Chapter 1. Introduction to VDO on LVM

The Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO) feature provides inline block-level deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning for storage. You can manage VDO as a type of Logical Volume Manager (LVM) Logical Volumes (LVs), similar to LVM thin-provisioned volumes.

VDO volumes on LVM (LVM-VDO) contain the following components:

If you are already familiar with the structure of an LVM thin-provisioned implementation, see the following table to understand how the different aspects of VDO are presented to the system.

Since the VDO is thin-provisioned, the file system and applications only see the logical space in use and not the actual available physical space. Use scripting to monitor the available physical space and generate an alert if use exceeds a threshold. For information about monitoring the available VDO space see the Monitoring VDO section.