query service partitions
• now to extend the volume group – type vgextend vg01 /dev/sdd1   (ensure you check your vg and sdd values)
• now to extend the logical volume – type lvextend +1T /dev/vg01/data /dev/sdd1  (ensure you check your vg and sdd values)
• if you get an error its possible the disk might not quite have 1TB, which is 1024gb – try  lvextend -L +1000G /dev/vg01/data /dev/sdd1
• now to grow the filesystem – type xfs_growfs /data
• That’s it – all done, you can confirm by typing df -h
• Remember to delete the snapshot so your datastore does not fill up.