Chapitre 1. Overview of logical volume management
Logical volume management (LVM) creates a layer of abstraction over physical storage, which helps you to create logical storage volumes. This provides much greater flexibility in a number of ways than using physical storage directly.
In addition, the hardware storage configuration is hidden from the software so it can be resized and moved without stopping applications or unmounting file systems. This can reduce operational costs.
1.1. LVM architecture
The following are the components of LVM:
- Physical volume
- A physical volume (PV) is a partition or whole disk designated for LVM use. For more information, see Managing LVM physical volumes.
- Volume group
- A volume group (VG) is a collection of physical volumes (PVs), which creates a pool of disk space out of which logical volumes can be allocated. For more information, see Managing LVM volume groups.
- Logical volume
- A logical volume represents a mountable storage device. For more information, see Managing LVM logical volumes.
The following diagram illustrates the components of LVM:
Figure 1.1. LVM logical volume components
