Extending / increasing LVM partition size quickly and while staying online

This guide will show you how to increase the partition or LVM logical volume space.

This quick method only uses 2 commands in CLI, one to extend the Logical Volume (LV) and the other to extend the file system partition itself.

In my experience... I have been able to execute STEP 3 and STEP 4 without having to unmount my file system or partition. Even my server application which is using the /dev/ssd/ssd_data file system stayed online during this process.

STEP 1 - EXAMINE YOUR VOLUME GROUP (VG) SIZE

vgdisplay

  --- Volume group ---

  VG Name               ssd

  System ID

  Format                lvm2

  Metadata Areas        1

  Metadata Sequence No  2

  VG Access             read/write

  VG Status             resizable

  MAX LV                0

  Cur LV                1

  Open LV               1

  Max PV                0

  Cur PV                1

  Act PV                1

  VG Size               159.68 GiB

  PE Size               4.00 MiB

  Total PE              40878

  Alloc PE / Size       20480 / 80.00 GiB

  Free  PE / Size       20398 / 79.68 GiB

  VG UUID               5hhU7Y-fllL-OCn1-UMaa-3IO2-FEX1-8a6daw

STEP 2 - EXAMINE YOUR LOGICAL VOLUME GROUP (LV) SIZE

lvdisplay

  --- Logical volume ---

  LV Path                /dev/ssd/ssd_data

  LV Name                ssd_data

  VG Name                ssd

  LV UUID                v9EA2K-lH9F-eKyq-OtUm-f6Lo-KHVH-qglyQc

  LV Write Access        read/write

  LV Creation host, time a31, 2013-11-21 13:32:47 -0600

  LV Status              available

  # open                 1

  LV Size                80.00 GiB

  Current LE             20480

  Segments               1

  Allocation             inherit

  Read ahead sectors     auto

  - currently set to     256

  Block device           253:1

STEP 3 - INCREASING / EXTENDING LOGICAL VOLUME

lvextend -L +20G /dev/ssd/ssd_data

The above lvextend command will add 20GB to the ssd_data, so the new size should be 100GB.

STEP 4 - RESIZING / INCREASING FILE SYSTEM SIZE

resize2fs /dev/ssd/ssd_data

The above resize command will resize (to maximize the size of the file system to its max capacity which is now +20GB to 100GB).