Following on
from my previous post, on working with scalable VGs.
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/cgaix/entry/working_with_aix_scalable_volume_groups1?lang=en
You may find
yourself in a situation where you’d like to convert a VG to scalable.
For example,
you might start off with a normal VG i.e. one that can support a maximum of 256
LVs and 32 PVs.
# mkvg -s
512M -y myvg hdisk5
myvg
# lsvg myvg
VOLUME
GROUP: myvg VG IDENTIFIER: 00f6027300004c0000000133aa24d1f6
VG
STATE: active PP SIZE: 512 megabyte(s)
VG
PERMISSION: read/write TOTAL PPs: 99 (50688 megabytes)
MAX LVs: 256 FREE PPs: 0 (0 megabytes)
LVs: 1 USED PPs: 99 (50688 megabytes)
OPEN
LVs: 1 QUORUM: 2 (Enabled)
TOTAL
PVs: 1 VG DESCRIPTORS: 2
STALE
PVs: 0 STALE PPs: 0
ACTIVE
PVs: 1 AUTO ON: yes
MAX PPs per
VG: 32512
MAX PPs per
PV: 1016 MAX PVs: 32
LTG size
(Dynamic): 256 kilobyte(s) AUTO
SYNC: no
HOT SPARE: no BB POLICY: relocatable
PV
RESTRICTION: none
Sometime
later you discover you need to grow the volume group and add more hdisks. But
you can’t because you’ve reached the maximum PV limit of 32.
You examine the chvg man page and discover the –G
flag! Of course you take note of the special considerations when converting to
scalable.
Changes the volume group to
Scalable VG format. This can accommodate up to 1024 physical volumes and 4096
logical volumes. Notes:
1
The -G flag cannot be used if there are any stale physical partitions.
2
Once the volume group is converted, it cannot be imported into AIX(R)
5.2 or lower versions.
3 The -G flag cannot be used if the volume
group is varied on.
4 There must be enough free partitions
available on each physical volume for the VGDA expansion for this operation to
be successful.
5
Since the VGDA resides on the edge of the disk and it requires
contiguous space for expansion, the free partitions are required on the edge of
the disk. If those partitions are allocated for user usage, they will be
migrated to other free partitions on the same disk. The rest of the physical partitions will be
renumbered to reflect the loss of the partitions for VGDA usage.
This will change the mappings of the logical to physical partitions in all the
PVs of this VG. If you have saved the mappings of the LVs for a potential
recovery operation, you should generate the maps again after the completion of
the conversion operation. Also, if the backup of the VG is taken with the map
option and you plan to restore using those maps, the restore operation may fail
since the partition number may no longer exist (due to reduction). It is
recommended that backup is taken before the conversion, and right after the
conversion if the map option is utilized.
6 Because the VGDA space has been increased
substantially, every VGDA update operation (creating a logical volume, changing
a log ical volume, adding a physical volume, and so on) may take considerably
longer to run.
Excellent, I
can convert my VG to scalable.
The volume
group must be varied off before it can be converted.
# chvg -G
myvg
0516-1707
chvg: The
volume group must be varied off during conversion to
scalable volume group format.
0516-732
chvg: Unable to change volume group myvg.
# umount
/myfs
# lsvg -l
myvg
myvg:
LV NAME TYPE LPs
PPs PVs LV STATE
MOUNT POINT
mylv jfs2 99
99 1 closed/syncd
/myfs
# varyoffvg
myvg
There must
be enough free PPs in the volume group (on each hdisk) in order for the
conversion to work. If there aren’t then you’ll see this error:
# chvg -G
myvg
0516-1214
chvg: Not
enough free physical partitions exist on hdisk5 for the
expansion of the volume group
descriptor area. Migrate/reorganize to free up
1 partitions and run chvg again.
0516-732
chvg: Unable to change volume group myvg.
In this
example, we vary on the VG again, and shrink the file system by 1 PP, giving us
1 PP free in the volume group. Remember, “There
must be enough free partitions available on each physical volume for the VGDA
expansion for this operation to be successful.”
# varyonvg
myvg
# chfs -a
size=-512M /myfs
Filesystem
size changed to 102760448
Inlinelog
size changed to 196 MB.
# lsvg myvg
VOLUME
GROUP: myvg VG IDENTIFIER: 00f6027300004c0000000133aa24d1f6
VG
STATE: active PP SIZE: 512 megabyte(s)
VG
PERMISSION: read/write TOTAL PPs: 99 (50688 megabytes)
MAX
LVs: 256 FREE PPs: 1 (512 megabytes)
LVs: 1 USED PPs: 98 (50176 megabytes)
OPEN
LVs: 0 QUORUM: 2 (Enabled)
TOTAL
PVs: 1 VG DESCRIPTORS: 2
STALE
PVs: 0 STALE PPs: 0
ACTIVE
PVs: 1 AUTO ON: yes
MAX PPs per
VG: 32512
MAX PPs per
PV: 1016 MAX PVs: 32
LTG size
(Dynamic): 256 kilobyte(s) AUTO
SYNC: no
HOT
SPARE: no BB POLICY: relocatable
PV
RESTRICTION: none
The VG is
varied off again.
# varyoffvg
myvg
# lsvg -o
rootvg
We convert
the VG to scalable.
# chvg -G
myvg
0516-1224
chvg: WARNING, once this operation is completed, volume group myvg
cannot be
imported into AIX 5.2 or lower versions. Continue (y/n) ? y
0516-1216
chvg: Physical partitions are being migrated for volume group
descriptor
area expansion. Please wait.
0516-1712 chvg: Volume group myvg
changed. myvg can include up to 1024
physical volumes with 2097152 total physical partitions in the volume group.
We vary on
the volume group and check that it is now scalable. You’ll notice that we’ve
now lost that free PP in the VG as it has been used in the conversion process.
# varyonvg
myvg
# lsvg myvg
VOLUME
GROUP: myvg VG IDENTIFIER: 00f6027300004c0000000133aa24d1f6
VG
STATE: active PP SIZE: 512 megabyte(s)
VG
PERMISSION: read/write TOTAL PPs: 98 (50176 megabytes)
MAX LVs: 256 FREE PPs: 0 (0 megabytes)
LVs: 1 USED PPs: 98 (50176 megabytes)
OPEN
LVs: 0 QUORUM: 2 (Enabled)
TOTAL
PVs: 1 VG DESCRIPTORS: 2
STALE
PVs: 0 STALE PPs: 0
ACTIVE
PVs: 1 AUTO ON: yes
MAX PPs per
VG: 32768 MAX PVs: 1024
LTG size
(Dynamic): 256 kilobyte(s) AUTO SYNC: no
HOT
SPARE: no BB POLICY: relocatable
PV
RESTRICTION: none
If you are
unable to free up a physical partition on a your hdisk (or hdisks) then you may
need to use a tool like migratelp to
move logical partitions around in order to free up some space. From the migratelp man page:
migratelp Command
Purpose
Moves allocated logical partition
from one physical partition to another physical partition on a different
physical volume.
Tags:
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