[linux-lvm] Question on LVM and Bare Metal Restore?

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 12 Jun 2011 at 11:01, Milan Broz wrote:

Date sent:      	Sun, 12 Jun 2011 11:01:41 +0200
From:           	Milan Broz <mbroz at redhat.com>
To:             	LVM general discussion and development <linux-
lvm at redhat.com>
Copies to:      	"Michael D. Setzer II" 
<mikes at kuentos.guam.net>
Subject:        	Re: [linux-lvm] Question on LVM and Bare Metal 
Restore?

> On 06/12/2011 12:44 AM, Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
> 
> > Backing up the regular partitions that contain an LVM has been 
> > always been available, and backing up the whole disk image. 
> > Recent versions have added the ability to backup the LVM dm 
> > partitions as well. Backing up and restore works fine as long as 
> > the LVM setup is already there, but it a disk completely fails one 
> > would need to recreate the LVM before being able to restore it.
> 
> Recovery is very easy with LVM (once you find how to do that:-)
> 
> I suggest you read the LVM documentation, mainly
> the section 6. LVM troubleshooting.
> 
> http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html-single/Logical_Volume_Manager_Administration/index.html
> 
> All you need to recover LVM metadata is metadata backup
> (automatically maintained in /etc/lvm or directory specified in lvm.conf)
> and then something like
> pvcreate -u <uuid> --restorefile <backup file> <PV> # only if PV header is lost!
> vgcfgrestore -f <backup file> <VG>
> 
> Milan
> 
Thanks for both messages, they will give me a starting point to 
test. 

In doing a backup of a 250GB physical partition with a LVM and 
swap it takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to backup, but only 20 
minutes to use fsarchiver to backup the lvm root directly. 

Perhaps adding vgcfgbackup and vgcfgrestore options to the mbr 
backup section will work. Will have to setup a test machine, and 
see if I can complete wipe the disk, and have it restore LVM from 
scratch.

Thanks again.


+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
  mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
  G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer 
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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