Increasing VM Size

There are a number of ways to increase the hard-disk size of a VM once it is provisioned, without rebuilding the VM. The chief way of doing it is via LVM and I love it.

My setup uses KVM on the host with all disk images stored in a LVM pool. In each VM, the main hard-disk is also using LVM as well, which is perfect.

To increase the size of the VM, I do this:

1. Stop the VM.
   Just so I don’t screw anything up accidentally, I will stop the VM.
2. Extend the volume in the host.
   This increases the size of the disk on the host:
   lvextend -L+10G /dev/lvmpool0/volumename
3. Startup the VM.
   It should reflect the new disk size. Check this by using fdisk or similar tool.
4. Partition the empty space.
   Preferably, use a Logical partition. Remember to set the partition type to ‘8E’ for Linux LVM.
5. Reboot the VM.
   To ensure the disk changes are read. VMs sometimes have issues with this.
6. Create the new PV.
   Ready the new partition:
   pvcreate /dev/hdaX
7. Extend the VG to this PV.
   This will append the PV to the existing VG instead of creating a new VG:
   vgextend vgname /dev/hdaX
8. Find out the amount of free space.
   This is needed for the next step. vgdisplay will show the amount of Free PE.
9. Extend the Logical Volume in this VG.
   The VG can be extended to any size, or up to the maximum free space above:
   lvextend -l + XXXX /dev/vgname/lvname
10. Resize the File System.
    This is the final step to using the new disk:
    resize2fs /dev/vgname/lvname