[TriLUG] SLES9 RAID and EVMS

[Chander Ganesan]

A couple of things...

Novell NSS volumes require that EVMS (the Enterprise Volume Management 
System - similar to LVM in concept, but much different from a design 
standpoint) be used to manage the entire disk - so LVM really isn't an 
option.

I believe you are going about the process backwards Brian.  You'll need 
to configure the disk to use EVMS, and then use the EVMS MD region 
plug-ins to configure RAID.

The key here is that EVMS needs to manage the physical volumes - it 
actually expects to manage the *entire* physical volume(s).  

I haven't actually gone through this process myself - setting up RAID 
under EVMS - but I do know it's a supported function, and I've done lots 
of other nifty things with EVMS. 

If I have time early next year I can try to play around with it and 
maybe give you some more feedback - it would be useful for me to be more 
familiar with anyways.

-- 
Chander Ganesan
Open Technology Group, Inc.
One Copley Parkway, Suite 210
Morrisville, NC  27560
http://www.otg-nc.com
Phone: 877-258-8987/919-463-0999
Fax: 919-386-0158



Pat Regan wrote:

>Ken Mink wrote:
>  
>
>>It took me a bit to work out exactly how. Before removing one of the md
>>physical volumes, who'd have to pvmove all the physical extents to the new
>>physical volume(the new md device). Once all the PEs were moved to the new
>>larger volumes, who'd be free lvextend to use more space.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>You are correct, you would have to use pvmove to clear out the original
>md devices before removing them.  I didn't think to mention that :(.
>
>  
>
>>This would work. For the largest md device size there must be that much free
>>on the disks.
>>    
>>
>
>Somebody probably knows a better strategy than just slicing it up into
>equal size pieces.  You can probably somehow take advantage of the fact
>that the new md devices will always be a bigger than the old ones :).
>
>Pat
>  
>