![logical volume manager windows logical volume manager windows](https://www.hdd-tool.com/images/windows-server-2012/diskpart/diskpart-extend-volume-server-2012_3.png)
This may sound simple, and mostly it is, but it can be tricky.įirst, what is a hard drive. One of the more common, yet more tricky fundamental concepts in computing today is the concept of drive appearance or, in other words, something that appears to be a hard drive. They are not just standardly available, but standardly implemented and have done much to improve the reliability and capability of modern storage. Today you can expect to find LVMs in use nearly everywhere, even implemented transparently on storage arrays (such as SAN equipment) to provide more flexible provisioning. Much of how virtualization technologies tend to tackle storage virtualization can be thought of as being related to LVMs, but generally this is similar functionality offered in a different manner or simply passing LVM functionality on from a lower layer. Commodity virtualization systems have brought snapshots from an underlying, storage industry knowledge component into the IT mainstream.
![logical volume manager windows logical volume manager windows](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RrLT9jzLj-Y/WwGVdraXllI/AAAAAAAABec/CUydIazZwYsoNYKkEJyC3XIO-lSYkW1zQCLcBGAs/s1600/9-How-To-Setup-Logical-Volume-Manager-LVM-Step-By-Step7.png)
Snapshots have become a major focus of LVM usage in the last decade, although mostly this has happened because of snapshot awareness growing rather than a recent shift in availability. Logical volumes can almost always be grown or shrunk as needed making them tremendously more flexible. Traditional partitions are rigid and cannot be resized.
![logical volume manager windows logical volume manager windows](https://www.diskpart.com/screenshot/en/pro/create-partition/create-logical-partition/apply.png)
While LVMs provide power and flexibility for working with multiple storage devices and types of storage devices while presenting a standard interface to higher layers in the storage stack, probably the most common usages are to provide for flexibility where rigid partitions used to be and for snapshots.
![logical volume manager windows logical volume manager windows](https://www.diskpart.com/articles/images/extend-logical-partition/main-interface-of-PA-Pro.gif)
LVMs are also very useful for combining many different storage systems into one such as combining many physical devices and/or RAID arrays into a single, abstracted entity that can then be split up into logical volumes (with single volumes potentially utilizing many different underlying storage devices.) One standard use of an LVM is to combine many SAN LUNs (potentially from a single SAN system or potentially from several different ones) into a single volume group.
#Logical volume manager windows software#
But it is completely possible for an LVM to sit directly on physical storage without RAID, and it is very possible for RAID to be implemented via software on top of the logical volumes rather than beneath them. Most commonly we would expect an LVM to consume a RAID array, split one RAID array into one or more logical volumes with each logical volume having a filesystem applied to it. Because of this, an LVM can sit at any of many different places in the storage stack. ZFS and BtrFS are interesting as they are filesystems that implement an LVM inside of the filesystem as an integrated system.Īn LVM consumes block devices ( drive appearances) and creates logical volumes (often referred to as LVs) which are themselves drive appearances as well. LVMs have been increasingly popular and standard since the late 1980s.
#Logical volume manager windows mac#
Popular LVMs include Logical Disk Management on Windows Server 2000 through Server 2008 R2, Storage Spaces on Windows 2012 and later, LVM on Linux, BtrFS on Linux, Core Storage on Mac OSX, Solaris Volume Manager on Solaris, ZFS on Solaris and FreeBSD, Vinum Volume Manager on FreeBSD, Veritas Volume Manager for most UNIX systems, LVM on AIX and many more. Essentially all LVMs offer logical volumes, snapshots and flexible allocation these being considered fundamental LVM functions. LVMs do not necessarily offer uniform features but common features often included in an LVM are logical volumes (soft partitioning), thin provisioning, flexible physical location allocation, encryption, simple RAID functionality (commonly only mirror based RAID) and snapshots. LVMs have become a standard feature of both server and client side storage management. Nearly all operating systems offer an integrated LVM product today and most have for a very long time. Most commonly an LVM is used to replace traditional partitioning systems, and sometimes additional functionality is rolled into an LVM such as RAID functions. Logical Volume Managers, or LVMs, are a storage abstraction, encapsulation and virtualization technology used to provide a level of flexibility often otherwise unavailable. A commonly used but often overlooked or misunderstood storage tool is the Logical Volume Manager.