CentOS - Oct 2015 - safest way to grow a LV under VMware ESXi5.5

Hello all,

In your view, what is the most reliable and safe way to increase an LV
housing the root filesystem of a Centos 6 VM. I am thinking either growing
the virtual HD virtual device, or creating a new device and adding it as a
PV to the VM, or perhaps migrating the whole FS to a new virtual disk.

Any input on how best to proceed would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Boris.

On 10/30/2015 08:42 AM, Boris Epstein wrote:
> I am thinking either growing
> the virtual HD virtual device, or creating a new device and adding it as a
> PV to the VM
Either of those should work.  Whichever you choose should be the path 
you take in the future.  I don't use VMware, but I suspect you'll need 
to reboot if you choose to grow the virtual HD, but the additional VHD 
probably won't require a reboot.

Boris Epstein wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> In your view, what is the most reliable and safe way to increase an LV
> housing the root filesystem of a Centos 6 VM. I am thinking either growing
> the virtual HD virtual device, or creating a new device and adding it as a
> PV to the VM, or perhaps migrating the whole FS to a new virtual disk.
>
> Any input on how best to proceed would be appreciated.
>
Dumb question: why do you need a larger root filesystem?

First, how big is root? And if this is for stuff under, say, /var/www, I'd
make a separate logical drive/partition, and mount that, rsync everything
from /var/www to that, then shut down the web, and remount the new
filesystem on /var/www.

Root, itself, doesn't need to be huge. We're using 500G, and seriously
considering making it 125G in the future, with data, or web stuff, is on a
separate partition, so when there's a sudden explosion of data, / is safe.

       mark

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 12:57 PM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> Boris Epstein wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > In your view, what is the most reliable and safe way to increase an LV
> > housing the root filesystem of a Centos 6 VM. I am thinking either
> growing
> > the virtual HD virtual device, or creating a new device and adding it
as
> a
> > PV to the VM, or perhaps migrating the whole FS to a new virtual disk.
> >
> > Any input on how best to proceed would be appreciated.
> >
> Dumb question: why do you need a larger root filesystem?
>
> First, how big is root? And if this is for stuff under, say, /var/www,
I'd
> make a separate logical drive/partition, and mount that, rsync everything
> from /var/www to that, then shut down the web, and remount the new
> filesystem on /var/www.
>
> Root, itself, doesn't need to be huge. We're using 500G, and
seriously
> considering making it 125G in the future, with data, or web stuff, is on a
> separate partition, so when there's a sudden explosion of data, / is
safe.
>
>        mark
>

Mark,

Thanks for your input.

Well, we are talking much smaller scale here (only about 30 GB at present,
planning to roughly double it).

I agree with you that it is best to keep usage/operational data outside of
root - but it just historically so happened that this is how we do things.
So for now this is the task and I need to perform it somehow.

Cheers,

Boris.