Oops, I pasted in the wrong notes of what I was sketching out... very 
sorry about that confusion. Totally botched up.

My question about your method was that a pvmove could be done to a 
snapshot, which I am going to answer myself by trying it right now. I 
thought that snapshot were inexorably connected to the source.

If there is a problem I am sure I will see the errors. heh.



Christopher G. Stach II wrote:
> ----- "Ben M." <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Does this appear to be a sound procedure? I have one inline question.
> 
> I read your version of the procedure and it looks like you want to skip the 
> pvmove. That's fine, but it means more downtime (an unreliable estimate is 
> one minuted per GB). In that case, you don't even need the snapshot. You 
> won't need a point in time copy if you are copying from a stable source.
> 
>> 1. Shutdown domU source (source lvname = win2k8-source) which is never
>> file mounted in Xen dom0, just "lvm'd".
> 
> Yeah, just turning off the guest and making sure it doesn't have the ``o'' 
> flag set in the ``lvs'' output is enough. I hope that nothing else had it 
> open (for writing) while your guest was running. :)
> 
>> 2. snapshot source win2k8-source to win2k8-snapshot
>> [How long do I wait before bringing DomU source back up? Is there in 
>> indication when it is done? It is approx. 50gig]
> 
> A few milliseconds. It will return almost immediately.
> 
>> 3. Bring up domU (Is this necessary if seeking accurate data state, 
>> would rather keep offline on a weekend dayrather than lose data
>> entries.)
> 
> The snapshot won't change. It's not necessary if you don't need your guest to 
> be up. In fact, you can skip the whole snapshot bit if you don't care about 
> downtime for your guest. Just dd from win2k8-source.
> 
> You can't perform this step if you aren't going to use pvmove. Your source 
> will change and your snapshot will be out of date. You would lose all of your 
> changes between the snapshot and when you reboot the guest the second time.
> 
>> 4. Create identical lv extent space (win3k8-target) on target pv/vg
> 
> Yes, but win2k8-target. :) Since you are copying to a new VG, you can just 
> keep the LV name the same.
> 
>> 5. dd if=/dev/vgsnapshotsource/win2k8-snapshot 
>> of=/dev/vgtarget/win2k8-target
> 
> Yes, but you can specify a larger block size and it will take less time. I 
> personally just default to using bs=1048576 for most things, even if it's not 
> ideal.
> 
>> 6. Shutdown DomU, change xen win2k8-source domU conf file phy:
>> reference to win2k8-target
> 
> Nope. Keep it the same. You don't want to run from the snapshot or the backup 
> copy, unless you're skipping the pvmove. If you are, you want to change the 
> VG and/or LV name to the non-backup copy.
> 
>> 6a. Drop snapshot, rename source lv to win2k8-old
> 
> If you were going with pvmove, you would perform that after this step.
> 
>> 7. Start "new" domU.
>> 8. test extensively, if works, run for few a day or two. Keep *-old as
>> fallback for a week or so. Then move to an archive using dd.
> 
> So, we have two possible procedures intermingled here. The major differences 
> are Procedure A (lots of downtime) and Procedure B (minimal downtime).
> 
> Procedure A
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
> 1. Create target LV with geometry identical to source LV geometry
> 2. Stop guest.
> 3. dd
> 4. Modify guest configuration to point to target LV
> 5. Start guest
> 
> This is the procedure to use if simplicity is desired. As a perk, your source 
> LV becomes your backup.
> 
> Procedure B
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
> 1. Create backup LV with geometry identical to source LV geometry
> 2. Stop guest.
> 3. Create snapshot of source LV
> 4. Start guest
> 5. dd from snapshot of source LV to backup LV
> 6. Drop snapshot of source LV
> 7. vgextend source VG with additional PV
> 7. pvmove source LV to additional PV
> (opt) 8. vgsplit [source VG into additional VG with additional PV]
> (opt) 9. Modify guest configuration [to point to source LV on additional VG]
> 
> Procedure B can be different for Linux guests in that, depending upon your 
> guest filesystem choices (ext3 journal, in particular) and site specific 
> caching issues, step 2 could be "Pause guest" and step 4 would then be 
> "Resume guest".
> 
> Depending upon how you handle your PVs and VGs in the optional 8 and 9 steps, 
> you may need to shut down your guest(s). Your desire to have one VG per PV 
> will probably necessitate that being done eventually.
> 

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