VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Migration Guide (September 2004)

Chapter 2

Converting LVM to VxVM

Converting Unused LVM Physical Volumes to VxVM Disks

LVM disks, which are not part of any volume group and contain no user data, are simply cleaned up, so that

there are no LVM disk headers. Then the disks are given over to VxVM through the normal means of

initializing disks.

CAUTION Exercise caution while using this procedure to give disks over to VxVM. You must be absolutely

certain that the disks are not in use in any LVM conﬁguration. If there is any user data on

these disks, it will be lost during conversion.

Removing LVM Disk Information

To remove LVM disk information from the disks use the following command:

# pvremove

disk_name

The pvremove command will not allow the removal of disk headers which indicate a Volume Group

membership for the disk. If the disk fails pvremove for this reason, you should ﬁrst make certain that the

group membership information is stale. Do this by using pvdisplay:

# pvdisplay

disk_name

If pvdisplay ﬁnds no valid group information associated with the disk, you can overwrite the LVM headers

using pvcreate:

# pvcreate

disk_name

CAUTION If disk_name is an alternate path to a disk that does not appear in the lvmtab ﬁle for this

system, or is a disk that is in use on another system, but not imported onto this system, then do

not pvcreate -f the disk. Doing so will destroy the LVM headers. You can use pvcreate

without the -f option safely, as it will only succeed if the disk is not listed lvmtab and the LVM

headers indicate it is not a member of any volume group. (That is, it has been pvcreated but

not been an argument for vgcreate or vgextend.)

Initializing Disks for VxVM Use

To initialize the disk for VxVM use, use the vxdiskadm command, selecting the option:

1) Add or initialize one or more disks

Or use the command:

# vxdisk init

disk_name

VxVM utilities will not tamper with disks that are recognized as owned by LVM (by virtue of the LVM disk

headers). If you attempt to use vxdisk init, or vxdiskadm on an LVM disk without using the pvremove

command ﬁrst, the command will fail.