Converting LVM to VxVM

This chapter explains how to convert your LVM configuration to a VxVM configuration and presents the following main topics:

• Converting Unused LVM Physical Volumes to VxVM Disks
• Converting LVM Volume Groups to VxVM Disk Groups
• Restoring the LVM Volume Group Configuration
• Examples

The basic tools for conversion are the VxVM commands, vxvmconvert and vxdiskadm, and the LVM administrative utilities such as pvremove and vgcfgbackup. The discussion here details how to use these tools and gives some insights into how these tools work.

The disks on your system managed by LVM can be of two types: LVM disks in volume groups, and unused disks.

The former are disks that contain logical volumes and volume groups. Unused disks contain no user data, and are not used by any volume group, but have LVM disk headers written by pvcreate. Conversion is done differently for these two types of disks.

For unused LVM disks you can use a combination of pvremove and vxdiskadm. For LVM disks in volume groups, the primary tool for conversion is the vxvmconvert command. For information on vxdiskadm, see the man page vxdiskadm(1M) or the VERITAS Volume Manager Administrator's Guide.