pvmove

Migrate LVM data between physical volumes

TLDR

Move data between physical volumes

$ pvmove [/dev/sda1] [/dev/sdb1]

Move all data from PV

$ pvmove [/dev/sda1]

Show progress

$ pvmove -v [/dev/sda1]

Abort move

$ pvmove --abort

SYNOPSIS

pvmove [options] source [dest]

pvmove migrates data between LVM physical volumes while the logical volumes remain online and accessible. This enables live storage migration, allowing administrators to replace disks, rebalance storage, or evacuate a physical volume before removing it from a volume group.When called with a source and destination physical volume, pvmove relocates all physical extents from the source to the destination. If no destination is specified, LVM automatically distributes the data across available physical volumes in the same volume group. The -n flag restricts the move to a specific logical volume. Operations can be run in the background with -b and aborted with --abort if needed.

PARAMETERS

SOURCE

Source physical volume.

DEST

Destination physical volume.

-v

Verbose output.

--abort

Abort in-progress move.

-b

Background mode.

-n LV

Move only this LV.

INSTALL

sudo apt install lvm2

sudo dnf install lvm2

sudo pacman -S lvm2

sudo apk add lvm2

sudo zypper install lvm2

nix profile install nixpkgs#lvm2

CAVEATS

Requires LVM. Can be slow for large volumes. Interruptible.

HISTORY

pvmove is part of LVM2 for physical volume data migration.