Customizing Logical Volumes in Linux Dedicated Servers

For dedicated servers that were purchased as part of a server deal or before October 20, 2021

In this article, we'll show you how to customize the Logical Volume on a Dedicated Server.

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is used to manage the storage space on Linux dedicated servers that were purchased either as part of a server deal or before October 20, 2021. If you create or have created one of these dedicated servers with an IONOS image, the entire storage space of the hard disk(s) is not partitioned when this server is made available for you to use, which allows you to distribute the storage space individually.

Please Note

When you install an IONOS image with Plesk on the server, approximately 90% of the available disk space is partitioned.

Please Note

This article describes deep changes to your server's file system. Before increasing the size of the existing volume, perform a backup to avoid data loss.

To manually adjust the size of the logical volume, follow the steps below:

Requirements

You have logged on to the server as an administrator.

Preparation

To check the available space of the logical volume, enter the following command:
[root@localhost ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /dev
tmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 32G 193M 32G 1% /run
tmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda2 28G 168M 28G 1% /
/dev/mapper/vg00-usr 9.8G 2.1G 7.2G 23% /usr
none 32G 4.0K 32G 1% /tmp
/dev/mapper/vg00-home 9.8G 37M 9.3G 1% /home
/dev/mapper/vg00-var 9.8G 362M 9.0G 4% /var
tmpfs 6.3G 0 6.3G 0% /run/user/0
To check the size of the logical volume and its free capacity, enter the following command:
[root@localhost ~]# vgdisplay -v NAME_DER_VOLUMEGROUP
Example:
[root@localhost ~]# vgdisplay -v vg00
To determine the filesystem, enter the following command:
[root@localhost ~]# df -Th | grep "^/dev"
Make a note of the file system.

Manually Increasing the Logical Volume

To increase a logical volume by 10 GB, enter the lvextend command in the following format:

[root@localhost ~]# lvextend -L +10G /dev/VOLUMEGROUP/LOGICALVOLUME

To use all available space to increase the size of the desired Logical Volume, enter the lvextend command in the following format:

[root@localhost ~]# lvextend -l +100%FREE [PATH OF LOGICAL VOLUME].

The following example uses all of the disk space to increase the size of the vg00/var logical volume:

[root@localhost ~]# lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/vg00/var
Size of logical volume vg00/var changed from 10.00 GiB (2560 extents) to 1.76 TiB (462142 extents).
Logical volume vg00/var successfully resized.

Enlarging the File System

To use the additional space, you must increase the size of the file system. The table below lists corresponding examples for the different file systems and the commands used to increase the size of each file system:

Filesystem	Command	Example	Note
Ext 2,3,4	resize2fs [PATH OF LOGICAL VOLUMES]	resize2fs /dev/vg00/var	To fit an ext3 filesystem, it must not be mounted or corrupted.
XFS	xfs_growfs [PATH OF MOUNT POINTS]	xfs_growfs /var
ReiserFS	resize_reiserfs -f [PATH OF LOGICAL VOLUMES]	resize_reiserfs -f /dev/vg00/var	To fit a ReiserFS filesystem, it must not be mounted or corrupt.

After entering the appropriate command, you will see that the file system has been enlarged. Example:

[root@localhost ~]# resize2fs /dev/vg00/var
resize2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Filesystem at /dev/vg00/var is mounted on /var; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 2, new_desc_blocks = 226
The filesystem on /dev/vg00/var is now 473233408 blocks long.

To verify that the filesystem has been adjusted, issue the following command:

[root@localhost ~]# df -h