vgreduce

Additional Notes

vgreduce removes one or more physical volumes (PVs) from an LVM volume group. This reduces the total storage pool. A PV can only be removed if no logical volumes are using extents on that PV. Use pvmove to relocate data off the PV before removing it.

This operation is useful when decommissioning a disk, replacing a failed device, or reorganizing storage. After reduction, the freed PV can be added to another VG or used for other purposes.

Syntax

vgreduce [options] volume_group physical_volume...

Parameters

• volume_group: Name of the volume group.
• physical_volume: One or more PVs to remove.

Common Options

• -a, --all: Remove all unused PVs from the VG.
• --removemissing: Remove missing PVs from the VG (when a disk has permanently failed).
• -f, --force: Force removal without confirmation.
• -A, --autobackup y|n: Control metadata backup.
• -t, --test: Do not perform the operation, just show what would happen.

Examples

vgreduce vg_data /dev/sdd1

Remove /dev/sdd1 from vg_data. The PV must have no used extents.

vgreduce --removemissing vg_data

Remove missing (failed) PVs from the VG.

pvmove /dev/sdd1
vgreduce vg_data /dev/sdd1

Move data off /dev/sdd1 and then remove it.

vgreduce -a vg_data

Remove all unused PVs from the VG.

Practical Notes

• Use pvmove first to migrate data off the PV being removed.
• If a disk has failed and cannot be replaced, use --removemissing to clean up the VG metadata.
• After reduction, you can reuse the PV elsewhere with pvcreate and vgextend.
• If the VG contains a RAID LV, removing a PV may degrade or affect redundancy.
• Always back up metadata with vgcfgbackup before structural changes.