VGCREATE

NAME

vgcreate - create a volume group

SYNOPSIS

vgcreate [--addtag Tag] [-A|--autobackup {y|n}] [-d|--debug] [-h|--help] [-l|--maxlogicalvolumes MaxLogicalVolumes] [-M|--metadatatypetype] [-p|--maxphysicalvolumes MaxPhysicalVolumes] [-s|--physicalextentsize PhysicalExtentSize[kKmMgGtT]] [-t|--test] [-v|--verbose] [--version] VolumeGroupName PhysicalVolumePath [PhysicalVolumePath...]

DESCRIPTION

vgcreate creates a new volume group called VolumeGroupName using the block special device PhysicalVolumePath previously configured for LVM with pvcreate(8).

OPTIONS

See lvm for common options.

-A, --autobackup {y|n}: Controls automatic backup of VG metadata after the change (see vgcfgbackup(8)). Default is yes.
-l, --maxlogicalvolumes MaxLogicalVolumes: Sets the maximum possible logical volume count. More logical volumes can't be created in this volume group. Absolute maximum is 256.
-p, --maxphysicalvolumes MaxPhysicalVolumes: Sets the maximum possible physical volume count. More physical volumes can't be included in this volume group. Absolute maximum is 256.
-s, --physicalextentsize PhysicalExtentSize[kKmMgGtT]: Sets the physical extent size on physical volumes of this volume group. A size suffix (k for kilobytes up to t for terabytes) is optional, megabytes is the default if no suffix is present. Values can be from 8 KB to 16 GB in powers of 2. The default of 4 MB causes maximum LV sizes of ~256GB because as many as ~64k extents are supported per LV. In case larger maximum LV sizes are needed (later), you need to set the PE size to a larger value as well. Later changes of the PE size in an existing VG are not supported.

EXAMPLES

To create a volume group named test_vg using physical volumes /dev/hdk1, /dev/hdl1, and /dev/hdm1 with default physical extent size of 4MB:


	vgcreate test_vg /dev/sd[k-m]1

To limit kernel memory usage, there is a limit of 65536 physical extents (PE) per logical volume, so the PE size determines the maximum logical volume size. The default PE size of 4MB limits a single logical volume to 256GB (see the -s option to raise that limit). There is also (as of Linux 2.4) a kernel limitation of 2TB per block device.