Resizing a KVM disk image on LVM, The Hard Way
In this post I’m going to show you how to resize your KVM Virtual Machine guest disk images.
And here’s some background information about our setup - we run Debian Wheezy systems as the KVM hypervisors and use LVM volumes as QEMU raw images for our guests. Inside the VM guests we also use LVM volumes for our filesystems.
You can also have a look at the Resizing a KVM disk image on LVM, The Easy Way post for a different and easy way of resizing KVM disk images. The difference between this post and the other one when it comes to resizing KVM disk images is explained in the Resizing a KVM disk image on LVM, The Easy Way post, so you might want to check that one also.
While this guide shows you how to resize your VM guests using LVM volumes you can still use this guide as a reference for resizing your VM’s disk images if you are using plain partitions inside your VM as well. If that is your case you should simply skip the sections involving the resize of LVM physical/logical volumes inside the VM guest domains.
DISCLAIMER: Make sure that you have proper backups in place before starting out with the resize procedure on your VMs! Create any backups necessary to ensure that if something goes wrong you can always go back to a previous working state. Losing any information or wiping out your disks is all your fault if this happens. Using this procedure is all at your own responsibility.
In order to make things clear we will use a guest# prompt whenever we execute commands inside the VM guest and host# prompt whenever we execute commands on the KVM hypervisor.
So, now that we have things cleared, lets start with resizing our KVM Virtual Machine disk images. First lets see how the disk image looks like inside the VM guest machine.
guest# fdisk -l /dev/vda
Disk /dev/vda: 10.7 GB, 10737418240 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders, total 20971520 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008d801
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/vda1 * 2048 20969471 10483712 8e Linux LVM
As you can see from the above output we have a disk of 10Gb in size and one partition which we use for LVM. Now lets see our physical LVM volume and some info about the volume groups we have before the resize.
guest# pvdisplay
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/vda1
VG Name vg0
PV Size 10.00 GiB / not usable 2.00 MiB
Allocatable yes
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 2559
Free PE 414
Allocated PE 2145
PV UUID nG36C3-AHSr-9ax7-hJD7-UoNg-GGWH-JeVeLO
And the volume groups we have inside the guest machine:
guest# vgdisplay
--- Volume group ---
VG Name vg0
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 1
Metadata Sequence No 3
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 2
Open LV 2
Max PV 0
Cur PV 1
Act PV 1
VG Size 10.00 GiB
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 2559
Alloc PE / Size 2145 / 8.38 GiB
Free PE / Size 414 / 1.62 GiB
VG UUID OPqZvj-RmWG-c1z1-0rEB-mHq4-GkWc-rw2Og1
From the hosts side we can check the LVM volume we use as a QEMU raw disk image for the guest before the resize. In the command below /dev/VG0/guest01 is the LVM volume we use as QEMU raw image for our guest machine.
host# qemu-img info /dev/VG0/guest01
image: /dev/VG0/guest01
file format: raw
virtual size: 10G (10737418240 bytes)
disk size: 0
Ok, we’ve got enough information already, so lets start with the resizing process now. First we need to shutdown the VM guest domain.
host# virsh shutdown guest01
Now we need to resize the LVM volume we are using as QEMU raw image for the VM guest machine.
host# lvresize -L+10G /dev/VG0/guest01
Extending logical volume guest01 to 20.00 GiB
Logical volume guest01 successfully resized
Lets check again the info of our QEMU raw image and verify that we have successfully resized it:
host# qemu-img info /dev/VG0/guest01
image: /dev/VG0/guest01
file format: raw
virtual size: 20G (21474836480 bytes)
disk size: 0
Okay, the VM’s guest disk image has been resized, now we can start up our guest machine and resize the LVM physical/logical volumes inside the VM as well.
host# virsh start guest01
Now, if we check our disk inside the VM guest we can see that the disk is larger.
guest01# fdisk -l /dev/vda
Disk /dev/vda: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders, total 41943040 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008d801
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/vda1 * 2048 20969471 10483712 8e Linux LVM
As you can see from the above output the Start and End sectors are still the same, which means that our partition needs first to be increased, before we extend the LVM volumes in our guest machine. So, what we need to do here is to re-create our partition, but this time making it bigger.
Lets run fdisk(8) and create our LVM partition bigger:
# fdisk /dev/vda
First delete the current partition:
Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1
Verify that the partition has been removed:
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/vda: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders, total 41943040 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008d801
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
Now re-create the partition, this time making it bigger. Note that the Start sector should be the same as before the resize, and the only change is in the Last sector.
Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
e extended
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-41943039, default 2048): 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-41943039, default 41943039):
Using default value 41943039
Verify that the partition is created:
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/vda: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders, total 41943040 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008d801
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/vda1 2048 41943039 20970496 83 Linux
Write the partitions table:
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at
the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks.
The disk partition has been made bigger, but we do need to run an
fsck(8) before resizing the file systems. Reboot the system and
schedule a file system check on reboot by executing the command below:
guest01:~# shutdown -Fr now
Once the VM guest machine is up check the fsck(8) passed normally
and then proceed. Lets resize now the physical LVM volume in our
guest.
guest01# pvresize /dev/vda1
Physical volume "/dev/vda1" changed
1 physical volume(s) resized / 0 physical volume(s) not resized
And now our physical volume should be resized. Verify that the physical volume has been resized:
guest01# pvdisplay
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/vda1
VG Name vg0
PV Size 20.00 GiB / not usable 2.00 MiB
Allocatable yes
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 5119
Free PE 2974
Allocated PE 2145
PV UUID nG36C3-AHSr-9ax7-hJD7-UoNg-GGWH-JeVeLO
Physical volume has been resized, which means that our volume group should be bigger now as well. To verify that, execute the command below:
guest01# vgdisplay
--- Volume group ---
VG Name vg0
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 1
Metadata Sequence No 4
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 2
Open LV 2
Max PV 0
Cur PV 1
Act PV 1
VG Size 20.00 GiB
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 5119
Alloc PE / Size 2145 / 8.38 GiB
Free PE / Size 2974 / 11.62 GiB
VG UUID OPqZvj-RmWG-c1z1-0rEB-mHq4-GkWc-rw2Og1
Physical volume and volume group have been successfully resized, so now we can resize our logical volumes and file systems as well. This is how our root partition looks like before the resize inside the guest.
guest01# df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg0-root 7.4G 989M 6.0G 14% /
First we resize the LVM volume:
guest01# lvresize -L+10G /dev/vg0/root
Extending logical volume root to 17.45 GiB
Logical volume root successfully resized
And now lets perform an online resize of the file system:
guest01# resize2fs -p /dev/vg0/root
resize2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
Filesystem at /dev/vg0/root is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 2
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/vg0/root to 4574208 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/vg0/root is now 4574208 blocks long.
And this is how our root file system looks like after the resize operations:
guest01# df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg0-root 18G 993M 16G 6% /
And that’s all!