Best practise for data disk in linux guest

[einjen]

I'm migratingating a linux physical which runs nfs and samba. it has three disks:

1: OS 10 GB

2: Data1, 100 GB

3: Data2, 200 GB

these disks filled up rather quickly and now while migrating, I would like to be prepared for expanding the disks when needed.

What is the best solutions?

Should I use LVM, and just expand the volumes with new virtual disks when needed, or is it possible to expand existing disks without stopping/reboot of the guest server?

any thoughts or recomandations is appreciated!

Best Regards!

EInar Næss Jensen

[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Definitely use LVM. It is by far the easiest way to add new disks to an existing volume of data. THere is even a graphical tool to do this 'system-config-lvm'. Most default installs use LVM these days. The only partition that should NOT be in LVM is /boot.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[kjb007]

I agree with Ed. Use LVM. Without it, you will not be able to add more physical space to an existing volume without creating new, bigger volume, copying the data, and removing the older volume. Also, since you asked, without shutting down the vm, you can not expand the disk, as the vmdk is in use while the VM is up. You can resize on the fly with lvm, so adding space, and extending your volume is fairly easy.

-KjB