VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 Migration Guide

Converting LVM to VxVM
Converting Unused LVM Physical Volumes to VxVM Disks
Chapter 22
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.