To split the physical volumes of a volume group and create a new volume group, use the vgsplit command.

Logical volumes cannot be split between volume groups. Each existing logical volume must be entirely on the physical volumes forming either the old or the new volume group. If necessary, however, you can use the pvmove command to force the split.

The following example splits off the new volume group smallvg from the original volume group bigvg.

# vgsplit bigvg smallvg /dev/ram15
  Volume group "smallvg" successfully split from "bigvg"