[ale] LVM and Xen

[Andrew Grieser]

I'm just getting started with Xen, and I was wondering if there was a "smart" way to do utilize LVM in combination with Xen.

I'd like to be able to add additional guests without having to repartition, and I'd also like to be able to increase space available to the guest without having to reinstall the guest.

Creating new "partitions" for guests on the fly means that I need to use LVM in the host domain (dom0). However, when Xen exports the partition/logical-volume to the guest, the guest thinks it is an entire drive, and wants to create a partition table. Because of this, using dom0 to increase the size of the logical volume on which the guest is residing doesn't accomplish much. Running resize2fs on the guest doesn't pick up the extra space.

Basically I'm wondering if there is a smart way to do this. Should I be running LVM on the host, on the guests, or both? For reference, both the host and guests are Debian Lenny.

Also, is there a way to export a partition/logical-volume and have the guest realize that it is a partition and not an entire disk?

Andrew