This short article explains how you can move/convert a Xen guest that uses disk images to LVM volumes. Virtual machines that use disk images are very slow and heavy on disk IO, therefore it is often better to use LVM. Also, LVM-based guests are easier to back up (using LVM snapshots).

Automated Image & Restore (AIR) is an open source application that provides a GUI front end to the dd/dcfldd (Dataset Definition (dd)) command. AIR is designed to easily create forensic disk/partition images. It supports MD5/SHAx hashes, SCSI tape drives, imaging over a TCP/IP network, splitting images, and detailed session logging.