Red Hat Summit1.2. Advantages of LVM
Logical volumes provide the following advantages over using physical storage directly:
- Flexible capacity
- When using logical volumes, you can aggregate devices and partitions into a single logical volume. With this functionality, file systems can extend across multiple devices as though they were a single, large one.
- Resizeable storage volumes
- You can extend logical volumes or reduce logical volumes in size with simple software commands, without reformatting and repartitioning the underlying devices.
- Online data relocation
- To deploy newer, faster, or more resilient storage subsystems, you can move data while your system is active. Data can be rearranged on disks while the disks are in use. For example, you can empty a hot-swappable disk before removing it.
- Convenient device naming
- Logical storage volumes can be managed with user-defined and custom names.
- Striped Volumes
- You can create a logical volume that stripes data across two or more devices. This can dramatically increase throughput.
- RAID volumes
- Logical volumes provide a convenient way to configure RAID for your data. This provides protection against device failure and improves performance.
- Volume snapshots
- You can take snapshots, which is a point-in-time copy of logical volumes for consistent backups or to test the effect of changes without affecting the real data.
- Thin volumes
- Logical volumes can be thinly provisioned. This allows you to create logical volumes that are larger than the available physical space.
- Cache volumes
- A cache logical volume uses a fast block device, such as an SSD drive to improve the performance of a larger and slower block device.
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