Skip to content

Server Disk Space Summary

Starting in IP Fabric version 5.0.0, the virtual appliance deploys as one hard disk installation instead of two disk volumes.

IP Fabric appliance is using LVM type for root and swap partitions. On a default installation, the swap has 16GB, and root has ~72GB of disk space.

We automatically resize the boot disk as follows:

  • resize primary partition to full size of the disk
  • resize extended partition to full size of primary partition
  • extend ipfabric-vg/root to +100%FREE
  • online resize ext4 partition

Increasing Disk Space On IP Fabric Appliance

If you need any help with a disk space expansion, please contact our Support Team

Resizing Root/First Disk

The easiest way how to resize IP Fabric system disk is to

  1. Shutdown the appliance

  2. Resize root/first disk to a desired size

  3. Start virtual machine

cloud-init will take care of resizing this disk.

Expanding System Volume By Adding Additional Disk(s)

If you want to add secondary or any additional disk as a system disk, you will need to manually add it to ipfabric-vg/root volume.

To do that follow LVM resource:

Local Backup Disk

Backup Disk

Backup disk is not present by default! Please add a new virtual disk to enable local backups.

When enabling local backups, a backup tool creates backups to the /backup directory. The tool first checks if the local backup directory exists and then the backups are created.

Any additional disk (see hypervisor-specific configuration at the bottom of this page) can be mounted as the backup directory. We recommend using an additional disk located on a different datastore than the root volume for the local backups.

Warning

The backup disk has to be partitioned with LVM. Specifically, the /backup directory must be on the logical volume backup of the volume group backup-vg.

Instructions To Mount a Physical Disk To /backup Directory

Warning

The name of your backup disk may vary depending on your system. To find out the name of your backup disk, you can use the lsblk command. In the following steps 2 and 3, we will use vdb as an example of a backup disk name. If your backup disk has a different name, please replace vdb with the correct name in steps 2 and 3.

  1. Find a device which you want to use as the /backup directory. In this case, vdb.

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ lsblk
NAME                    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda                     254:0    0 76,3G  0 disk
├─vda1                  254:1    0  487M  0 part /boot
├─vda2                  254:2    0    1K  0 part
└─vda5                  254:5    0 75,8G  0 part
  ├─ipfabric--vg-swap_1 253:0    0   16G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─ipfabric--vg-root   253:1    0 59,8G  0 lvm  /
vdb                     254:16   0   20G  0 disk             # <- I want to use this device for the /backup directory

  2. Create LVM physical volume on the disk vdb:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo pvcreate /dev/vdb
  Physical volume "/dev/vdb" successfully created.

  3. Create the volume group backup-vg:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo vgcreate backup-vg /dev/vdb
  Volume group "backup-vg" successfully created

  4. Use the entire size of the volume group backup-vg for creating the logical volume backup:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo lvcreate -n backup -l 100%FREE backup-vg
  Logical volume "backup" created.

  5. Create a filesystem (in this example ext4) on the logical volume backup:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/backup--vg-backup
mke2fs 1.46.2 (28-Feb-2021)
Discarding device blocks: done
Creating filesystem with 5241856 4k blocks and 1310720 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 26bf3259-8421-4b67-ad27-71fa55e57af8
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
  32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
  4096000

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

  6. Create a new fstab entry (for example with sudo vi /etc/fstab):

    Info

    We strongly recommend only LVM partition, LABEL and UUID in fstab, for more info see Persistent block device naming.

    /dev/mapper/backup--vg-backup   /backup   ext4   defaults   0   0

  7. Create the /backup directory:

    sudo mkdir /backup

  8. The logical volume backup can be now mounted with:

    sudo mount /backup

  9. Finally, check the output of lsblk:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ lsblk
NAME                    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda                     254:0    0 76,3G  0 disk
├─vda1                  254:1    0  487M  0 part /boot
├─vda2                  254:2    0    1K  0 part
└─vda5                  254:5    0 75,8G  0 part
  ├─ipfabric--vg-swap_1 253:0    0   16G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─ipfabric--vg-root   253:1    0 59,8G  0 lvm  /
vdb                     254:16   0   20G  0 disk
└─backup--vg-backup     253:2    0   20G  0 lvm  /backup

Increase Size of Backup Disk

Warning

The name of your backup disk may vary depending on your system. To find out the name of your backup disk, you can use the lsblk command. In the following step 5, we will use vdb as an example of a backup disk name. If your backup disk has a different name, please replace vdb with the correct name in step 5.

Suppose you prepared a backup disk with size of 20 GB with the instructions above and you would like to increase its size (for example to 40 GB).

  1. Shutdown the IP Fabric appliance.

  2. Increase the backup disk’s size at the VM-level (for example to 40 GB).

  3. Start the IP Fabric appliance.

  4. Log in to the CLI as the osadmin user.

  5. Check the status with lsblk – notice that the disk vdb in this case has 40 GB, but the LVM logical volume backup still has only 20 GB:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ lsblk
NAME                    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda                     254:0    0 76,3G  0 disk 
├─vda1                  254:1    0  487M  0 part /boot
├─vda2                  254:2    0    1K  0 part 
└─vda5                  254:5    0 75,8G  0 part 
  ├─ipfabric--vg-swap_1 253:1    0   16G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─ipfabric--vg-root   253:2    0 59,8G  0 lvm  /
vdb                     254:16   0   40G  0 disk 
└─backup--vg-backup     253:0    0   20G  0 lvm  /backup

  6. Resize the LVM physical volume:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo pvresize /dev/vdb
  Physical volume "/dev/vdb" changed
  1 physical volume(s) resized or updated / 0 physical volume(s) not resized

  7. Resize the LVM logical volume:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/backup-vg/backup
  Size of logical volume backup-vg/backup changed from <20,00 GiB (5119 extents) to <40,00 GiB (10239 extents).
  Logical volume backup-vg/backup successfully resized.

  8. Resize the filesystem:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ sudo resize2fs /dev/mapper/backup--vg-backup
resize2fs 1.46.2 (28-Feb-2021)
Filesystem at /dev/mapper/backup--vg-backup is mounted on /backup; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 3, new_desc_blocks = 5
The filesystem on /dev/mapper/backup--vg-backup is now 10484736 (4k) blocks long.

  9. Re-check the status with lsblk:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ lsblk
NAME                    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda                     254:0    0 76,3G  0 disk 
├─vda1                  254:1    0  487M  0 part /boot
├─vda2                  254:2    0    1K  0 part 
└─vda5                  254:5    0 75,8G  0 part 
  ├─ipfabric--vg-swap_1 253:1    0   16G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─ipfabric--vg-root   253:2    0 59,8G  0 lvm  /
vdb                     254:16   0   40G  0 disk 
└─backup--vg-backup     253:0    0   40G  0 lvm  /backup

  10. Also check the size of the filesystem:

    osadmin@ipfabric:~$ df -h /backup
Filesystem                     Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/backup--vg-backup   40G   19M   38G   1% /backup

Deprecated Resize Wizard

IP Fabric appliance with version lower than 5.0 was using two LVM volumes by default. ipfabric-vg/root for system and data, backup-vg/backup for /backup. System and data volume was extended over two disks (usually first two). For additional drives, one could choose to extend root or backup volume. This option was discontinued in favor of one system/data disk with the possibility of adding a backup disk. The original script is still present in the system, but it is discouraged to use it as it expects only the boot disk to be sda, sdb as extended ipfabic-vg/root, and one could choose how sd[c-z] would be used. The new approach with one disk is more versatile and is not limited to sd[a-z] disks.

Deprecated script

This script should not be used anymore. You should run only when you are sure you know what you are doing.

Script location: /opt/nimpee/sys-lvm-resize.sh

Increase Disk Space For VMware

Extend Existing Virtual Disk (For System And Data)

  1. Open VMware vSphere web console.
  2. Right click VM name and select Edit Settings.
  3. Select Hard disk and change its size.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Restart VM (using CLI or web UI).
  6. Disk space is automatically increased if you resized the first drive.

Add New Virtual Disk (As An Additional Backup Disk)

  1. Open VMware vSphere web console.
  2. Right click VM name and select Edit Settings.
  3. Click Add New Device → Hard Disk
  4. Select new size
  5. Specify Location:
    1. for system disk expansion is recommended to select Store with the virtual machine
    2. for backup volume is recommended to select different datastore ideally on a different physical storage
  6. Click OK VMWare virtual hardware
  7. Launch Remote (Web) Console.
  8. Reboot(Send Ctrl+Alt+Delete function can be also used) or power on IP Fabric VM.
  9. Follow Adding additional disk(s) or Example adding disk to backup

Increase Disk Space For Hyper-V

Extend Existing Virtual Disk (For System And Data)

  1. Open Hyper-V Manager.
  2. Shutdown VM. (when Started, HyperV won’t let you change any hardware settings)
  3. Right click VM name and select Settings.
  4. Select **IDE Controller - Hard Drive - ipfabric-x-x-x-disk1.vhdx **
  5. Click Edit - Choose Action - select option Expand, click Next.
  6. Set up required disk size and click Finish.
  7. Start VM.
  8. Disk space is automatically increased, if you resized the first disk.

Add New Virtual Disk (As An Additional Backup Disk)

  1. Open HyperV Manager.
  2. Shutdown VM. (when Started, HyperV won’t let you change any hardware settings)
  3. Right click VM name an select Settings. HyperV settings
  4. Select IDE Controller 1 - Hard Drive - click Add HyperV Add hard drive
  5. Select Virtual hard disk - click New - select Choose Disk Format - select VHDX - click Next. HyperV Add hard drive - format
  6. Select Dynamically expanding - click Next HyperV Add hard drive - type
  7. Specify name and location of disk.
  8. Configure Disk - select Create a new blank virtual hard disk - change Size to required value - click Finish. HyperV Add hard drive - space
  9. Apply new disk on Settings window - close Settings.
  10. Start VM.
  11. Follow Adding additional disk(s) or Example adding disk to backup