Updated: 2022/Sep/29

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PVMOVE(8)                   System Manager's Manual                  PVMOVE(8)



NAME
       pvmove - move physical extents

SYNOPSIS
       pvmove [--abort] [--alloc AllocationPolicy] [-b|--background]
       [-d|--debug] [-h|--help] [-i|--interval Seconds] [-v|--verbose]
       [-n|--name LogicalVolume] [SourcePhysicalVolume[:PE[-PE]...]
       [DestinationPhysicalVolume[:PE[-PE]...]...]]

DESCRIPTION
       pvmove allows you to move the allocated physical extents (PEs) on
       SourcePhysicalVolume to one or more other physical volumes (PVs).  You
       can optionally specify a source LogicalVolume in which case only
       extents used by that LV will be moved to free (or specified) extents on
       DestinationPhysicalVolume(s).  If no DestinationPhysicalVolume is
       specified, the normal allocation rules for the volume group are used.

       If pvmove gets interrupted for any reason (e.g. the machine crashes)
       then run pvmove again without any PhysicalVolume arguments to restart
       any moves that were in progress from the last checkpoint.
       Alternatively use pvmove --abort at any time to abort them at the last
       checkpoint.

       You can run more than one pvmove at once provided they are moving data
       off different SourcePhysicalVolumes, but additional pvmoves will ignore
       any logical volumes already in the process of being changed, so some
       data might not get moved.

       pvmove works as follows:

       1. A temporary 'pvmove' logical volume is created to store details of
       all the data movements required.

       2. Every logical volume in the volume group is searched for contiguous
       data that need moving according to the command line arguments.  For
       each piece of data found, a new segment is added to the end of the
       pvmove LV.  This segment takes the form of a temporary mirror to copy
       the data from the original location to a newly-allocated location.  The
       original LV is updated to use the new temporary mirror segment in the
       pvmove LV instead of accessing the data directly.

       3. The volume group metadata is updated on disk.

       4. The first segment of the pvmove logical volume is activated and
       starts to mirror the first part of the data.  Only one segment is
       mirrored at once as this is usually more efficient.

       5. A daemon repeatedly checks progress at the specified time interval.
       When it detects that the first temporary mirror is in-sync, it breaks
       that mirror so that only the new location for that data gets used and
       writes a checkpoint into the volume group metadata on disk.  Then it
       activates the mirror for the next segment of the pvmove LV.

       6. When there are no more segments left to be mirrored, the temporary
       logical volume is removed and the volume group metadata is updated so
       that the logical volumes reflect the new data locations.

       Note that this new process cannot support the original LVM1 type of on-
       disk metadata.  Metadata can be converted using vgconvert(8).


OPTIONS
       --abort
              Abort any moves in progress.

       -b, --background
              Run the daemon in the background.

       -i, --interval Seconds
              Report progress as a percentage at regular intervals.

       -n, --name  LogicalVolume
              Move only the extents belonging to LogicalVolume from
              SourcePhysicalVolume instead of all allocated extents to the
              destination physical volume(s).


EXAMPLES
       To move all logical extents of any logical volumes on /dev/hda4 to free
       physical extents elsewhere in the volume group, giving verbose runtime
       information, use:

            pvmove -v /dev/hda4


SEE ALSO
       lvm(8), vgconvert(8)



Sistina Software UK    LVM TOOLS 2.02.44-cvs (02-17-09)              PVMOVE(8)