vgextend

Additional Notes

vgextend adds one or more physical volumes (PVs) to an existing LVM volume group. This increases the total storage pool available for logical volumes. The added PVs must already be initialized with pvcreate.

Extending a volume group is a common operation when more disk space is needed. The new space can then be allocated to existing logical volumes with lvextend or used for new LVs.

Syntax

vgextend [options] volume_group physical_volume...

Parameters

• volume_group: Name of the volume group to extend.
• physical_volume: One or more block devices already initialized with pvcreate.

Common Options

• -A, --autobackup y|n: Enable or disable metadata backup.
• -f, --force: Force the addition even if the PV is already used by another VG or is misaligned.
• --restoremissing: Restore a previously missing PV.
• -Z, --zero y|n: Zero the first sector of the new PVs.

Examples

vgextend vg_data /dev/sdd1

Add /dev/sdd1 to the vg_data volume group.

vgextend vg_data /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1

Add two physical volumes at once.

vgextend --restoremissing vg_data /dev/sdb1

Restore a previously missing PV (after replacing a failed disk with the same device).

Practical Notes

• A PV can only belong to one volume group at a time. Use pvchange or vgsplit to move a PV between VGs.
• After extending the VG, use lvresize or lvextend to allocate the new space to logical volumes.
• Run pvcreate on the device first: pvcreate /dev/sdd1.
• To remove a PV from a VG, use vgreduce.
• If the PV was previously used in a different VG and contains data, use pvcreate -ff to force initialization (all data will be lost).