Symantec logo

Resizing a volume

Resizing a volume changes the volume size. For example, you might need to increase the length of a volume if it is no longer large enough for the amount of data to be stored on it. To resize a volume, use one of the commands: vxresize (preferred), vxassist, or vxvol. Alternatively, you can use the graphical Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA) to resize volumes.

If a volume is increased in size, the vxassist command automatically locates available disk space. The vxresize command requires that you specify the names of the disks to be used to increase the size of a volume. The vxvol command requires that you have previously ensured that there is sufficient space available in the plexes of the volume to increase its size. The vxassist and vxresize commands automatically free unused space for use by the disk group. For the vxvol command, you must do this yourself. To find out by how much you can grow a volume, use the following command:

# vxassist [-g diskgroup] maxgrow volume

When you resize a volume, you can specify the length of a new volume in sectors, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. The unit of measure is added as a suffix to the length (s, m, k, or g). If no unit is specified, sectors are assumed. The vxassist command also allows you to specify an increment by which to change the volume's size.

Warning: If you use vxassist or vxvol to resize a volume, do not shrink it below the size of the file system which is located on it. If you do not shrink the file system first, you risk unrecoverable data loss. If you have a VxFS file system, shrink the file system first, and then shrink the volume. Other file systems may require you to back up your data so that you can later recreate the file system and restore its data.